School News
President Tony Jones Honored by Osaka University
 By Lamaretta Simmons
In recognition for his many years of accomplishments in international exchanges through the arts, Tony Jones, president of The School of the Art Institute, has been named as Honorary Director of the Board of Directors at Japan-s Osaka University of Arts.
"[Osaka] is a sister school, and we have a special relationship with Japan. I have been going to Japan since 1982. So, this is really very special, and to be honored by such a prestigious institution I thought was quite wonderful," said Jones of the appointment.
While the new title will not distract Jones from his primary duties at SAIC, he did mention that the ongoing relationship between the two arts schools is one that he is very proud of.
"I think we have probably had a longer association with Japan than almost every other country. We have photographs going back to 1925 showing students from Japan. We have students from Korea, Japan and China ... so we know that [for] 80 years plus we've been having students coming from Asia, and so we created the relationship with Osaka."
SAIC has an exchange program with Osaka University, which has primarily the same visual arts course offerings as SAIC. For over half a century, the Tsukamoto Gakuin Institute, centered at the Osaka University of Arts, has distinguished itself as one of Japan's leading institutions for art education.
The exchange program between SAIC and OUA is a great opportunity for the two cultures and schools to merge; however, Jones said it is often harder to find American students who want to go study in Japan.
"Frankly, the difficulty is not the students who want to come from Osaka to us, there are lots of those, it's that it is very difficult... for us to send students there. But we have had students going and I think we have one there now." Jones added that the language barrier and finding host families for American exchange students are the two biggest hurdles to overcome.
Yet, despite those hurdles, the relationship between the international community and SAIC has steadily grown over the past decade or so, with an increase in international students, in particular those from Asia.
"Overall, if you go back fifteen years, the [international] student enrollment [of SAIC] in 1985 was about five percent of the total school enrollment, now international students are about 12 percent, so we've gone up quite a bit. Oddly, if you look at all the other major professional schools in the U.S., Cal-Arts, Pratt, Cleveland, Rhode Island we're the lowest [in terms of international enrollment]," Jones said.
Jones, who has been honored with numerous awards from various international institutions over the years, was surprised with the honor during a recent speaking engagement at Osaka University.
Jones was named president of SAIC in 1986. In 1992, Jones was appointed director of the Royal College of Art in London. He returned to SAIC in 1996 as president of the school and co-chief executive officer of the Art Institute.
Among his other accolades and awards are: Scotland's Newbery Medal (1986); Honorary Professor, The University of Wales (1995); Director of the Glasgow School of Arts (1980-1986); Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art and Honorary Member of the American Institute of Architects.
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