A New Two Years for Me and SFC | Tomoyuki Kojima (Dean, Faculty of Policy Management)
October 7, 2005
At SFC, new terms for deans and graduate school chairs began on October 1. Newly appointed for two-year terms are Professor Masaru Tomita as Dean of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies and Professor Yoko Sato as Dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care. Professor Kenji Kumasaka of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies and Professor Choichi Yoshino of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care have completed their terms. We are truly grateful for their hard work over their four-year terms. Professor Yoshino will continue as Chair of the Graduate School of Health Management, while Professor Hideyuki Tokuda, Chair of the Graduate School of Media and Governance, and I, as Dean of the Faculty of Policy Management, will continue to serve in our roles for another two years.
The next two years will be a very important time for both Keio University and SFC. In 2008, Keio University will celebrate its 150th anniversary, a first for a private institution of higher learning in Japan. The 150th Anniversary Commemorative Project Committee has already been officially launched and has begun planning specific anniversary projects and fundraising activities to realize its goals of "Leading to the Future" and "Design the Future." As a campus of Keio University, SFC will also be involved in the 150th anniversary projects.
Now in its 16th year since its establishment in 1990, SFC, as the newest campus within Keio, has been working to embody the founding principles of Keio University in a manner befitting the new era. The core of these efforts has been to cultivate individuals who can identify and solve the problems of the coming new era, and to send back "students from the future" to the "future" as professionals in problem-solving.
SFC's efforts toward the 150th anniversary will continue in the same direction. To enable more "energetic" as well as "intelligent" students with a strong sense of inquiry to join SFC, we want to try new initiatives for AO (Admissions Office) entrance examinations, general entrance examinations, and advancement from within Keio through collaborations with high schools, regional Mita-kai, and the Athletic Association. To further instill "problem identification and solving" type education in our students, we aim to enhance the curriculum centered on research projects and encourage students' growth through their proactive engagement in research. We also want to devise a system to more actively incorporate domestic and international fieldwork and internships, which are necessary for the practical application of problem identification and solving, into the curriculum.
As Japan's first Faculty of Policy Management, establishing SFC's "Policy Management" as a discipline is an urgent task. In 2003, we published the four-volume series "The Forefront of Policy Management," but the next step is to clearly define the "Policy Management" that SFC has been developing as an integrated science. The formation of the COE (Center of Excellence) "Program for the Advancement of Policy Management in Japan and Asia" is addressing this very issue. We strongly hope that the five-year COE will provide an answer to this challenge by its conclusion in March 2007.
SFC aims to be " The University that Creates the Future " (a book edited by the late Professor Hiromu Sempuku, published by Keio University Press), and we hope that not only faculty but also staff, students, and our more than 10,000 alumni will further practice "autonomy, decentralization, and cooperation" toward this goal.
(Posted: October 7, 2005)