CUNY Conference on Asian American / Asian Students:
"Aspects of Social Interaction"

Date: Friday, April 30, 2004
Time: 8:15 AM to 3:00 PM

Place: CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Martin E. Segal Theatre

Transcript

Keynote Speaker

• Dr. Victor Nee; Goldwin Smith Professor of Sociology, Director of the Center for the Study of Economy and Society at Cornell University

  Topic: “Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration”

Hiroko Karan: Good morning. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the CUNY Conference on Asian American Asian Students: Aspects of Social Interaction, sponsored by the Asian American Asian Research Institute at Queens College, City University of New York. My name is Hiroko Karan, Dean of the School of Science, Health, and Technology at Medgar Evers College, member of the AAARI Advisory Board, and I am the chair of this conference.

First I would like to thank Dr. Thomas Tam, Executive Director of AAARI, and the student assistants in the office of AAARI for organizing this conference. Without their dedication, this conference would not be possible. I also thank all the distinguished guests, keynote speakers, session moderators, and presenters for your participation in this important conference. This conference is to explore Asian American Asian students in the City University of New York, and what obstacles or programs they commonly take in CUNY, and how faculty administrators and [counselors] can assist these students to successfully complete the academic program. Recruitment, retention and graduation are central issues for all the students at the university. This conference will shed light on issues related to Asian American Asian students, and will provide positive advice on issues and program as well as opportunities to form networks among attendees.

We would like to acknowledge the conference co-sponsors that have made this conference possible. They are Verizon Foundation, The College Board, the Graduate Center of CUNY, Queens College, Office of the Vice Chancellor of student development and enrollment management of CUNY. The program you have here, we will start with greetings of distinguished guests, and then we’ll have a keynote speaker, then we have a little break and at ten o’clock we will start the general session. Then, 11-12, we have a lunch break, and we will start an afternoon session from 12-1 P.M, and 1-2 P.M, and 2-3 P.M. If sessions have some concurrent talk going on, so you may choose depending on your interests.

This morning we have several distinguished guests who have taken time from their busy schedules to offer their greetings. All have distinguished careers and long résumés, but thanks to time limit, I am advised to make an abbreviated introduction of each person, and anyone, and particularly the students here, advised to go to CUNY or campus website or other appropriate website to learn more about these distinguished guests.

First, I would like to ask Dr. Betty Lee Sung, Chairperson of the Advisory Board of Asian American Asian Research Institute, to offer greetings. As you know, Dr. Lee Sung is the former chairperson of the department of Asian Studies, and Professor [Emerita] at the City College of New York. She is most distinguished pillar and leader of the Asian American Asian Research Institute. Dr. Lee Sung.

Betty Lee Sung: Thank you Dean Karan. Good morning. As chairperson of the Asian American Asian Research Institute, I have the pleasure and the honor of welcoming every one of you to the City University on Asian American Asian Students Conference: Aspects of Social Interaction. Now, this is our second conference of the year although it’s our fourth conference since our beginning. The first one was on South Asia, held at Baruch College on March 19 th of this year.

As a newly established organization, our Executive Director, Dr. Thomas Tam, has kept us very, very busily involved in numerous activities this year. In addition to this conference, we’re holding a weekly series of 11 workshops on Chinatown in the 21 st century, and they’re held on Friday afternoons. Also, we’re also having lectures, and this is a continuing series of lectures given by well-known experts in Asian and Asian American affairs, and that’s also held on Friday evenings, and that has been ongoing. We’re very happy to report that all of these events have been very well attended.

This conference for Asian students has been especially dear to our hearts, because there are about 24,000 Asian American students enrolled in the 20 colleges in CUNY. We want to know how CUNY is serving these Asian students, and what they’re doing, what their majors are, and what are their concerns. Are these students getting the most out of their college experience, not only academically, but socially? And that is the thrust of our conference today: Aspects of Social Interaction.

We want to acknowledge our conference chair, Dean Hiroko Karan of Medgar Evers College, and her committee, and our keynote speaker, Dr. Victor Nee from Cornell University. And of course, we want to acknowledge our sponsors, and one of our best supporters has always been June Jee of Verizon Foundation, and we’re very thankful for their support. I know she was going to say she was my student, and I’m very proud of that fact.

So, all of our, all of our speakers, we want to thank all of our speakers for contributing to this conference, so, thank you very much, we hope you find this conference informative and rewarding. Thank you very much.

Hiroko Karan: Thank you Dr. Lee Sung. Next I would like to introduce Mr. Wellington Chen, a member of the CUNY Board of Trustees appointed by Governor Pataki in June 2002, and Senior Vice President of PDC Development Corporation, a real-estate company in Queens. He served on the CUNY board [standing] committee on student affairs and special programs, facility planning and management, and vice-chair of the committee on academic policies programs and research. Trustee Chen.

Wellington Chen: Good morning everyone. It’s my pleasure to bring greetings on behalf of the Board of Trustees, and every time Dr. Tam sponsors an event I must come. It’s such great work, and I must thank all the sponsors and all of you for attending, especially Verizon, June Jee, thank you again. And [ Vice Chancellor Otis Hills with] the University and Queens College and the College Board. I think that the topic is so important, I think I, you’re looking, as a first-generation Chinese American, I can remember landing in Queens, and going through school, registering for high school for the first time, and I got sent to the basement because I didn’t speak the language. They sent me to workshop, the wood workshop, which turned out to be fine for me, fun.

But in retrospect, you keep on thinking about, [whether I’ve picked the right road], back then, either you make it or you don’t make it in school. Fortunately for me, it was an excellent school, but for the people, I keep on remembering the kids that did not pick up the language fast enough, and they end up with [inaudible], and I could tell you what one restaurant owner said to me years later. He said, “Do you know that a lot of grave sites on the Jersey side are the kids in their 20’s, a generation gone down.”

So I think that I understand the implication, I feel the mission, and it’s very, very important, and Dr. Betty Lee Sung knows this. When I went to the Flushing Library, back then, there were only a few books, and they were all written by her. [inaudible] So June Jee is not the only one, but I must apologize, because I need to go back up [inaudible], so I cannot stay for the whole thing, but I hope you contribute, because for those of you that listen to NPR over the weekend, there was a master talking about Zen, and Dr. Tam probably heard on the radio too, and his insight was about how humans improve ourselves and how can you be at peace with yourself, and chief among them are two things. One is, our perception of the world. You could be totally frustrated or you could be happy. And somewhere between is where most of us fall, including myself. And the second thing is how you change this perception, and that’s through communication. By communicating with one another you not only influence other peoples’ points of view, but you also influence yourself. So, hopefully, I look forward to seeing results in the transcript of this important panel and good luck, thank you.

Hiroko Karan: Thank you Dr. Chen. At this time I would like to ask Ms. June Jee, Director of the Manhattan Community Affairs Department of Verizon, to offer her greetings. I do know Verizon Foundation is one of the co-sponsors of this conference, and also I just wanted [inaudible] former student of Dr. Betty Lee Sung. Ms. June Jee.

June Jee: Good morning everyone. I extend greetings from Verizon, and as Dr. Sung said, yes, I was her student over two decades ago, but anyway, two years ago, I’ve been telling everyone I’m 28, so Dr. Sung is probably two years older than me. I just wanted to say, over the years, we at Verizon have been successful in building communities by partnering with organizations and institutions such as this. You play a critical role in our success by supporting projects such as the high-tech bridge project, you allow us to play a role in building stronger communities and to better serve our society.

Now, I think we have the smaller role and you play a bigger role, because as creators and individuals who are going to implement projects and initiatives in the community, we hope to see each and every one of you integrate technology in your day to day activities so that you can create an online community that can better enhance relationships among yourselves and the greater community, and to address some of these issues that we face as a community. So once again, I thank you very much for this opportunity, and I look forward to working with all of you. Thank you.

Hiroko Karan: Thank you Ms. Jee. Next I would like to ask Dr. Otis Hill, Vice Chancellor for Student Development and Enrollment Management at the CUNY central office to offer his greetings. Previously, Dr. Hill served as the Senior Vice President of Student Affairs at Kingsborough Community College and has a distinguished career as an administrator and researcher in student development. Vice Chancellor Hill.

Otis Hill: Thank you Dr. Karan, good morning ladies and gentlemen. It’s a pleasure to bring greetings on behalf of the chancellor and chancellery of the City University of New York in this special occasion in the history of AAARI. I would like to begin by acknowledging the work of the conference chair, Dr. Karan, and co-chair, Frank Shih, and the entire conference committee for organizing this event around this special topic, Asian American Asian Students: Aspects of Social Interaction. So, to all students, faculty, staff, and guests from the CUNY institutions and outside institutions of higher education, from the business world, and from community-based organizations, we thank you for taking time out from your other responsibilities to contribute to this important conference. And I’d like to add that to our keynoter, Dr. Nee, as well, for today’s conference success depends largely on your input. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the hard work and perseverance of the chairperson of AAARI, and I wasn’t her student, I wish I had been, Dr. Betty Lee Sung, and Executive Director, Dr. Thomas Tam. They both are to be congratulated for the many accomplishments of AAARI since its inception.

We’re here today to share and discover and continue the work began by AAARI at its first colloquium last year. For social and academic adjustments are large parts of university life, and it’s critical to understand what influences these factors for CUNY’s 24,000 plus Asian American Asian students. For positive experience with academic and social integration, development of a sense of competency, resources to identify purpose and established integrity, to add positive peer reactions and sound faculty-student interactions, appropriate role models and mentors, and institutional cultural sensitivity are all critical to the growth and well-being of the students that are the focus of this conference.

It’s also important to know what it is about the past that will influence how one adjusts today, and in the future, as a participant in campus life and in society in general. Discovery brings on joy, provides clarity and new knowledge, but also initiates new challenges, and so today’s conference is not just for answers, but opportunities as well, opportunities to open minds, expand our perspectives, to exchange our ideas and in that exchange come to new understandings and appreciations and enhance the lives our students. I’m personally pleased to continue to offer the resources of the Office of Student Development and Enrollment Management in partnership with AAARI to educate the public about Asian and Asian American student concerns. Best wishes for a most successful conference. Thank you.

Hiroko Karan: Thank you, Vice Chancellor Hill. Next we’re scheduled to have Dr. James Muyskens from Queens College, President of Queens College, but due to schedule he won’t be able to join us this morning. Instead he sends his executive assistant to the president, Ms. Sue Henderson, to offer greetings. Ms. Henderson.

Sue Henderson: Thank you, it’s really indeed an honor to be with you today for this important conference. For those of you who might not be familiar with Queens College, the fitting home for the Asian American Asian Research Institute, because we’re located in Flushing, the most vibrant Asian American community in the United States. Our campus has students from almost every country in Asia, and so we’re always looking for ways to highlight issues of importance to the Asian community. Our faculty includes scholars well-known for their interests in Asia and Asian Americans, including Natalie [Pith-Penderwall], Mora [inaudible], and Roger Sanchez. We also have artists of the stature, poet [Miko Han], and choreographer [Ming-Yin Mei,] who just earlier this month was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.

I must congratulate Dr. Thomas Tam and Betty Lee Sung for their hard work and everyone involved in the institute, as you’ve done a spectacular job in such a very short time. The institute has already held a number of major conferences, almost every week it offers new workshops, a class or film, and its website is full of topical information. This is truly an institute that hit the ground running and has not stopped. Your activity tells everyone that Asians are a vital part of this city and this country, and we ignore you at the risk of impoverishing ourselves. We as Americans take a naïve view of assimilation. If someone is assimilated, we think they have become a stereotypical American, leaving behind all the influences of their native land. But assimilation works two ways. When a drop of water falls into a stream, it becomes part of the stream, but also imperceptibly changes the way the stream flows. So it is with assimilation. Each new American changes, however quietly, what it means to be an American, and with the student population of the city University now close to 15% Asian, it is clear that the Asians are poised, as never before, to influence this stream of American life. This makes today’s conference on Asian students especially important, for these students have a profound effect on all the Americans in years ahead.

Thank you again for inviting me here today, and I look forward to a very stimulating program.

Conference Chairperson:
Hiroko Karan

Conference Co-Chairperson:
Frank Shih

Conference Committee:
Dave Bryan, Selena Cantor, Loretta Chin, Sambhavi Lakshminarayauan, Moon Sung, Thomas Tam,
Marie Ting, Raymond Wang, and Susie Lew Wang

Conference Coordinator:
Phillip Li

Contact Info:

Tel: 212-869-0182
Fax: 212-869-0181
E-Mail: events@aaari.info