Seiichi Makino received his Ph.D. in linguistics in 1968 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is an internationally prominent Japanese linguist and scholar who is recognized throughout the world for his scholarship and for his many publications. Before beginning his tenure at Princeton University in 1991, he taught Japanese language, linguistics, and culture at the University of Illinois while training lower division language coordinators. He is an experienced ACTFL oral proficiency trainer in Japanese and frequently trains Japanese instructors internationally in proficiency-oriented instruction and in the administration of the Oral Proficiency Interview. Professor Makino has been the Academic Director of the Japanese Pedagogy M.A. Summer Program at Columbia University since 1996. He also directs the Princeton-in-Ishikawa Summer Program. In 2014, the Japanese government honored Dr. Seiichi Makino with a decoration: The Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, for his outstanding contributions in the mutual academic exchanges between Japan and the United States and the development of Japanese language education. Yukiko Abe Hatasa received her Ph.D. in linguistics in 1992 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has taught all levels of Japanese for over twenty-five years, and has worked on curriculum development and teacher training in five major institutions in the US, Australia, and Japan. She is known nationwide as one of the premier Japanese methodologists in the US and Japan. She is currently a professor of Japanese pedagogy at Hiroshima University. Kazumi Hatasa received his Ph.D. in education in 1989 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently a professor at Purdue University and Director of the Japanese School at Middlebury College. He is recognized internationally for his work in software development for the Japanese language and distributes most of his work as freeware over the Internet.
