Fulbright Memorial Fund Program
November 17-December 7, 2002, Glenna Pearson will visit Japan as part of the Fulbright Memorial Fund (FMF) Teacher Program. She was selected from a national pool of 2100 applicants by a panel of educators to earn this honor. This program allows distinguished primary and secondary school teachers in the U.S. to travel to Japan for three weeks in an effort to promote greater intercultural understanding between the two nations.
The 200 educators will begin their visit to Tokyo, where they will receive a practical orientation of Japanese life and culture and meet with Japanese government officials and educators. She then will travel in a group of 20 to Shimane prefecture (state) to Hamada, a city north of Hiroshima. There she will have direct contact with Japanese teachers and students during visits to primary and secondary schools as well as a teachers college in the city of Hamada. She also will visit cultural sites and local industries in addition to a home-stay with a Japanese family.
The program is sponsored by the Government of Japan and was launched to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the U.S. government Fulbright Program, which has enabled more than 6,000 Japanese citizens to study in the U.S. on Fulbright fellowships for graduate education and research.
A total of 600 teachers from all 50 states and the District of Columbia will visit Japan in June, October and November of 2002 (200 in each group). To date, the FMF Teacher Program has provided 3,100 primary and secondary educators with the opportunity to visit Japan. The program is administered by the Japan-United States Educational Commission (JUSEC). The Institute of International Education (IIE), the nation's largest nonprofit educational and cultural exchange agency, serves as the contracting agency for coordinating FMF activities in the United States. If you would like more information on this program and the 2003 competition year, please contact IIE at 1-888-527-2636 or visit http://www.iie.org.