Address to the Japan-SIG
2008 NAFSA Annual Conference
Washington D.C.
Gary DeCoker, Earlham College
I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak with you today at this 20th anniversary of the
Japan-SIG, and I want to start by noting that I think I am here, not because of the work that I
have done in the field of International Education, but rather because of my position at Earlham
College. I came to my current position after having been a faculty member at the University of
Minnesota and Ohio Wesleyan University for nearly 20 years. As a professor, I helped develop
an East Asian Studies program, arranged for my students to study abroad, helped my colleagues
on the faculty pursue their interest in Japan, and facilitated exchange programs between Japanese
and Ohio K-12 schools. Typical things for a professor in Japanese Studies. But five years ago,
when I took my current position at Earlham, I was still a novice in the field of educational
exchange. And to some extent, I still am.
Earlham has a number of historical connections with Japan and also with Japanese Americans-including many Japanese graduates over the years beginning with the first in 1893. During
WWII, Earlham created a program to enroll Japanese Americans in order to free them from the
internment camps. In the Viet Nam War era, the College developed a program to place Assistant
Language Teachers in the Tohoku region that became the model for the Japanese government
JET Program. Our program also led to draft deferments for some of the participants, which was
a goal of the Quaker pacifists who started the program. These are just a few of our programs, all
started by enthusiastic and energetic professors who created and negotiated various exchange
opportunities with their counterparts at Japanese educational institutions.
Our faculty members demonstrated a certain freewheeling, creative spontaneity in the early years
of our program development. And they left us a wonderful legacy. We currently have a 35year-old relationship with the City of Morioka, which includes a recent exchange agreement with
Iwate University (negotiated with the Japan-SIG co-coordinator Professor Natsumi Onaka), and
an exchange program with Waseda University that began in 1963. I’d like to use our exchange
program with Waseda as the focus of my comments today.
For the past 45 years, we have been exchanging students, faculty and staff members between
Waseda and the 26 Midwestern liberal arts colleges of the Great Lakes Colleges Association
(GLCA) and the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM). The program began with Jackson
Bailey, a graduate of Earlham in 1950 who later returned as a professor of history. In the early
1960’s, Professor Bailey asked his graduate mentor from Harvard, Edwin Reischauer, who had
by then become U.S. Ambassador to Japan, to help him locate a Japanese university to partner
with. Ambassador Reischauer introduced Professor Bailey to Waseda. And the cooperation
between our consortium of colleges and Waseda began what was the first post-WWII mutual
exchange program between U.S. and Japanese universities.
I wanted to point out how much has changed between 1963 and today so I looked up some
information on the New York Times Internet site. Here are some of the stories that appeared in
that paper in 1963:
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Japan's roads are rapidly being improved, especially between major cities, in preparation
for the huge crowds expected to attend the 1964 Olympic Games.
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Japan was invited today to become a member of the 20-nation Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), heretofore an all-Atlantic group
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Supermarkets are springing up rapidly in Japan as self-service stores gain increasing
acceptance among housewives.
A few days ago, I came up with an even better way to illustrate the changes between 1963 and
today. I was looking at some historical documents from the beginning of our program. Here is
something that I found in our back files. It is a handbook from one of our first programs. Our
current handbook is about 5 times as large. And the contents, too, differ greatly. Let me read the
only comment on “health and welfare” from our 1960’s handbook.
Be sure to check with your school about insurance coverage while you are in Japan; each
college has it own insurance program. You should continue such coverage. As a student
at Waseda University you will be eligible for low-cost medical and dental treatment
through the Waseda clinic. (While in Japan you might want to take advantage of lowcost dental work or have contact lenses made relatively inexpensively.)
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There is nothing else about health, nothing about safety, or GLBT issues, or culture shock, or
sexual harassment, or disabilities, or legal considerations, or grievance procedures. Not much at
all about policies and procedures actually. The entire booklet is devoted to informing the
students about the program--schedules, addresses, curriculum, books, etc.
Another thing I discovered in our historical file is a carbon copy of a letter written to the
president of Waseda. When I say carbon copy, I’m not talking about the carbon fiber used in my
fancy new road bike. This letter was hammered out on a typewriter on onionskin paper
separated by sheets of carbon paper. Then it was mailed to Japan by airmail, which probably
took a couple of weeks. Mail was about the only way to communicate back then. Of course,
phone calls were possible, if you wanted to spend the equivalent of about $5.00/minute for a
connection with a couple second pause between each verbal exchange.
Other things besides communication, too, have changed. For those of us in International
Education, one of the most profound changes, I think, is in the professionalization of our field.
Back in the early 1960’s, the professors who founded our program did not have a body of
research and professional knowledge to draw upon. NAFSA was created in 1948, but for its first
decades, the organization was focused on students coming to U.S. colleges from other countries.
And the Forum on Education Abroad didn’t start until 2001.
As a result of the lack of professional organizations, the pioneers of educational exchange
between Japan and the United States in the early 1960’s could not draw on the wonderful
documents created by International Education professionals such as these:
From NAFSA
Best Practices in Addressing Mental Health Issues Affecting Education Abroad Participants
NAFSA's Guide to Education Abroad for Advisers and Administrators
Crisis Management in a Cross-Cultural Setting
From the Forum on Education Abroad
Code of Ethics for Education Abroad
Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad
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I could mention many more such documents and I’m sure that you have your favorites. Our field
is truly blessed by the dedication and hard work of many committed practitioners who strive to
set standards, interpret government regulations, and to shape public opinion for our field.
I know that my topic was supposed to be looking ahead, even though I’ve been talking mostly
about the past. So I’ll end with a few comments about the future as it relates to our past.
Let me read a bit from this carbon-copied letter of 1963.
From more than 7 years of foreign study experience at Earlham, several convictions in
principle and philosophy have emerged. Commitment to these is necessary if a program
is to be successful.
1. The program must be academically sound and geared to on-campus undergraduate
education.
2. It must require high academic standards of performance.
3. It must give students significant understanding of the culture. Therefore it should
emphasize the humanities and social sciences.
4. Serious language study must be an integral part of the program.
5. It must include conscious analysis of the contemporary scene through a combination
of courses and a non-credit seminar experience.
6. It must include significant study in the humanities both through courses and extracurricula activities.
7. There must be substantial individual, personal contact between the American and
Japanese students.
8. Some substantial work-camp type experience is essential.
9. Each student should be challenged to do some kind of independent study project.
10. The American faculty member should participate in the program in a substantial
academic way.
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This document strikes me as an early effort at setting standards for international exchange. But
what is interesting to me is that it is written very much as a counterpoint to the freewheeling
spontaneity I mentioned earlier. The focus is on the curriculum and on academic rigor.
Over the last 2 decades, we have developed an incredible professional literature in the field of
International Education. Much of our current success, not only in exchanges between Japan and
the U.S., but exchanges worldwide, comes from the work of colleagues in our field, many of
whom are attending this 2008 NAFSA annual conference. But I wonder what has been lost in
the professionalization of our field?
What I have noticed in my 5 years in the field is that at some of our colleges we have lost the
energetic and creative involvement of faculty members. On many of our campuses, it seems to
me, professors have given over study-abroad programs to professionals in the field of
international education.
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International Education Professionals develop and manage the programs.
Professionals recruit and orient the students.
Professionals answer the typical questions regarding visas, packing, plane tickets, and the
like.
Professionals talk with helicopter parents.
Professionals oversee the budgets.
Professionals keep up with the governmental regulations, legal ramifications, student
health concerns.
Professionals seek professors to run our programs.
And professionals orient these professors and plug them into the somewhat narrow roles
that we have carefully defined for them.
I can’t predict the future of Japan’s relationship with the rest of the world, but what I can say for
certain is that professors at our institutions will be working to define that relationship, and to
explain it, and to prepare our students for it. It would be a shame to lose the enthusiasm and
creativity that led to the founding of many of the early exchanges between our countries. And it
would be a shame to lose sight of the kinds of academic concerns addressed in the letter that I
just read from.
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So today, as we look ahead to the future, I would like to encourage International Education
professionals to keep in mind the important role that our faculty members play, and to make sure,
in our efforts to set professional standards for our field and to create better, more efficient, more
professional study-abroad programs, that we don’t squeeze out the professorate.
And in the next 20 years of the Japan-SIG, I hope that we will continue to see among us faculty
members from our campuses working closely with International Education professionals--as we
revise existing programs and envision new models to take us forward.
Gary DeCoker, Ph.D.
Director, Japan Study
Director, Institute for Education on Japan
Professor, Japanese Studies
Earlham College
801 National Road West
Richmond, Indiana 47374
765-983-1890 (office)
765-983-1798 (fax)
decokga@earlham.edu
www.earlham.edu/~jpns/
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