"Sustainable Campus Program" Selected for the Design the Future Fund Program | Tomohiro Ichinose, Dean of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies
2023.07.11
In the "Okashira's Diary" entry published on March 7 , I announced the launch of a project related to campus sustainability. I am pleased to report that the "Sustainable Campus Program" proposed by SFC has been selected for the Design the Future Fund Program. This is a competitive fund within Keio University for educational programs that align with the objectives of the Design the Future Fund, and we were fortunate to be chosen from among many applicants.
The Sustainable Campus Program is a collaborative program involving all departments at SFC, namely the Faculty of Policy Management, the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care, the Graduate School of Media and Governance, the Graduate School of Health Management, and the Keio Shonan Fujisawa Junior and Senior High School. The program aims to achieve a sustainable campus as its outcome. Within the program, five projects will be advanced in mutual collaboration. Their respective themes are resource circulation, the natural environment, carbon neutrality (hereafter CN), health and community, and food and agriculture. The resource circulation project will be led by the Sachiko Tsukahara Lab, which has been working on initiatives such as waste separation and collection. The natural environment project will be handled by the Tomohiro Ichinose Lab, which has been conducting biological surveys on and off campus. The CN project will be advanced collaboratively by the Tsukahara and Ichinose Labs, with advice from Dr. Yosuke Arino, who has been teaching at the Faculty of Policy Management and the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies as a Guest Associate Professor (Part-time) since the 2022 academic year. The health and community project will be promoted by the Miki Akiyama Lab, which has been active on the theme of health in Fujisawa City, in collaboration with the Shima Ishikawa Lab of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care and the Yuko Oguma Lab of the Graduate School of Health Management. The food and agriculture project will be undertaken by the Yoko Hasebe Lab in cooperation with the local community, focusing on students' agricultural experiences and local production for local consumption in the Endo and Goshomi areas. In addition, an environmental project has been underway at the Senior High School under the guidance of teacher Hiroaki Narita, which will collaborate with the five projects to conduct outreach activities within Fujisawa City.
Before this selection was finalized, we held a pre-kickoff meeting on May 9 to share an overview of the five projects and the environmental project at the Senior High School. I was struck by how surprisingly little we knew about each other's various projects, despite being on the same campus. I hope that this Sustainable Campus Program will serve to connect these related projects. The campus is about to enter its summer break, but related Special Research Projects are also scheduled to be offered. Although earning credits is limited to students of the Faculty of Policy Management and the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, I strongly encourage them to consider enrolling. We also warmly welcome inquiries from anyone interested in the Sustainable Campus Program.