Keio University Co-Hosts Asia-Pacific Regional Seminar by the Erasmus Mundus Support Initiative

From March 5-6, Keio University co-hosted an Asia-Pacific Regional Seminar by the Erasmus Mundus Support Initiative. The two-day event was held on Keio's Mita Campus. Erasmus Mundus is a long-established program that cooperates with institutions of higher education to connect students with study abroad opportunities between countries in Europe and other places throughout the world.

Between in-person and online attendance, there were approximately seventy participants at the seminar, representing government agencies and universities in Europe and the Asia-Pacific. Attendees included Haitze Siemers, minister and deputy head of the European Union Delegation to Japan, Jacques Kemp, head of sector within the European Commission and the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), and other representatives from throughout the European Union, Australia, Indonesia, Taiwan, and other regions. Participants from Japan included Satoshi Nara, director of the Higher Education Bureau for the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), and university representatives from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and Toyohashi University of Technology, both of which have been selected under MEXT's EU-Japan Inter-University Exchange Project (IUEP EU-Japan). Keio University was represented by Vice-President Yukihiro Ikeda and Professor Norihisa Miki from the Faculty of Science and Technology.

The first day of the seminar began with opening remarks from Vice-President Ikeda who stated that building human connections between Europe and the Asia-Pacific will become ever more important in the future.

Professor Miki then introduced the Japan-Europe Master on Advanced Robotics (JEMARO) as a specific example of such cooperative relationships. JEMARO is a double degree program established by Keio's Graduate School of Science and Technology together with three universities in the European Union through the IUEP Program. In his keynote speech on the second day of the seminar, Professor Miki drew on his experiences with JEMARO to discuss issues that can emerge due to differences between Japan and Europe's educational philosophies and methodologies, as well as difficulties in how to conduct evaluation and quality assurance when developing new programs and curricula.

For the final session on the second day, two international students, one from Mexico and one from Germany, were brought up as panelists to discuss their experiences as participants in the JEMARO program. The audience showed great interest in hearing honest and firsthand accounts from the two students about why they decided to apply for JEMARO, what it was like to conduct research in Japan, and what they would say to encourage future students who plan to apply to Erasmus Mundus programs. The two-day seminar ended on a high note, as participants from the Asia-Pacific and Europe shared their opinions and suggestions on how to increase exchanges and engagement between the two regions.