About Us

Sponsored by St. Olaf’s Collaborative Undergraduate Research and Inquiry (CURI), this project was developed by Professor Ka Wong of the Asian Studies department, along with his students from the TRiO McNair Scholar Program and Asian Conversations.

Aiming to promote and facilitate undergraduate research in all fields, the CURI program provides opportunities for St. Olaf students to work closely with a faculty member in a research framework and gain better and deeper understanding of a particular subject.

Initiated in St. Olaf in 2007, the TRIO McNair Scholars Program is one of the eight existing Federal TRIO programs funded by the U.S. Department of Education. This graduate preparatory program provides academic support to low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented students, helping them prepare for applying to graduate school.

Asian Conversations (ASCON) is a high impact learning community about Asia, along with a sequence of Chinese or Japanese language study for participants’ first two years of college. The program is dedicated to providing students with a comprehensive global perspective with exceptional disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches on Asia (such as art, history, linguistics, literature, political science, and religion) as well as a faculty-led experiential January term to China and Japan during the sophomore year.

Asia in Northfield is an ongoing project. The initial research and production team includes Jacob Caswell (’17), Paoge Moua (’15), and Meena Wainwright (’16), from CURI and Trio/McNair programs. Updated efforts have been provided by various members from the Asian Conversations program, such as Andrew Arrington (’26), Ryan Carlisle (’26), Gus Duininck (’25), and John Shorter (’26), as well as student interns from the DiSCO/IT department Isaiah Thao (’24) and Thomas Xiong (’27),