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Comprehensive Youth Development Project

April. 1. 2010

Expanding upon the accomplishments of its activities concerning human resources development over the past five years, the Center for Engineering Education Development (CEED) is launching a new undertaking called the ‘Comprehensive Youth Development Project’ (hereafter “the Project”) starting in this school year. Working in collaboration with the Office of Human Resources Development, the Project will be implemented over a six-year period between 2010 and 2016. Operation costs associated with the Project will be covered by the special expenditure reserve provided by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The Project details are as follows:

Purpose and Objective of the Project

The Project aims to develop world-class human resources who have the creativity, broad perspective and flexible mind-set to assume leadership roles internationally and who will succeed in diverse fields in society. To achieve this, through the Project, we will attempt to improve attitudes concerning young scholars’ role in society among junior scholars, business organizations and university teaching staff. In addition, we will develop and test a program, intended for university-wide implementation, for cultivating cosmopolitanism and leadership skills to foster future leaders who will learn and amalgamate professional and international skills that will equip them to perform and function as globally-minded leaders. The end product of the two phases described above is an integrated human resources development system which tracks students from their admission to university until getting a tenure-track job.

Overview of the Project

To build an integrated human resources development system that can track students from their admission to university until getting a tenure-track job, we will carry out the project with a focus on the following two features:

a. ‘The construction and promotion of a system to improve the attitudes of young scholars towards careers for graduates,’ a university-wide project, will be implemented largely by the Office of Human Resources Development.

b. ‘The development and implementation of a program to cultivate a cosmopolitan mind-set and leadership skills,’ a pioneering project, will be implemented at the Center for Engineering Education Development (CEED) and a detailed evaluation of the project, in preparation for eventual university-wide implementation, will be performed by the Office of Human Resources Development.

1. The construction and promotion of a system to improve the attitudes of young scholars towards careers for graduates (a university-wide project)

1.1 Construction of a web system to help improve students’ interest in career development (Hi-System)

Expanding upon the university’s proven interactive web system, we will construct a new system which provides junior scholars, businesses and university teaching staff with the convenience of interactive real-time viewing and the ability to search information with regard to career development for junior scholars.

1.2 Face-to-face career development opportunities

We arrange internship information workshops and company tours during which junior scholars and company representatives can meet face-to-face to provide opportunities for junior scholars and businesses to build relationships. We also arrange individual counseling sessions with career mentors to help junior scholars gain a better understanding of potential career paths. Additionally, we offer round-table discussion sessions and publish brochures to cultivate an interest in improving the attitude concerning career development for junior scholars among the parties involved, including the university teaching staff.

1.3 Promotion of career development based on the university’s track record with career development for junior scholars

We consolidate and analyze a variety of information concerning the careers of junior scholars and publish it via Hi-System. Specifically, we collect various information including self-promotion of junior scholars, assessments of students of this university by businesses and employment data for students (DC and PD) reported by teaching staff of the respective faculties. By making these pieces of information widely available, we aim to improve the attitudes of junior scholars towards their career development.

2. The development and implementation of a program to cultivate a cosmopolitan mind-set and leadership skills (a pioneering project)

2.1 Building an overseas internship hub

In conjunction with finding internship hosts overseas, working in cooperation with businesses, universities and research institutes abroad, we are developing a structure (including an information desk) to address a potentially large increase in the number of students taking foreign internships and a system for risk management. At the same time, we are developing a program for accepting interns from universities abroad. Through the activities described above, we are creating a hub for international internships to manage and operate the dispatch and acceptance of interns, to offer internship education on a regular basis and to significantly improve the international mobility of human resources.

2.2 Development of a bilingual e-learning system

Making use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), we are developing an interactive bilingual e-learning system to provide an education environment which allows student participation in specialized courses from overseas locations. To expand the double-degree program, we have realized an international collaboration in higher education using the interactive bilingual e-learning system mentioned earlier by developing a credit recognition model for distance education and are promoting the use of that system to provide international students with a learning support environment. With the interactive bilingual e-learning system described above in place, we look forward to a dramatic improvement in international mobility in higher education.

Related link

Center for Advanced Human Resource Education and Development, Hokkaido University: http://www2.synfoster.hokudai.ac.jp/