A gift from USC College Professor Emeritus Jack Wills, an East Asian studies pioneer at USC, has established fellowships for graduate students.
Photo credit: Pamela J. Johnson
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Supporting the Mentor ModelProfessor Emeritus Gives $50,000 for East Asian Studies Graduate Students
By Pamela J. Johnson
August 2006
Although John “Jack” Wills Jr. retired from USC College in 2004, he’s
still devoted to the place he called his intellectual home for four
decades.
Wills has donated $50,000 to help establish a graduate research
assistantship program for the East Asian Studies Center. He hopes this
seed money encourages others to pitch in, so that students can work
one-on-one with major scholars in their field of study.
“By watching an established, high-functioning researcher do his or her
work and participating in that work, the student learns a great deal
about how to become a researcher,” Wills said from Amsterdam, where he
was teaching East Asian studies this summer.
Wills knows a thing or two about developing new programs. When he
arrived at USC, the history department — like most American
universities — did not yet offer courses in East Asian studies.
The year was 1965. China’s then-Foreign Minister, Marshal Chen Yi,
graced the cover of Time magazine wearing dark sunglasses under the
headline, “The Enemy in Asia.” The U.S.-Chinese relationship had not
yet shifted from hostility to engagement. History courses emphasized
Europe and the United States.
Wills, who had earned his Ph.D. in history and Far Eastern languages at
Harvard University, helped to develop a general education program that
included East Asian languages, cultures and history.
“I was involved in that rethinking,” Wills said of the planning process
in the 1970s. “Then, they looked at me and said, ‘OK, now we want you
to give us all of Chinese history in one semester, in a freshman survey
class.’ I said, ‘Yeah, guys, right. That’s 300 years a week.’”
The history professor went on to serve as acting chair of the
department of East Asian languages and cultures from 1987 to 1989 and
director of the East Asian Studies Center from 1990 to 1994. He wrote Mountain of Fame: Portraits in Chinese History (Princeton University Press, 1994). The New York Times called his journey through 5,000 years of Chinese history a “spirited and highly intelligent book.”
“I dedicated the book to my students at USC because the whole thing had
been road tested, believe me,” Wills said. “I put about a thousand of
them through it before the book came out.”
Now, he wants to help graduate students, especially those from East Asian countries who want to study at USC.
“Particularly, when the school takes in young people from East Asia,
they are not eligible for U.S. government support, for which we have
just a tiny bit to hand out,” Wills said. “A research assistantship is
by far the best way to support them, especially because they have such
strong language and research skills.”
Stan Rosen, political science professor and EASC director, was glad Wills agreed to announce his donation.
“Jack is a very modest person,” Rosen said. “He was reluctant to come
forward at first. But if people know it’s Jack, someone well-known but
not somebody who has $70 billion dollars, that will encourage other
people to follow suit.”
East Asian studies’ students said a research assistantship program would greatly enhance their education.
“The ultimate aim is to have a mentor throughout, a main professor that
you work with,” said Kaitlin Solimine, 25, a second-year graduate
student who received a Fulbright scholarship to study in China.
“That would be great if they offered a research program for students,”
echoed Xiaoqiu Xu, 27, who is completing her master’s program and will
study for her Ph.D. at Stanford University. “Research is an important
experience for any student.”
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