The Eastern Consortium in Persian and Turkish
The Ohio State University has been a member since 1984 of the Title VI-supported Eastern Consortium in Persian and Turkish (ECPT), a cooperative arrangement of universities with Middle East National Resource Centers, which is intended to provide intensive, one-year equivalent instruction in both first- and second-year Persian and Turkish language. The other participating members of the Consortium currently are Columbia, Georgetown, Harvard, New York, Princeton, Yale Universities and the Universities of Chicago, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The program annually serves a national constituency of students who are pursuing the less commonly taught languages of Persian and Turkish. In the summer of 2006 Pashto was offered for the first time through the Consortium. Students are general at the graduate level, pursuing a variety of different disciplines, from the Humanities to the Sciences.
The Consortium’s venue rotates regularly among the member institutions, and The Ohio State University has served as its host in the summers of 1990, 1996-98, and in the summers of 2004-06. With the financial support of OSU’s College of the Humanities and the willingness on the part of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures to offer the program, the program has been very successful while at OSU. During the past summer, the program was hosted very successfully at the University of Chicago, who recently rejoined the Consortium, served as host during summer of 2007 and will continue to serve in summer of 2008.
When OSU was the Consortium’s venue previously, the program received a number of tuition authorizations from OAA to award to qualified applicants. It has been customary for other Consortium member institutions to offer the same incentive to students in need of financial aid, and indeed such support is seen by the Consortium, and Title VI authorities, as crucial to its success.
See these Eastern Consortium documents for further information.
Summer Workshop in Slavic, East European and Central Asian Languages
In 1962, IU became home to the Uralic and Altaic Language and Area Center, which in 1981 was renamed the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center (IAUNRC). The Center's intensive summer language program, Summer Workshop in Slavic, East European and Central Asian Languages (SWSEEL), has been offered at the Bloomington campus of Indiana University since 1950. The Summer Workshop provides up to 200 participants in Slavic, East European and Central Asian languages the opportunity to complete a full year of college language instruction during an eight-week summer session. It is made possible by the contributions of a large number of area studies centers across the country, and the Middle East Studies Center at Ohio State has been a sponsor of the program since its designation as a National Resource Center in 1988.
The Middle East Outreach Council
Established in 1981, the Middle East Outreach Council (MEOC) is a national nonprofit organization working to increase public knowledge about the peoples places, and cultures of the Middle East, including the Arab world, Israel, Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan. It is an affiliated organization of the Middle East Studies Association. The Middle East Studies Center has been an active member of MEOC since its designation as a National Resource Center in 1988. Other institutional members include UCLA, Portland State university, Yale, Georgetown, UT Austin, University of Utah, Tyler Junior College, and North Carolina State University.
The Middle East Studies Association
The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is a private, non-profit, non-political learned society that brings together scholars, educators and those interested in the study of the region from all over the world. The association is a constituent society of the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Council of Area Studies Associations, and a member of the National Humanities Alliance. As part of its goal to advance learning, facilitate communication and promote cooperation, MESA sponsors an annual meeting that is a leading international forum for scholarship, intellectual exchange and pedagogical innovation. It is responsible for the International Journal of Middle East Studies, the premiere journal on the region, the MESA Bulletin and a quarterly newsletter. The Middle East Studies Center has been an institutional member of MESA since its designation as a National Resource Center in 1988. It provides a necessary annual venue for collaborative projects to be initiated - and for them to survive! Most recently, we collaborated with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, on a military training workshop for officers at Camp Mabry.