Northern Kentucky University’s World Languages and Literatures Department is looking to develop more courses that could be used as the foundations for a future Japanese major thanks to a grant from the Japan Foundation of Los Angeles.
The World Languages and Literatures Department is part of the College of Arts and Sciences.
The “Salary Assistance Grant for Japanese Courses” provides funding for the development of Japanese programs and curriculum at universities. NKU has a thriving Japanese minor, so the funds have been applied to developing additional courses.
“As part of this, Dr. Junko Agnew and Professor Makoto Nakamura did an informal poll of their students to see if there was interest in a future major in Japanese. Although this was an informal poll, about 75 percent of the students said that they would consider pursuing a Japanese major if there was one at NKU,” said Dr. Caryn Connelly, Chair of the World Languages and Literatures Department.
“As the process progressed, we learned a dignitary from the Japanese Consulate would visit NKU to present us with the grant check. We were very honored to have Mr. Tye Ebel from the office of the Consulate General of Japan in Nashville to award the grant to us.”
NKU has a strong foundation to build on when creating the proposed Japanese major. The university has partnerships with three Japanese universities: Gifu University, Nanzan University and Musashi University.
“Because of these partnerships, many NKU students are pursuing a Japanese minor and study abroad in Japan. Between that and the courses they take here at NKU, a good number of them have the equivalent of a major in terms of the amount of credit hours in Japanese,” said Dr. Connelly.
The duration of the grant is one year and ends in the summer of 2018. Dr. Agnew is researching Japanese major programs at other colleges and universities in the country. The group is also developing Japanese courses that would be parallel to French, German and Spanish major programs. NKU currently has 65 students minoring in Japanese.