Today's Youth: A New Curriculum of Youth | Tomoyuki Kojima (Dean of the Faculty of Policy Management)
2006.08.18
Although it is now summer vacation, at SFC, the curriculum committee, led by its chairman, Professor Hagino, is working tirelessly, giving up its vacation to prepare for the implementation of the "Future-Pioneering Curriculum" next spring.
In the undergraduate program, a group of essential courses will be arranged for students, centered on the two main pillars of "Creation" and "Advanced," with the mandatory graduation project as the goal. The work began in earnest last fall, with a special curriculum task force appointed by the dean playing a particularly active role. This task force developed nearly the entire framework, from the basic concept of the new curriculum to the "refresher" courses—designed to help students acquire the perspectives and reconfirm the basic knowledge needed to shift their mindset toward "problem finding and solving," which is SFC's goal—and the establishment of the novel course structure of "Creation" and "Advanced."
The special task force was composed of young faculty members in their 30s, including some who are SFC alumni. While SFC will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2010, these task force members will be at SFC beyond its 40th anniversary. The members are in their 30s, and from my perspective, they are "today's youth." However, I am nothing but astonished and filled with admiration for their "excellent creativity, strong will, burning passion, courage that rejects cowardice, and adventurous spirit that casts aside ease."
Since its establishment, SFC has prided itself on leading other universities with a challenging spirit of "thinking and acting on the run." Fueled by the ideal of wanting to remain so 20 or 30 years from now, the special task force developed the basic policy for the "Future-Pioneering Curriculum." Samuel Ullman, who listed creativity, will, passion, courage, and an adventurous spirit as the conditions of "youth," said, "Old age arrives when one loses one's ideals." SFC is still in the prime of its "youth," and I too hope not to lose my "ideals."
(Posted: 2006/08/18)