 Pamela Sari, and I direct the Asian American and Asian Resource and Culture Center. Our center was founded in the spring of 2015 as a result of faculty, staff and student activism for more than a decade, decade long. So fun fact about me was that I graduated with my PhD from Purdue University. And when I was a graduate student, I was involved in some of these efforts to propose the Asian American and Asian Resource and Culture Center. So I always say that I have a full circle of engagement with the center. So our center is a resource that invites all Purdue communities to weave diverse Asian and Asian American experiences into our campus life. So we do this through the intersections of pedagogy, cultural work and advocacy. Some of our signature programs include Lunch and Learn every Thursday in the fall and spring semester. And also our speaker series, we invite speakers from all across expertise into Purdue campus. And we also celebrate cultural events such as our annual Lunar New Year celebration. We also work with faculty and staff across the colleges to weave Asian and Asian American experiences into the classrooms. We also work very closely with Asian interest student organizations. There are so many of them that you can get involved with. So again, we welcome your interest if that's that's something that you are really interested in. We also have an active social media presence. On my background is our website. And also you can find us and our daily thematic content on Instagram and Facebook. And also we are on Twitter as well. I can speak of the impacts in terms of two things. One, for students who identify as Asian and Asian Americans, we foster a sense of belonging and growth of identity, and also a sense of collaborations with each other in terms of Asian Americans and Asian internationals. Due to systemic racism that often happened against our communities. Sometimes we are in the position of trying to position ourselves away from each other. And I've seen that the art is trying to build the bridges among the two communities. For example, this just came up in some of our programming last semester. Some of our students come from communities like Hannah mentioned, where they might be one of, or the only Asian in the community. They never see other people who look like them. And when they're in school, suddenly, there's a feeling of shame about, you know, bringing their own food to to the school, for example, there's, there's a sense of shame and also a sense of of shaming. And when we talk about, right, food, for example, what is what is your favorite thing to cook? And suddenly that conversation is flowing about, Yeah, I remember the time when I feel ashamed of bringing even my own cultural food, food that I eat at home, into my education setting. So the opportunity to get together and discuss these issues have allowed, you know, the growth of identity and the growing sense of belonging as members of the communities. Asian Americans and Asian internationals have different, but also intersecting histories that we would like to share and celebrate with each other. So and we see some of the people that we've interviewed, they said that they grew up without a sense of role models through the TV, people around them, they don't see people who look like them. And what a privilege it has been to bring people like Wong Fu production, Mirai Nagasu Olympian and USVU skating team, where people can say to us that, wow, there are people who look like us who can be successful. So it fosters a sense of growth in their identity. So for the rest of campus communities, the presence of the art can foster a creation of strong allies to help us dispel some of the myths that we often hear about Asian and Asian American communities. For example, the idea of a model minority myth, the Asian and Asian American comes into college campuses, successful, don't need help. So and by looking into the diversity of our communities, we can begin to see, right, many of us actually need help. And how can we be allies to each other in this sense? So hopefully that that will continue to to Purdue, as we know, have has excellent academic programs, which means that our students are really working hard to achieve their academic success. And my favorite, and honestly, my favorite, some of my favorite moments at the arts is late afternoon, when students come together with their communities, working at the ITAP computer lab at the center, or you utilizing the conference room at the center, and I can see them trying to teach each other homework while singing together, going to the kitchen to get something to eat and back and discussing again about their homework and their classes. The creation of communities of care are just refreshing to me and encouraging me every single day. And in fact, from some of the students that we talk to and also staff members that we talk to, mental health professionals actually also recommend our students go to these types of communities and go to student organizations in our in our case with Asian interests to to get that that sense of community and and to get that sense of care with each other. So that's something that I really am touched every time for and our student organization have been very forward thinking in terms of including Asian American and Asian internationalists in their groups. And so I can see these these bridges are being build relationships are being fostered. So that is that is one of the excellence efforts that I've been seeing coming through. And also our students have been gaining skills from their involvement with the center and their involvement with the Asian interest to an organization skills that are translated into academic work that look into the diversity and intersectionality of our communities. For example, I work with several students who eventually through their involvement at the art, they're interested in taking more courses like intro to Asian American Studies or other courses in other colleges that look into intersectionality of our identities, and they decide to pursue further education, looking at their own communities, looking at intersectionality of work in, you know, across our communities. And they translate that into graduate school applications into their work. Writing letters of recommendation is also one of my favorite things to do because I can see that their aspirations really translate into growing skills, growing academic work and skills. So there are many ways that you all can get involved with the art. First one is like the other directors have said, visit the course or centers. We have welcoming staff at the art. We also have a graduate student and two undergraduate staff members who can speak with you. And if you want to learn more about what you can do to get involved. Also, I would recommend participate in our events, not only as attendees and attendees are great, but also as organizers and presenters. Our students have been presenting at our weekly lunch and learn, for example, one time, a couple of students presented on the history of chopsticks and how, you know, the history of chopsticks represent diversity of our communities. The student organizations that we work with, they volunteer to host tables at our events, for example, at the Lunar New Year celebration, they host different events again to emphasize the diversity of the Lunar New Year experiences across countries, across regions in the United States. They participate as volunteers in our speaker series. We try to collaborate with student organizations to when we invite each of our speakers that way, our students can also get experiences of hosting and also organizing planning events. And the third one is participate in our communication efforts. So subscribe to our weekly newsletter if you haven't done so. Follow us on social media and also participate in our social media thematic events. And lastly, we are now trying to grow our services to fulfill our mission. For example, we just started our ARC research labs. We're doing research right now, for example, on media portrayal and media impact on Asian and Asian American communities surrounding the issue of COVID-19. If that fits in your academic work, come talk to me and how you can get involved and how you can participate in this research. And also this is something exciting. We're starting our lion dance team that hopefully will be able to present in some of our major university campus events in the future. So if you have talents in the area of you would like to practice and grow your skills in the area, please come join us in our this upcoming lion dance team. So there are some of the ways that you can get involved.