This article features Prof. Michael Norton, an adjunct professor in the Department of Transdisciplinary Science and Engineering.
Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) introduced the Global Scientist and Engineer Program (GSEP) in April 2016 to encourage international students to study engineering without having to overcome the tremendous challenge of learning Japanese to a sufficient level to attend classes and pass examinations in Japanese. As a result, this has opened up Japan’s leading engineering University to a much wider range of potentially highly qualified candidates outside Japan. Although I am not one of the GSEP core teaching staff, I have had the pleasure of working with some of the students selected to join this course, so I’m very happy to share my experience and perspectives with the GSEP webpage.
I have been in Japan almost 20 years since first coming to run the science and technology section at the British Embassy here in Tokyo, so can quite sympathise with those who previously had to face the challenge of understanding sufficient colloquial and technical Japanese to survive lectures by native Japanese speakers! Japanese has always been a uniquely complicated language, with its 2 vocabularies of hiragana and katakana and a seemingly infinite number of Kanji to learn. However it’s perpetual absorption of new words from outside and tendency to invent their own abbreviations makes modern Japanese even a challenge for Japanese speakers to keep up with! Combined with the substantial number of homophones (words which sound very similar) with complete different meanings, it is no surprise that many bright students would choose universities outside Japan for the engineering education rather than devote such substantial intellectuals resources to mastering the language. Happily, GSEP has removed that barrier, although I would still encourage all students to learn Japanese as you go along-it will substantially enrich your everyday life and access to Japanese culture!
The scholarship available from the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT) is a very generous one so it is not surprising that GSEP has attracted some very strong applicants who are now enjoying the programme. They belong to the Department of Transdisciplinary Science and Engineering within the School of Environment and Society where I give some courses- I thus encounter some of the students, since my courses are in English.
My most detailed contact with the students has been through the additional course on science communication which I run with Prof Nohara and which some of the GSEP students joined both in 2016 and 2017. They displayed their enthusiasm for the international dimensions of education right from the beginning when we first interviewed all applicants to decide who could participate. Combined with their excellent English, there was little hesitation in accepting them to our programme. The course includes background lectures on science communication followed by visits to UK organisations involved in the field (either through visits with me as the guide or some more concentrated internships at the London Science Museum). This year’s GSEP participating students already reported on their experience, and it’s great to see that they not only enjoyed it, but really got some detailed insights into the communication process as a result. This year’s undergraduate students showed a level of detail in their understanding and a maturity which was quite exceptional in the 12 years that this programme has been running, and they played a very active role in discussions in all the organisations we visited. It is probably quite rare for hosting organisations to actually enjoy visits of students but in this case I think they really did!
So I think GSEP is not only opening up Tokyotech’s excellence in education to a wider group of students but, in this case, I think Tokyotech is benefiting significantly from this injection of bright students from a wider range of nationalities and cultures.
by Prof. Michael Norton
About the author
Michael Norton obtained his BSc and PhD degrees in chemistry at Bristol University. He has worked in the chemical industry, UK government science service and spent 4 years in the USA as Science Attache at the British Embassy. He was the founding director and established the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, developing its advisory services to the UK Parliament. From 1998 to 2004, he was Counsellor for Science and Innovation at the British embassy in Tokyo, after which he joined Tokyo Institute of Technology as a visiting professor (2004-6). From April 2006 he became a Professor at the Innovation Management Institute at Shinshu University specializing in innovation clusters, and environmental sustainability. In 2012 he moved to Tohoku University as a Professor in the Environmental Leader programme, before returning to Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2015 where he is Adjunct (Special) Professor in the School of Transdisciplinary Science and Engineering.