Dr. Kaoru Ochiai, Croft Instructional Assistant Professor of Japanese, was born in Tokyo, Japan. She received her B.A. in English from Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, and her M.A. and Ph.D in TESOL from The University of Mississippi. She joined the faculty of the Croft Institute and the University's Department of Modern Languages in the fall of 2002. Dr. Ochiai's professional interests are second language acquisition (SLA), teaching methodologies, and comparative cultural studies of the United States and Japan. Her future research will emphasize learning styles and language teaching as well as socio-cultural aspects in language learning.