Frank M. Gagliardi Professor of Japanese, Emerita
Your colleagues and students describe you as “a private person with a big heart who has done so much for the Japanese program and our students and faculty.”
Students who struggled in language courses especially benefited from your close personal attention. For your very popular Winter Study course, “1,200 Years of Kyoto Culture,” you often gave preference to people who had never been outside our time zone. Yet you are equally admired among advanced students for your tutorials on Japanese language and culture, offered in both Japanese and English.
Faculty colleagues speak warmly of your dedication to their advancement as teachers and scholars. As chair of Asian studies, you advised visiting faculty as thoughtfully as you did full-time colleagues. You led important curricular changes, too, adopting a new textbook that made Japanese language study accessible to students with varied learning styles. Such vision made you the perfect choice to direct the highly regarded Associated Kyoto Program during its recent 50th anniversary.
You end every semester with a sushi and karaoke party, where you lovingly carve fish for your students with a knife crafted by a master sword maker in Kyoto. Through such gestures of care and attention, you have helped make our Japanese program, and the campus, a hub of both learning and cultural vitality.
I hereby declare you the Frank M. Gagliardi Professor of Japanese, Emerita, entitled to all the rights, honors and privileges appertaining thereto.
June 8, 2025