On Becoming the New Dean | Naoyuki Agawa (Dean of the Faculty of Policy Management)
2007.06.01
As of today, I have been appointed Dean of the Faculty of Policy Management. It is the last day of a week-long university-wide class cancellation due to a measles outbreak, and there are no students at SFC. There is nothing to mark the appointment of a new dean.
This is not the first time I have experienced a significant milestone in my life pass with no event to mark it. When I moved from a certain private junior high school, which was in turmoil due to campus disputes, to Keio Senior High School, there was no proper graduation ceremony. Three years later, when I entered the Department of Political Science in the Faculty of Law at Keio University from Keio Senior High School, there was no entrance ceremony because the university was on strike and locked out. Two years later, I studied abroad at Georgetown University in the United States and did not return to Keio, so I missed Keio's graduation ceremony. (This past March and April, as Acting Dean, I attended the Juku's graduation and entrance ceremonies for the first time). When I joined Sony in September after returning from the U.S., there was no company entrance ceremony. And on the day I became dean, the students were not here. The work of the dean itself is nothing new to me, as I had been serving as Acting Dean for some time. The only change is that the word "Acting" has been removed from my title.
But by next week, classes will be running as usual. In the morning, buses will start arriving in front of the main building, and the once-quiet SFC will suddenly become lively. Morning classes will proceed smoothly, and at lunchtime, the student cafeteria and co-op will be bustling. As evening approaches, the campus will finally quiet down, yet classes, club activities, group work, and meetings will continue in various classrooms and the Media Center. Eventually, night will fall, and SFC will fall into a brief slumber.
This class cancellation has made us realize, just a little, how important it is for the SFC community that such ordinary daily life continues. What if activities at SFC were never to resume? What if this campus were eventually overgrown with weeds and the buildings decayed into ruins—what would you all do?
Under a new dean who took office with almost no one noticing, I hope that education and research at SFC will continue to be actively pursued day by day, that their results will be shared with the world, that graduates will go on to their futures, and that new students will arrive. And then, as time passes, the dean will have disappeared, with no one noticing. This is what this lazy new dean hopes for.
(Date Published: 2007/06/01)