3. Concrete Initiatives under R2030 Challenge Design

As stated at the start of this document, there is a need for further discussion of the concrete initiatives to be pursued under the R2030 Challenge Design, and such discussion will be taken into account as we work to build a shared awareness of the issues involved. Ritsumeikan University has pursued its R2020 plans in tune with the changing times. The process of implementing these plans provided a real sense that we have entered an era of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), as typified by the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic arose rapidly as a globally shared challenges, requiring us to adjust our preconceptions and accepted wisdom across all spheres of activity, from individual lifestyles to society, politics, and economics. Progress and advancements in technology enabled wide-ranging efforts to tackle COVID-19, which both brought great benefits to society and changes to the everyday lives we had led prior to the pandemic. These experiences prompted people to reassess the significance of humanism and ethics, and awareness of considerations surely increased. What is important when living through an era of uncertainty, in which no question has a single correct answer, is surely for each and every person to continue to learn and grow, seeking a better version of oneself and a better society for all. Moreover, there is a need to rekindle appreciation of the fact that living in a manner true to oneself and participating in the creation of a better society is linked to the process of gaining awareness of the roles that one can play, developing one’s own pathway forward, and playing one’s part in a changing society.

Thus far, Ritsumeikan University has sought to become a university better able to support students’ learning and growth, taking into account the conditions and demands of the present era and into the future, and achieving improvements and enhancements in education, research, and support for students’ lives. Given the contemporary climate in which radical transformations could occur at any time, we now appear have reached a major transition point in terms of education, research, and student support at Ritsumeikan University. Under R2030, we will pursue the initiatives set forth below, in order to raise the standards and quality of education and research on an ongoing basis and continues to be a gathering point for people committed to learning and growth, with a view to creating universal value and tackling the various challenges confronting humankind.

(1) Approach to the R2030 Challenge Design

Informed by the initiatives pursued under R2020, in AY 2018 the Ritsumeikan Academy drew up the R2030 Vision: Challenge Your Mind, Change Our Future. Based on this Vision we set out the Ideal Shape of the Academy, the Ideal Qualities in Our People, and Policy Objectives, to ensure the Academy is a place in which students on any level, members of faculty, staff, or indeed alumni are able to consider, from the own individual perspectives, how to create a better society; and which attracts, on this basis, those who are able to exercise boldly the freedom to tackle any challenge in moving toward the realization of a truly peaceful society.

Ritsumeikan University has a two-point vision for its existence in the 2030s, as it strives to create value for social coexistence: (1) as a next-generation university that creates new forms of value, and (2) as a university that produces innovative and creative individuals, through which it will continue to generate new forms of value and learning. At the heart of this vision lies the idea of undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, and faculty and staff continuing to learn, seek, and explore throughout their lives, and of these people gathering at Ritsumeikan University to learn together at significant points in their lives. Ritsumeikan University will function as a kind of mothership (alma mater) for people on a lifelong journey of learning.

The R2030 Challenge Design also articulates the ideal of expansive recoupling of research and education. Our research, in the sense of intellectual enterprise that generates value for social coexistence, should connect widely and in diverse ways not only with other universities and research institutions, but also with companies, national and local governments, civil society and local communities; moreover, learners should be able to participate in this kind of broad-ranging, open research in the context of vertical connections between the university’s affiliated schools, undergraduate colleges and graduate schools. This is precisely what it means to pursue learning that is consistently active and inquiry-based.

Another of our objectives for R2030 is to become the number one university in terms of students’ sense of growth. We believe that to achieve this objective, we need to abandon conventional thinking that views the places where students learn under the binary framework of “curricular” and “extra-curricular,” and instead provide an environment in which all students, in the course of their university life, make use of their individual characteristics, collaborate with a diverse range of people, and thereby obtain a sense of growth and continue to improve on their own distinctive “personal best.”

The outcomes of R2020 and our initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic have been, among other things, (1) to expand opportunities for diverse students to learn and grow, and (2) in support of such learning and growth, to promote exchange among students and provide the basic infrastructure for such exchange to take place. This work has enabled those who have led full lives as university students to gain a sense of personal growth in a variety of situations in their social lives. There are keen expectations that the concrete programs carried out under the R2030 Challenge Design will further elevate these outcomes and raise students’ sense of growth and satisfaction.

(2) The Meaning of Expansive Recoupling of Research and Education: Seeking to Discharge Ritsumeikan University’s Mission

To pursue the expansive recoupling of research and education, we first need to clarify the type of education that is linked to research. Universities are “knowledge hubs” but also places for “knowledge sharing”: through their research activities, and enabling students to observe faculty members working intently on these activities, they foster students’ understanding of what it means to learn. Moreover, the mandating of exploratory learning in the revised national primary and secondary school curriculum from AY 2022 means that senior high school students will gain more opportunities to come into contact with the research undertaken at universities. A good example of this is the Rice Bowl Seminar series, which enables students of Ritsumeikan affiliated and partner schools to encounter cutting-edge university research through seminars featuring research presentations by young Ritsumeikan University researchers and free discussion. The problem, however, is that the experiences and insights gained from such activities are not directly connected with the learning students pursue after entering university, leading to some dissatisfaction with university learning among new students. We acknowledge that this state of affairs must be addressed, and that the university must pursue educational reforms that foster students’ capacity for exploration, including ways to resolve the kind of disconnect noted above. Specifically, we are promoting integrated education programs, advancing senior high school-university articulation, and considering the introduction of a system that allows senior high school students to take university classes. It is also important to share achievements and experiences in high school-university articulation activities undertaken recently by individual colleges, including connections with institutions other than our affiliated and partner schools, and to learn from these achievements and experiences. On this basis we will explore overall approaches to undergraduate education, with a view to the continuation and advancement of learning at graduate school level as well.

NEXT: Chapter II(3) Further Enrichment of Student Learning and Growth