American Center for Mongolian Studies

Last updated
American Center for Mongolian Studies
TypeAcademic, Not-for-profit
Founded2002
Headquarters235 South 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia [1]
Key people
William Fitzhugh, President of the Board of Directors
Charles Krusekopf, founder and Executive Director
David Dettmann, Director of US Office
Marc Tassé, Resident Director of Mongolia Office
Website http://www.mongoliacenter.org/

The American Center for Mongolian Studies (ACMS) is a US registered 501(c)3 not-for-profit, academic organization which promotes research and scholarship in Inner Asia, a broad region consisting of Mongolia and parts of China, Russia and Central Asia, including Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Buryatia, Tuva and eastern Kazakhstan.

Contents

International academic activities in Inner Asia are often conducted within the confines of particular disciplines because opportunities for discussing and sharing cross-discipline research are rare. As a result, research produced within one discipline is not readily available to researchers of other disciplines, and this creates circumstances in which valuable knowledge about Mongolia and Inner Asia is underutilized.

The American Center for Mongolian Studies was established in order to facilitate and coordinate the various multi-discipline research activities occurring each year in the region. It is a consortium of more than 30 academic and cultural institutions in North America and Inner Asia, including the National University of Mongolia, the Smithsonian Institution, Western Washington University, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, University of California Berkeley, and University of Pennsylvania. Although similar in some respects to the Mongolia Society at Indiana University, the ACMS is the only US based Mongolian Studies and Inner Asia focused academic and research organization operating a permanent office in Mongolia.

History

The ACMS was incorporated in 2002 in Austin, Texas and established its home office at Austin College. It moved its home office to Western Washington University in 2003, and opened its Mongolia office in 2004, which is currently housed in the School of Foreign Affairs at the National University of Mongolia. From the fall of 2009 to Spring 2014, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for East Asian Studies provided logistical support for the home office. In 2014, the ACMS moved offices to the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mongolian Studies scholars and discipline based Mongolian researchers were instrumental in the establishment of the ACMS, and the United States Department of Education, United States Embassy in Mongolia, and Council for American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) contributed significant financial resources to establish and operate the ACMS Mongolia office.

In November 2013 the ACMS Mongolia office moved to its current location inside the East Entrance of Natsagdorj Library in Ulaanbaatar.

Governance

A board of directors comprising one representative from each member institution and “board members at large” elected by ACMS individual members oversees the activities of the ACMS and provides guidance in addressing research issues in Inner Asia. It is governed by officers nominated and elected to two year terms by the board itself. These officer positions include president, vice-president for external relations, vice-president for member services, treasurer, and secretary. The board of directors also appoints the executive staff which supervises the daily operations of the organization. This executive staff includes the executive director of the ACMS, resident director of the ACMS Mongolia office, and deputy director of the ACMS Mongolia office.

Officers

Membership

The center is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. [2] The organization has over 30 institutional members which include universities, museums, and other not-for-profit, educational or cultural organizations. In addition, the ACMS has over 300 individual members and sponsors.

The logo is derived from the Mongolian Soyombo symbol, the symbol on the national flag of Mongolia.

Activities

Promoting research and scholarship in Inner Asia is the stated goal of the ACMS. It organizes and conducts international conferences, provides fellowships to student researchers, cooperates with local libraries to improve access to materials, and produces informational resources about academic activities in Inner Asia. It provides logistical support to individual researchers and institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution and United States Geological Survey. In addition, it organizes regular public lectures, the Speaker Series, in Ulaanbaatar which are given by Mongolian and international scholars on various research topics.

Research

Mongolia was overlooked in much of the congressional spending legislation produced in the post-Soviet era, such as the Fulbright-Hays Title VIII program. As a consequence direct US government support for the field of Mongolian Studies dwindled relative to other area studies throughout the 1990s, and institutional support for discipline-based research in Mongolia was not well organized. In spite of this, between 1990 and 2003 over 70 PhD dissertations and Masters theses were written at US universities about topics related to Mongolia or involving Mongolia as the context of the research. The ACMS was founded with the intention of providing the institutional support to address these resources issues and organize research produced in the region.

Books for Mongolia program

In November 2013, The Asia Foundation signed a partnership agreement for the management of the Books for Asia Mongolia program with ACMS. ACMS operates the program under the title Books for Mongolia. The Books for Asia program is a popular program which leads in the region with book donation initiatives. Books for Asia puts one million brand new books into the hands of students, educators, and local and national leaders in 19 countries annually.

In Mongolia, over 800,000 books and textbooks have been donated and distributed to schools, kindergartens, universities, libraries, and government and non-government organizations throughout Mongolia since 1990. Books for Mongolia will continue to provide a world of information and opportunity to Mongolians by providing new and high quality English language books to organisations throughout Mongolia.

Library Access

Library resources of significant research value are difficult to access in Mongolia. Inconsistent business hours, inaccessible catalogs, and poor research environments occasionally produce insurmountable barriers for researchers. The ACMS provides logistical support to researchers in order to gain access to collections that individuals may not be able to access on their own. In addition, the ACMS maintains its own library of Mongolian Studies and discipline-based academic materials which is open to the public. It is also a participating member of the Local Libraries and Archives Project under the guidance of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies (AIYS) and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC), with funding support from the US Department of Education Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) program which aims to increase digital access to foreign library resources through the Digital Library for International Research.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Library</span> Organized collection of books or other information resources

A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical or digital access materials, and may be a physical location or a virtual space, or both. A library's collection can include printed materials and other physical resources in many formats such as DVD, CD and cassette as well as access to information, music or other content held on bibliographic databases.

Inner Mongolia Agricultural University

Inner Mongolia Agricultural University is a university in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China under the authority of the Autonomous Region government. It is in Hohhot, the capital city of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It was established in 1952. There are over 100 undergraduate degree programs and postgraduate courses across a range of disciplines, including Agricultural, Engineering, Science, Art, Business, and Management.

Yeungnam University Private university in South Korea

Yeungnam University is a private research university located in Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang, South Korea. The university's predecessors, Taegu College and Chunggu College, were founded in Daegu in 1947 and 1950 respectively. In 1967, the two colleges were merged by President Park Chung-hee to form Yeungnam University. In 1972, the university's new main campus opened in Gyeongsan east of Daegu. The university includes colleges of Law and Medicine as well as a university hospital.

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute is located in Panama and is the only bureau of the Smithsonian Institution based outside of the United States. It is dedicated to understanding the past, present, and future of tropical ecosystems and their relevance to human welfare. STRI grew out of a small field station established in 1923 on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal Zone to become one of the world's leading tropical research organizations. STRI's facilities provide for long-term ecological studies in the tropics and are used by some 1,200 visiting scientists from academic and research institutions around the world every year.

University of Michigan Library

The University of Michigan Library is the academic library system of the University of Michigan and the second largest research library in the United States by volumes held.

University of the Philippines Open University Public research university

The University of the Philippines Open University(UPOU) is a public research and open university and distance education institution headquartered in the town of Los Baños, Laguna, with satellite offices in Quezon City, Metro Manila. It is the fifth constituent university of the University of the Philippines System.

The Association for Asian Studies (AAS) is a scholarly, non-political and non-profit professional association open to all persons interested in Asia and the study of Asia. It is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. With approximately 6,000 members worldwide, from all the regions and countries of Asia and across academic disciplines, the AAS is the largest organization focussing on Asian studies.

East Asian studies is a distinct multidisciplinary field of scholarly enquiry and education that promotes a broad humanistic understanding of East Asia past and present. The field includes the study of the region's culture, written language, history and political institutions. East Asian Studies is located within the broader field of Asian studies and is also interdisciplinary in character, incorporating elements of the social sciences and humanities, among others. The field encourages scholars from diverse disciplines to exchanges ideas on scholarship as it relates to the East Asian experience and the experience of East Asia in the world. In addition, the field encourages scholars to educate others to have a deeper understanding of and appreciation and respect for, all that is East Asia and, therefore, to promote peaceful human integration worldwide.

American School of Classical Studies at Athens Research institute in Greece

The American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) is one of 19 foreign archaeological institutes in Athens, Greece. It is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). CAORC is a private not-for-profit federation of independent overseas research centers that promote advanced research, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, with focus on the conservation and recording of cultural heritage and the understanding and interpretation of modern societies.

Academic library Library attached to a higher education institution

An academic library is a library that is attached to a higher education institution and serves two complementary purposes: to support the curriculum and the research of the university faculty and students. It is unknown how many academic libraries there are worldwide. An academic and research portal maintained by UNESCO links to 3,785 libraries. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are an estimated 3,700 academic libraries in the United States. In the past, the material for class readings, intended to supplement lectures as prescribed by the instructor, has been called reserves. In the period before electronic resources became available, the reserves were supplied as actual books or as photocopies of appropriate journal articles. Modern academic libraries generally also provide access to electronic resources.

Smithsonian Libraries and Archives System of libraries at the Smithsonian Institution, United States

Smithsonian Libraries and Archives is an institutional archives and library system comprising 21 branch libraries serving the various Smithsonian Institution museums and research centers. The Libraries and Archives serve Smithsonian Institution staff as well as the scholarly community and general public with information and reference support. Its collections number nearly 3 million volumes including 50,000 rare books and manuscripts.

The Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California is a school focusing on homeland security education.

The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) is a scholarly institution dedicated to supporting the conservation of Egyptian antiquities and research in Egyptology, Coptology, and all periods of Egyptian history. The center is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). Previous and current 990 forms that detail the organization's financial holdings and the compensation of its Executive Director and other key personnel are available to the public.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Center for Khmer Studies</span>

The Center for Khmer Studies is a private American Overseas Research Center working to promote research, teaching and public service in the social sciences, arts and humanities, as they are related to Cambodia and the Mekong region. CKS also aims to connect Cambodian scholars, students and artists with their international colleagues for the purposes of fostering understanding of Cambodia and Southeast Asia.

The Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) grant program is a United States Department of Education Title VI grant program that provides grants to develop innovative techniques or programs that address national teaching and research needs in international education and foreign languages by using technology to access, collect, organize, preserve, and widely disseminate information on world regions and countries other than the United States.

Council of American Overseas Research Centers

The Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) is a private not-for-profit association of centers that research, conserve and record cultural heritage and modern societies. CAORC, founded in 1981, helps arrange research projects that span national boundaries, in which member centers collaborate.

The National Coalition of Independent Scholars (NCIS) is the principal professional association for independent scholars. Incorporated in the USA but now with an international membership, NCIS is a non-profit organization that supports independent scholars, defined as someone who is actively pursuing knowledge in an academic or scientific discipline, without secure employment in or support from an academic institution. Independent scholars include unaffiliated scholars, adjunct professors and part-time faculty, graduate students, research professionals, artists, and curators. NCIS enables scholars working in the arts, humanities, social sciences and STEM fields to access and share resources, such as library access, and support, which are typically unavailable to researchers who are not affiliated with a university or other institution.

The American Center of Research (ACOR) is a private, not-for-profit academic institution & consortium, research library, and hostel. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, with a facility in Amman, Jordan, ACOR promotes the study of the MENA region, with an emphasis on the past and present of Jordan. The institution is a member of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). Prior to 2020, ACOR was known as The American Center of Oriental Research.

Latin American Council of Social Sciences

The Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) is an international non-governmental institution, created in 1967 from an initiative of UNESCO, an institution in which it has Associative status. Currently, it brings together 680 research centers and postgraduate programs in various fields of the social sciences and humanities, located in 51 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in the United States, Africa and Europe. Its headquarters are in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The current executive secretary of the organization is Karina Batthyány.

Library of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

The Library of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean was established in 1948 as part of the creation of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean; this coincided with the inauguration of the Economic Commission for Latin America by the United Nations, in support of its mandate in the region. The Library has four branches: the Hernán Santa Cruz Library in Santiago, the Centro de Recursos de Información y Distribución de Documentos in México D.F., the Raúl Prebisch Library in Brasilia and the Caribbean Knowledge Management Centre in Port of Spain. These four form the ECLAC Library.

References

  1. ↑ "American Center for Mongolian Studies - GuideStar Profile". Guidestar.org. Retrieved 2 January 2018.
  2. ↑ "American Overseas Research Centers". Council of American Overseas Research Centers. Archived from the original on 2012-03-14. Retrieved 2012-03-28.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.