For nearly three decades, Professor Carolyn Kun-Shan Lee, Professor of the Practice in the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department, has shaped Chinese language learning at Duke around a simple but powerful conviction: language is meant to be lived. Since joining the university in 1995, she has built a curriculum that reaches beyond the classroom — into local schools, temples, and sister institutions — where Mandarin becomes, as she puts it, "relevant to life here and now."
Lee also served as Director of the Chinese Language Program and as faculty director of the Duke Study in China program from 2000 to 2022. In these roles, she helped shape generations of students’ engagement with Chinese language and culture both on campus and abroad.
Across her courses, students don't just study the language; they use it. In Chinese 333, they tutor fifth graders in the Mandarin Dual Language program at Glenwood Elementary School, supporting both language development and subject learning. In Chinese 370, they visit the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Temple in Cary, exploring cultural practices through tea meditation, calligraphy, and mindful observation. In Chinese 411, they present core concepts of Confucianism to peers at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics — stepping into the role of cultural ambassadors while deepening their own understanding.
Lee hopes these experiences do more than build language skills. "I hope students recognize the country's immigrant foundations and become more attentive to the cultural and linguistic resources already around them — communities that invite us to engage with, learn from, and serve." In her vision, learning Chinese isn't something that happens at a remove from American life; it happens within it.
That sense of connection has shaped her teaching from the start.
"Together, we are gradually building a community — like fitting pieces of a puzzle — creating a rich, shared tapestry of learning and connection."
The service-learning office, she notes, has been a key partner in that work, helping bridge the classroom and the communities beyond it.
Through her teaching, partnerships, and curriculum development over nearly thirty years, Lee has helped define a model of language education that is relational, reflective, and rooted in real-world engagement — one shaped not only in the classroom, but across communities and global contexts. Her work continues to shape how students learn, connect, and carry language forward long after they leave Duke.
“My hope is that this work continues to grow, opening more pathways for students to connect classroom learning with the communities around them. In those encounters, language becomes not just something we learn, but something we live,” she says.