Tom Gally

Bachelor of Arts (linguistics), University of California, Santa Barbara, 1978
Master of Arts (linguistics), University of Chicago, 1979
Master of Science (mathematics), University of Chicago, 1980

As I was born in 1957, I am one of the oldest faculty members in the Center for Global Education. I grew up in Southern California in the United States and attended the University of California at Santa Barbara. There, I majored in linguistics and studied Russian and Chinese. I also took many mathematics classes.

In graduate school at the University of Chicago, I received two master’s degrees, first in linguistics and then in mathematics. At that time, my interests were in the purely theoretical and abstract aspects of those fields, and I didn’t give much thought to practical applications. After working in staff positions at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan, I moved to Japan in 1983. At first, I didn’t know any Japanese, but living in Tokyo and being immersed in the culture drove me to study the language hard. I also came to understand the importance of practical competence in another language.

Two and a half years after I arrived, I started working as a freelance translator. I did work for many different Japanese companies and government agencies, translating documents of many types from Japanese to English. I also wrote advertising copy for Japanese companies, and I helped with the editing of more than a dozen English-Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries.

After joining the faculty of the University of Tokyo full-time in 2005, I taught and managed undergraduate English-language courses, as well as doing research on language education policy, lexicography, and related topics. I was the first manager of the ALESS program in the College of Arts and Sciences beginning in 2008, and I helped with the establishment of ALESA and FLOW. Since retiring from my full-time position in March 2023, I have been working part-time in this Center, teaching one GLA class each semester. I also help the university administration with English-language communications.

I work from my home in Yokohama. In my spare time, I enjoy playing piano, following developments in artificial intelligence, and playing with my young grandson.

The longer I teach, the more I find that I learn from my students. If the syllabus for my GLA class sounds interesting to you, please sign up so that we can learn together.