Intercollegiate Taiwanese American Students Association

It started with something simple: the idea that Taiwanese American college students from across the nation needed an organized way to get together and celebrate what it meant to be “Taiwanese.” Throughout the eighteen years since the Intercollegiate Taiwanese American Students Association’s (ITASA) creation, the organization has grown from a private startup by a small group of founders to one of the oldest and biggest intercollegiate Asian American organizations in the nation. ITASA alumni hail from more than fifty colleges and universities in the United States.

On July 15th 1990, a group of second generation Taiwanese Americans converged on the campuses of Cornell University as a part of the Taiwanese American Conference/East Coast (TAC/EC) at Donlon Lounge to commence discussions regarding an intercollegiate Taiwanese Council. We nicknamed ourselves ‘seeds,’ a term used as the agents to organically grow the Taiwanese community including a Taiwanese American Collegiate Network,” recalls Winston Yang, the organizer for the 1991 meeting of the ITASA “seeds.” During the 1991 meeting, about twenty representatives from schools like Harvard, Columbia, Yale, U Penn, Smith, Rutgers, and NYU converged on the campuses of Columbia University for three days.

Among the yellowed sheets of notebook paper Yang has preserved from the meeting, the strokes of someone’s neat, cursive handwriting documented the dreams and visions for ITASA. “I wish that there existed a strong Taiwanese identity” was the dream, the glue that brought them all together. The vision for ITASA was for more than just a network of students with Taiwanese background; the organization also sprang from the need for students to explore their identities as Taiwanese Americans, an arena for expressing the love for their heritage with others.

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 U Penn in 1992(ITSA), followed by Yale University in 1993. The first Midwest ITASA conference took place the same year at Purdue University. From then on, ITASA held two conferences annually on the East Coast and the Midwest, until 1999, when the first annual West Coast Conference was held at the University of California, Berkeley, thus completing the three-region conference series which continues today.

In the beginning, ITASA conferences were self-financed and catered by students' own families. Attendance ranged from 35 to 300 people.

On February 17, 1998, ITASA was formally incorporated as a 501(c)(3) religious/cultural tax-exempt nonprofit corporation in Delaware by Incorporator Kok-ui Lim with the help of many other people, including Jimmy Ho, Audrey Jean, Cathy Hsu, Tim Chng, Rolla Chng, et al.

The founders of ITASA presided for several years and had tried several ways to generate successors. They created a steering committee of positions including the quaintly termed "Computer Operator" and recruited interested students from schools all over the nation to help run the organization. Many members of the steering committee have noted that they lacked the experience and motivation to run a geographically dispersed student organization. Staff experience increased with the command of Jimmy, Audrey, Cathy, and others. This new generation of ITASA leaders, all recent conference directors on the East Coast, helped to secure ITASA's financial and organizational future by facilitating the incorporation of ITASA into a 501(c)(3) corporation and investing ITASA's involvement on the regional level. They also developed ITASA's nascent web presence, centralized fundraising strategies and brought greater structure to the national calendar of events and board responsibilities. From then on, the Board of Directors emerged from a group of veteran officers and new officers emerged from the conference leaders. Today, the ITASA National Board is selected every June from a pool of applicants from across the United States.

In 1998, Taiwanese American students at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tufts University established the Boston Intercollegiate Taiwanese Students Association (BITSA) to serve the many campuses in the Boston area. BITSA works closely with ITASA at targeting its thriving community of local students.

In 1999, the first Annual Leadership Retreat was held at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1999, ITASA "Regional Representatives" were added to the leadership structure. In 2003, Regional Representatives would become Regional Governors with more defined responsibilities.

In the spring of 1999, students at the University of California at Berkeley undertook the first West Coast Conference, bringing ITASA to three major regions across the United States.

In 2000, the Leadership Retreat Program was expanded to include the Midwest and West Coast Leadership Retreats. The first Midwest Leadership Retreat was held at Northwestern University with the West Coast Leadership Retreat hosted by Pomona College.

In 2001, ITASA's leadership structure was changed to its current form of a National Board overseen by a Board of Directors.

In 2003, Governor-led Regional Boards were established, replacing the single Regional Representative in each region and District Chairs took charge over the Districts, which were subdivided from the Regions.

In 2006, the first annual ITASA Winter Mixer in New York, NY was held.

In 2010, the Philanthropy Department was created. The Philanthropy Department plans and implements projects designed to further ITASA's mission statement.

In 2018, the Programs and Philanthropy departments were merged, as were the Marketing and Public Relations department.

In 2020, the External Affairs Department was created. The External Affairs Department aims to advocate for Taiwanese/ Taiwanese American rights representing the voice of college students across the US. Marketing and Public Relations Departments became two separate departments. Marketing focusing on social media online presence and the Public Relations focusing on outreach. The National Board introduced the co-national director system for most of the departments.

ITASA 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.

As a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, ITASA aims to:

1. Explore the perspectives that exist within the Taiwanese American Identity;
2. Empower our participants with the resources to further develop their personal identities wherever they may go;
3. Activate our community, create a voice that represents us in larger arenas, making Taiwanese Americans an influential force in society;
4. Build unity and relationships amongst the Taiwanese American Student Associations;
5. Guide participants towards becoming better leaders by redefining their TASA's and themselves.

While setting goals, the National Board has identified 5 levels of student activism. The community at large needed more resources to educate, unite, and equip the general body of Taiwanese Americans across the United States. The campuses at each school needed support in getting linked to the nationwide network and founding new chapters of Taiwanese American student groups. The individual students needed more information, ideas, contacts, outlets and guidelines for personal and collective activism.

ITASA directly addresses 5 levels of the Taiwanese American body.

1. Regional Conferences held in the East Coast, Midwest and West Coast provide students with annual conventions promoting education, activism, leadership, culture, performance and friendship. For the past decade, the ITASA East Coast Conference has attracted an average of 345 students from schools all over the United States.
2. Leadership Retreats provide old, new and aspiring campus leaders with training, peer support and shared ideas to start each year with a clear game plan and stronger leadership tools.
3. Mixers provide students with the opportunity to mingle and share ideas with others students in a more social setting.
4. ITASA Awards provide recognition to Taiwanese American students and student organizations across the United States in categories such as Outstanding New TASA, Outstanding Website, and Outstanding Leader. Awards are distributed on an annual basis at the ITASA East Coast Conference.
5. Premier Website provides students everywhere with an interactive community, leaders' guidelines, campus profiles, contacts, vital links and scholarship information.

In addition to these larger initiatives, ITASA also distributes an electronic copy of the ITASA Newsletter to the Taiwanese American student community. The newsletter is distributed on a quarterly basis. It typically contains updates on National Board activities, descriptions of events held by Taiwanese American student organizations across the country, and information regarding ongoing events within the Taiwanese American community.

ITASA also issues regional grants to Taiwanese American student groups. Regional grants are given to fund events that are both intercollegiate in nature and conform to ITASA's mission statement. In the past, regional grants have funded the ITASA Winter Mixer in New York, NY, the University of California at Irvine Lantern Festival, and other similar events. Regional grants are reviewed, approved, and distributed by the Finance Director and Regional Governors.

A 3D Variant

Original 2001 logo

ITASA's current logo was adopted in 2001, designed by Robbie Tseng to reflect the academic nature of the Taiwanese American student community. The design is to appear like pages in a book. 3 stacks of books on the left form a stairway, in front of a page itself. Taiwan is white to reflect political ambiguity while the green background is used to represent the lush green tropical island of Taiwan, a common depiction throughout the island. The stairway of books and upward-curving top right corner symbolize the ambitious aspirations of Taiwanese American students.

New variants of the logo are being experimented with which are not a change of the old logo, but rather different representations. For example, 3D logos, chrome versions and so forth. They are designed for use on various ITASA materials such as booklets, press packets and websites.

William Tang updated the logo in 2006 by slightly rounding edges and increasing the glossy effect and is the current one being used. Taiwan island's profile was made extremely accurate to convey geographically accurate features in any logo use.

The green used in the logo is rgb(51,160,43) with hue 77, saturation 136, luminosity 98. The black used in the logo is rgb(0,0,0) with hue 0, saturation 0, luminosity 0. The white used in the logo is rgb(255,255,255) with hue 0, Saturation 0, luminosity 240.