Dec. 3, 2003

Contact: Nancy Hope, (785) 864-3918.

KU, Olathe school district to sign pact; will promote international education

LAWRENCE -- The University of Kansas will sign an agreement Dec. 4 with the Olathe Unified School District No. 233 to provide KU credit for a new Eastern Civilizations course at Olathe's four high schools. Students will earn concurrent high school and undergraduate college credit.

The signing will take place at 5:15 p.m. Thursday at the Olathe District Schools Education Center, 14160 Blackbob Road. Kim Wilcox, dean of the KU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Carl Strikwerda, associate dean; Jan Heinen, director of Mid-level Education at Olathe Public Schools; Nancy F. Hope, associate director of the Kansas Consortium for Teaching about Asia; and Elaine Gerbert (pronounced jer-BARE), director of the KU Center for East Asian Studies, will attend.

Strikwerda lauds this agreement as the start of KU's role in promoting international curriculum at the high school level.

"We hope that the course will encourage students to study even more about East Asia when they go on to college," he said. "These kinds of courses can help students prepare for the increasingly international world we live in. The University of Kansas is extremely pleased that the Olathe schools have an important commitment to promoting international studies, and we're very grateful for the opportunity to work with them and their students."

Funding for this project came from a National Endowment for the Humanities Focus Grant and from the KU Center for East Asian Studies. It is the first of several steps in a plan to internationalize the Olathe school district's curriculum and is part of Olathe's 21st Century Career and Advanced Studies Programs, which began this year. The project represents a nationwide trend in which area studies centers build bridges with local schools to bring world area expertise into the curricula to meet the nation's need for a citizenry better informed about traditions beyond local and national communities.

To prepare the Olathe teachers to teach Eastern Civilizations, Gerbert and Hope conducted a semester-long workshop in spring 2003. The workshop sought to acquaint high school world history, literature and social science teachers with the content of the East Asian Civilizations course offered at KU through the East Asian languages and cultures department.

Hope and Gerbert -- along with KU East Asian studies faculty members Shengli Feng, Wallace Johnson, Dan Stevenson, Maggie Childs, Megan Greene and Deborah Peterson -- led Olathe teachers through topics ranging from geography, Asian languages and history, to Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist thought, to Shinto rituals, and Asian art and literature. Childs, acting director of the KU Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, will facilitate the concurrent-credit agreement by working with the high school teachers to ensure that they meet KU standards in the classes.

This is the first time KU has entered into a formal concurrent-enrollment agreement with a school district.

The Kansas Consortium for Teaching about Asia is part of the KU Center for East Asian Studies, which is a federally funded Title VI Area Studies Center.