Asian and Asian American Studies (AAAS) is an interdisciplinary department which was created in Fall 2016 through the merger of two programs, Asian and Pacific Studies (ASPA) and Asian Pacific American Studies (APAM). In an increasingly transnational world where global citizenship, multicultural awareness, interfaith dialogue, and social justice are emphasized and valued, AAAS offers transformative education by bringing together teacher-scholars and students from different disciplines and fields in the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts to study and to critically analyze the past and the present on both sides of the Pacific.