The UCLA Asian American Studies Center is very proud to announce that UCLA Professor Min Zhou, an internationally renowned and influential scholar of Sociology and Asian American Studies, is the inaugural appointee of the Walter and Shirley Wang Endowed Chair in U.S./China Relations and Communications at UCLA. The Wang Endowed Chair is the first endowed chair in American higher education, which focuses on U.S./China relations and Chinese American Studies.
Professor Min Zhou was born and raised in Zhongshan, China. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the State University of New York at Albany and her B.A. in English from Sun Yat-Sen (Zhongshan) University in China. She has been a faculty member in the Departments of Sociology and Asian American Studies at UCLA since 1994. "Professor Min Zhou is a preeminent scholar, an exceptional teacher, and a highly influential global thinker," said Professor Don T. Nakanishi, the Director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. "She is constantly being asked to speak and share her research around the world and across the nation. She is also deeply committed to enhancing relationships between the United States and China, and contributing to greater public knowledge of the Chinese American experience."
Professor Zhou has received many academic awards and honors, including the 2007 Chiyoko Doris'34 and Toshio Hoshide Distinguished Teaching Prize in Asian American Studies at UCLA, a resident fellowship at the Russell Sage Foundation and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and the Chang Jiang Scholar Lecture Professor by Sun Yat-sen University in China. She was an elected member of the Council of the American Sociological Association, Chair of the Section on Asia and Asian America of the American Sociological Association, and President of the North American Chinese Sociologists Association.
Professor Zhou teaches and does research on international migration; ethnic and racial relations; ethnic entrepreneurship, education and the new second generation; Asia and Asian America; and urban sociology. She has published more than a hundred books, refereed journal articles and book chapters, some of which have translated and published in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.
She is the author of Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave (1992), The Transformation of Chinese America (2006), Contemporary Chinese America: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community Transformation (2009), and The Accidental Sociologist in Asian American Studies (forthcoming); co-author of Growing up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States (1998); co-editor of Contemporary Asian America (1st ed., 2000; 2nd ed., 2007) and Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity (2004). Zhou is currently working on three major projects: a book manuscript entitled Chinatown, Koreatown, and Beyond: How Ethnicity Matters for Immigrant Social Mobility; a study of Los Angeles' new second generation; and a study of Chinese immigrant transnational organizations.
In a letter to the Wangs, Professor Zhou wrote: "The Wang Chair is an honor that would have been unthinkable for me... I came to the U.S. as a foreigner exchange student. I had limited English proficiency and little money... I feel real fortunate with my career and life in my new homeland with the support of extraordinary colleagues, students, friends, and caring Americans."
For more information about Professor Zhou, visit her home page: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/zhou/
Walter Wang is president and chief executive officer of JM Eagle, the world's largest plastic pipe manufacturer. Shirley Wang, who graduated from UCLA in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in communication studies, is CEO of Plastpro, a leading manufacturer of fiberglass doors and home products.
In 2007, the Wangs made a major gift of $1 million to the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, which established the Walter and Shirley Wang Program in U.S./China Relations and Communications and its U.S./China Media Brief series ( http://www.USChinaMediaBrief.com ), along with the endowed academic chair. Over the past 10 years, the Wangs have supported philanthropic and civic leadership endeavors that promote a better understanding and appreciation of Chinese culture. They are active members of the Committee of 100, a national organization of Chinese American leaders, and they support the China AIDS Initiative, an alliance led by the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center that is dedicated to helping China accelerate its response to HIV/AIDS. Shirley Wang also serves on the board of the China Institute, a nonprofit educational and cultural institution that promotes understanding and appreciation of Chinese culture, and of Facing History and Ourselves, a group that helps educators teach moral responsibility, tolerance and social action.
In addition to being honored recently by New York City's Museum of Chinese in America for their continued support and generous donations, the Wangs have been recognized for their support of the award-winning PBS series "Becoming American: The Chinese Experience" and of the film "The Blood of Yingzhou District," which won the 2007 Academy Award for short subject documentary. The UCLA Asian American Studies Center, founded in 1969, is the nation's leading research, teaching, publications, public education, and archival and library program in Asian American studies. Its more than 40 faculty members, drawn from throughout the UCLA campus, specialize in disciplines ranging from the social sciences to the humanities and represent many professional fields, including law, urban planning, education, public health and the arts. The center's press publishes the Amerasia Journal and AAPI Nexus, along with many books and reports. The center also maintains an array of relationships with organizations, elected and community leaders, corporations, and foundations throughout the nation and the world.
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