Rotary fellowship leads to position at Japan university

Five years ago, Hiroyoshi "Hiro" Hiratsuka worked at Coastal Carolina University as an international programs coordinator and as a lecturer of Japanese. The Rotary Club of Conway (Rotary International District 7770) sponsored him for a World Peace Fellowship, a program aimed at equipping the next generation of government officials, diplomats and humanitarian leaders with skills to reduce the threat of war and violence. It led to his master's degree in peace studies.

In 2008, he became the first and only South Carolina resident to be awarded with this honor. As part of the fully-funded academic fellowship, Hiratsuka traveled back to his native Japan to study at Aoyama Gakuin University (AGU), International Christian University in Tokyo. 

He is now a faculty coordinator of Strategic Management and Intellectual Property Rights Program (SMIPRP) in the graduate school of business at AGU. “I’ve been working with a group of international students at AGU,” says Hiratsuka. “I’m responsible for designing cultural transition orientations and program evaluation for the graduate school.”

But he is used to transition. After he came to America in high school, he earned a bachelor's degree in international studies at Ramapo College of New Jersey and a master's degree in international education from the School of International Training in Brattleboro, Vt. He served as international internship coordinator at the University of Diusburg-Essen in Germany and returned to Vermont to work as group leader of the Freeman Asia Japan Teacher Training program before coming to CCU. 

Hiratsuka is still active in the International Rotary Club, where he acts as a special adviser on global grants and scholarships to District 2590, which is Yokohama and Kawasaki, Japan. He also provides grant writing and editing in English to international members who are ready to propose grants to Rotary International in the United States.