About Us
Spotlight
Gina Williams
Fine Arts Teacher
Lake Forest Academy, Lake Forest, Illinois
Illinois’s 2007 Golden Apple Award winner Gina Williams has traveled the world and promoted global studies for over a decade. Even before taking EASC’s NCTA Teaching about Asia seminar in Chicago, Gina helped found the Multicultural Affairs Committee and the Asian Exploration Club at her high school. The NCTA seminar provided Gina with additional funding, educational resources, and social networks, which she used to initiate an Asian Studies Interdisciplinary Course, to be launched in 2008-09. “The experience provided by the NCTA program will be the single most important tool I draw on as I move forward,” she says.
National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA)
We are a founding member of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA), a multi-year initiative funded by the Freeman Foundation that facilitates teaching and learning about Asia in middle and high school world history, geography, social studies, and literature courses. Launched in 1998, this nationwide program is a collaboration of the East Asian studies programs of seven national institutions:
- Columbia University
- Five College Center for East Asian Studies
- Indiana University
- University of Colorado
- University of Pittsburgh
- University of Southern California
- University of Washington
Since its inception, NCTA has provided introductory Teaching about Asia seminars for middle and high school teachers in 46 states. Our center has coordinated seminars in eight states in the Midwest and the South:
- Alabama
- Indiana
- Illinois
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Ohio
Resources
Teaching about Asia Seminars
Thirty-hour seminars offered throughout the Midwest and South for middle and high school teachers interested in incorporating East Asia into their curricula.
Study Tours to China, Japan, and Korea
An annual summer study tour for alumni of the NCTA Teaching about Asia seminars.
