Objective

The Nitobe College for Graduate Students offers a learning environment, which is truly a “microcosm of international society” where graduate students from different fields of study and with diverse cultural values and ethnic backgrounds collaborate, creating shared knowledge and solutions to urgent global issues. By so doing, the students develop various skills for productive, interdisciplinary, intersectional, and intercultural collaboration.

More concretely, the program trains the students as professionals with the following competencies.

1. The competency to develop and expand the already acquired professional competency in response to problems (Ability for Personal Personal Development)
2. The competency to consolidate individual competency into team competency and lead the team in problem-solving (Team Organization and Management Skill)
3. The competency to create social value and change society (Knowledge Sharing and Application Capacity)

Competencies as professionals must be supported with ethical sense as professionals (Professional Ethics). Without such ethical sense, society will not trust the professionals. Nitobe College for Graduate Students has defined universally important competencies that should be obtained by all students who have studied in our graduate courses as “3+1 Competencies”. The “3+1 Competencies” will be cultivated in Nitobe College for Graduate Students. The human resources educated in this program will be capable of taking full advantage of their professional abilities in resolving problems through mutual understanding cultivated in good communication as members of teams of students with diverse knowledge, skills, experiences and sense of value.

3+1 Competencies

Ability for Sustainable Personal Development

The competency to improve one’s abilities in response to a specific problem through accurate analysis of one’s own abilities. This is the ability to define, plan and complete a mission based on an accurate understanding of what one is able to do, by employing one’s curiosity, desire for self-improvement and self-motivation in tough situations. It is the ability to flexibly control oneself, to structurally understand the obtained knowledge and to explicitly express that knowledge. It is, so to speak, competence in self-governance.

Team Organization & Management Skills

This is a competency in organizing professionals with diverse backgrounds as a team and leading them to achieve a set objective. This is also a competency for collaboration based on a foundation made by creating a common vision, building a network, procuring whatever is necessary, negotiating and organizing. It is competency in project design and management. It is, so to speak, a competency in dealing with others.

Capacity for Knowledge Sharing and Application for Social Benefit

This is a competency to bring creative value to society through innovative solutions. It is also a competency in contributing to society by recognizing one’s role in society, finding out what society requires, proposing a better direction and working in that direction. It is, so to speak, a competency in dealing with society.

Professional Ethics

Professional Ethics is an indispensable foundation in utilizing the above three competencies. It is a competency to make impartial and fair decisions as a professional when working with people who have diverse values.

Four Features

A Microcosm of International Society: Improve your communication skills and diversity awareness.

Nitobe College values and makes use of Hokkaido University’s diversity to offer a distinctive learning environment, which is really quite a “microcosm of international society,” where students gain a high level of communication skills along with a keen awareness of cultural diversity.

Cross-disciplinary Environment: Embrace your expertise and transcend its limits.

Hokkaido University is a research-oriented, comprehensive university (twenty-one Graduate Schools and fifty-five professional courses) with acclaimed scholars and motivated students of diverse national, cultural, and ethnic origins.

Active-learning Curriculum: Develop your problem-solving skill.

On the basis of team learning, students acquire techniques and senses for achieving outcomes in collaborating with others through intensive active learning.

Global Professional Networks: Build and  ontribute to networks for your lifelong career development

The new network that is to be established by the students of the program together with the teaching staff and mentors will play an effective role in society when the students start to work.