Bi-annual Conference on Asia and the Environment

Research Conference on Asia and Environment on a biannual basis.   Bard College has been hosting this conference between 2014 and 2017. Vassar will host the conference in 2019 and 2021.   The conference is oriented to present and discuss undergraduate or graduate student research on Asia.  We encourage paper, and poster sessions, individual and team presentations.  The detail conference guideline and call-for-paper will be issued in the fall of 2018 and 2020.   The conference will provide a paper prize for exceptional student research papers presented at the conference.

Environmental Exchange conference with Ochanomizu University

Vassar will hold an environmental exchange conference at Vassar with Ochanomizu University of Tokyo in 2019.

Vassar’s Japanese Program has maintained an established academic partnership with Ochanomizu and Ritsumeikan Universities since 2006. Each year since 2012, the first anniversary of the disastrous North Japan Earthquake, Ochanomizu University invites two students from Vassar to participate in a student peace-building forum in March. In March 2014, Vassar hosted the visit of fourteen Ochanomizu students and two faculty members at Vassar and held a student forum called “Overcoming 3.11.” (Their costs of travel and lodging were covered by the Japanese government.) Presentations by students were conducted in both Japanese and English, but the highlight of the week-long event was the 3.11 memorial ceremony in which the Ochanomizu students talked about their experience of the tsunami. This event attracted many students, including those who had never taken Asian language or Asian Studies courses.