Washington University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis have established the Joint Center for East Asian Studies in St. Louis.  This Center combines the resources of a distinguished independent university with those of a dynamic public university.  The Center makes available to each campus the curricular strengths of the other by integrating the teaching of courses on each other's campus, encouraging faculty and graduate student interaction through joint colloquia, and coordinating outreach efforts.

    By combining the two East Asian faculties in a formal consortium there is the opportunity for both specialization of effort and cross-fertilization without overlap and duplication.  Washington University's East Asian Studies Program emphasizes the cross-disciplinary study of East Asian languages, cultures, law, and business.  The University of Missouri-St. Louis' Center for International Studies supports an East Asian studies faculty with particular strengths in history and social sciences, especially political science, economics, and anthropology.

    Cross-disciplinary dialogue between the two campuses takes place in two arenas.  First is the classroom, where there is movement across campuses of both students and faculty. The second is a Joint Center-sponsored colloquium series, featuring presentations by distinguished scholars on topics of contemporary relevance to East Asian Studies.

    The Center also serves as a regional office for East Asian Studies serving faculty from other universities throughout the central Midwest.  In the recent past, the University of Missouri-St. Louis has hosted, in conjunction with the China Council of the Asia Society and JETRO, four conferences for regional academic audiences.  These programs provide current scholarly perspectives and information, thus promoting an active interest in East Asia for trained faculty without Asianist colleagues on their campuses.

    The accomplishments of the Joint Center for East Asian Studies have been substantial.  Especially noteworthy are the following:

• Graduate student Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grants from the US Department of Education.
• Undergraduate Foreign Language and International Studies grant from the US Department of Education.
• Coordination of a faculty exchange between the two universities, with Washington University faculty teaching language courses on the UM-St. Louis campus, and UM-St. Louis faculty teaching graduate courses at Washington University.
• Initiation of Korean language courses on both the UM-St. Louis and Washington University campuses.
• Annual Joint Center Colloquium Series.
• Faculty workshop on the introduction of Korean studies in the curriculum.
• Conference on Intellectual Property Law in East Asia sponsored by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.