Jim Kelly, assistant journalism professor said the purpose of this program is to help South Asian educators improve their relations with the governing body and the media profession.

We want them to see how journalism education at the university level creates good journalists, and how good journalists help create a strong democracy, Kelly said.

Joe Foote, dean of the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts, associate professors Walter Jaehnig and Jyotika Ramaprasad, and assistant professor Jim Kelly submitted a request for funding of another two-phase program.

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The original two-phase program was funded by a $147,000 grant from the United States Information Agency. The renewal grant is also funded by the US Information Agency, and will continue work begun last fall.

In the first phase of the new grant, government policy makers from the five South Asian countries will visit the United States in the summer of 1996.

We hope to provide them with a better understanding of how a journalism education in the United States leads to and enforces professionalism in the national media, Kelly said.

The policy makers will come from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the homelands of the 12 participants of the first grant program.

In phase two, educators will meet in Sri Lanka for the National Journalism Educators convention. Attendees will include the original 12 participants of the first grant program.

The purpose of the conference is not to confine the ideas to the original 12 participants, but to make sure we spread these ideas to all the groups, Ramaprasad said. It will also be an opportunity to network and interact.

Wrap up work on the first grant will begin this winter said Ramaprasad.

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We will go to South Asia this winter to finish working on the first grant and begin planning the second, Ramaprasad said.