Pacific Rim Curriculum Shifts With the World : Education: UCSD’s one-of-a-kind school focusing on Latin, Asian studies is at a turning point as it works to fine-tune itself to the needs of potential employers.

With a stunning new $8.8-million building overlooking the Pacific and a complement of almost 40 full-time and visiting professors, the University of California’s grand experiment to prepare students for the economic and cultural challenges from Pacific Rim nations has moved into a critical stage.

As the question of America’s competitiveness in the world becomes a central national theme, the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UC San Diego sees itself playing a central role in shaping the U.S. response.

“The school . . . is clearly ahead of its time,” said UC President David P. Gardner, who pushed hard with university regents for its creation in 1986 because of the Pacific Rim’s importance to California. He praised “the quality of its faculty and the uniqueness and breadth of its curriculum,” adding that “no other school in the country, to my knowledge, has such an academic program.”

With an unusually strong and diverse group of students as well, the school has already established its credibility for preparing graduates to address deficiencies in the policy-making skills of public and private institutions concerning Asia and Latin America.

But its senior professors say that the breakneck pace of change in worldwide economic and political events, on top of the growing pains inevitable at any new professional school--let alone one with such a new and ambitious agenda--are forcing continuing refinements and revisions.

As it prepares to welcome its fourth class of graduate students in September, the school is altering the curriculum to respond to changing business needs, working to improve student job placement and seeking to recruit bright young professors to deepen the school’s intellectual depth.

“We’re operating within a (world) situation of great flux,” Peter Gourevich, UCSD professor of political science and dean of the school, said. “We’re still asking ourselves, what does it take to prepare people for a rapidly changing American role in this new international environment?”

Professor Chalmers Johnson, a longtime expert on Japan and China who was recruited from UC Berkeley, punctuated that assessment with reference to the multidisciplinary needs of students for political, economic, historical and linguistic preparation.

“My criterion for the school’s success is that our students should have skills that no faculty members have,” Johnson said, “in that our economists are not good linguists and our linguists are not good economists, and our goal is to put the two together, among other (disciplines), in trying to train young people for the competitive world of the future.”

For Johnson, the school’s mandate has a special urgency: “I think what we are trying to do is the most advanced of any such institution in the United States today . . . but, given that I feel there are only a few years left for America to reverse matters before our decline (as a nation) becomes irreversible, I don’t think the school is succeeding as fast as it ought to, that there is no sense of crisis that all American institutions should have in dealing with Asia.”

Johnson cites the example of a well-known business school having not a single economics professor who has studied inside a Japanese bank, despite the fact that eight of the world’s 10 largest banks today are Japanese-owned. (The other two are European.)

From an initial 30 students in September, 1987, the school has grown to 150 today, with a total of 400 expected by mid-decade. Most study a two-year syllabus leading to a master’s degree in Pacific international affairs, with a handful pursuing doctoral degrees in the subject.

About two-thirds specialize in Asia, with a third concentrating on Latin America in their second year following a rigorous year of interdisciplinary core studies. More students plan careers in the corporate sector, as opposed to public policy-government positions, than originally expected by school planners.

“Basically, I think we’ve gotten an outstanding number of professors who are recognized around the world, and we’ve gotten students of good quality,” Gourevich said.

“On the other hand, we’ve had to make a lot of adjustments in our curriculum, which was simply too rigid at first, that it did not allow for students to have enough choice in (picking courses) for their career patterns.”

In particular, the school, in its initial attempts at job placement for graduates, found that financial firms were telling students they did not have enough business background to justify their being interviewed seriously. A minimum of two accounting courses, for example, is desired by such firms, but students had time only for a single course, given the pressures of other requirements, Krause said.

“We’ve backed off of having too many required courses at the beginning,” said Professor John Ruggie, a specialist in international relations. “Students were getting frustrated at not having enough flexibility within a general subject area.”

The school has not backed away, however, from what Johnson calls its “Draconian” language requirement. The faculty has decided that, without some knowledge or study of either Japanese, Korean, Spanish or Chinese at the time of application, an applicant will no longer ordinarily be admitted. The school runs its own language programs with specially selected instructors rather than relying on foreign-language departments at UCSD.

“It just can’t be done, starting a language from (scratch) intensively to become proficient while at the same time studying all the other courses needed to be trained in Pacific affairs,” said Lawrence Krause, an expert on Pacific trade and economics and the first professor recruited by Gourevich for the school in 1986.

Both Krause and Johnson argue that the school’s graduates must be able to analyze and research issues in the vernacular of whatever country they select for specialization.

“The language requirement has been tough,” said Megan DeJarlais, one of seven students spending the summer between her first and second years taking intensive Japanese before tackling the school’s dreaded language proficiency exam. “I just have to take the attitude that I am here because I want to be, and that I just have to do the language.”

DeJarlais, in comments echoed by her peers, called the best part of the school “the incredible diversity of students, people who have done everything in the past.”

Even Johnson said the “truly astonishing thing about the school is how good the students are, which is to say that these young Americans are ahead of the establishment, they are in tune to the Pacific, and many have considerable experience gotten largely on their own. . . . These students have hustled.”

DeJarlais studied economics at Hollins College in Roanoke, Va., and was attracted to UCSD because of the school’s newness and its range, which offered her the chance to prepare for a government career.

Robert Hamilton came to UCSD after taking a bachelor’s degree at Berkeley and spending seven years as a U.S. Marine Corps officer in Asia, leaving the Corps at the rank of captain.

“I saw a news clipping about the school and did some research on it, and knew about Chalmers Johnson from when I studied at Berkeley in the early 1980s,” said Hamilton, who hopes for a corporate position after graduation next year. “The curriculum at first makes it hard for you to focus because there are so many different elements pulling at you, not just business and not just politics.”

Craig Kakuda spent several years on his own in Japan after graduation from Northwestern University pursuing his interest in journalism. But he realized that, without grounding in Asian economics and politics, his value to media companies would be minimal.

“I liked the fact that the school is new, and its curriculum covers every single hole in my background,” Kakuda said.

DeJarlais said the students “are all individuals, if not risk takers, since (the school) I think suits people who are looking for something not quite mainstream, people interested in international environmental issues, or trade between Mexico and Japan, those of us who don’t fit into the regular business school or Ph.D. track.”

China specialist Susan Shirk, who holds a joint appointment both at the school and in the UCSD political science department, said she worried at first that students on a professional school track would be less interesting than those in traditional doctoral studies because of their bottom-line career goals.

“But I’ve found the students here tremendously playful intellectually . . . and with a lot of leadership skills--liking to talk, more outgoing, able to organize--that Ph.D. candidates may not have.”

Placement of the students after graduation is critical to the school’s eventual acceptance as a major academic institution, and the picture has been mixed with the first two graduating classes.

“We are putting more energy into career preparation, from the first week of orientation, to stress that they need to think about their goals, what job they want, how to put together a resume, how to interview,” Gourevich said. “We found that our students have a great deal more variety in work experience and in preparation than anticipated.”

So far, students have been placed in the private sector more easily than in government or foundation positions.

“There are more jobs in the private sector on the international scene, and in part there is more student interest,” Gourevich said. “But we’ve also found that placement in the public sector takes more work. Let’s face it, there are fewer public agencies on the West Coast interested in these skills, and Washington is far away.

“We’re trying to improve the flow of information to the public sector, and hopefully we’ll start to put together a track record that will help.”

The school did put six graduates this past June in the prestigious Presidential Management internship program of the federal government, where they will work the next two years in various government agencies.

The school has also found that students with undergraduate science or engineering preparation, together with their graduate international management training, are proving prime candidates for hi-tech firms aware of growing competition from Asian companies.

“But we always knew that things would be hard because of our location and our newness. We didn’t expect to be discovered overnight,” Gourevich said.

Ruggie said that, despite the school being part of a “historical evolutionary trend, and (despite) the fact that the school is in the forefront of post-Cold War issues about whether the U.S. is declining, about Japan as a superpower, it needs very much to augment placement service substantially.

“I’m not convinced that the university clearly understands what we are up against in terms of competing” for positions in Washington against traditional public policy schools on the East Coast, he said.

Johnson worries that American corporate firms also need a push in understanding the value of the UCSD program.

“In some respects, the Japanese pay more attention to this school than we do in America,” Johnson said. “I assure you that, when the Japanese who come here to study do so, they do more than just study. They make reports on what we are doing. When they think Americans are getting competitive, when they see the state of California putting up the money to train young Americans to compete in the Pacific, the Japanese pay attention. . . . I sometimes worry that Japanese companies will end up more interested in our product than American firms.”

Shirk said the general awareness in Asia of the school has surprised her.

“Members of the State Planning Commission of China visiting the U.S. made a specific request to visit here; they wanted to come to the school and meet Peter Gourevich,” she said.

As the school enters its next phase, the faculty will try to solidify the nascent doctoral program as well as look for promising younger professors to fill positions in areas such as international technology.

Although small, the doctoral program is important to train new faculty in a field that Johnson and Shirk said still has too few up-and-coming experts. In particular, Johnson said the school must recruit professors “in a more radical way” by looking “for the unorthodox, the offbeat who may come out of professional schools more than from regular academic disciplines.”

Gourevich said the school has “the chemistry and psychology” to succeed as it evolves.

Summed up Krause: “A lack of change so far would be a recognition that we were a sham. This school was, and still is, an experiment, with no hard and fast blueprint.”