ABOUT ITASA

The Intercollegiate Taiwanese American Student Association is a non-profit organization providing events and resources that explore and celebrate Taiwanese American identity in order to inspire, empower, and activate its community.

ITASA was founded by a small but very active community, including individuals such as Tim Ch'ng, Morris Tsai, Rolla Ch’ng, Ula Hwang, Peilan Chiu, Cindy Yeh, Felicia Lin, Winston Yang and others. In 1992, the first "ITSA Conference" was held at the University of Pennsylvania. Somewhere along the line the founders of ITSA, recognizing the unique Taiwanese American identity, renamed the conference to ITASA. Over the next year, similar conferences were held with various names, including the ITASA/TASC Cultural Conference at the University of Illinois, the ITASA Taiwanese Cultural Celebration at Brown University, and TASCon at the University of Illinois again. Though varying in name and location, these conferences involved the same group of college students - a group of Taiwanese American students who wanted to grow and reach a community of like-minded individuals.

Having hit upon a very real community, annual ITASA conferences took root and built upon the successes of the previous years. The first ITASA East Coast conference took place at Yale in 1993, the first ITASA Midwest conference took place the same year at Purdue. From then on, ITASA held two conferences annually on the East Coast and the Midwest, until 1999, when the first annual West Coast Conference at the University of California, Berkeley, thus completing the three-region conference series that continues today.