Honoring Reischauer Scholars
The Stanford Program on International and Cross-cultural Education (SPICE) honored two of the top students of the 2010 Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) at the RSP Japan Day event at Stanford University on August 16, 2010. The RSP, an online course on Japan and U.S.-Japan relations that is offered to high school juniors and seniors across the United States, recognized the students based on their coursework and exceptional research essays.
The event featured opening remarks by Gary Mukai, SPICE Director; Acting Consul General Hideyuki Mitsuoka, Consul General of Japan in San Francisco; and Professor Emeritus Daniel Okimoto, Stanford University. The program was highlighted by presentations by student honorees Rachel Waltman and Jiyoon Lee, who wrote research essays on changing roles of women in the workplace in Japan, and media censorship following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Named in honor of former Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer, a leading educator and noted scholar of Japanese history and culture, the RSP annually selects 25-30 exceptional high school juniors and seniors from throughout the United States to engage in intensive study of Japan. Through Internet-based lectures and discussions, the program provides students with a broad overview of Japanese history, literature, religion, art, politics, economics, education, and contemporary society, with a focus on the U.S.-Japan relationship. Prominent scholars affiliated with Stanford University, the University of Tokyo, the University of Hawaii, and other institutions provide lectures and engage students in online dialogue. The RSP received funding for the first three years of the program from the United States-Japan Foundation. Funding for the 2007 and 2008 RSP was provided by the Center for Global Partnership, the Japan Foundation.
The RSP will begin accepting applications for the 2011 program in September 2010. For more information about the RSP, visit www.reischauerscholars.org or contact Naomi Funahashi, RSP coordinator, at nfunahashi@stanford.edu.
Jonas Edman
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, C332
Stanford, CA 94305-6060
Jonas Edman is a Curriculum Writer for the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). In addition to writing curriculum, Jonas coordinates SPICE’s National Consortium for Teaching About Asia (NCTA) professional development seminars on East Asia for middle school teachers, and collaborates with FSI and other Stanford colleagues on developing curricula for community college instructors as part of Stanford Human Rights Education Initiative (SHREI). Prior to joining SPICE in 2010, Jonas taught history and geography in Elk Grove, California, and taught Theory of Knowledge at Stockholm International School in Stockholm, Sweden.
Jonas' professional interests lie in curriculum and instruction and teacher professional development, with a special interest in online education development. He received his Single Subject Teaching Credential in Social Science from California State University, Sacramento in 2010, and a bachelor degree in History from Stockholm University in 2008. He graduated high school from the American School in Japan in 1996.
Jonas has presented teacher seminars nationally for the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia in Omaha, Nebraska; the California Council for Social Studies in Anaheim and Burlingame, California; the National Council for the Social Studies in Washington D.C.; the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs in East Lansing, Michigan; and the National Association for Multicultural Education in Oakland, California. He has also presented teacher seminars internationally for the East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, and Bangkok, Thailand; and the European Council of International Schools in Nice, France.
Irene Bryant
Irene Bryant is the instructor for the Stanford e-Entrepreneurship Japan Program and a Curriculum Writer for the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE).
She has authored the discussion guides “Biosecurity”, “Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide”, and “International Security and DPRK’s Nuclear Program”, which are part of a video curriculum series on Introduction to Issues in International Security. She has also co-authored the teacher's guides for Far West: The Hidden History and The Partition.
Prior to joining SPICE, she worked as Assistant Director for Stanford’s US-Asia Technology Management Center (US-ATMC), as well as Program Administrator for the China Program at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. She has experience working in human resources, venture capital, as well as in Montessori. She was also a Coordinator for International Relations in Sendai, Japan on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme.
Irene received a BA in East Asian Languages and Literatures from Smith College as well as an MA in Japanese Studies from SOAS University of London. A San Francisco native, she has lived in Taiwan, Japan, and the UK, and is passionate about empowering students to become future change-makers in their communities and beyond.
A Visit to Okinawa
On September 7th and 8th, 2009, SPICE director Gary Mukai visited three public high schools in Okinawa as well as the Okinawa AmerAsian School. Most of the students at the Okinawa AmerAsian School have American fathers and Okinawan/Japanese mothers. While visiting the four schools, Gary had the chance to talk with many classes of students about what they would like American high school students to know about Okinawa. SPICE plans to develop a short documentary on AmerAsians during the next year and a comprehensive curricular unit on U.S.-Okinawan relations in the near future.
Kamishibai Project
Early Encounters: The First Japanese Embassy to the United States, 1860
Pearl Harbor Memory: Survivor Reflections
"Pearl Harbor Memory: Survivor Reflections" was a panel presentation that took place during a "Pearl Harbor: History, Memory, Memorial" summer institute that was sponsored by the AsiaPacificEd Program, East-West Center, Honolulu. The summer institute was part of the Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop for Schoolteachers supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) under the We the People Initiative. Additional support for the program was provided by the Arizona Memorial Museum Association, the National Park Service and the Japan American Society of Hawaii.
AsiaPacificEd Program
East-West Center
University of Hawaii
Examining Long-Term Radiation Effects
On April 4, 2009, SPICE co-sponsored a high school teachers' workshop with Stanford's Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREEES) and the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA) called "Examining Long-Term Radiation Effects: Case Studies of the Atomic Bombings of Japan and the Chernobyl Power Plant Thermal Explosion." The workshop featured two scholars and reflections by an atomic bomb survivor. SPICE staff also introduced its curriculum unit of the same title. The workshop was funded by the U.S. Department of Education (Title VI) and the NCTA.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Gary Mukai
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, C331
Stanford, CA 94305-6060
Dr. Gary Mukai is Director of the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). Prior to joining SPICE in 1988, he was a teacher in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, and in California public schools for ten years.
Gary’s academic interests include curriculum and instruction, educational equity, and teacher professional development. He received a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from U.C. Berkeley; a multiple subjects teaching credential from the Black, Asian, Chicano Urban Program, U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education; a master of arts in international comparative education from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education; and a doctorate of education from the Leadership in Educational Equity Program, U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education.
In addition to curricular publications for SPICE, Gary has also written for other publishers, including Newsweek, Calliope Magazine, Media & Methods: Education Products, Technologies & Programs for Schools and Universities, Social Studies Review, Asia Alive, Education About Asia, ACCESS Journal: Information on Global, International, and Foreign Language Education, San Jose Mercury News, and ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies; and organizations, including NBC New York, the Silk Road Project at Harvard University, the Japanese American National Memorial to Patriotism in Washington, DC, the Center for Asian American Media in San Francisco, the Laurasian Institution in Seattle, the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, and the Asia Society in New York.
He has developed teacher guides for films such as The Road to Beijing (a film on the Beijing Olympics narrated by Yo-Yo Ma and co-produced by SPICE and the Silk Road Project), Nuclear Tipping Point (a film developed by the Nuclear Security Project featuring former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, former Senator Sam Nunn, and former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell), Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo (an Academy Award-winning film about Japanese-American internment by Steven Okazaki), Doubles: Japan and America’s Intercultural Children (a film by Regge Life), A State of Mind (a film on North Korea by Daniel Gordon), Wings of Defeat (a film about kamikaze pilots by Risa Morimoto), Makiko’s New World (a film on life in Meiji Japan by David W. Plath), Diamonds in the Rough: Baseball and Japanese-American Internment (a film by Kerry Y. Nakagawa), Uncommon Courage: Patriotism and Civil Liberties (a film about Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service during World War II by Gayle Yamada), Citizen Tanouye (a film about a Medal of Honor recipient during World War II by Robert Horsting), Mrs. Judo (a film about 10th degree black belt Keiko Fukuda by Yuriko Gamo Romer), and Live Your Dream: The Taylor Anderson Story (a film by Regge Life about a woman who lost her life in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami).
He has conducted numerous professional development seminars nationally (including extensive work with the Chicago Public Schools, Hawaii Department of Education, New York City Department of Education, and school districts in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County) and internationally (including in China, France, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, and Turkey).
In 1997, Gary was the first regular recipient of the Franklin Buchanan Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, awarded annually to honor an outstanding curriculum publication on Asia at any educational level, elementary through university. In 2004, SPICE received the Foreign Minister’s Commendation from the Japanese government for its promotion of Japanese studies in schools; and Gary received recognition from the Fresno County Office of Education, California, for his work with students of Fresno County. In 2007, he was the recipient of the Foreign Minister’s Commendation from the Japanese government for the promotion of mutual understanding between Japan and the United States, especially in the field of education. At the invitation of the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea, San Francisco, Gary participated in the Republic of Korea-sponsored 2010 Revisit Korea Program, which commemorated the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War. At the invitation of the Nanjing Foreign Languages School, China, he participated in an international educational forum in 2013 that commemorated the 50th anniversary of NFLS’s founding. In 2015 he received the Stanford Alumni Award from the Asian American Activities Center Advisory Board, and in 2017 he was awarded the Alumni Excellence in Education Award by the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Most recently, the government of Japan named him a recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays.
He is an editorial board member of the journal, Education About Asia; advisory board member for Asian Educational Media Services, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; board member of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Alumni Association of Northern California; and selection committee member of the Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award, U.S.–Japan Foundation.
Rylan Sekiguchi
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, C332
Stanford, CA 94305-6060
Rylan’s professional interests lie in curriculum design, global education, education technology, student motivation and learning, and mindset science. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Symbolic Systems at Stanford University.
He has authored or co-authored more than a dozen curriculum units for SPICE, including Along the Silk Road, China in Transition, Divided Memories: Comparing History Textbooks, and U.S.–South Korean Relations. His writings have appeared in publications of the National Council for History Education and the Association for Asian Studies.
Rylan has also been actively engaged in media-related work for SPICE. In addition to serving as producer for two films—My Cambodia and My Cambodian America—he has developed several web-based lessons and materials, including What Does It Mean to Be an American?
In 2010, 2015, and 2021, Rylan received the Franklin Buchanan Prize, which is awarded annually by the Association for Asian Studies to honor an outstanding curriculum publication on Asia at any educational level, elementary through university.