This conference is to honor Professor Michio Tsutsui for his distinguished scholarly achievements and to thank him for his leadership in Japanese language education.

Professor Tsutsui received a BS in Naval Engineering from Osaka University, Japan, and worked several years for IBM Japan as a systems engineer. In 1984 he earned a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Illinois Urbana­Champaign. In 1985 Prof. Tsutsui created the Japanese language program at MIT, which he directed until 1990. From 1990 until the present time, he has been a faculty member at the University of Washington, where he was hired to create and direct a “one of a kind” specialized program in Japanese, the Technical Japanese Program.

Professor Tsutsui is a national leader in technical Japanese language. He has written a number of articles on technical Japanese and on teaching technical Japanese to engineers and scientists, and he has given numerous presentations on these topics at national and international conferences. He has also organized workshops to promote collaboration among programs and individuals engaged in or interested in teaching technical Japanese. Additionally, he has been very active in promoting the use of technology for foreign language learning. He has led several CALL (Computer­Assisted Language Learning) projects at the University of Washington, including Language Partner and Language Evaluator, and has organized several CALL workshops.

Professor Tsutsui’s publications include A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar, A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar (coauthored with Seiichi Makino, published by The Japan Times); Tobira: Gateway to Advanced Japanese (editorial supervisor and a coauthor, published by Kurosio Publishers); numerous articles in Japanese linguistics, CALL, and Japanese for Specific Purposes; and several books of research papers (co-editor, published by Hitsuji-shobo, etc.).

Since 2011, Professor Tsutsui has also been an Adjunct Professor of Japanese Pedagogy in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, and will continue to teach summer intensive courses there after his retirement from the University of Washington in December 2015.