Dr. James Collins, the new Director of NIU’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies, has found a home on foreign soil.

Born in Chicago, Collins always knew he would like to travel outside the City of Big Shoulders. Last month, he returned from a 14-year stay in Southeast Asia, where he served as a research fellow at the Institute of the Malay World and Civilisation on the campus of the National University of Malaysia.

The Northern Star caught up with Collins to ask him about his many stays in the Far East, his long overdue return to DeKalb and his new role at NIU.

Northern Star: Where in Malaysia did you stay?

James Collins: Well, I was there a long time. I was in the Peace Corps from 1968 to 1970 in Malaysia, then after I did my PhD at the University of Chicago I was in Malaysia from 1980 to 1983. When I was in Hawaii, I was on sabbatical in Malaysia, also, it must have been 1992, probably. And then this last job was from 1995 to last month. So all of those times I’ve lived in, or near Kuala Lumpur, near the capital city.

NS: How did you like it there, overall?

JC: I first went to Malaysia 40 years next month; I arrived in 1968. There’s been tremendous changes that have taken place in Malaysia, so it’s interesting because Malaysia is a comfortable place for me. I know a lot of people from 1968 and their relatives and their villages, so all of the open-heartedness and generosity of Malaysians 40 years ago is what’s part of my memory. But now Malaysia is a very highly-developed country, actually. It has all of the amenities that we’re accustomed to in the US, more or less. In fact, a far better public transportation system than in DeKalb. … There’s a modern commuter train system and when you get to the center of [Kuala Lumpur] there is, like Chicago, subways, elevated lines, stuff like that. That’s what’s interesting to me, is that I still have memories of Malaysia as a more rural, as a more quiet place, and I have all these friends from that era. For me it’s been sort of a warm, evocative kind of place. It reminds me of when I was 21. At the same time, now it has all these modern amenities. Everybody here thinks it’s a bit odd that I send text messages all the time, because in Malaysia, or Indonesia, that’s a typical way to communicate with people. In the US, it seems people my age don’t use text messaging much, so it’s interesting.

NS: So would you say they’re ahead of the curve, technologically speaking?

JC: In some ways, yeah. I mean, there are some things done here that maybe aren’t done there. For example, here at NIU if I want to go to a conference overseas, I have to get a form and fill out the form, and it has to be signed before I hand it in. In Malaysia, at the university, I open up a Web page and fill out the form electronically and send it to the appropriate officers who would approve it or not. In many ways, the university there is a little more into using electronic communication.

NS: Beside its rapid transit and technological aspects, what is charming about Malaysia to you?

JC: As I was saying, I think it’s a society that 40 years ago was still very traditional. And it has made tremendous progress in the last 40 years to become a modern country with all the modern infrastructure that we associate with modernity: toll roads and major highways and subways and express trains … Japanese cars and cell phones. So there’s that; that alone is very interesting. For someone my age, it is very interesting to recall what it was like and what it’s like now. That’s one thing I find very interesting about Malaysia. It’s a very diverse country. It has a very mixed ethnic population. The demographics are changing, but by and large, I think the groups that were there 40 years ago are still there. It’s very diverse.

NS: What was the extent of your work in Malaysia?

JC: The last 14 years, I was a senior research fellow at a research institute at the national university. So I was at an institute called The Institute of the Malay World and Civilisation [sic]. My responsibilities were to supervise MA and PhD students writing their theses about language topics relating to islands in Southeast Asia. I had to write up research grants and supervise funded research grants and write reports. If I was in the mood, I would sometimes teach. I taught undergraduate courses, co-taught with some of my former students. I have also spent some of my time teaching graduate courses, too. I was busy. I still have about 15 graduate students in Malaysia. In fact, in early October, I am going to make a brief visit back to Malaysia and take a look at what the students have written.

NS: What was it like coming back to DeKalb after having been in Malaysia for so long?

JC: I lived in Malaysia, then worked again in America, then worked in Malaysia and did research in Indonesia, and then come back and worked in Honolulu for 10 years at the University of Hawaii. So I am quite used to shifting from one culture to the other. It’s not seamless shifting; there are always adjustments that have to be made. I think I said before that I haven’t felt any discomforts adjusting to life in DeKalb; it’s very comfortable and pleasant here. People are very polite and friendly, students are very well disciplined. … My impression is that NIU is a very pleasant place to be, and the local community is very friendly and talkative. So far I haven’t had what everybody’s predicted: culture shock.

NS: Is there any other place in the world where you would like to teach?

JC: I’ve taught in Asia, Brunei in Asia, and of course, I taught in the community college systems in Chicago. I’ve taught at [The University of] Hawaii, I’ve given courses in El Paso, Texas, at the University of Texas [and] here. I’ve also taught at Frankfurt, at the University of Frankfurt in Germany and at Leiden University in the Netherlands. I would like to teach again in Leiden, in the Netherlands, a very nice place. They have very good libraries, particularly in Southeast Asian studies. Also, the University of Helsinki would be a very pleasant place to teach. That would be a nice place to teach, too. So Helsinki in Finland, or Leiden in the Netherlands; those would be nice places to teach at again.

NS: You’re the newest director of the NIU’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Can you tell us a little about the Center?

JC: The Center for Southeast Asian Studies is a somewhat different unit within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences because it represents a voluntary association of NIU’s scholars who had studied Southeast Asia. And this center has part of its budget from the university, and a somewhat larger part of its budget from the Department of Education in Washington. And that funding enables us to provide travel grants to faculty, to assist faculty in bringing scholars to talk here; it also provides extensive scholarships for graduate students who specialize in Southeast Asian Studies. … As an undergraduate center for Southeast Asian Studies, we have a special mission to undergraduates which is probably about 90 percent of the student body at NIU. We take that seriously, and we’re exploring ways to more effectively interact with the undergraduate community here on campus.

NS: What kind of duties do you have as director?

JC: One of my duties is to be the director of the center. That means coordinating the efforts of about 30 to 35 other faculty members who are interested in Southeast Asian Studies. We reach out to the undergraduate community, but also, we do have fellowships that we give to graduate students to pursue their MA and PhD degrees. We organize conferences, so this semester there will be two major international conferences held right here at NIU. … As I’ve told you before, one of my responsibilities is to seek funding for this center, because only a small percentage of costs of running the center come from NIU’s general budget. A large part of funding for the center comes from the Department of Education in Washington, and that’s a competitive group. I am now focusing on writing the next grant which will probably be submitted in October of next year. We’re already assembling and working and figuring out how to re-posture ourselves so we look even better in Washington than we do now.