Toward a Fulfilling Autumn | Tomoki Kamo, Dean of the Faculty of Policy Management
2024.09.27
The sky, the wind, and the sounds all carry a hint of autumn. The summer vacation is coming to a close. The campus, with renewed energy and strength, will welcome the fall semester.
During the summer vacation, one of my duties as dean is to give presentations about the faculty. This year, I once again gave presentations at our affiliated schools (Keio Senior High School, Keio Girls Senior High School, Keio Shiki Senior High School, and Keio Shonan Fujisawa Senior High School). In mid-August, I spoke at an information session held at the Osaka City Campus . Additionally, from late July to early August, I took the opportunity of the Camp for Designing the Future to explain our faculty. What I have consistently conveyed at these information sessions is the purpose behind the cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary education and research that the Faculty of Policy Management and the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies have pursued, as well as the kind of education and research we aim to achieve.
Through these information sessions I have attended as dean over the past three years, I have reaffirmed two things. First, the principles that the Faculty of Policy Management and the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies have consistently upheld since their establishment in 1990—"problem finding and problem solving," "cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary education and research," and "practical wisdom"—are now shared by many educational and research institutions and have permeated society. The high school students attending these sessions use these terms to express their own aspirations. This can be seen as a positive evaluation of our educational and research activities. Second, precisely because of this, we are now required to show the new direction for the development of policy management studies that our faculty has cultivated.
What must we teach and research? The answer to this question needs to be built and presented through a shared understanding with my faculty colleagues. Of course, we have made such attempts repeatedly in the past. The book series "The Forefront of Policy Management" , published 20 years ago to mark the 10th anniversary of the faculty's founding, can be said to represent the collection of disciplines that my colleagues around the year 2000, a decade after our founding, considered to be the shape of policy management studies. And the research areas in each volume of the book series "Opening Up Policy Management" , published in the spring of 2023 , indicate the current collection of disciplines. As dean, my purpose in launching the book series "Opening Up Policy Management" was to structure and three-dimensionally visualize the scholarship of the Faculty of Policy Management, which develops "cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary education and research." I was concerned that if we did not do so, society would not understand what exactly we are teaching and researching. I wanted to overcome the weakness of a faculty that champions "cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary education and research."
It can be said that the strength of the Faculty of Policy Management and the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, which conduct cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary education and research, lies in their ability to quickly identify policy issues that present and future societies seek to solve, and to organize educational and research teams to overcome these challenges. Policy issues are what serve as a hub, connecting the expertise of the faculty members with education and research.
If you wish to understand the direction of development for education and research at the Faculty of Policy Management and the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, it may be a good idea to pay attention to the policy issues where multiple faculty members have formed teams to conduct education and research. You will see what the Faculty of Policy Management, the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, and SFC believe they must teach and research together with the students who will shape the future.
This autumn, the Open Research Forum will be held. After this autumn, research findings from several faculty teams will also be published as books. I hope you will pay attention to the form of education and research presented there.