Hiroko Miyashita, a graduate student in SUNY Empire State College’s Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program, recently met Second Lady Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden, who also is a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College, advocates for community colleges across the nation on behalf of the Obama administration.

Miyashita and Biden were on hand at an open house for the Heads Up America Campaign, the administration’s proposal to make the first two years of community colleges tuition-free for students, held Nov. 4, on the City University of New York’s LaGuardia Community College campus.

Miyashita, who teaches Japanese at LaGuardia as a part-time member of the faculty, demonstrated shodo, Japanese calligraphy, by writing Mrs. Biden’s name and giving it to her as a souvenir of the open house.

As a SUNY Empire graduate student, Miyashita’s research interests are second-language acquisition and sociolinguistics. She also has strong interests in studying Japanese pop culture and the Japanese language.

In addition to her skills in shodo, she plays both koto, the Japanese harp, and shamisen, the Japanese banjo.