What do we actually learn in area and culture studies? The answer may seem straightforward: languages, cultures, histories, societies. But how do you translate those classes and activities into skills to put on your resume? How do studies of ancient Chinese bronze vessels, medieval Japanese peasants, or Korean literature, for example, improve your chances of getting your dream job outside of Academia?
Career Skills for Global Students is a workshop series organized by the East Asian Studies Center in collaboration with the Hamilton Lugar School and the HLS Living-Learning Center. Designed to help students translate their classroom experiences—especially in East Asian Studies and the Humanities—into practical, future-facing career skills, the series explores how global knowledge, cultural insight, and interdisciplinary thinking prepare students to thrive in an ever-changing world of work.
While the series primarily draws inspiration and examples from East Asian Studies, students from all disciplines at HLS are warmly encouraged to participate. Space permitting, we also welcome students from outside HLS who are interested in applying global and humanistic learning to professional life. If you’re curious about how your studies connect to leadership, innovation, and meaningful work, we’d love to have you join the conversation. Reach out to the organizer for more information or to reserve a spot at mortoxen@iu.edu.
Introducing the EASC Culture Innovation Hub
The Culture Innovation Hub is a new initiative from the East Asian Studies Center (EASC) designed to empower students to turn their deep cultural knowledge into real-world action. Whether you're fascinated by J-dramas, Korean forest bathing, Zen architecture, Chinese poetry, Japanese films, or the environmental philosophies of East Asia, or something completely different, this is your space to experiment, connect, and create.
We believe that innovation isn’t limited to tech labs or business schools. In fact, students of East Asian Studies already possess a powerful toolkit: cultural insight, historical depth, interdisciplinary awareness, and a global mindset. The Culture Innovation Hub helps you take those skills further into entrepreneurship, social impact, and creative careers.
Whether you're hoping to start a side hustle, launch a nonprofit, or just explore what's possible for your future resume, the Culture Innovation Hub gives you the space and support to take the leap.
Get Involved
Don’t wait until graduation to create something meaningful. Join the Culture Innovation Hub and start exploring how your academic passions can lead to creative, community-driven, and entrepreneurial possibilities.
Culture Innovation Challenge
Funding opportunity: Got an idea that bridges East Asian culture with social impact or entrepreneurship? The East Asian Studies Center invites undergraduate and graduate students to pitch a start-up or NGO concept rooted in their area studies knowledge and passion for East Asian cultures.
2025-2026 Sessions & Topics
Wednesday September 10, 2025
What does it mean to study literature, history, language, and culture in a world that is constantly and rapidly evolving? In this kickoff session of the Career Skills for Global Students series, we explore how the Humanities—and East Asian Studies in particular—equip students with the intellectual agility, cultural insight, and reflective habits needed for innovation in an uncertain future. Far from being static or backward-looking, the Humanities are engines of creative thinking, systems awareness, and ethical considerations. This session will show how deep engagement with global cultures, past and present, prepares students not only to understand the world—but to transform Join us to discover how your coursework in the Humanities is priming you for adaptive, interdisciplinary thinking that is increasingly vital in today's dynamic professional landscape.
Where: GA 2067
Wednesday October 15, 2025
What if your fascination with other cultures could be more than a passion—what if it were the foundation for a creative career? In this session of the Career Skills for Global Students series, we explore what it means to be a cultural entrepreneur: someone who turns cross-cultural understanding, historical perspective, and creative insight into real-world impact. Whether you're interested in launching a nonprofit, designing immersive learning experiences, curating digital exhibitions, or building globally aware products and services, your training in Area Studies gives you a unique edge. You’re not just learning about the world—you’re learning how to act within it. This session will also introduce our Culture Innovation Hub, a new EASC resource where your ideas can take shape—literally. Whether you're dreaming of having your own online shop with K-pop artifacts, planning a cultural event, experimenting with new media, or something completely different, the Innovation Hub is a collaborative environment for transforming insight into action. Join us to learn how your global knowledge and creative instincts can power entrepreneurial thinking and new career pathways in a changing world.
Where: GA 1060
Thursday November 13, 2025
Where do you go with your degree when the career path ahead is uncertain, unstable—or doesn’t even exist yet? In this session of the Career Skills for Global Students series, we will have a brainstorm on how area studies students develop skills and mindsets to become effective navigators of complex situations. Whether through interpreting layered historical events, interpreting linguistic ambiguities, or engaging with philosophical and ethical questions, students in these fields become comfortable with uncertainty, complexity, and nonlinear change. They learn to ask better questions, read between the lines, and adapt perspectives across contexts—skills that are increasingly essential in fields like innovation, sustainability, design, diplomacy, and social entrepreneurship. In a world that no longer rewards rigid expertise but demands agile thinking, collaboration, and creative risk-taking, this session will help you recognize your potential not just to survive chaos—but to lead through it.
Where: GA 2134
Thursday January 15, 2026
In today’s fast-changing world, the most resilient organizations aren’t just efficient—they know how to learn. In this session of the Career Skills for Global Students series, we explore the concept of organizational learning and how students trained in Area Studies and the Humanities are uniquely positioned to foster it. Drawing on deep cultural understanding, historical thinking, and interpretive skills, students in these fields learn how knowledge is created, contested, and reconfigured across time and place. Organizational learning requires more than just solving problems—it demands deep learning: reflecting on assumptions, identifying patterns, and designing systems that can adapt and grow. Area Studies students are especially well-equipped for this role. Through their study of global contexts, they develop the ability to manage knowledge systems across cultures, to anticipate multiple interpretations, and to guide teams in learning not just what to do—but how to think differently. This session will help you see yourself as a learning architect—someone who can build environments where ideas evolve, systems improve, and organizations thrive.
Where: GA 2067
Thursday February 12, 2026
How do you communicate effectively across different languages, cultural systems, and symbolic worlds? In this session of the Career Skills for Global Students series, we explore how language learning and cultural studies work together to help students become expert code switchers—able to shift between social, linguistic, and symbolic contexts with confidence and nuance. Whether you're moving between language systems, writing styles, cultural registers, or platforms, code switching is a vital tool for global communication and collaboration. We’ll also look at the role of ‘semiotic awareness’ and how meaning is constructed through signs, symbols, and context, and we’ll discuss how this forms the foundation for both localization and prompt engineering. From tailoring messages for specific audiences to adapting content for new cultural environments, these skills empower students to shape communication in strategic and culturally fluent ways. Join us to explore how your studies in language, literature, and global culture have already prepared you to become a sophisticated communicator across borders, platforms, and symbolic systems.
Where: GA 2067
Thursday April 16, 2026
What makes something worth doing, creating, or preserving? In this final session of the Career Skills for Global Students series, we explore how students in the Humanities and Area Studies engage not only in the interpretation of culture—but in the making of value. Through storytelling, translation, curation, research, and advocacy, students shape how people understand what matters—ethically, culturally, and socially. Whether you're creating a podcast about Korean literature, translating activist poetry from Chinese, or designing a public exhibit on Japanese visual culture, you are generating meaning and relevance for new audiences. This session invites you to see your academic work not just as reflective, but as generative. You’re not only learning about the values of others—you’re actively contributing to cultural ecosystems, public understanding, and the reimagining of what holds worth in our rapidly changing world. Join us as we examine how students become value-makers: creators, communicators, and curators of what counts.
Where: GA 2067
2024-2025 Sessions & Topics
Tuesday September 10, 2024
Things don’t happen for just one reason. Area studies pursues a holistic and multi-disciplinary understanding of how diverse social and historical environments lead to different organizational structures and outcomes. Developing a broader perspective of the varied pressures on a system leads students to grow the ability to analyze how complex outcomes result from non-linear changes.
Where: GA 2134
Tuesday October 15, 2024
Worldview is created individually and collectively. Area studies pursues a deeper comprehension of how knowledge about the world is created in social and historical contexts and why people with different cultural backgrounds may come to very different conclusions based on the same information. Often, the most valuable person in the room is the one who anticipates the range of human reactions to a course of action and actively sidesteps problems during the design process.
Where: GA 3067
Tuesday November 12, 2024
Communication is not just about words and sentences, but that meaning is created through self-awareness, complex symbols, gestures, body language, and subtle cultural references. Language training and awareness of cultural context deepens the amount of information a person gets from a conversation or text. These communication skills enhance your ability to work in teams and solve complex problems.
Where: GA 1060
Tuesday December 10, 2024
The ability to understand people from vastly different cultures and the ways they reach conclusions about values, norms, and ethics is a fundamental skill in most work situations involving other human beings. To manage and lead complex systems and engage in strategic thinking, the ability to quickly consider multiple perspectives is vital.
Where: GA 2134
Tuesday January 14, 2025
Know your audience, identify gaps, act with impact. An understanding of ideas and social configurations from outside the US provides students rich opportunities to rethink existing social structures and practices. In understanding how different peoples interact with the world, students hone their ability to see need and recognize opportunity in places invisible to those only on the “inside” or “outside” of a situation.
Where: GA 1060
Tuesday February 11, 2025
Once you create a message, all possible interpretations of that message exist for the audience to adopt. Words, actions, and images exist as complex symbols tied into the network of an individual’s worldview. Area studies explores the role of meaning in the face of cultural values and individual understanding. By practicing the interpretation, translation, and analysis of varied symbols from multiple perspectives, students are more likely to understand and be understood in diverse social settings.
Where: GA 1060
Tuesday April 8, 2025
Can students in the humanities and area studies become innovators and entrepreneurs? This session explores how we often unknowingly train design thinking—a problem-solving framework emphasizing creativity, iteration, and critical thinking. We will explore how cultural literacy, historical knowledge, and non-linear thinking can drive innovation in diverse fields, from sustainable business models to social and cultural enterprises. The session will begin with a brief summary of the ‘hidden skills’ that we have covered in previous sessions, so now is the time to catch up! Join us to discover how area studies and the humanities can fuel new approaches to entrepreneurship and innovation in a rapidly changing world!
Where: GA 1060
Introducing: Empowering Global Minds Project
Our new program at the East Asian Studies Center is here to show how the critical skills you're building in Area Studies can set you up for success in today's fast-changing world.
