The department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations was established as an independent academic unit of the College of Arts and Sciences in 1982. The master's program in Chinese was inaugurated in 1989, and the first student graduated in 1992. There are currently 15 students in the master's program. The doctoral program is a special track in the Comparative Literature Program, supervised by the Chinese faculty in conjunction with the faculty in Comparative Literature. According to Kroll, emphasis is placed on quality over quantity when it comes to enrollment.
Graduate education is a joint enterprise between student and advisor.
In our program we have always thought it better to work closely with a small number of truly excellent students than to direct impersonally an inflated number. We also take care that all of our doctoral students have extensive teaching experience in both language and culture classes. I think the results in individual success have shown the wisdom of our approach.