East Meets West: Lawrence Embarks on Cross Cultural Initiative with Tokyo's Waseda University

APPLETON, WIS. -- The annual back-to-school malady known as "roommate anxiety" has infected its share of students over the years. But so far, the only symptoms Lawrence University sophomore Nick Mauro has exhibited has been a bad case of excitement.

Mauro is one of 19 Lawrence students who volunteered to spend the coming academic year living with a visiting Japanese student from Tokyo's Waseda University. The Japanese students are spending the year at Lawrence as part of a new cross cultural education initiative the college has undertaken.

Unlike most international students who attend Lawrence, the Waseda students will arrive with limited English skills, which will clearly add an a new wrinkle to the roommate experience.

"The language barrier will definitely be a challenge," says Mauro, a physics and mathematics major from Sumner, Maine. "I've had some email contact with my roommate this summer and I can tell by the way he writes that his English is pretty iffy, but he'll still speak better English than I speak Japanese.

"I lived with a student from Nepal last year and that worked out well," Mauro added. "This seemed like another neat opportunity. I don't know very much about Japanese culture, so I anticipate I'll learn a lot."

As a residential college, Lawrence places a premium on the educational opportunities that exist outside the classroom and realizes that living on campus can provide some of a student's most memorable college experiences. Having attended a boarding prep school in upstate Maine, Mauro admits diversity there was in short supply, so he welcomes the opportunities to expand his cultural horizons at Lawrence.

"It's going to be new and different and something I've never experienced before," said Mauro, who credited the positive cultural experiences enjoyed by two of his cousins in the Peace Corps with playing a role in his request for a Waseda roommate.

"It's my understanding that when the Japanese form a relationship, it is really more of a bond and that's how I'm approaching this. To get that kind of friendship out of this is really important to me. I'm all for this program and I'm going to do whatever I can to make my roommate feel comfortable here."

Waseda, with an enrollment approaching 50,000 students, is considered the premier private college in all of Japan, on par with the prestigious Tokyo University, a public institution. Its academic requirements are as rigorous, if not more so, than any U.S. institution, with an acceptance rate of only 10% of its applicants.

With an eye toward globalization, Waseda was interested in introducing its students to the American tradition of liberal arts education and to that end, extended invitations to 26 institutions in the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, of which Lawrence is a member, and the Great Lakes Colleges Association. Lawrence's program proposal was one of three accepted by Waseda officials and will join Earlham College in Indiana and Coe College in Iowa in a three-year partnership that will bring 15-20 Japanese students to each of those campuses for the next three years for one year of study.

With the help of a $1.5 million grant from the Freeman Foundation that Lawrence received in 2001 to support its East Asian studies program, college administrators and faculty were able to advance the budding relationship with Waseda by meeting with the incoming Japanese students and conferring with officials there during a visit to Japan earlier this year.

Lawrence's connection to one of Waseda's most distinguished graduates, Takakazu Kuriyama, helped in establishing a relationship between the two schools. The former Japanese ambassador to the United States, Kuriyama spent a year as a student at Lawrence in the 1950s and returned to Lawrence in 2000 as the college's visiting Scarff professor. In addition to graduating from Waseda, Kuriyama also taught there after retiring from public service.

Brian Rosenberg, dean of the faculty at Lawrence, said the Waseda students will attend special classes, including English as a Second Language instruction, during the Fall Term and then be mainstreamed into regular Lawrence classes during the Winter and Spring terms.

"These are very bright students, but we suspect English will be a challenge for most of them initially," said Rosenberg.

"It's been very complicated pulling this all together," he added. "This is a large-scale program and we're feeling our way along. Most of the logistics have had to be worked out primarily by email with an institution that regularly rotates its staff so we haven't always been dealing with the same people from one contact to the next. It's taken a lot of patience to get to this point."

While ironing out the details has at times been daunting, Rosenberg is confident the potential benefits will ultimately be well worth it.

"This program will dramatically increase the profile of our East Asian studies program, especially our new Japanese language major," said Rosenberg. "It also will add greatly to our community diversity and be a positive for the entire campus culture."

"The most exciting benefit of the program will be in developing an ongoing relationship with Waseda," Rosenberg added. "The potential for a wide range of exchange opportunities with them down the road is very high."