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This is an oral interview of Dr. Carola Haas by Helen Le and Hannah Dawn for the Oral History Project for the course Asian American Experience. Dr. Carola Haas is a Chinese American professor of Wildlife Ecology at Virginia Tech, working with the university for 30 years. As faculty member of the College of Natural Resources and Environment in Virginia Tech, she dedicates her research to managing wildlife populations in controlled ecosystems. Dr. Haas conveyed her interest in her research and affiliation within the field. She is a member within many ecological societies and organizations such as the WildLife Society and Society of American Foresters.
Dr. Haas graduated from Wellesley College in 1983 with a Bachelor Degree in Biological Sciences, then she pursued a Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Ph.D. in Cornell University and graduated in 1990. She then decided to do her postgraduate in Yamanashi Daigaku, Kofu, Japan for two years. After coming back to the US, she was offered a position in Virginia tech and settled in the town of Blacksburg. This interview serves as her oral history, a retelling of her childhood as a Chinese-American, getting in touch with her cultures, and her story as an APIDA member in Virginia Tech.
Additional comments from Dr. Carola Haas after the interview:
18:26 - This book (The Last Boat Out of Shanghai) was written by Helen Zia in 2019.
20:32 - “Traveling to China with relatives who are also scholars was so amazing and I learned so much! This aunt, Joan Stanley-Baker wrote a text on Japanese art. My mom's cousin Lindy Mark is a cultural anthropologist but she had gotten really involved in revival of kunqu, a former of Chinese opera that her mom and my grandfather both really enjoyed and she just came for part of the trip because she was also working in Hong Kong developing a college class on Kunqu. Her brother Peter Li taught Chinese language and literature at Rutgers, and has written a biography of their famous father (Li Fang-Kuei) but several other books as well.”
22:08 - “Li Fang-Kuei was married to my great-aunt Hsu Ying. We called her Gu Nainai even though she was my mother's aunt rather than father's. She was an early feminist! Many strong women in my mom's family! Her brother, my grandfather, was Hsu Dau-lin.”
27:40 - “Now [the organization is called] SBIO but then was called Wood Science and Forest Products. Audrey Zink and I both interviewed in two depts in the college in fall 1992.”