Project

Characteristics
Participants who share a particular social concern form a team by assigning roles among themselves and work together to propose solutions within a set period (approximately 10 months). At the end of the term, the team presents its findings and submits a written report. This is a research activity based on teamwork.
A distinctive feature of this program is that students develop teamwork skills while engaging in a series of processes essential in the professional world; setting goals, planning and scheduling, managing progress, and proposing solutions as members of a team. Through this activity, each student has the opportunity to exercise leadership while also cultivating cooperation as a team member, thereby gaining practical skills directly applicable to real-world situations.

Themes


Themes are selected based on participants’ awareness of social issues, focusing on topics that can be researched from the perspective of young people. Rather than choosing topics out of simple interest, participants are encouraged to deeply explore questions such as “Why is this issue worth addressing?” and “What kind of value would solving this problem bring to society?”

Format and Frequency


Teams proceed with their projects through teamwork-based activities such as confirming the problem’s significance, conducting surveys of up to 1,000 respondents, interviewing relevant stakeholders, and compiling their research findings.
Each team divides roles among its members, and the frequency of research activities depends on each person’s responsibility. On average, there are about two official project meetings per month where all members gather to share updates and coordinate their progress.

＊　Map of past overseas regional studies destinations

Project2013 “Substantial Study of ‘Global Human Resource’ by University Students”

The expression ‘global human resource(GHR)’ has been well known for a while. In Japan many universities and companies have been working on this GHR training, yet still there is no concrete vision agreed by all parties. Perhaps this is because the definition of GHR may be vague and unknown. It seems to us at KIP that there is a basic misunderstanding of the meaning within the trainers and trainees of university, company, and students. In this program, KIP will investigate the differences and gaps between the GHR that the universities want to provide, the companies want to hire, and the students want to receive. By making this clear, the three groups, universities, companies, and students. We hope to provide a foundation to reach a consensus, an appropriate and suitable way of training will be established, and hopefully create true ‘global human resource’ that will contribute to the world.

Activities

• 1000 students’ survey (including American students)
• Interviews to companies in various fields, including US companies in Japan and Japanese companies in US
• Interviews to major universities in both countries, including ‘Liberal Arts’ universities
• Discussions of the employment issue with the students in America and in Japan
• Interviews to members of Japanese American society – usiness connections to US
• Home stay or dormitory stay (will try to do our best)

Project2012″Dialogue between Japan and the U.S. on Earthquake Disaster Reconstruction”

The images of the destruction and the news of the 3.11 Disasters have discouraged foreigners from visiting Japan. Yet, in a paradox we cannot escape seeing, the 3.11 Disasters – along with the suffering and humanitarian assistance that followed – have led both Japanese and non-Japanese to become more aware of how interconnected all of us are. KIP feels that a creatively designed program for college students can address many of these issues.
These are the aims of the project:

• To send “Voice of Japan to the USA and the World” on the first Anniversary of the 3.11 Disasters by sending the Tohoku students and KIP students to go to the USA together.
• To give Americans a new perspective on Japan by listening to Japanese students.
• To raise awareness about Japan through discussions, home stays and cultural exchanges.
• To deepen our understanding of the United State.
• To encourage students to consider taking a long term study abroad.

Project2011 “International Education”

“Young people these days are inward-looking.” This oft-spoken viewpoint is frequently projected in the media and buttressed with other supposed evidence that Japnaese exchange students in foreign countries are decresasing, freshmen employees willing to work aborad are decreasing, Japnaese students at Harvard are decreasing, and so on. This is seen as a problem because their ability as effective and worldly-wise human resources is percived to be unreliable even though we need the men and women who can servive in the globalized world.In such situation, we decided to analyze wheter “young people’s tendency to be inward-looking” is true or not in this project. The purpose of this project is, therefore, to focus on the essence of this problem, to dicvoer how we can solve it, and to propose what we should od about focusing on “international education”.