Amidst the hectic year known as 2020, I started and finished SPICE’s Sejong Korea Scholars Program (SKSP), an online program offered through Stanford for high school students interested in Korea. The program was challenging but also rewarding; I honestly loved every moment of it.

My interest in Korea began when I was in elementary school. Growing up in Queens, New York, a New York City borough with a diverse population, Korean culture was introduced to me in the form of food. Although some may think all Asian food is the same, as a Chinese American, I know how vastly different Korean food can be from Chinese food. My Korean American classmates would bring in Korean foods for lunch—kimchi, gimbap, galbi—and because I had never seen it before, I’d always want to know how it tasted. Luckily for me, Queens had a sizable ethnic Korean population and with that came great Korean restaurants. I was a frequent visitor to these tasty restaurants. Through this, I became interested in learning more about Korea, but outside of food, a few videos I had watched, and some information from my classmates, I didn’t know much, if anything at all, about Korea.

Heading into the SKSP, I was worried I didn’t know as much as my classmates. When I started the SKSP, all of my worries subsided. You didn’t need a strong background on Korea or in Korean. I was told that the most important thing to have is a genuine interest or curiosity about the topic, which was something I did have. I also have to say that my classmates were some of the most motivated students I’ve ever met.

And during our biweekly meetings, we would attend lectures with experts on Korea and professionals who worked with Korea. Something interesting I learned from a lecture was that the “BBC Dad” Professor Robert Kelly is a political analyst on Korean affairs, which I don’t find to be a coincidence; instead, learning the fact that Professor Kelly is an expert on Korea shows how widespread and important the study of Korea today is.

We explored a bit of pre-nineteenth century Korean history and then explored more on religions in Korea, colonial Korea, the division of Korea and the Korean War, post-war Korea, the divergence of North and South Korea, and trends in South Korean culture including bits about chaebols and the Hallyu wave. I found a particular interest in the Korean diaspora in Japan, which I learned about when learning about Korea in its colonial period. And because the SKSP has a research component, I wrote my paper on that and enjoyed my time so much because it was a topic I genuinely wanted to learn more about. After completing my paper, I was led to Min Jin Lee’s novel Pachinko, a historical fiction about a Korean family in Japan, and found myself so invested because I had some background knowledge.

Starting the course before the pandemic and completing it during the pandemic was interesting, to say the least. When the coronavirus situation took a turn for the worse, my high school courses scrambled to finish the year, but the SKSP went on normally, and I was able to invest more time into learning about Korea. I have to give props to the course instructor, Dr. HyoJung Jang, and the program coordinator Jonas Edman for keeping the course running smoothly through a worldwide crisis and helping us students with any questions and issues we had.

I participated in the SKSP as a senior in high school, and having taken it right before college has been incredible. This course has helped develop my self-driven learning skills, which I believe will be unimaginably beneficial for me as I head off to begin my first year of college. The SKSP is a college-level course that teaches in the same way college courses are taught, and right now, I find that my experience with the SKSP has prepared me for my college classes that I have only recently started.

The SKSP has furthered my interest in international relations, which I hope to major in at the University of Pennsylvania where I am a freshman this fall. I am definitely looking forward to furthering my knowledge of Korea and hope I am able to visit one day after traveling is safe once again. For me, as someone who came into the SKSP with a curiosity and left with even more, I can’t wait to continue on my path of learning. For those interested in the SKSP, I say go for it. It has changed not only how much I know about the world, but also how I perceive it. I hope SPICE continues to offer this terrific opportunity and students take this opportunity, so they can make a difference in the world.

As schools across the U.S. began to close due to COVID-19 in mid-March, I was in the unique position of transitioning into online classes while already having had some experience taking fully online classes. The year before, I had completed SPICE’s Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP), an intensive online course focusing on Japanese culture, history, and U.S.–Japan relations; participating in the Sejong Korea Scholars Program (SKSP), an equivalent program, I thought, would be a similar experience.

Yet, being part of the SKSP in the midst of a pandemic framed the way I participated in and learned from the class. As the course went on, we began each Virtual Classroom with a brief discussion on COVID-19, talking amongst ourselves how we were personally doing, and how Korea was handling it as compared to the U.S. We were encouraged to read local news in Korea to learn about COVID-19, and we brought our learnings to each discussion with renewed vigor. There’s a strange and harrowing feeling you get when analyzing the course of a virus in your home country and across the Pacific—an implicit understanding that this isn’t just a research text to pore over, but an unprecedented moment in history we’re living through. 

But back to the beginning. After participating in the RSP, I realized how essential it is to analyze stories from all facets.

RSP first introduced me to the concept that “history is told from the winner’s perspective,” and SKSP gave me the opportunity to delve deeply into that. I became intrigued with how history is taught and wanted to understand the “other” sides of stories I learned about in my textbooks. Weeks later, when we learned about the Japanese exploitation of Korean comfort women during World War II, I knew that learning about these issues from one side would simply not be enough to fully comprehend parts of history such as these. The way I learn history directly impacts how I view society and the relationships between groups of people.

Hence, each of the modules helped me craft a multifaceted perspective of Korea and U.S.–Korea relations. The lessons and lectures allowed me to understand and re-interpret modern and historical issues in a global context. From Shamanism’s evolving role in Korean society, to Japanese colonial rule in Korea, to the social impacts of the Miracle on the Han River, to class and socioeconomic strata in Korean education systems, I dove into a plethora of topics through readings, lectures, and class discussions. As a high school student, I never believed I would have the honor of learning from distinguished scholars and experts, but SKSP introduced me to a variety of academics with clear passions for Korean history and culture. My learning extended beyond lectures: in discussion boards, I learned from my classmates, who shared their diverse perspectives and experiences and fostered an inclusive and challenging learning environment. We were given the chance to analyze material on our own through readings and assignments, but it was in these virtual interactions with my peers that I discovered the most. The open and constructive group that Dr. Jang and Mr. Edman facilitated was one where we could respectfully engage with one another on any topic while acknowledging at the end of the day the friendships and bonds we’d made. Thus, I paired my self-led education from SPICE with that of my public schooling and constructed a greater comprehensive understanding of the world.  

However, it was the Korean War and North Korea units that I believe played the greatest role in not only my intellectual development, but also my personal and political growth. These two units coalesced in my final research paper project, in which I wrote about the critical role of student activism in South Korean democratization. During my research and readings, I analyzed how the March First Movement set the stage for South Korean protest culture and democratization. I recognized that of the two factions of activists post March First, I might have been in the more radical faction, the one that ended up becoming North Korea. This realization, combined with the readings and lectures from the North Korea unit, completely changed my view of geopolitics in Korea. I learned about the U.S.’s role in the Korean War, and subsequently the Western portrayal of North Korea as a rogue, renegade state. I wondered, how much are we to speak about propaganda when students like me are taught lessons that shield Western imperialism with saviorism and American exceptionalism?

SKSP is not simply a fleeting online course with a broad overview of Korea, but an unparalleled opportunity to uncover Korea on an academic level few other high school students have. I hadn’t expected to undergo a personal and political reckoning within myself, but it is because of this growth that I am beyond grateful for SKSP, Dr. Jang and Mr. Edman’s instruction and advising, and all of my peers’ questions and discussions. Since then, I haven’t ceased to continue kindling my interest in Korean history and politics, questioning previously held beliefs, and broadening my worldview. And it is especially during a time like this—a global movement of Black Lives Matter, a local movement to change my high school’s Indigenous emblem, and everything in between, all within the context of a pandemic—that it is so crucial for me to critically analyze what I’ve been taught, and to keep learning as much as I can. In SKSP, I’ve developed the skills necessary to do so. It’s the “other sides” of stories, namely non-Western and non-white, that I am committed to studying, since understanding the nuances of the past can help guide us into a more equitable future.

Next fall, I begin at Stanford, hopefully on campus—it feels like coming full circle, having the privilege to attend college in an institution that first allowed me to foster a genuine love for learning. Now, while many of my friends begin their college careers, I have chosen to take a gap year with the U.S. Department of State’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), a rigorous and competitive academic scholarship to study a critical language abroad. As of August, the in-country program has been pushed back to 2021 due to COVID-19, but I hope to find myself in Seoul in a few months. With everything ahead of me, I know SKSP is only the beginning, as I hope to continue bridging my education to the world.

I grew up with STEM as my backbone, my crutch. My parents met in engineering school, and the childhood they gifted me with was one filled with opportunities to get my hands dirty. The identity I built for myself was defined by asking questions about snail slime, aphids on roses, simply everything about the “hows” and “whys” of the biological world around me. And not once did I think to steer my gaze elsewhere in hopes of enriching my worldview. To an elementary school Mallika, understanding science and science alone would gift me the tools to solve the world’s greatest problems.

So, of course, it confused me to see my dad, an equity analyst focused on the semiconductor and green tech industries, travel so often to Japan, China, and Korea. Hands filled with stuffed animal pandas wearing qi paos, he would talk on and on about East Asia’s incomparable ability to merge the old with the new: cities at the forefront of tech innovation were sparkled with architecture and customs from lineages spanning thousands of years. My dad sold the intrigue. Not in an orientalist way, rather through a deep appreciation of recognizing the past in an effort to rebrand the future. I just had to get my peek.

I started learning Japanese in fourth grade, Chinese in seventh, and was in love with the languages. They were logical, pictographic, and simply scientific. But the classes were one-dimensional, one-epochical almost, if that’s even a word. What they were able to capture in unraveling the past did nothing in describing the translation to the future. I wanted to get a grasp of contemporary issues to eventually find ways to apply this newfound information to my STEM pursuits.

Fast forward a few years, a semester of SPICE’s Reischauer Scholars Program under my belt, I loved my experience with the SPICE program so much that I had to return for a second program. Naturally, I applied to SPICE’s China Scholars Program (CSP) my junior year of high school, and compounded with classes like AP U.S. History and Honors Chinese, my worldview felt interconnected. Everything I was studying added to an accumulated web of information, weaving connections between economics, public policy, technology, and culture. I wrote my final paper on how bureaucracy, educational equity, and green technology could help China establish itself as the (not a) global superpower, and it had quite honestly been my first exploration in drawing conclusions between seemingly disparate fields. For someone who had conducted many science research projects in the past, CSP and its instructor, Dr. Tanya Lee, challenged and stretched me in ways I never thought possible.

At MIT, we’re taught the merits of collaboration through group-based projects and exceedingly difficult problem sets. However, I often doubt the translatability of this approach in the real world. Students of similar academic backgrounds collaborate on similar projects with similar solutions. The web of information synthesized by students of different majors is undeniably extremely useful in developing real-world solutions. Completing CSP through a STEM lens was a unique way of doing just that. I met students from Virginia all the way to Hong Kong who were passionate about everything under the sun. The variation in perspectives livened discussion boards, and I could almost liken the completed responses to a mosaic: each student had their unique piece to offer, such that the image created was one of heightened clarity. Since then, I’ve taken classes on Chinese, on economics, and even on how to stage revolutions, all as a result of understanding the merits of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural exploration. And who knows, I might even minor in Chinese to pay homage to the language that shaped my worldview.

The sports world has been dramatically affected by COVID-19. Not only has there been a significant decline of events for the spectator—both in person and on television—but the impact on the participants themselves has also been unprecedented. Due to social gathering restrictions, organized youth sports have been almost completely shuttered. High schools and colleges have been cancelling their practices and competitive seasons. The PAC-12 recently postponed its football season. The pandemic has also had a dramatic effect on sports at the highest level. Only fairly recently have there been abbreviated attempts to reinstitute professional sports seasons such as Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association. Even the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo were postponed to 2021.

SPICE is helping to develop the CoviDB Speaker Series, a TeachAids initiative which provides free online videos to educate the general public about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. For episode 4 of the CoviDB Speaker Series, TeachAids Founder and CEO Dr. Piya Sorcar decided to provide a glimpse into how the pandemic has impacted the lives of two of the world’s greatest athletes. Sorcar enlisted the support of Emmy Award-winning sportscaster Ted Robinson to interview three-time Olympic diver and gold medalist Laura Wilkinson and five-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer and Stanford student Katie Ledecky.

The interview can be viewed here. Robinson drew out insightful perspectives from Ledecky and Wilkinson concerning the uncertainty that they lived with while awaiting the decision about whether the 2020 Olympics would be held, and also their feelings once the decision to postpone the Olympics was made. Wilkinson reflected, “What was frustrating at first, turned out to be really special” as she reflected upon things like spending extra time with her family, including four children. Ledecky added that being able to focus more on her studies at Stanford University definitely helped to create a little more balance in her life. In response to Robinson’s question about maintaining the discipline to train in light of the postponement, Ledecky responded

During a segment of the interview that focused on advice for youth, Ledecky noted, “The work that you put in doesn’t go away… It is always in the bank… At some point in the future, you are going to be able to compete again, have those opportunities to let that work show.” Wilkinson added, “When you want something, it doesn’t matter what people say about you or what they think of you. If you think you want to do this, if this is your goal, you have to go after it because you’re capable of more than you probably think you are. And other people’s opinions do not need to define you or what you’re capable of doing. You define that.”

For each of the first four episodes in the CoviDB Speaker Series, SPICE has developed a teacher’s guide to encourage the showing of the episodes in U.S. classrooms at the secondary school level. Each of the guides includes (1) a summary of the questions that were asked by the interviewer, including terms and definitions, (2) guiding questions for small-group work, and (3) debriefing activities. In the area of debriefing activities, writing prompts such as the following for episode 4 are offered to students.

• Laura and Katie commented on how their lives have been disrupted since the pandemic. Write a diary entry about how your life has been disrupted. What has been especially challenging? What lessons have you learned from the experience?
• Write about a time when you were disappointed with the cancellation of something. How did you cope with it? Did you learn something positive from the experience? Have you ever been in limbo about whether an event was going to happen or not? How did this make you feel?

Other suggested debriefing activities involve the designing of an artistic image, writing of a poem, or writing lyrics to a song that captures the significance of quotes from the interview such the following:

• Laura: The sun is a great healer in a lot of ways, both emotionally and physically.
• Katie: The Olympics is … an opportunity for the world to come together.
• Laura: I think that it [COVID-19] has reminded us of how connected we are as a world and how we all need to be doing our individual parts to combat this.
• Ted: I have been around athletes in team sports who at some point have said that they kept playing because they wanted their kids to see them.

As TeachAids and SPICE think about their work with youth, two statements from the interview were especially poignant to the staffs. Ledecky noted, “This is history [the time of COVID-19] but you don’t have to be afraid of it. Fear is really a mindset… so if you do everything that you can do, there is no point in worrying beyond that because worrying does not help you at all. It is not going to change anything. Do what you can control. Worry about the things that you can control and things that you cannot control, you have to let those go.” Wilkinson stated, “This [challenging time] could be that gift to you. This could be that opportunity to rise to a whole new level. Don’t look at this and be sad and upset. Look at this as an opportunity of how you can get ahead.” Though the statements were intended as advice for youth, in fact, the statements seem relevant today to all of us.

The CoviDB Speaker Series is a TeachAids initiative that is co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, the University of California San Francisco’s Institute for Global Health Sciences, and the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE).

In 2015, SPICE launched Stanford e-Japan, an online course for high school students in Japan. Two key objectives of the course were to introduce the students to U.S.–Japan relations and to also encourage the students to consider studying in the United States. Since then, many Stanford e-Japan alumni have spent time studying at U.S. colleges as exchange students for a year and on summer programs, and several as four-year undergraduates.

One of the challenges for international students to enroll in college in the United States is the cost of tuition. To encourage more Japanese students to consider applying to U.S. universities as full-time undergraduates, Mr. Tadashi Yanai—through the Yanai Tadashi Foundation—has offered competitive four-year scholarships to Japanese high school students who enter top colleges in the United States. Several Stanford e-Japan alumni have received the prestigious and very generous scholarships.

This year, four Stanford e-Japan alumni are recipients of the Yanai Tadashi Scholarships. The Yanai Scholars are scheduled to begin their undergraduate studies in the United States from this fall. They are:

• Yuki Hayashita (Shiba High School, Tokyo): Brown University
• Ryotaro Homma (Kaisei Academy, Tokyo): Yale University
• Hugo Ichioka (Zushi Kaisei High School, Kamakura City, Kanagawa Prefecture): Williams College
• Riki Shimizu (Nada High School, Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture): Duke University
   

Riki Shimizu, who was a student in the fall 2018 Stanford e-Japan course, noted, “Stanford e-Japan was one of the most instructive programs in high school. Back then I did not have enough English ability to fully express my thoughts, but I think it somewhat improved through the courses to the level that I could consider U.S. colleges as an option. Without attending e-Japan, I wouldn’t be able to go to Duke…” Shimizu’s Stanford e-Japan Instructor Waka Brown commented, “I am touched that Riki credits my course for providing him with the inspiration to apply to universities in the United States.” She continued, “The fact that Riki will be going to Duke University, Yuki to Brown University, and Ryotaro to Yale University is exceedingly rewarding to me as one of their former teachers.”

Stanford e-Japan is also generously supported by the Yanai Tadashi Foundation. Stanford e-Japan Instructor Meiko Kotani, who taught the fall 2019 Stanford e-Japan course, is hopeful that more Japanese students will consider applying to U.S. colleges in the future. Upon hearing that her student, Hugo Ichioka, was accepted into Williams College, she stated, “The excitement that was conveyed from his email, which alerted me to the news that he had become a Yanai Scholar, made me reflect upon the importance of working with young students and encouraging them to think ‘outside of the box’ and to apply to universities outside of Japan… during one of my online classes, I had my students meet with high school students in the United States who were enrolled in SPICE’s Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) and this seemed to have prompted many to consider studying in the United States.”

This type of meaningful exchange between Japanese students and American students has become significant in the college life of Yanai Scholar Daisuke Masuda, a rising junior at Stanford University. When asked what advice he would give to the new Yanai Scholars, Masuda commented, “Interacting with people with diverse backgrounds has always been an integral part of my college life in the United States. The more you know about their culture, the better you can appreciate why they do what they do. I would encourage you to get to know your peers from around the world and learn various approaches to learning, careers, and life in general.”

SPICE also offers online courses to U.S. high school students on Japan (Reischauer Scholars Program), China (China Scholars Program), and Korea (Sejong Korea Scholars Program), and an online course to Chinese high school students on the United States (Stanford e-China Program).

To stay informed of SPICE news, join our email list and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Starting something new from scratch is always challenging. Though it requires huge amounts of effort and contains the possibility of not working out, I believe that it is absolutely worth exploring a new challenge because it has the power of creating chances of making people happier. This is the most important thing I learned from the people who took the initiative to establish the wonderful program, Stanford e-Japan.

Though it was the inaugural year of the program when I joined in 2015, I was truly impressed not only with the high quality of the academic content, but also with the rich opportunities of communication with prestigious leaders from various fields. Moreover, the program generously offered the top three students the chance to visit Stanford University for a ceremony.

It was exhilarating to be in the program due to the endless surprises and new learnings that I encountered throughout the course. 

Since then, I have resolved to initiate new challenges myself in order to contribute to younger students just as Stanford e-Japan Instructor Waka Brown did for me. After I returned to Keio University from a one-year university exchange program at the University of California, San Diego, I established a student-led organization with several members at Keio from diverse backgrounds. Our student-led organization aims to cultivate young global citizens of Japan by allowing students attending Japanese high schools to have meaningful interactions with international students from Japanese universities like Keio.

In addition to encouraging the high school students to explore new challenges, I also wanted to share how interesting it is to learn about different cultures, including the histories of foreign countries and the benefits of interacting with people who have different backgrounds. We focus on designing an environment so that high school students can actively discuss and exchange ideas with international students in person while also building their English presentation skills. Through our program, we believe every high school student has the opportunity to learn something new like communication skills with individuals of different backgrounds, the ability to reach a mutual understanding with people of differing opinions, and leadership skills to lead discussions in a diverse community.

During our programs at several high schools, I have been able to hear many voices from the high school students, international students, and even high school teachers that suggest that they have fortunately had meaningful and fruitful experiences during our programs. Despite some initial struggles, I now strongly believe that even small programs like ours can make a difference in our society. I will never forget the precious lessons learned from Stanford e-Japan, and perhaps the most important lesson is for me to continue to explore new challenges and to encourage young students to do so as well.

In collaboration with TeachAids, Stanford Medicine, and the University of California, San Francisco, SPICE is helping to develop the CoviDB Speaker Series, which seeks to provide free online videos to educate the general public about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. SPICE’s work is focused on the development of teacher guides for the Series. Leading the Series is Dr. Piya Sorcar, CEO & Founder, TeachAids. The first three speakers and their topics are Dr. Anurag Mairal, Director of Global Outreach, Stanford Biodesign, “COVID-19 and Global Health: Facts and Myths”; Shuman Ghosemajumder, Global Head of AI at F5, “Cybersecurity and Privacy in the Era of COVID-19”; and Anne Firth Murray, Founding President, Global Fund for Women, “Violence Against Women.”

Read a recent article from The Stanford Daily about this here.

Related articles:

CrashCourse: The Prevention and Treatment of Concussions

2010 Orientation Celebrates FSI’s Research, Educational, and Policy Endeavors

The following reflection is a guest post written by Jun Yamasaki, a Spring 2017 alum and honoree of the \Stanford e-Japan Program, which is currently accepting applications for Fall 2020. He is now a student at Northwestern University.

My journey with Stanford e-Japan began with my enrollment in the fall session of the course when I was in the second year of high school in 2017. “Journey” may not be a word that is usually associated with the taking of a class, yet, my usage of it here is deliberate. Three years have passed since I was a student in Ms. Waka Brown’s class, and I have since graduated high school to pursue a college education in the United States at Northwestern University. As I reflect on my experience with Stanford e-Japan, the word “journey” seems ever more appropriate, for the program has been and will continue to be interlinked with my personal development as I look towards my future path.

The initial motivation behind my enrollment in Stanford e-Japan was rooted in my background as a kikokusei or kikokushijo, Japanese words that are used to describe students who have returned to Japan from a long period abroad. When I was five years old, I was suddenly told by my parents that we would be moving to the United States. To say that I was shocked or surprised would be an understatement; after all, my “world” at the time had consisted of a set of small bubbles, all on the scale of a few kilometers: my immediate neighborhood and the cities where my grandparents resided. A bullet train station linked those two discrete bubbles together during summer and winter breaks. Understandably, as a kindergartener, my knowledge and command of the English language was not even close to rudimentary.

A few months saw my repertoire slowly increase, and with it, my comfort in my new environment. The openness, friendliness, and hospitality of the people I met during my time in the States helped me feel that I belonged there, that I was not just some outsider from another country, and that I could consider where I lived in Florida, and later California, as my new homes. These experiences were perhaps my first encounter or involvement with U.S.–Japan relations.

My return to Japan in 6th grade unexpectedly proved to be more difficult for me than going to the United States. My entire experience with my attempts at reacclimation is another story altogether, but essentially, I experienced what many kikokushijo term as “reverse culture shock” due to the significant differences in culture and behavioral expectations in the United States and Japan. This led to a period that involved many questions about my own identity, as a result of those experiences, as well as the inevitable question that many kikokushijo are asked when they bring up their upbringing outside of Japan: “So do you consider yourself Japanese or American?” I have yet to come up with a satisfying answer. Sometimes, for the sake of conversation, I briefly consider just giving a simple answer. However, I almost never do so, because a simple answer does not do justice to the significance and weight of the topic for kikokushijo like me; not to mention that an answer aside from “It depends” would grossly fail to take into account the complexity of the concept of culture itself, and the many philosophical considerations that have to be made in such a discussion.

It was these experiences, or more specifically, the questions that arose from these experiences, that led me to enroll in Stanford e-Japan.

While I was enrolled in the course, each module of Stanford e-Japan helped me construct a multi-dimensional understanding of U.S.–Japan relations. This was not only helpful in satisfying my own curiosity, but especially today, I appreciate how solid of a foundation this course has given me to understand, interpret, and construct informed opinions about current events. Modules such as “U.S. High Schools and Education,” “Diversity Issues in the United States,” “Civil and Human Rights: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy,” and “The Japanese American Internment,” have offered me perspectives about the background and significance of some of the crucial racial injustice issues in the United States today that I would not have been able to have access to had I not taken the course. In addition, as countries around the world struggle against the global health emergency that is COVID-19, modules such as “Healthcare in the United States” have become ever more relevant.

Stanford e-Japan’s efforts to help increase the number of Japanese students studying abroad have also impacted me both directly and indirectly. The “Studying Abroad” module and the subsequent discussions with my fellow classmates about our future plans with regard to college and how we will continue to strengthen the U.S.–Japan relationship were very informative and productive. This was especially helpful because around this time, I was not sure if I wanted to stay in Japan as most of my classmates at school were planning to do, or go to the United States. Although I had some idea at that point about the quality of U.S. college education, spending six years back home in Japan had made me slightly hesitant at the prospect of living for four (or more) years away from my group of friends and family.

Participating in Stanford e-Japan gave me a glimpse into what I could experience at a college in the United States, and the turning point in my decision came in August of 2018, when I attended the joint Stanford e-Japan and Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) awards ceremony on the Stanford campus. I was simply awestruck by the quality and depth of the analyses that the Reischauer Scholars had conducted for their presentations. I distinctly recall Ms. Brown and Ms. Funahashi (RSP Instructor) remarking that the level of research that they had conducted was near the level of a university or graduate school paper.

After the awards ceremony, the e-Japan and RSP students had a chance to tour the Stanford campus. At one point, we talked about our experiences with the U.S.–Japan relationship and our future plans. I distinctly recall that this was one of the major turning points in my decision to apply to colleges in the United States; in that moment, sitting there and conversing with the other award winners that sunny California afternoon, I had a powerful realization that this was the college life that I wanted to experience over the next four years.

Even after my graduation, Ms. Brown and the other instructors have been kind enough to invite me to return to the Stanford e-Japan virtual classrooms to talk to the current students about topics such as studying abroad and education in the United States. I always tell them that it was important to me that whatever field I went into, I wanted to be involved in some shape or form with the U.S.–Japan relationship. Taking Stanford e-Japan and examining the U.S.–Japan relationship from so many different perspectives and dimensions helped me “connect the dots,” and realize that my seemingly disparate interests were not necessarily mutually exclusive.

This leads me to the current stage of my journey. As a stepping stone towards the future goal that I was able to identify through my participation in Stanford e-Japan, I am currently studying mechanical engineering and applied mathematics, with plans to obtain further education and research experience in the form of a PhD in aerospace engineering after my undergraduate studies. Although I have enjoyed all of the classes I have taken so far, one class called “Design Thinking and Communication” stands out to me in particular. In this class, students are split into groups of four students, and are tasked with devising a solution for real, outside clients. In my case, my group was paired with a project partner from the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab, a rehabilitation research hospital in downtown Chicago. As we went through the design process to create a solution for our client’s patients, we had to research and approach the problem from multiple different perspectives, such as societal impacts and financial concerns; not just the more tangible, technical-oriented considerations. Although they may be slightly different in subject matter, I am currently enjoying studying engineering for the same fundamental reasons that I enjoyed Stanford e-Japan.

Stanford e-Japan is truly unique in that it is a course that has been, and will continue to be relevant for its students even years after the conclusion of their enrollment. I am always happy to hear that Ms. Brown, Dr. Mukai (SPICE Director), and SPICE have been continuing their efforts to bring such a great program to increasing numbers of students. As someone who is fortunate enough to attend college in the United States thanks to the generosity of the Yanai Tadashi Foundation, I am pleased to hear that Mr. Yanai is also supporting Stanford e-Japan. It is my hope that SPICE will continue to offer such courses to students who are as motivated and driven as those I studied with when I was a student in Stanford e-Japan.

On May 16, 2020, Jonas Edman chaired a panel of community college educators with whom he worked during the 2019–20 academic year. The educators were fellows of Stanford’s community college faculty fellowship program, Education Partnership for Internationalizing Curriculum (EPIC), coordinated by Stanford Global Studies (SGS). EPIC is a program that brings together a cohort of primarily California community college faculty and academic staff from various disciplines to work collaboratively with Stanford staff for one academic year on self-designed projects aimed at developing global competencies and awareness among community college students.

The panel was one of two that was held during the “Integrating Global Topics into Community College Curricula” online symposium. The featured EPIC Fellows on the panel were Lauren Arenson, Pasadena City College; Dana Grisby, Laney College; Humberto Merino-Hernandez, Cerritos College; Soraya Renteria, Las Positas College; and Citlali Sosa-Riddell, Pierce College. Short descriptions of their talks can be found here.

In his closing comments following the panel, Edman noted how much he appreciated hearing about both the rewards and challenges of working with students in community colleges and also learning about the extraordinary diversity that exists among the students enrolled in community colleges in states like California.

Read a full article from SGS.

SPICE is grateful to Denise Geraci, Outreach and Academic Coordinator, SGS, for coordinating EPIC and for organizing the online symposium.

Related articles:

The Education Partnership for Internationalizing Curriculum: Reflections on Collaborating with Community College Educators

SPICE’s Jonas Edman Meets with new EPIC Fellows, September 10, 2019

The Stanford EPIC Fellowship for Community College Instructors

“From Cold War to Hot Peace: An Ambassador in Putin’s Russia,” a Book Talk for Educators by Ambassador Michael McFaul