Exciting new opportunities are beginning to grow on the campus of Moravian College as a result of its InFocus Initiative and Peace and Justice Studies Program. It all started four years ago when Moravian’s new provost found money for an exploratory trip to Japan to develop a study abroad opportunity for students to travel to Japan. Since the 1960s, the college town of Bethlehem, Pa. had hosted Japanese students from its sister city Tondabayashi, but the expense had prevented reciprocal travel with U.S. students to Asia. That all changed in 2017.

“We wanted to expand the program and cement these longstanding relationships but were still in infancy in terms our mutual collaboration,” shared Kelly Denton-Borhaug, executive director of Moravian’s Global InFocus Program and co-director of the Peace and Justice Studies Program. “The Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission grant was instrumental in helping us accomplish this goal.”

The InFocus campus-wide initiative provides opportunities to link education with urgent issues facing humanity, rotating around four centers of investigation: poverty and inequality; sustainability and climate change; health and health care; and war, peacebuilding and a just economy. The immersion experience in Japan was developed as part of “War, Peacebuilding and the Just Society, in this innovative campus program.

With JUSFC funding, Moravian students completed the program’s second immersion trip to Japan in May 2018. Participants learned about the legacy of World War II and the global reality of the U.S. role in nuclear weapons around the world. The immersion experience is immediate and impactful.

The trip begins with orientation to Japan and its culture, as American students spend 24 hours a day with their counterparts from Otani University. Traveling from Osaka to Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Kyoto and then returning to Osaka, they learn history not taught in U.S. classrooms. Sometimes shocking, the transformational impact of the course offers unique educational opportunities that shape the students’ multicultural understanding of the dropping of the atomic bomb and what it means to be an American. Reflective writing and shared assignments cover visits to war museums and peace parks, lectures, reading and study.                                                                 

The JUSFC grant also extends to include bringing Japanese scholars to the Moravian College campus, reaching a broader range of U.S. students than only those who travel to Japan. And despite the language differences, student exchanges have fostered phenomenal cross-cultural perspectives in critical thinking and meaningful connections that endure beyond the study abroad – for both countries. Otani University’s president remarked on the impact made on the Japanese students who traveled to Moravian College last spring as part of the grant.

“We’ve finally broken through the culture, and for first time we have more students applying than we have space to accept.” Denton-Borhaug noted. “With the support of JUSFC, these amazing opportunities continue to grow and it is so satisfying to see people take advantage of it.”

Read more about this transformational experience from Moravian student blogs from 2018 and blogs from 2017. To learn more about the Peace and Justice Studies Program, visit the Moravian College website: Japan Mayterm. For more information about JUSFC’s Institutional Grants, click here.