2025/10/14

On Friday, October 3, a delegation of 17 people led by Professor Monica Feixas from the Zurich University of Teacher Education (PH Zurich), Switzerland's largest teacher education university, visited Kyoto University of Foreign Studies (KUFS).

The visit was made thanks to a personal connection with Ralph Schildknecht of PH Zurich's Institut Unterstrass, who was an international student at KUFS in 2005 and was able to reacquaint himself with everyone in Kyoto for the first time in roughly two decades.

As part of the welcome session, Niklaus Weigelt, who is a first-year student in the KUFS Department of Global Studies, gave a video presentation. He delivered greetings in both German and English, which put everyone at ease.

This was followed by a presentation in German by Department of German Studies student Kosuke Okamoto, who provided an introductory overview of the university and talked about his own study abroad experience. The visitors posed various questions to Mr. Okamoto, such as why he had chosen to study German and which things proved challenging during his time abroad, wrapping up the presentation on a pleasant note.

KUFS Institute for Liberal Arts and Sciences Professor Eric Hawkinson gave a presentation regarding his research on education and digital technologies.

This included a hands-on portion in the MAICO Immersive Learning Lab (MAICO: Multimedia Access for Independent Curricular Objectives), which led to enthusiastic discussion regarding the future of technology integration in education.

Ms. Feixas took some time to talk about the Swiss education system and activities at PH Zurich, which was a rewarding opportunity to exchange ideas about and deepen mutual understanding of Japan and Switzerland in regard to numbers of official languages, education system differences and so forth.

Mr. Schildknecht also shared some of his memories from his time studying at KUFS, and talked about his life thereafter. According to him, fellow KUFS exchange program participants and KUFS graduates in Switzerland still get together to meet on a regular basis. The ways in which the relationships among these international students have persisted, transcending both time and international borders, is truly inspirational.

This visit raised expectations for the further development of the KFS family worldwide.

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