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Invited Nobel Prize winner Prof. Makoto Kobayashi to Penang Malaysia

On 30 November 2015, Toyohashi University of Technology (TUT) and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) invited Professor Makoto Kobayashi, the Nobel Prize winner in Physics 2008, to give a special lecture session entitled “Matter and Antimatter - Violation of CP Symmetry” at USM. The audience of around 300 people, including USM students, faculty members and Japanese residents of Penang, were delighted by this opportunity to learn about the extraordinary recent discoveries in the area of particle physics.

The next day, Prof. Kobayashi held a lively interactive session on physics research with USM students as well as visiting the Penang Japanese School for a talk with young Japanese students. He was also invited to MORIS (Magnetics and Optics Research International Symposium) 2015 held at the TUT overseas education base in Penang. The researchers who participated in the conference made the most of the precious opportunity to engage in lively discussions with the Nobel Laureate Professor.

Accelerating faculty development for the globalization of higher education

TUT has been promoting the development of faculty resources who can respond to and lead the globalization of higher education. Since 2014, TUT has created and managed a joint Faculty Development (FD) program for TUT, Nagaoka University of Technology (NUT) and the National Institute of Technology (KOSEN). The aim of the program is to develop the teaching in English capability of the faculty members of these institutions. It also provides them with the opportunity to cultivate research and education with a global perspective.

This is a full one-year program and it consists of (1) 3-months pre-study at TUT Toyohashi campus, (2) a 6-month program at Queens College of the City University of New York (QC) and (3) a 3-month post-program at TUT’s overseas education base in Penang Malaysia.

The 2015 program dispatched a total of 10 faculty members from KOSEN and TUT, who successfully completed the QC program on December 18th 2015. The program at QC includes intensive English learning, taking regular QC graduate lectures and workshops with QC faculty members to establish potential research collaborations.

The eight KOSEN faculty members from this group have already begun the final stage of the program in Penang, Malaysia.Since early January, the group have been practicing the skills they honed at QC – teaching their specialist area in English - by giving lectures in English at USM, PSP (Seberang Perai Polytechnic) and other institutions.They also presented their research at the IGNITE (International Global Network for Innovative Technology) conference hosted by TUT at Penang in January 2016.

This Global FD program will enter its third year in April 2016, thereby continuing to strengthen the efforts to globalize the educational systems of TUT, NUT and KOSEN.

Exploring Japanese culture through study trip to Kyoto

A study trip for international students has been held every year since 1995. The purpose of this study trip was to experience Japanese culture by visiting Japanese educational facilities and world cultural heritage sites.

This year, 36 international students attended this trip to Kyoto on 21 - 22 December 2015. They enjoyed visiting Kiyomizu-dera and Kinkaku-ji, and cultural experiences such as making Yatsuhashi and Yuzenzome, as well as learning about Japanese disaster-prevention technology at the Kyoto City Disaster Prevention Center. Kyoto is internationally famous as a Japanese city which still preserves historic landscapes. The international students were deeply impressed by such uniquely Japanese cultural aspects as “Omotenashi” and the traditional dishes served in the Japanese style hotel, or “Ryokan.”

After this trip, one international student summed up their impression as follows: “This trip was a good chance to experience Japanese culture. Thanks to this, I realized that I would like to see more Japanese cities.”