Featured Alumni
Here is a glimpse at what some of our program alumni are doing now as leaders in their field, and ongoing dedication to our institutional mission of advancing social, economic, and environmental justice.
Ari Witkin
Japan and Its Buddhist Traditions 2008
Goucher College
“Today, 4 years after first departing for Japan, I am currently living and working at the Pearlstone Center in Reisterstown, Maryland. Pearlstone is a Jewish conference and retreat center as well as an organic farm and experiential education institute. Here at Pearlstone I serve as the Programs Coordinator and a lead educator – teaching program participants of all ages and backgrounds about the environment, sustainable agriculture, and the Jewish tradition of seeking justice in our communities through agricultural practice. Living in intentional community with the people whom I work with side by side everyday is a life ripe with opportunity to reflect upon and use all that I learned while studying in Japan.”
Jasna Rudolfa
Japan and Its Buddhist Traditions 2010
Bucknell University
“The 2010 Japan and Its Buddhist Traditions program had such a strong impact on me that, upon returning to Bucknell University after the program, I changed the focus of my academic studies. I found the Buddhist concepts of selflessness, universal kindness, and the bodhisattva ideal of salvation for all to be intellectually fascinating and personally challenging to realistically implement, especially in a society such as the U.S. that prizes independence and its volatile relative, selfishness. I further explored these ideas in the ethics and moral philosophy classes I took as a student majoring in religion and East Asian studies, eager to provide a different perspective I developed while in Japan to my seminars that focused primarily on Western scholarship. This May (2012) I graduated Summa Cum Laude, as well as a new member of Phi Beta Kappa and the recipient of the 2012 Bucknell Prize in Religion, the 2012 Walter M. and Florence K. Davis Prize in Religion, and the 2012 CBS/Sony Prize in Japanese Studies. I now write articles for Phi Beta Kappa’s The Key Reporter and am considering attending graduate school in the future to pursue studies in comparative ethics and moral philosophy.” More information about Jasna’s current activities may be found on her personal website: http://www.jasna-rodulfa.com/. (Picture: Jasna during a morning of alms-giving in Fukui Prefecture.)
Japan and Its Buddhist Traditions 2007
Oberlin College
Dylan attended the Japan and Its Buddhist Traditions (JBT) program in the fall of 2007 and fell in love with Kyoto. After graduating from Oberlin College in 2009, he spent a year at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama, and upon completion moved to Kyoto, where he has lived since then. He is currently receiving a Japanese Ministry of Education scholarship to study at the Shin Buddhism affiliated Otani University, where he is doing research on the history of the use of philosophy to interpret Buddhism in modern Japan. In the fall of 2012, he was the teaching assistant for JBT’s Japanese Religions course. Dylan says he values his experience on the program for exposing him to not only the wide variety of Buddhist practices in Japan, but also to the people and cultures there.
