The remarkable strides made in Japanese science and technology have been accompanied by no less outstanding achievements by the Japanese industry over the last few decades. The time has already arrived. There is a need for a new approach to science and technology, facilitating the formation of a positive, balanced, and supportive relationship between man's environment and the industry's progress and needs. As such, it is a university that places its most significant emphasis on graduate-level education.
The Nagaoka University of Technology aims to establish itself as an indispensable member of a global society. A university that creates GIGAKU with a proactive approach to societal change produces engineers with practical, creative capabilities and a spirit of service that will lead society into the future and emphasizes graduate-level education.
A pressing issue today is the development of human resources able to find the region's strength from a global perspective in response to recent rapid globalization and bring about the technological innovation that contributes to the creation of new industry with international competitiveness. To support this development and enhance cooperative efforts, the three institutions of Nagaoka University of Technology (NUT), Toyohashi University of Technology, and National Institute of Technology established an industry-academia–government collaborative, integrated campus research and technological development in 2013. The three institutes have been working on cooperative projects with regional industry on a nationwide scale. This educational program fosters engineers who can achieve innovation. At the same time, understanding market needs and executing practical research and development can be achieved only through cooperative education, involving technical colleges through to universities of technology.
The Nagaoka University of Technology was selected for participation in the "Top Global University Project" established by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology in 2014. From the 109 universities that applied all over Japan, 37 universities (including 21 national universities) were selected as "universities with a high level of international acceptance and international competitiveness." NUT has set the goal of being "a university that leads the way in Innovative Global Engineering Education with a strong network among strategic regions in the next generation." We will spend the next decade promoting the project to attain the goal of being a university that assumes a leading role in the globalization of Japanese society.
Our project will expand a system for cultivating practical engineers, including high schools and colleges of technology (KOSEN), to overseas countries while building an international GIGAKU education and research network. We will also expand the industry-academia collaboration models that NUT has promoted overseas and construct an international GIGAKU Techno Park Network. The project is intended to enable students to move freely across industry-academia integrated campuses that are developed worldwide and enable them to earn degrees in an environment where they can receive education in their desired setting. At present, about 60 students (approximately 15% of internship students) every year participate in six-month overseas internships and acquire overseas experience. In ten years, more than 40% of students will be able to experience study abroad (including internships) for more than three months by completing their master's program. With international students accounting for approximately 15% of all students, NUT is among the foremost fully internationalized universities in Japan. The number of international students will be 30% of all students in ten years. By learning with international students, teachers, engineers, and business persons from all over the world (all graduate school classes are conducted in English), students can acquire the ability to play an active role in the international arena. In this way, we foster engineers and researchers who are active at the global level and undertake research and development and create a new industry on a worldwide scale.
The Nagaoka University of Technology produces challenging global engineers who have a high level of GIGAKU ability (ability in the field + ability to research + ability to innovate + ability to practice), who take up the challenge to investigate unexplored areas and fields boldly, and who can create technological innovation.
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