I was fortunate enough to be asked to lead MSU’s freshman study abroad program to Japan. It has two tracks and I will be leading the one on popular youth culture. We are slated to have 10 freshman students per track. The two-week trip is preceded by a three-day on-campus orientation. The whole thing happens in early to mid August. These students are incoming MSU freshman students and will be taking this program as their first exposure to MSU. So this is very exciting.
A big challenge is that the program will earn students three credits. That is a lot of work crammed into two weeks. We need to worry about time difference, fatigue from traveling, etc, while we need to make sure that the students will be learning enough. They’re just out of high school so there will be some adjustment for them, too. This will be a very good challenge for me too.
Yuya Kiuchi 