Start or Maintain a Japanese Language Program at your College or University

On December 15 and 16, 2007 members of the ALLEX Academic Team spent two intense days at Waseda University, Japan's premier private institution, interviewing candidates for the Intercultural Education Program and Japanese Teaching Associate Program.

The interviews consisted of two rigorous individual sessions with ALLEX affiliated professors, and culminated in demanding small group discussions with individual performance evaluated by the ALLEX academic team.

	From Left: Kazunori Ueno, ALLEX Chairman; Thomas Mason, ALLEX Executive Director; Professor Patricia Wetzel, Portland State University and ALLEX Academic Director; Yohei Arakawa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. (Not Pictured: Steve Nussbaum, Waseda University)
	In Part Two of the interview test students were evaluated on their performance in small group discussions. (Left: Professor Wetzel, with the entire interview team, evaluates a discussion session.) The intensive discussion sessions were valuable in judging leadership, intellectualness, cooperativeness, and adaptability--skills that can be hard to evaluate in individual sessions.
	In each discussion four to five candidates discussed several topics, including 1) why Americans have culture shock when studying in Japan and 2) the types of problems Japanese teachers encounter in the American classroom.