The EAST Program
         “East Asian Studies at Trinity” (the EAST Program) is Trinity University’s acknowledgment that our nation and people, especially our youth, must learn to think clearly and positively about Asia and recognize the certain role that Asian affairs will play in America’s future. EAST therefore originated in the 1990s with a Chinese language program and has grown into a major interdisciplinary initiative that enjoys strong student demand and substantial alumni support.  It is one of five curricular goals in Trinity’s current $200 million capital campaign.

New faculty positions are part of the EAST initiative, and within the last year, gifts from alumni and trustees have created two new professorships that faculty members whose vision helped create the EAST program. The Richard M. Burr and Donald N. Clark Professorship in Chinese Business was the gift of an alumna, who asks to remain anonymous, whose career in Business and trade with China was shaped at Trinity more than a quarter-century ago by Professor Burr in Business Administration and Professor Clark, Trinity’s East Asia historian.  The first Burr-Clark professor is expected to be on campus in 2009. A second major gift from Trustee Oliver Lee has endowed a senior position in Chinese in honor of his parents, J.K. and Ingrid Lee. Professor Stephen Field, head of the Chinese program and chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, is the first J.K. and Ingrid Lee Professor.  Oliver Lee’s gift assures the strength of Trinity’s Chinese program as
one of the best liberal arts college Chinese programs in the United States.  Plans call for more East Asia-related faculty positions in Political Science, Philosophy, and Japanese.