Fellowship to provide Japanese immersion for secondary education department chair

Laura Dull, department chair and associate professor of secondary education at SUNY New Paltz, has been selected as a 2015 Keizai Koho Center (KKC) Fellow by the National Association of Japan-America Societies (NAJAS).

The chief function of the Fellowship is to bring American education professionals to Japan for a two-week immersion experience meant to establish connections and improve relations between Japanese institutions and businesses and the global community.

On June 28, Dull will travel to Tokyo for an itinerary highlighted by tours of schools and museums, visits to major industrial and corporate facilities, meetings with Japanese teachers, government officials and business leaders and a home stay with a Japanese family.

Dull intends to use the sponsored trip to advance her own teaching strategies and develop curriculum to be shared with SUNY New Paltz students and history and social studies teachers in the Hudson Valley, namely by continuing her work as part of a team of educators who created a set of Common Core-aligned teaching units under the heading, “Women’s Rights: The Struggle Continues.”

“I hope the KKC Fellowship and visit to Japan will enable me to add to this unit a component about Japanese women’s history: the position of women in Japanese society and some of their struggles and achievements,” Dull said. “One thing I talk about in classes with future high school teachers is that history is an argument about the past, and internationalizing history and working to understand events from multiple perspectives is valuable. My colleagues and I are always looking for ways to talk about how teachers can try to bring diverse perspectives into the classroom.”

The Keizai Koho Center, an independent, nonprofit organization, has worked with Japan’s business community since 1978 to improve its communication with international society and help its supporters gain a better understanding of the environment in which they operate.

The KKC Teacher Fellowship is a competitive distinction awarded annually to secondary education teachers, administrators and college faculty trainers of teacher candidates who are involved with the instruction of history, economics and social studies. More information about this program is available online.