David Chao

The Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) honored three of the top students of the 2013 Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) and celebrated the tenth anniversary of the RSP at a Japan Day event at Stanford University on August 9, 2013. The three 2013 RSP Japan Day honorees—David Chao, Kaylyn Cheape, and Brittany Schulte—offered research presentations on a variety of Japan-related topics. The event also included inspiring presentations by 12 Japanese high school and college students from BEYOND Tomorrow, a nonprofit organization for students from the Tohoku region of Japan who are overcoming the adversities of the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Japan Day featured welcoming comments by Gary Mukai, SPICE Director, and opening remarks on youth and the future of Japan and U.S.–Japan relations by Acting Consul General Nobuhiro Watanabe, Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco. Acting Consul General Watanabe noted, “I am impressed by the students’ keen insight on Japan and Japan–U.S. relations. They are the ones to shoulder this relationship in the coming years and months, and we are very much looking forward to the day when these students will engage in furthering our two countries’ strong ties.”

Naomi Funahashi, the RSP Manager and Instructor, gave an overview of the RSP to the Japan Day audience of over 50 people. Named in honor of former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer, a leading educator and noted scholar of Japanese history and culture, the RSP is an online course on Japan and U.S.–Japan relations that is offered annually to 25–30 high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors across the United States.

David Chao (junior, The Thacher School; Ojai, CA), Kaylyn Cheape (senior, Leilehua High School; Wahiawa, HI) and Brittany Schulte (junior, Pinewood School; Los Altos, CA) were recognized for their coursework and exceptional research essays. They presented their research which focused on the following topics, respectively: the role of mass media in shaping public opinion in China and Japan, the dual crises of Japan’s aging population and shifting priorities of the Japanese healthcare system, and how the uniquely Japanese concern with mastery and perfection has played a role in guiding Japan’s economic success.

Kaylyn Cheape	Brittany Schulte

SPICE was honored to also welcome four RSP alumni to the Japan Day event: Joey Burnett (RSP 2006), Sekhar Paladugu (RSP 2007), Amy Ishiguro (RSP 2011), and Aryo Sorayya (RSP 2012). Their presence offered a reminder of the significant and lasting impact of the RSP on its students.

Commemorating a decade of developing future leaders, the RSP presents a creative and innovative approach to teaching high school students about Japan and U.S–Japan relations. The program provides American students with unique opportunities to interact with diplomats and top scholars affiliated with Stanford University, the University of Tokyo, the University of Hawaii, and other institutions through online lectures and discussions, and introduces both American and Japanese perspectives on many historical and contemporary issues. The RSP honorees, the RSP alumni, and the visiting students from Japan enjoyed several opportunities throughout the day to engage in meaningful exchanges about their respective countries and the U.S.–Japan relationship. Both the RSP and BEYOND Tomorrow aim to cultivate future leaders, and Japan Day afforded a unique opportunity for dialog and possible collaboration between American and Japanese youth. Importantly, SPICE also presented a plaque to Professor Emeritus Daniel I. Okimoto, Stanford University, in honor of his support of the RSP since before its inception in 2003.

The distinguished RSP advisory committee members (Professor Emeritus Nisuke Ando, Doshisha University; Ambassador Michael H. Armacost, Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, Stanford University; Professor Phillip Lipscy, Stanford University, Professor Emeritus Daniel I. Okimoto, Stanford University) were all in attendance.

The RSP is currently funded by a generous three-year grant from the Center for Global Partnership, the Japan Foundation, and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

The RSP will be accepting applications for the 2014 program in September and October 2013. For more information about the RSP, visit www.reischauerscholars.org or contact Naomi Funahashi RSP Manager and Instructor, at nfunahashi@stanford.edu.

By Sangsoo Im, Correspondent, Yonhap News, San Francisco
Translated by Annie Lim, coordinator and instructor, Sejong Korean Scholars Program, SPICE.

Stanford University, one of the most prestigious American universities on the West Coast, has launched an unprecedented online lecture series on Korea for American high school students. 

This is the first time a Korean Studies program has been made available to high school students.

Created as part of the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), this one-semester program offers courses on Korean history, culture, religion, art, and politics, consisting of lectures, online discussions, and assignments.

The name for this program is the Sejong Korean Scholars Program (SKSP).

The program, which launched last month, is managed under the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) under the leadership of Director Gi-Wook Shin and is funded by the Korea Foundation. 

Alongside Gi-Wook Shin, David Straub (former U.S. Department of State’s senior foreign service officer specializing in Korean affairs), Charles K. Armstrong (director of Center for Korean Research at Columbia University), and Michael Robinson (professor at Indiana University) are some of the top scholars involved in the program.

The program is free, and the instruction is in English. Approximately 60 students applied, and 27 were selected on the basis of their grade point averages, essays, and letters of recommendation.

SKSP’s coordinator and instructor Annie Lim says, “The students who applied are interested in a variety of topics ranging from Korean history to Korean pop culture.”

Upon completion of the courses, the students will receive credits through Stanford Continuing Studies.

A similar program on Japan has been in progress at Stanford University for 10 years.

Stanford University is the first among American universities to create textbooks and curriculum on Korean studies for high school students and has begun to reach out to the 50,000 high schools in the United States.

APARC’s director and one of the founding members of SKSP, Gi-Wook Shin points out, “Along with Yoko’s Story and so on, American junior high and senior high schools’ distorted history textbooks containing Korean history have received a lot of criticism, but there has not been much effort to rectify it. Through SKSP, we hope that American high school students can acquire a broader perspective and expand their range of knowledge and understanding about Korea.”

SPICE has been transformed from a small local high school program begun by Professor Victor Hao Li (formerly of Stanford Law School), a number of Stanford students, a visionary group of nearby teachers and educators, and me in 1973 into a major national project. SPICE began as a modest start-up focused on Asia and has evolved into an extraordinary asset contributing to broad global education. It is an honor to have been in on the beginning of such a noble effort.

—John Lewis, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics (Emeritus);        Center for International Security and Cooperation faculty member

Today, the efforts of the Stanford Program on International and Cross Cultural Education (SPICE) to internationalize the K–12 classroom span a broad range of topics—security, the arts, the environment, global health, and international relations. With the dawn of 2013, SPICE looks back to its roots and celebrates 40 years of promoting the study of China. The roots of the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) date back to the Bay Area China Education Project (BAYCEP), which commenced operation in 1973. John Lewis was instrumental in the founding of BAYCEP, and several other scholars of Chinese studies, including Albert Dien, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures (Emeritus), were actively involved in BAYCEP’s early years and still remain involved with SPICE today.

The first director of BAYCEP was Dr. David Grossman, SPICE’s founding director. He noted the following about the creation of BAYCEP:

“The original impetus was the Nixon visit to China in 1972, and the realization that the general public and students were not prepared for this radical shift in geopolitics. The problem was how to bridge this profound knowledge gap.” 

Image

A BAYCEP publication from the 1980s

The purpose of BAYCEP was to serve as a bridge between Stanford experts on China and K–12 schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. This was accomplished in two ways—China-focused curriculum development and teacher professional development. By 1976, other projects on Japan, Africa, and Latin America were established, and they along with BAYCEP came to form the nucleus of SPICE.

Continuing the 40-year tradition of teacher professional development on China, SPICE staff members Jonas Edman, Naomi Funahashi, Rylan Sekiguchi, and Johanna Wee recently collaborated with Dr. Clayton Dube, Executive Director, U.S.–China Institute, University of Southern California, to lead a series of China-centered sessions at the annual European Council of International Schools November Conference. The sessions were held in Nice, France, from November 22 through 25, 2012, and included an intensive daylong institute called “China in the Humanities.” The institute comprised four theme-specific mini-sessions—Dynasties, Cultural Revolution, Rural and Urban China, and China in the World—each of which involved both a lecture and a pedagogically-focused curriculum demonstration. The featured SPICE-developed curriculum units (with primary Stanford academic advisors listed) were Chinese Dynasties Parts One and Two (Albert Dien, Professor Emeritus); China's Cultural Revolution (Andrew Walder, Professor, Sociology); China in Transition: Economic Development, Migration, and Education (Scott Rozelle, Director, Rural Education Action Project); 10,000 Shovels (Karen Seto, former Assistant Professor, School of Earth Sciences); and Divided Memories (Gi-Wook Shin, Professor, Sociology, and Director, Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, and Daniel Sneider, Associate Director, Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center).

Image

Authored by Rylan Sekiguchi, Curriculum Specialist, and HyoJung Jang, Curriculum Writer

As SPICE moves into its fifth decade, the staff will continue its China-focused curriculum development and teacher professional development seminars. SPICE recently began developing a curriculum unit on sustainable development in China in consultation with Len Ortolano, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering. Also, from January 2013, SPICE will begin its twelfth year of offering two 30-hour seminars on East Asia—one for middle school teachers and one for high school teachers. The seminars feature lectures by FSI and Center for East Asian Studies faculty and curriculum demonstrations by SPICE staff that focus on China, and other northeast Asian nations.

In addition, SPICE plans to create of a high school student-focused national distance-learning course on China that is parallel to SPICE’s current distance-learning course offerings, which include the Reischauer Scholars Program on Japan and the Sejong Korean Scholars Program.

With Stanford President John Hennessy’s announcement of the K–12 initiative in 2006, Stanford renewed its long-time commitment to improving public education in the United States. SPICE will continue to make FSI scholarship in the areas of security, the arts, the environment, global health, and international relations accessible to young students. FSI believes it has the opportunity and the obligation to utilize its resources to help address issues facing our schools.