Two times within the past year, groups from CSU East Bay’s Peer Mentor program have had the opportunity to travel to Japan and visit Fukuoka Institute of Technology (FIT).

According to Dr. Sally Murphy, director of General Education and Freshman Year Programs, the visits were part of a student exchange program between the two universities.

“We’ve had a long-standing relationship since halfway through Mo’s [former University President, Mohammad Qayoumi] time here with FIT,” said Murphy.

Murphy stated the first time the students from FIT came to our university was last August where their university and our university both exchanged 10 students, with our 10 students being from the Peer Mentor program.

According to her, a representative from FIT came to our campus and met with members from different groups on campus such as Associated Students Inc. (ASI) and felt that the Peer Mentor Program would be the best group of students to bring over.

“They were looking broadly at East Bay students so they interviewed ASI, they interviewed the O-team and Marguerite, they interviewed and visited classes for peer mentors and […] they selected the peer mentors as the students they wanted to have an academic exchange with,” she explained.

What this meant was FIT would pay for 10 of our students to spend about 10 days in Japan with a group of their selected students or ACE students.

“The way we’ve worked it out, 10 students from FIT come here for a week to 10 days and then we go to Japan right after for a week to 10 days,” Murphy explained.

Our 10 Peer Mentor students then went over to Fukuoka, Japan in September for what Murphy described as about eight days where they stayed in the dorms and ate meals that were paid for and provided by FIT.

The former Governor of Japan spoke to the Peer Mentor students in Japan about international competency while Dr. James Houpis, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, spoke about environmental issues to the FIT students that visited our campus.

Due to a government subsidy that FIT was receiving in order to help pay for this program the government required at least 18 students be involved during the year which led to eight more Peer Mentor students to travel to Japan for two weeks during spring break.

No FIT students attended CSUEB during the second trip but 10 ACE students were identified as ones who will travel to CSUEB in the summer.

During the spring break trip students got to partake in activities Murphy described as “cultural.”

“It was just a remarkable experience,” said Murphy.

Peer Mentor Samantha Gifford described the experience of going to Nagasaki where America dropped the Atomic bomb during World War II.

“We went to the bombing museum and it was an entirely different situation, it was amazing to see how much destruction America caused Japan and to see how they still welcome us,” she said.

Overall Gifford enjoyed the exchange experience and if given the opportunity would do it again in a heartbeat.

“It was absolutely amazing, quite the life changing experience,” she said.