Enhancing and Communicating the Appeal of the Faculty: Satoko Nagata, Dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care
There is an organization called the Association of Private Nursing Colleges and Universities, and its University Management and Administration Committee carries out projects aimed at improving the management and operation of nursing colleges. As part of these efforts, an online training session titled "Effective Student Recruitment and Quality Assurance of Education in Private Universities" was held recently. Lectures were given on effective student recruitment based on the latest entrance examination trends and the concept of quality assurance in education. Online training on student recruitment was also held last year. This is against the backdrop of a declining 18-year-old population and a downward trend in recruitment ratios for health and medical faculties, including nursing, due to social conditions. Increasing the number of students who wish to enter nursing faculties is a common and urgent issue for member schools of the association.
Experts on higher education advancement noted that to create a virtuous cycle between student recruitment and education, it is important to visualize student growth qualitatively and quantitatively and to publicize this to gain the understanding and consensus of stakeholders. At that time, it was emphasized that it is important to publicize the PDCA cycle process for educational improvement—including "goal setting, formulation of assessment plans, visualization of learning outcomes, data analysis and discussion based on it, and actual improvement"—in other words, what kind of university initiatives led to what kind of student growth. Furthermore, the importance of specifically showing junior and senior high school students and their parents how studying at that faculty leads to their future was pointed out once again. On the other hand, it was mentioned that nursing colleges, like other medical faculties, face the challenge of how to express the individuality of each university while being subject to constraints such as designation regulations.
In the Model Core Curriculum for Nursing Education, for which a revised version was presented in 2024, "Competency-Based Education" aimed at visualizing learning outcomes was introduced, and the specific number of items for qualities and abilities to be achieved upon graduation reached 756. Additionally, to ensure clinical competence after graduation, it is argued that more practical nursing education should be conducted within basic education, and efforts toward this are underway. While the content to be implemented as nursing education becomes increasingly diverse, sophisticated, and precise, it is a difficult challenge to simultaneously bring out the characteristics of the university. However, I would like to put our heads together and re-examine the curriculum to leverage the strengths of this faculty. Furthermore, while linking with the efforts toward the certified evaluation and accreditation of the entire Juku, I intend to consider the PDCA cycle for educational improvement and make great use of next year's 25th-anniversary commemorative projects to communicate the appeal of this faculty to many people.
In closing, I was appointed Dean of the Faculty in October and have been spending my days receiving guidance and support from many people. I will strive to further enhance the appeal of the faculty and deliver it to as many people as possible, and I look forward to your continued support.