The latest announcements on our teaching resources, professional development opportunities, and student programs
Receive SPICE updates in your inbox or follow us on social media.
The U.S.-Japan Council’s TOMODACHI Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) identifies, cultivates, and empowers a new generation of Japanese American leaders. A new cohort of Emerging Leaders is selected annually to attend USJC’s Annual Conference, participate in leadership education, and join program alumni in bridging the future of the U.S.–Japan relationship.
SPICE Director Gary Mukai has been named a recipient of the 2017 Autumn Conferment of Japanese Decorations. On November 3, the government of Japan announced that Dr. Mukai will be awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays for his contributions to the promotion of friendship and mutual understanding between Japan and the United States.
We often speak about U.S.–Japan relations in grand terms that focus on links between our countries. But the heart of our connection is personal—innumerable interactions between Japanese and American citizens who recognize the national and the individual benefits of such links… This is what gives Japan Day its special significance.
—The Honorable Michael Armacost, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan
Tottori Prefecture—the least populous prefecture in Japan known for its seafood and stunning natural beauty, including its iconic sand dunes—is now collaborating with Stanford University. The first kanji character of Tottori means “bird” and the recent launching of a new online course, Stanford e-Tottori, is helping high school students to gain a bird’s-eye view of U.S. society and culture with a focus on U.S.–Japan relations.
The Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) honored top students of the 2016 Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) and Stanford e-Japan (Spring Session) at “Japan–U.S. Day”—an event held at Stanford University on August 9, 2016.
All things Korean – economics, culture, politics – are the subject of an educational conference on campus this week.
The fifth annual Hana-Stanford Conference on Korea for U.S. Secondary School Teachers takes place July 25 to 27 in Paul Brest Hall. The meeting brings together American teachers and educators from Korea for discussions on how Korean history, economics, North Korea, foreign policy and culture are covered in American schools.
For four decades since 1976, the SPICE staff has worked with many centers of Stanford Global Studies (SGS)—including the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Center for East Asian Studies, Center for Latin American Studies, and Center for African Studies—on innovative educational outreach efforts. The 2015–16 academic year was no exception.
On May 27, 2016, President Obama will become the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima. In light of this historic visit, SPICE hosted a webinar on May 23, 2016, which featured the talk, “Beneath the Mushroom Cloud,” by Clifton Truman Daniel, grandson of President Harry S. Truman and author of Growing Up with My Grandfather: Memories of Harry S Truman. Following a question and answer period with Mr.
From atomic bombs to harsh military occupations in the World War II period, the past is very much the present in the Asia Pacific region.
My daughter, Emily, was teaching English at a middle school in Asahi City, Chiba Prefecture, on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program when the 2011 Tohoku earthquake struck on March 11, 2011. Tohoku is a region in the northeast portion of the island of Honshu, the largest island in Japan. Though Asahi City, a coastal city, is not in the Tohoku region, it was still heavily damaged by the resulting tsunami. Several of Emily’s students lost their homes. She was emotionally shaken, of course, but was fortunate not to sustain any injuries.
When I first started the Stanford e-Japan program, I never expected to be up on that podium making a speech [at Stanford University]… Yet there I stood, a little more grown up than before.
—Seiji Wakabayashi, Kumon Kokusai Junior-Senior High School
If I hadn’t participated in this program, I wouldn’t have been as interested in the U.S. as I am right now.
—Hikaru Suzuki, Senior High School at Otsuka, University of Tsukuba
The Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) honored two of the top students of the 2015 Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) at a Japan Day event at Stanford University on August 13, 2015. The two 2015 RSP Japan Day honorees were Meera Santhanam and Katie Goldstein.
Thirty U.S. secondary school teachers, representing 11 states and multiple subject areas, came to Stanford for a three-day professional development conference that seeks to help teachers better incorporate Korean studies in the classroom.
In a ceremony held last night on Stanford campus, SPICE Director Gary Mukai received the 2015 Stanford Alumni Award in recognition of his leadership and service in the field of education.
Established in 1995 by the Association for Asian Studies, the Franklin Buchanan Prize is awarded annually to recognize an outstanding curriculum publication on Asia designed for any educational level, elementary through university.
How does a community college instructor begin to tackle a lack of global awareness exhibited by her students? She spends an afternoon at Stanford with leading faculty and experts, as well as other community college faculty, to discuss issues of importance to the global community.
In collaboration with the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) at Stanford University, SPICE hosted a professional development seminar for elementary school teachers that focused on strategies to incorporate Latin American and Latino children’s literature into the K–5 classroom.
On February 6, 2015, 32 teachers from across the Bay Area gathered at Stanford University to listen to guest lectures, participate in curriculum demonstrations, and collaboratively explore issues related to immigration and identity.
At the request of the Silicon Valley Innovation Center, the SPICE staff was invited on December 5, 2014 to give an overview of its work to a group of 20 educators from Kazakhstan. The educators are counseling specialists and school administrators from Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS). The NIS is a network of schools for exceptional students of ages 12 to 18 throughout Kazakhstan. The primary purpose of the visit to Stanford University and also to U.C. Berkeley was to learn more about the admission process to competitive universities in the United States.
For 14 years, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar has been a tireless Stanford professor who has strengthened the fabric of university’s interdisciplinary nature. Joining the faculty at Stanford Law School in 2001, Cuéllar soon found a second home for himself at the Freeman Spogli for International Studies.
Michael McFaul, a Stanford political scientist and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, has been selected as the next director of the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
The announcement was made Wednesday by Stanford Provost John Etchemendy and Ann Arvin, the university’s vice provost and dean of research. McFaul will succeed Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, who was nominated in July as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court and elected Tuesday.
McFaul takes the helm of FSI in January.