About Us
Western Michigan University’s links to Japan date back more than 50 years, with WMU’s first Japanese alumnus earning a graduate degree in psychology in 1955. In 1961, the first academic partnership with a Japanese university occurred when Keio University sent a group of 66 students and three professors to WMU for a Summer Institute program. Currently, more than 500 WMU alumni reside in Japan.
More recently, efforts on both sides of the Pacific Ocean have resulted in the establishment of WMU’s Michitoshi Soga Japan Center. For more than 35 years, Dr. Soga, a WMU professor emeritus of physics, worked tirelessly to establish a network of connections in West Michigan for individual visitors, as well as for businesses and Japanese partner universities and colleges. The Center is one of a number of centers that exist under the auspices of the Diether H. Haenicke Institute for International and Area Studies. The Haenicke Institute was established in 1998 by the WMU Board of Trustees to promote globalization and internationalization of the academic domain of Western Michigan University.