The American Association of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ) has selected Prof. Mari Noda to receive the AATJ Lifetime Achievement Award.  Prof. Noda, who retired in 2023, will receive the award at the 2025 AATJ Conference on Thursday, March 13, 2025, in Columbus.  She will also deliver the keynote speech. The AATJ Lifetime Achievement Award (https://www.aatj.org/professional-development/aatj-lifetime-achievement-awards/) recognizes individuals who have demonstrated a lifetime of exceptional contributions to Japanese language and culture education at both national and international levels. Only a select group of extraordinarily distinguished scholars have been recognized with this honor. 

 

Prof. Noda taught in DEALL for 33 years, between 1990 and 2023. She founded the Performed Culture Approach to East Asian language pedagogy with Prof. Galal Walker, and has been a champion of Japanese language education. In DEALL, she supervised 17 MA students and 12 PhD students who currently teach at US and Japanese universities, including University of Pittsburgh, California State University, Fullerton, Portland State University, Middlebury College, and Kansai Gaidai University. Renown for her excellent coursework, the majority of DEALL MA and PhD graduates in both Chinese and Japanese now utilize the performed culture approach at their respective institutions. As quality training is essential to advancing Japanese language education, Prof. Noda has dedicated enormous amounts of time and energy to teacher training in DEALL and other institutions. Dr. Tom Mason, the director of ALLEX Foundation, estimates that Prof. Noda has trained close to 2,000 instructors in their program since 2003. She also has written numerous books and articles on the performed culture approach in Japanese and East Asian language pedagogy, materials preparation, curriculum development, study abroad, and multimedia materials. Outstanding among these publications are two textbook series, Japanese: The Spoken Language and NihonGo Now. She has generously shared her ideas at conferences more than 130 times.

 

Dr. Patricia Wetzel, one of the nominators of the award, says of Prof. Mari Noda that, "she is the consummate educator, with an impact on students that makes her unforgettable. There can be no higher praise of a teacher than that." Dr. Hiroaki Kawamura, another nominator of the award, writes about Prof. Noda's contributions to grassroots exchange and says "Dr. Noda's contributions are far beyond traditional Japanese language teaching and research. In my mind, she embodies the goal of AATJ, i.e., impacting the world through Japanese language teaching, learning and research."

 

Upon receiving the good news from AATJ, Prof. Noda stated that,  "I feel honored and humbled to be selected for this award. It stands as a testament to the great work of all the students and colleagues I have had the privilege of working with. Indeed, I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with exceptionally talented and dedicated individuals not only within DEALL but also at such institutions as Cornell, Portland State, and the ALLEX Foundation. If I were to look for any negative side to this award, it seems to suggest that I’m old. My journey isn’t over. I look forward to witnessing more of the fantastic things we can achieve together."

 

Please join us in congratulating Prof. Mari Noda!