P-CEN welcomed Professor Mayumi Shirasawa of National University Corporation- Tsukuba University of Technology (NTUT) as a visiting research scholar at RIT/NTID for the current academic year, September 2013 to August 2014. Dr. Shirasawa proposed a yearlong project entitled: A study toward ensuring high-quality postsecondary education to students who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing in Japan. This proposal has been supported by the Nippon Foundation of Japan. During her stay in Rochester, she will “analyze how universities in the U.S. provide high-level academic education to Deaf students with a central focus on access service in the Rochester Institute of Technology. By comparing the findings to the situation in Japanese pioneer universities, she hopes to discover exactly what Japanese universities need to introduce”. Dr. Shirasawa has a long history of collaboration with NTID, having worked closely with the PEN-International project in establishing the Postsecondary Education Programs Network of Japan (PEPNet-Japan), modeled on NTID’s PEPNet.

Dr. Shirasawa is living on campus and attending sign language and other courses as she pursues her research.