ECU signs pact with Osaka University

Published Oct 29, 1996 by
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One of Japan’s leading universities for preparing school teachers has signed an exchange pact with East Carolina University, opening the way for student and faculty exchanges at both campuses.

Shigemitsu Kinoshita, the president of Osaka Kyoiku University, and ECU Chancellor Richard Eakin, signed an agreement during a ceremony at ECU this week. The agreement permits students to exchange places from one campus to the other. It also facilitates the exchange of faculty to promote research interests.

“We can learn much from you,” Eakin said after signing the agreement . “I hope we have some things here that we can share with you as well,” he said.

Kinoshita said he was happy with the agreement between the two schools and would do his best to promote the exchange in the years ahead. He said he was particularly impressed by the “high confidence in ECU expressed by the state government.”

Accompanying the Osaka president was Tetsuo Takaoka, a professor and a student adviser at the Foreign Students Guidance Center.

Donald L. Spence, a member of the ECU School of Education faculty and the associate director of International Programs, said the exchange agreement is expected to generate a special grant to the Osaka University of Education from the Japanese Ministry of Science, Education and Culture. He said the grant “will support administrative team visits designed to facilitate substantive program exchanges.”

Spence said the two campuses share many points for collaborative research and both are “in a unique position to exercise a very positive role in teacher education here and in Japan.” He said a research team from Osaka may visit ECU as early as next year.

An ECU graduate student has just completed a semester of study at Osaka, supported in part by a grant from the Japanese Ministry of Education. The student, Neal Binder, is developing a program to teach 7th grade geography and economics to children in the U.S. and Japan. Binder is working on a master’s degree in the ECU School of Education.