ALLEX Foundation: Establish and Enhance Japanese and Chinese Language Programs

Members of the ALLEX Academic Team spent a total of seven days in December and January in Asia interviewing candidates for the Teaching Associate and Teaching Fellow Programs. Of the more than 200 candidates who submitted paper applications at the pre-interview screening stage, about eighty were invited to the final matching stage where just over thirty teachers will be awarded a position in the United States.

The interviews consisted of two rigorous individual sessions with ALLEX staff and affiliated professors. In Japan, the interview was held at Waseda University; in Taiwan the OhStudy office served as site host.

ALLEX graduate Wakana Maekawa was awarded the Hamako Ito Chaplin Memorial Award. Maekawa attended the ALLEX Teacher Training Institute at Portland State University in 2007 and completed her M.A. in Applied Linguistics at Texas Tech University in May, 2009. At Texas Tech, she taught beginning and intermediate Japanese language courses as a graduate instructor. She is currently a visiting instructor of Japanese at Hamilton College, New York.

The Hamako Ito Chaplin Memorial Award is administered though the Association for Asian Studies. In accordance with the wishes of the Chaplin family, each year a prize of $1,000 is awarded to a current graduate student or a new Japanese language professional who aims to work in a North American institution, in an area that directly involves Japanese language teaching.

(Reprinted from the Association of Asian Studies Newsletter, Spring 2011; picture from the Hamilton College website.)