We didn't think it was going to be necessary to argue at this point in history that there is a critical need for UVM students to understand as much about the other peoples of the earth as they can or to argue for the importance that Asia will have in the social, economic and political lives of the informed citizens UVM hopes it is producing.

Nor did we think it necessary to detail the value of intense study of Chinese and Japanese or the value of an academic credential in either area. Nevertheless, Professor John Jing-hua Yin, Professor Emeritus Peter Seybolt and I sat in the Silver Maple Ballroom of the new Davis Center a few weeks ago nervously awaiting the vote of UVM's Board of Trustees on the College of Arts and Sciences' proposals to establish a new Department of Asian Languages and Literatures and new majors in Chinese and Japanese. Without comment and in no time flat, the approval was granted. As a result, I am very pleased to announce the establishment of the College's twenty-first department, which Professor Yin, author of an influential text on Chinese language pedagogy published by Yale University Press, will chair.

There is also another exciting initiative with which this one nicely dovetails. A group of faculty from six different units, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Business Administration, the College of Education and Social Services, the College of Nursing and Health Sciences and the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, has just completed a proposal for a new College of Arts and Sciences' BA in Global Studies. The core components of the degree will form the basis of new, specialized global studies offerings by the other units, and, at the same time, the College degree draws heavily on courses offered by those units.

The cross school/college nature of this collaboration also allows students to build individually designed emphases that combine a problem area and an area of the world. One essential element of many of these programs will be enhanced language study. For example, the Business School has already expressed an interest in a global management/business degree and a desire to have business students study Asian language and culture to be able to take advantage of the growing employment opportunities for students with such a combination of expertise.

The proposal for the new degree (and a related proposal to change the name of Area and International Studies to Global and Regional Studies) has already received my enthusiastic endorsement and moved on to the College Curriculum Committee. The hope is that the proposal will meet with the approval of the Provost and receive a favorable Faculty Senate vote by December with final approval by the Board of Trustees in February. If all goes well, the program could be rolled out as early as the fall 2008 Semester, when the new College language requirement will also go into effect.

Finally, Professor Emily Manetta, a new Assistant Professor of Anthropology, has begun to teach an introduction to the linguistics of South Asian languages, and we are currently interviewing lecturers who would be qualified to teach introductory and intermediate Arabic.

It is my hope that at some point in the not too distant future a dean of the College of Arts and Sciences will be waiting anxiously as the Board of Trustees considers a proposal to rename the Department of Asian Languages and Literatures.

The new Department would be called the Department of Asian, African and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures and will offer language instruction in Arabic, Hindi and Swahili just for starters.

It's always fun to dream.

Dean, College of Arts and Sciences