This record group is divided into four major series: Administrative, Applications, Correspondence and Grants.
Administrative contains material concerning the running of the program. It contains the minutes of the steering committee as well as some smaller committees. Reports on PICAS activities, most written by the executive director, and evaluations of PICAS written by grant and fellowship recipients are included. The steering committee minutes in particular offer significant detail on PICAS activities and programs.
Applications include mostly the proposals for conferences to be sponsored by PICAS and for faculty long term research grants. Some proposals and applications for other research grants and the summer language fellowship are also included. These files also have summary information on the number of fellowships awarded and evaluation of the fellowships and summer language programs.
Correspondence contains material chiefly written and received by William Kincaid, executive director of PICAS. It contains incoming and outgoing correspondence from the faculty, students and administrators of the participating colleges. The bulk of the material concerns the summer language fellowships and the long-term faculty research grants.
Grants is organized by the dates of the grants awarded to PICAS. It contains the grant applications and correspondence with the donors. It also contains information on possible sources to renew the grant beyond 1995.
The Program for Inter-Institutional Collaboration in Area Studies (PICAS), founded in early 1986, was a joint program between the University of Michigan, the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) and the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA). It was designed to allow students and faculty of schools within the consortia to have access to the resources of the six University of Michigan study areas (listed on following page). PICAS sponsored conferences on non-western topics both at the University of Michigan and at affiliated colleges. Research grants were available to faculty of the colleges to come to Ann Arbor. Short-term grants, typically one week, were open to students and faculty. PICAS also sponsored summer language fellowships, through which recipients received intensive instruction in a study area language. Some of the fellowship recipients were taught at Beloit College. All grants and fellowships were awarded on a competitive basis. PICAS was governed by a steering committee consisting of the project director, the executive director, the presidents of ACM and GLCA, representatives from two of the six area study centers, and two faculty members each from ACM and GLCA. PICAS was funded by a series of grants from the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation. From 1985 to 1990, the Pew Memorial Trust also contributed funding to PICAS. PICAS was closed when the grants expired in September 1995.
Program for Inter-institutional Collaboration in Area Studies Directors
| Date |
Event |
| 1986 | John Eadie |
| 1986-1987 | Karl L. Hutterer |
| 1987-1988 | John Cambell |
| 1988-1995 | Ernst N. McCarcus |
Member Institutions
- Associated Colleges of the Midwest
- Beloit College
- Carleton College
- Coe College
- College of the University
- Colorado College
- Cornell College
- Grinnell College
- Knox College
- Lake Forest College
- Lawrence College
- Macalester College
- Monmouth College
- Ripon College
- St. Olaf College
- Great Lakes Colleges Association
- Albion College
- Antioch College
- Denison College
- DePauw College
- Earlham College
- Hope College
- Kalamazoo College
- Kenyon College
- Oberlin College
- Ohio Wesleyan
- Wabash College
- Wooster College
- University of Michigan area study centers
- Center for Afroamerican and African Studies
- Center for Chinese Studies
- Center for Japanese Studies
- Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies
- Center for Russian and East European Studies
- Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies
