Obama issues Executive Order to expand tourism through increased visa processing capacity

On January 19, 2012, President Obama issued executive order designed to increase tourism in the U.S. by expanding and accelerating visa-application processing by at least 40 percent for countries like Brazil and China and adding more countries to the Visa Waiver Program, which currently allows tourists from 36 nations to skip the visa process. The order also calls for the creation of Task Force on Travel and Competitiveness charged with creating a national strategy for increasing domestic and international travel to the U.S.

Click here to read the full Executive Order.

A.C.E. /STEP-EIKEN sign Memorandum of Understanding with The American Association of State Colleges and Universities

On December 11, 2011, A.C.E. /STEP-EIKEN signed a Memorandum of Understanding with The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), a non-profit, association of 400 accredited public colleges, universities and systems of public higher education throughout the USA.  The MOU agrees “to work together to assist member academic institutions in U.S. and Japan to develop cooperative programs that will be mutually beneficial to Japanese higher education institutions and American AASCU member colleges and universities.”

A Grand Beginning for the New Year as A.C.E. Opens at URI

A.C.E. celebrated the opening of the new A.C.E. Language Institute at the University of Rhode Island on January 19, 2012, just days before the celebration of the Lunar New Year on January 23. This holiday marks the upcoming year of the Dragon in many Eastern cultures – a symbol of good fortune and power.  A.C.E. wishes all of our institutes and partners a fortuitous and productive year ahead. Congratulations to all those who helped make the launch of A.C.E. at URI possible.

Former WLCA student Arman Kehlhofer wins year abroad in Trabzon, Turkey

A.C.E. World Language & Culture Ambassadors (WLCA), formerly World Language Programs, recently received a touching email from the father of a former WLCA student saying, “We appreciate the work A.C.E. does in getting young people interested in learning languages and learning about different cultures!”

In 2009, his son Arman Kehlhofer attended WLCA’s  STARTALK  summer camp on Farsi language and Persian culture, an experience Arman says “really helped him with his Farsi skills.” Since then, Arman has continued down a path of international exploration and education. While continuing his Farsi studies, Arman has also taken on Turkish, Spanish, and German. Most recently, he was awarded a NSLI-Y Scholarship from the U.S. State Department for a year-long immersion program abroad in Trabzon, Turkey during the 2011-2012 academic year. When he returns, Arman plans to attend the University of Washington to pursue his studies in Linguistics and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, also hoping to add Arabic to the mix.