On August 17, 2007, SPICE held an awards ceremony to honor two of the top scholars from its Reischauer Scholars Program, a distance learning course on Japan and U.S.-Japan relations for high school students.

The event featured opening remarks by Makoto Yamanaka, then consul general of Japan in San Francisco; Stanford Professor Peter Duus, Department of History; and Yukiko Ono, assistant director of the Center for Global Partnership at the Japan Foundation. In addition, the award recipients, Kseniya Charova and Sekhar Paladugu, presented their final research essays on Japan's lean production paradigm and U.S.-Japan diplomacy.