SPICE’s relationship with the East-West Center dates back to 1988 when David L. Grossman, Founding Director of SPICE, departed Stanford to become the Director of the Consortium for Teaching Asia and the Pacific in the Schools (CTAPS) at the EWC. In 1995, Grossman left the EWC to join the faculty and administration of the newly established Hong Kong Institute of Education, now the Education University of Hong Kong. Namji Kim Steinemann became his successor and CTAPS became the AsiaPacificEd Program for Schools, which Steinemann directed until her retirement in 2019. I had the pleasure of giving sessions for CTAPS and AsiaPacificEd during its summer institutes from 1989 to 2009.

Over the years, SPICE has continued its connection to the EWC through its work with the EWC’s past presidents like Michel Oksenberg, former Senior Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University, and most recently with EWC President Suzanne Puanani Vares-Lum who took office in January 2022. She is the first woman, Native Hawaiian, and Hawaii resident to be chosen for this role. On June 6, 2022, I met with President Vares-Lum to discuss a teacher summer institute that SPICE will host at the EWC in July 2022 and mentioned my desire to continue SPICE’s long history with the EWC.

The summer institute is the culmination of two online professional development programs (2020–21 and 2021–22) for high school teachers across Hawaii that is supported through a grant from the Freeman Foundation. It is called the Stanford/SPICE East Asia Seminars for Teachers in Hawaii or Stanford SEAS Hawaii and is managed by Rylan Sekiguchi.

Stanford SEAS Hawaii aims to build teachers’ content knowledge of East Asia by connecting them with scholars at Stanford University, the University of Hawaii, and other local institutions in Hawaii. The participating teachers—Stanford/Freeman SEAS Hawaii Fellows—also receive teaching resources from SPICE and share pedagogical strategies to support their teaching in the high school classroom.

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SPICE is grateful to the Freeman Foundation for its generous support of Stanford SEAS Hawaii and EWC President Vares-Lum for her commitment to continuing the EWC’s long history of working with SPICE. Photo above (left to right): Gary Mukai and the Freeman Foundation’s President Graeme Freeman, Senior Program Officer Alec Freeman, and Office Manager Robin Sato.