MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear AKPS members,

I am pleased to report that our roundtable panel presentation at the 2011 APSA in Seattle was a great success, with a good-sized audience and excellent discussion.  Our APSA program chair, Professor HeeMin Kim, did an excellent job making the panel presentation successful.  Thanks are also due to the members who attended our roundtable discussion.  The strong attendance will help us gain more panels at next year’s APSA.  The call for papers for next year’s APSA in New Orleans is included below in this newsletter.  The AKPS encourages graduate students to apply for travel grants for participation in the 2012 APSA.  Graduate students who will be presenting papers at one of the AKPS panels are eligible for the grant and the application form can be found at the end of this newsletter and also on our website.

During our annual business meeting in Seattle, we elected two new members to the AKPS Governing Board: Professor Mikyoung Kim, Hiroshima City University, and Professor Jong-Sung You, University of California, San Diego. On behalf of the AKPS, I would like to thank the departing Governing Board members for their excellent services for the past three years: Professor Denise Hart, University of Pittsburgh and Professor Sun-Kwang Bae, Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center.  Professor Bae will continue in his excellent work as our webmaster.  Also, I am pleased to report that our executive secretary, Professor Mikyoung Kim, and treasurer, Professor Heon Joo Jung, have agreed to continue to serve the AKPS for the next two years.

Our ISA program chair, Professor Tae-Hyung Kim, has been hard at work organizing the three AKPS panels at the upcoming ISA conference in San Diego in April, 2012. His efforts especially helped us retain the three panels.  The ISA originally reduced our number of panels to two because of space constraints.  Thanks to Professor Kim’s hard work and persuasion, we were able to retain the three panels in the ISA conference next year.

Finally, I propose to update and expand our Syllabi Project.  I would like to thank all of those who have already contributed to this project by sharing your pedagogy and reading/video materials.  Please update your syllabi on the web by sending new ones electronically to me in MS word format at hchae@bw.edu.  I also would like to encourage others who are teaching either Korean politics/foreign policy or East Asian politics to share their syllabi with the members. Collected syllabi will be added to our website.

Have a good remainder of the fall semester and I hope to see you all in San Diego in April!

Best,
Haesook Chae
President, AKPS
Associate Professor, Baldwin-Wallace College