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| Venue of the symposium |
Four sessions were concurrently held in each room.
A. Reaching out to internationally mobile students: promotional activities and overseas offices
B. Managing degree programs in English: admissions, curriculum, and pedagogy
C. Internationalizing the campus: support system and accommodations
D. Internationalization in the eyes of students: voice of students
The most interesting session was D, which was facilitated solely by international students who came to Japan through the G30 Project. To name some of the opinions that were raised at the venue, international students often have difficulty in entering the community of Japanese students. Even though they want to join some clubs, there are no brochures in English. In addition, the support environment for people with various cultural backgrounds has not caught up with the real situation—Islamic students chronically cannot find space to do prayer, and there is a lack of medical experts who can communicate in English.
Prof. Masahiro Yamaguchi was invited from Tohoku University, and delivered a presentation at session C. He talked about how Tohoku University handled the situation after the Great East Japan Earthquake suggesting several patterns of action that international students took. He also introduced Tohoku University’s unique program for both International and Japanese students to co-study and earn credit at the same time.
In a different room, 13 universities presented their activities with an original poster that lit up the whole space with nice photos and illustration.
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| Prof. Masahiro Yamaguchi Poster Session |
Now the internationalization of Japanese universities is unstoppable. Thanks to the G30 Project, many university staff became aware of aspects of universities abroad. There is so much to be reformed, but the selected 13 universities for G30 surely accelerated internationalization and preparations for it in the future.