A 15 year-old exchange agreement between two public universities, one in the U.S. and the other in Japan, was honored Wednesday, Aug. 25, by the visit of the president of Aichi University of Education to SUNY Fredonia.
 
Ken-ichi Tahara and his wife, Akiko Tahara, met with SUNY Fredonia President Dennis L. Hefner and key campus administrators, toured the campus, the village, and the Dunkirk public school system Wednesday. Accompanying President Tahara was SUNY Fredonia graduate Tomoko Yasutake, a linguistics professor at Aichi who added another component to the international relationship when she initiated an annual three-week immersion program that brings student teachers from Aichi to Fredonia each spring.
 
The 48-hour visit, called a "whirlwind" by President Hefner, was the first visit by an administrator of the Aichi university to Fredonia since the agreement between the two partners was initiated. The visitors return to Japan Thursday, Aug. 26.
 
“In 1987 we started sending students to SUNY Fredonia, and for all 13 of them, it was a life-changing experience,” President Tahara said. “More recently, we started sending student teaching practitioners to SUNY Fredonia to teach in area schools, including Dunkirk.” He noted that his students have had “wonderful experiences with the school authorities and the teachers in Dunkirk.”
 
The exchange program has sent three of Fredonia’s students to Aichi University of Education, but President Dennis L. Hefner said he hopes that the addition this fall of a foreign language course in Japanese will encourage more Fredonia students to look to Japan for an international experience. The course is taught by a SUNY Fredonia graduate student, Yukiko Yasuda, who is studying for her master’s degree in English as a second language.
 
The exchange agreement between SUNY Fredonia and Aichi University of Education was founded by Music Professor Emeritus Thomas Regelski during a sabbatical year he spent at the Japanese campus.
 
Enrolling 4,000 students, the university is located in the prefecture of Aichi that, at the center of the Japanese archipelago, is blessed with moderate climate and beautiful scenery, and is steeped in history.