Asia Intercollegiate Cooperative Project
for Nurturing Global Leaders
in Sustainable Infrastructure Development

On August 30, 2018, the 8^th round table meeting for the CAMPUS Asia program took place in Seoul, Korea. The meeting was joined by four representatives including Prof. Akihide Tada from the Graduate School of Engineering, Nagasaki University. The other representatives of the School of Civil Engineering and the School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shandong University as well as Prof. Jun Kyungsoo, Dean of the Graduate School of Water Resources and other members from Sungkyunkwan University joined the meeting.

During the meeting, the attendees from the three universities discussed specifically on how to respond to this year’s monitoring+ initiatives and to draft required documentations. In order to ensure the educational quality of the CAMPUS Asia program, a joint program review was also conducted by the three universities in conjunction with the meeting. As external experts, Prof. Lee from the Department of Civil Engineering, Joongbu University, Korea, Prof. Lee from the School of Engineering (chemical engineering), Sungkyunkwan University, Prof. Liu and Assoc. Prof. Chang from the School of Qilu Transportation, Shandong University were invited.

In the joint program review, Prof. Han from Shandong University explained about the background and overview of the program as well as its achievement and challenges. The external experts provided precious feedback to the program for its further development including the need for (a) increasing number of infrastructure-related courses offered in English by each university as well as practical courses and opportunities for site visit; (b) continuous survey on students’ satisfaction; and (C) faculty exchange among the three universities.

During the round-table meeting, it was confirmed that the monitoring+ initiative is a great opportunity not only to improve the educational quality of international collaborative program but also to review the achievement made in cooperation among the three universities over the past few years. Furthermore, a long-term student exchange will start this year based the double degree program. For its educational quality to be ensured, a stronger collaborative system needs to be developed among the three universities. In other words, the three universities confirmed that the “coordination system to provide pre-departure research guidance” should be established as a key element of the double degree program to assist the participating students in writing two master’s thesis. The meeting also covered other topics including the joint “Curriculum for Infrastructure Maintenance Engineering” and internship opportunities for inbound students.

On August 16 and 23, 2018, pre-departure briefing sessions were held for four participating students who will start the study program in Sungkyunkwan University, Korea or Shandong University, China from the end of August. Two of them will study abroad for a short-term period (six months) based on the credit transfer system, and the other two will study abroad for a long-term period (one year) based on the double degree program.

Following encouragement remarks by Prof. Akihide Tada, the managing director of the project, the international coordinators provided the students with detailed information, including some tips on living in China or Korea, precautions about temporarily returning to Japan, recommended items to bring and registration procedures for their courses. Every outbound student who participate in this project are required to register for OSSMA (Overseas Student Safety Management Assistance) membership, which provides an assistance in both English and Japanese in case of emergency. Pre-departure guidance on safety management is provided through handing out a guidebook and emergency contact list to help the students feel safe while studying abroad.

Upon their departure and as their study progresses, the international coordinators and supervisors at each university will work even more closely to share information in order to flexibly address any issues or concerns over their study and risk management at the host university.

Two-week summer schools were held from August 4 to 18, and from August 12 to 26, in Sungkyunkwan University, Korea and Shandong University, China. These summer schools are intended to give students opportunities to learn beforehand about the current situation and challenges that China and Korea are facing in managing infrastructure and to attract prospective graduate students who will participate in the program in 2019. From School of Engineering, Nagasaki University, nice undergraduate students (third and fourth graders in the Course of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Course of Chemistry and Materials Engineering) participated in the summer schools.

At Sungkyunkwan University, Korea, the participating students attended special lectures on infrastructure as well as Korean language lessons. They also experienced Korean culture by wearing hanbok, Korean traditional costume. This is the second summer school hosted by Sungkyunkwan University as part of CAMPUS Asia project. One of the participating students in 2017 was actually motivated by this summer school to continue his study at graduate school and is currently studying at Shandong University, China, as part of the double degree program of this project. He surely shows a great effect of summer schools in encouraging students to study abroad for a longer period.

At Shandong University, China, the participating students stayed for one week each at Qingdao campus and at Jinan campus. Especially in the brand-new Qingdao campus just opened last year, all the facilities including classrooms and dormitories employ a novel design. The first week of the summer school at Qingdao campus was hosted by the School of Environmental Science. The second week was held in Jinan where the world heritage site is located. At Jinan campus, the School of Environmental Science and Engineering was responsible for taking care of the participating students. They experienced Tai Chi, tea ceremony, kite-making, calligraphy and other Chinese culture. They also joined a field trip to infrastructure construction sites such as tunnels. The students had a great opportunity to learn about the current situation of infrastructure maintenance from a different perspective than those in Japan

It is our hope that the participating students will take advantage of these precious experience to improve their English skills required as global human resources and to familiarize themselves with the student life in Korea and China. These efforts will eventually lead to an increasing number of outbound students from Nagasaki.

In the 3^rd or 4^th quarter, the participating students will submit their report and talk about their experience in an on-campus session. They are also expected to study English for the mandatory TOEIC tests scheduled in November. We look forward to hearing their comments and feedback on their experience.

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