Director of Programs and Grants, Mark Flanigan, is leaving the JICUF on July 15th after four years of service. Mark was a Rotary International Peace Fellow and Global House Tutor at ICU prior to his appointment at the JICUF. At the end of this month, he will move to Bangladesh to take up a new post, which he explains in detail in our interview.

JICUF: Please tell us when and how you started working for the JICUF.

Mark: I was actually in my second year as a Rotary Peace Fellow and graduate student at ICU when I first heard about JICUF. I was one of a small group of ICU students (both April and September) who had volunteered on a disaster relief mission up in Tohoku during Golden Week, helping a small fishing village in Ishinomaki that had been devastated by the tsunami. JICUF was interested in interviewing us since they were doing their own fundraising for Tohoku relief. My interview was published on the website and featured in the e-newsletter. Later, I saw that they were hiring for a new position in NYC and promptly applied. With my own background as a JET Program alumnus and ICU graduate student, I thought I might have a good chance. In the end, I was hired and happily started working at the JICUF not long after my June graduation from ICU.

JICUF: What have you enjoyed most during your four years at the JICUF?

Mark: For me, having the chance to continue my ICU connection beyond my two years on campus has been the most enjoyable aspect of these past four years in NYC. It was really a seamless transition, as I graduated in June of 2012 and was working and living in NYC just a couple of weeks later. Right away, I got involved with our dynamic staff in helping to plan the Aspen Forum as well as my first student recruitment trip to Seattle. I remain very grateful for the opportunity to have visited the ICU campus several times each year from fall 2012 up until my final official visit this past June. It was also a great benefit to my professional development to learn more about grantmaking and help start our own JICUF grants initiative this year, which has been really popular with both students and faculty. JICUF will provide approximately $100,000 in grants directly to our successful applicants on an annual basis.

JICUF: What was the most memorable event?

Mark: There are really too many to mention! Some highlights include returning to campus for the Aspen Forum and the Rethinking Peace Studies conference, hosting a special Tohoku fundraiser in partnership with the Embassy of Japan, traveling to places like Seattle, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Honolulu, and Washington DC for numerous alumni-focused and recruitment events, and meeting and mentoring new ICU Rotary Peace Fellows. Most recently, welcoming ICU students to NYC each summer for our Global Link program has been a nice way to keep in touch with current students and help them expand their own horizons. Going back to my time as a Peace Fellow and graduate student at ICU, working with such great professors and living in Global House were really meaningful to me. I very much enjoyed living on the verdant campus and being an active part of the university community as well as being able to access a major metropolitan area like Tokyo.

JICUF: Please tell us about your next adventure.

Mark: I will leave the JICUF and NYC in late July and start my new position as a WorldTeach volunteer at the Asian University for Women (AUW) in Chittagong, Bangladesh. AUW is a small liberal arts school that was founded in 2008 “to educate women to become highly motivated and effective professionals, leaders, and service-oriented citizens.” I will be serving as a visiting teacher to support students in The Access Academy, which is an intensive, year-long, pre-undergraduate residential program that helps students develop academically, socially, and culturally. The main focus of the academic curriculum is to foster English communication skills, critical thinking, problem-solving and strategies for lifelong learning and leadership. Most of these young women come from impoverished backgrounds and, for them, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pursue higher education with much-needed scholarship support. I was really moved to volunteer for this program after learning more about their extremely challenging situation. I may not have a lot of money to donate to them, but I do have my time, energy, and life experience to offer.

JICUF: Is there anything you would like to say to everyone in the ICU community?

Mark: I would like to say a very big THANK YOU and 「本当にお世話になりました」 to everyone that has made my experience so much fun these past six years since I first set foot on the ICU campus to take the summer course in Japanese. It’s been a true honor and privilege to be connected to so many ICU faculty, staff, students, administrators, alumni, trustees, and friends. Likewise, I have been so fortunate to work alongside my amazing colleagues and our trustees and counselors here at the JICUF since 2012. I simply can’t describe all the wonderful things I have been able to learn and the special people I have been able to meet through such associations, but it has really meant the world to me. On my final trip to ICU this June, I had the chance to meet up and talk with many faculty and staff I’d known over the past six years or so. One of them, Professor Gavin Whitelaw, told me he would soon be leaving ICU for a new position at Harvard University. He said the best time to leave a place you love is “when you will still miss it very much.” In the case of my time at both ICU and the JICUF, I agree with him 100%. I will miss everyone and everything quite deeply, but the world is small, and it’s not truly a goodbye, but simply a “mata, ne.”

Thank you, Mark!
You will be missed, but in the words of Charles Dickens, “The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”
またね！