Connecting the Stars | Tomoki Kamo, Dean of the Faculty of Policy Management
2024.07.22
A hot summer has arrived. The cicadas started chirping a few days ago. At dawn, there is a time when a delicate balance is struck between body temperature, room temperature, and the outside air. This moment is very pleasant, but for the rest of the day, we must find ways to coexist with the heat.
This hot summer, our colleagues at SFC continue to share their educational and research activities in their respective fields. I would like to introduce a few official opportunities. On July 31 (Wed) and August 1 (Thu), SFC will hold the Camp for Designing the Future 2024 . At SFC, which will serve as the main venue, four workshops will be held: "Entrepreneurship and Management Workshop for High School Students: Designing the Future with Startups," "Multilingual Education Workshop: Reconsidering the Role of Community in Language Learning," "Inquiry Exploration Workshop: Everything Begins with a Question," and "Crafting Workshop: Discover, Imagine, Create, and Shape the Landscape."
On the same dates, a workshop titled "Food and Health Workshop: How We, as the Yukichi Fukuzawa of the Reiwa Era, Should Engage with Japanese Food Culture" will be held at the Yamagata venue, the Tsuruoka Town Campus of Keio (TTCK). Then, a little later, from August 8 (Thu) to August 10 (Sat), the Camp for Designing the Future 2024 will move to the Tottori venue (Tottori City Hall Main Building) to hold the "Augmented Town Workshop: Weaving New Human Connections with XR and Robotics," co-hosted by Tottori Prefecture and WebDINO Japan with the cooperation of Tottori City.
This year again, the workshops offered at the Camp for Designing the Future cover a wide range of key areas. Entrepreneurship and management, language and communication, inquiry-based learning, design, space, and information, food and health, and XR, robotics, and the city—these all visualize the breadth of education and research at SFC.
On August 20 (Tue), the Faculty of Policy Management and the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies will hold an information session at the Keio Osaka City Campus . I will be speaking along with Tomohiro Ichinose, Dean of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies. A key point of this information session that should not be missed is that it includes a mock lecture by Kazunori Takashio, Dean of the Graduate School of Media and Governance. This collaboration between the undergraduate faculties and the graduate school is not a coincidence; it is intentional. This is because education and research at SFC's Faculty of Policy Management and Faculty of Environment and Information Studies are not designed to be completed in the short four years of an undergraduate degree but are intended to extend into the master's program at the graduate school. As society becomes more diverse and complex, and the challenges we face become increasingly interdisciplinary, the significance of advancing to a master's program to cultivate the skills needed to forge a path for the next 30 years after graduation is greater than ever. Furthermore, on the evening of August 20, following the information session, Dean Kazunori Takashio of the Graduate School of Media and Governance will speak at the Knowledge Capital SpringX Chou Gakkou , held in the same building as the Keio Osaka City Campus. This is also an event to watch.
The campus is also beginning to work on activities planned for the autumn, beyond the summer. We have decided to hold the SFC EXPO on November 23 (Sat) and November 24 (Sun), and preparations are now underway. This event brings together under the banner of an "expo" several opportunities that were previously held separately: the Open Research Forum (ORF), which showcases SFC's research activities to the public; the open campus for high school students interested in the Faculty of Policy Management, the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, and the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care; and the Fujisawa Citizen's Lecture Series, co-hosted with Fujisawa City.
Preparations are now well underway for the " Town Planning Idea Contest 2024 ," a special project for this expo.
In its city master plan, Fujisawa City has designated the area around SFC as the "Forest of Health and Culture District." In this district, urban infrastructure development is underway with the aim of creating a "Campus Town that Creates the Future," which will continue to develop sustainably through industry-academia-government-citizen collaboration, centered on SFC's technological clusters and academic and research functions in fields such as information, environment, and medicine. As part of this future-oriented town planning, the "Town Planning Idea Contest 2024" is soliciting ideas on the theme of creating a park.
During this hot summer, SFC is rolling out a rapid succession of events to share its diverse educational and research activities with the public. I see the essence of this as "drawing constellations" by connecting the stars scattered across the night sky. Among SFC faculty, there is a saying that compares the diversity of academic fields on campus to a star-filled sky. Stars are guideposts for navigation. As societal challenges change, so do the necessary academic fields—the stars. It is safe to say that their number is now increasing. How do we connect these stars to draw constellations and show the way toward solving problems? I believe this is SFC's strength and its appeal.
The appeal of SFC lies not only in the diversity of academic fields that support its education and research but also in the richness of ideas that connect these different fields. I encourage you to pay close attention to the educational and research activities that SFC will be sharing this summer.
The 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games will soon be held in Paris. Current Keio students and Keio University alumni have been selected as athletes, and faculty members will serve as coaches . During the lunch break on July 10 (Wed), we held a send-off rally for the Keio student athletes, Keio University alumni athletes, and coaches from SFC: Hisashi Mizutori, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Policy Management, and Kenta Chida, Senior Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Policy Management. It will be a hot summer for the world of athletics as well. I hope to draw energy to get through the summer by watching the inspiring performances of our athletes and coaches in Paris.