In Spring 2021, Korean studies students at three Big Ten universities had the opportunity to participate in a new pilot program of the UW–Madison Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS) that connected them with senior policymakers with decades of experience in US-Korean relations.
Called the Big Ten KOR-US Fellows Program, this new initiative built on infrastructure already developed by the Big Ten Academic Alliance and the Korea Foundation Global e-School programs that allows Big Ten universities to share Korean studies courses. Students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of Illinois, and University of Maryland enrolled in a course on US-Korean relations taught by CEAS Associate Director, David Fields. In addition to readings (1,392 pages!) and lectures about US-Korean relations, students in this course had the opportunity to engage with policymakers who have devoted their careers to this relationship and who actually lived many of the events the students were studying.