Learning competencies of Nitobe College

“3+1 Competencies”

Ability for Sustainable Personal Development

• Curiosity and desire for self-improvement: These comprise the desires to explore the unknown, improve the present, and take action toward self-improvement based on one’s future visions.
• Challenging new horizon: This is the willingness to take on new challenges, to try again what cannot be achieved so far, and to keep trying until one succeeds.
• Self-knowledge: This is the understanding of one’s own strengths and weaknesses in light of one’s objectives or challenges.
• Predictive capability: This is the ability to predict future events and foresee upcoming needs based on one’s comprehensive understanding of past developments and the present situation.
• Abilities of planning and execution: These mean providing an optimal roadmap for achieving a goal and steadily taking the steps according to the roadmap.
• Feedback: This is to identify necessary improvements based on the results of implementing a plan and to modify the plan by incorporating the improvements for enhanced efficiency. It may also involve redefining issues to achieve goals.

Team Organization & Management Skills

• Ability to articulate and share one’s vision: This is the ability to clearly understand the ultimate goals to such an extent that one can share them with other team members and articulate them from various perspectives to ensure appropriate understanding by other team members. It is also the ability to take responsibility for what one says and to share the common goals and anticipated results with other team members.
• Mutual understanding of specialty: This means a proper understanding of the abilities and characteristics of others’ specialties. It also means a clear explanation of your specialty to others.
• Networking skills: These are the skills to find connections to build a required team of professionals.
• Trust-building ability: This is the ability to build relationships of trust with collaborators. It also means having high reproducibility of the expected behavior.
• Collaborative skills: These are the skills to work independently as a professional to achieve shared goals with other team members and to produce the maximum team results while drawing out one another’s strengths and compensating for one another’s shortcomings.
• Abilities to obtain/organize resources: These are the abilities to procure necessary resources or reallocate/sort out resources to use them efficiently.
• Preparatory negotiation skills: These are the skills to identify differences of opinions and/or
  interpersonal conflicts among the concerned parties beforehand, and to share information and coordinate opinions.
• Mediation skills: These are the skills to identify the causes of any interpersonal conflicts and to create a new environment to achieve goals.

Capacity for Knowledge Sharing & Application for Social Benefit

• Abilities to contribute to society and social wellbeing: These abilities mean considering and trying to contribute to the wealth and wellbeing of society at large.
• Recognition of needs: This means considering current challenges and issues and grasping the needs of others and society at large.
• Awareness of social roles: This means recognizing one’s standing and expected roles in society.
• Ability to propose solutions: This is the ability to work out solutions to social problems and to propose them in a readily acceptable form.
• The ability to make decisions: This is the ability to select the best of all available options in one’s
  professional capacity in consideration of the levels of significance and urgency. It also involves taking responsibility for making the decision.
• Resilience: This is the ability to not give up easily to achieve one’s goals and involves flexibility.

Professional Ethics

• Consideration: This means looking at things from various perspectives, not only one’s own viewpoint. It also means having the imagination to look at things from another person’s perspective.
• Risk management: This means predicting risks and acting based on appropriate judgment.
• Integrity: This means never telling a lie to oneself or others.
• Ethical sensitivity: This means being sensitive to ethical issues. It means, for example, to be conscious of human rights, environmental issues, and issues concerning harassment, racial discrimination, gender, privacy, and waste, as well as having the imagination to consider other people’s emotions.
• Ethical reasoning: This is the ability to articulate the grounds for ethical judgments, rationally explain the reasons for reaching conclusions, and share related processes.
• Balance of fairness, impartiality and efficiency: These guarantee equal opportunities and honesty. They also involve efforts to achieve optimum results with minimal resources.
• Distinguish of normative and culture: This means distinguishing ethical issues from cultural ones.

Foundation Program

Be the Architect of Your Own Future!

In Foundation Program, students team up with class members having various fields of study, diverse cultural values, and ethnic backgrounds. By tackling various issues together, students acquire the basics of “3 + 1 competencies” as well as “ability to notice your own specialty and to give back to the team” and “ability to utilize the strengths of members and to cooperate while compensating for weaknesses”. Students also gain experience in explaining the team’s conclusions logically and accurately. Recognize one’s role in society and aim to be a human resource who plays a central role in the international community.

Curriculum of Foundation Program

Course Subjects	Credits	Class Type	Requirements for completion	Number of credits necessary for completion
Foundation I	2	Inter-Graduate School Class	Compulsory	Four or more credits including Foundation I and Foundation II
Foundation II	2	Inter-Graduate School Class	Compulsory
Nitobe College Foundation Seminar for Graduate Students	[1]＊1	Nitobe College Special Classes＊2	Elective
Total	Four or more credits

^*1The Course subjects with number of credits shown in parentheses consist of multiple subtitles. If the subtitles are different, students may register more than one such course subject can be taken.

^*2As these classes are offered by Nitobe College independently, they will not be counted as credits for completion of the graduate schools.

Nitobe College Foundation Program for Graduate Students I and II are held in the fifth and sixth periods weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, where around 30 students are adopted. Students study urgent global issues through a small group discussion.

Introduction of the Courses in Foundation Program 2023AY

Honors Program

Be a Global Pioneer!

In Honors Program, students take on more ambitious projects to apply the skills and knowledge they learned in the Foundation Program. In these projects, students will attempt to both find and solve problems while looking at them from local and global points of view for SDGs topics. In addition to holding discussions on how to solve such issues, students will foster their ability to uncover genuine problems through fieldwork, as well as their ability to look at matters from various perspectives. Through these experiences, students will further develop their “3＋1 competencies,” gain the ability to look toward the future, and become talented individuals with the drive and confidence to new fields in our global society. 

Only students who performed excellently in the Foundation Program are eligible to participate in the Honors Program.

Curriculum of Honors Program

Course Subjects	Credits	Class Type	Requirements for completion	Number of credits necessary for completion
Advanced I	2	Inter-Graduate School Class	Compulsory	Four or more credits including Advanced I
Advanced II	2		Elective
Project Implementation	1	Nitobe College Special Classes＊2	Elective
Nitobe College Special Seminar for Graduate Students	[1] or [2]＊１		Elective
Total	Four or more credits

^*1The Course subjects with number of credits shown in parentheses consist of multiple subtitles. If the subtitles are different, students may register more than one such course subject can be taken.

^*2As these classes are offered by Nitobe College independently, they will not be counted as credits for completion of the graduate schools.

Main subjects (Advanced I and II) are offered as inter-graduate school classes (educational program), in which two consecutive classes will be held once a week. Each subject will be planned and operated by instructing staff from various graduate schools as well as supporting staff (Nitobe College professors). In addition, the credits for Nitobe College Special Classes (Project Implementation and Nitobe College Special Seminar for Graduate Students) are admitted for completing Nitobe College Honors Program, and students can choose the courses of their own accord.

Introduction of the Courses in Honors Program 2023AY

Schedule

Please note that the enrollment ceremony, special events, and some classes may be held on Saturdays. Check the schedule below for details.

Schedule for Main Subjects, AY2023