In summer 2020, a few months after the pandemic took hold of the country, Tomoko Miwa, 43, began to realize she wasn’t going to be able to travel to see her family, perhaps for quite a while. It was painful to think about not getting to share a meal with her mother and father, both in their 70s, something she’d planned to do at least once a year while studying abroad.
Miwa, who grew up in Nagoya, Japan, came to Colorado in 2018 to pursue a doctoral degree in clinical psychology at the University of Denver. She’d earned a graduate degree in the same field in Japan, but the schools in her home country didn’t offer the equivalent of the next step up. A mentor with whom Miwa had worked in Japan after graduation had a connection at DU and suggested Miwa look into the school. Miwa hesitated at first. In a way, she’d done this once before—and it hadn’t worked out the way she’d planned.
Miwa’s mother always encouraged her daughter to pursue a good education.
