Hello, does anybody have experience with the "University if the West"? http://www.uwest.edu/uwest/About/about_uwest.htm And what is their status? I couldn't find out anything on their website. adelheid
If they're accredited, they don't seem to say anything about it. Given that they're from California (just where I'd expect a school such as this one to be located), check the Western Association of Schools and Colleges www.wascweb.org
University of the West is the new name of the former Hsi Lai University. The new name was chosen to evoke the idea of the 'West' in both American and Chinese traditions. U.West is CA-approved and is currently a candidate for regional accreditation with WASC. http://www.wascweb.org/senior/directories.htm They scored a major coup when they lured the chairman of UC Berkeley's Buddhist Studies Ph.D. program, Dr. Lewis Lancaster, to be their new President. This guy is a big-time international-class scholar. http://www.uwest.edu/uwest1/president.html They have some other stars as well, including Ananda Guruge, a Sri Lankan scholar-diplomat who has served as Sri Lankan Ambassador to the US, France and UNESCO. He's the author of some 40 books, 150 papers and he's fluent in English, Sinhala, French, Pali, Sanskrit, Tamil and Hindi. He's a significant figure in international Buddhist scholarship. Here's their religious studies faculty listing: http://www.uwest.edu/UWEST/Academic/religion/faculty.htm U.West offers a spectacular set of courses in Buddhist studies, up to the doctoral level. http://www.uwest.edu/uwest/Academic/religion/course.htm The school is associated with the Taiwanese Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order and with the Hsi Lai Temple in suburban Los Angeles. http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln260/HsiLai.htm The school has an attractive physical campus in Rosemead Ca. They have been experimenting with DL, but at this point that only consists of a few classes transmitted live by video to a handful of remote sites. I'd like to enroll in this if it didn't mean having to move to LA.
Re: Re: University of the West I was sipping a mocha at Borders while leafing through Tricycle the other day, and happened on an advertisemnt for U. West. It seems that their DL activities have expanded a little. They still are transmitting individual classes by live video to remote sites, but those sites are multiplying. They list Boston, Dallas, Florida, Fremont CA, Los Angeles, NYC, No. Carolina, San Diego, San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver. Telephone numbers were given for each. I Googled a couple, and they belonged to Fo Guang Shan activities. It would certainly be more convenient if classes were on-line, but perhaps they want this to be more than a purely intellectual execise and prefer that their remote students be in a supportive practice environment.
University of the West is now RA. Another of my CA-approved favorites has moved on to bigger and better things. At their most recent meeting February 16-17 in San Jose, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) voted to extend accreditation to the University of the West (formerly Hsi Lai University). http://www.uwest.edu I particularly like their religious studies department: http://www.uwest.edu/eng_06/REL_index.php
