Project Name: Co-creation of E&I education catalog

Project by Faculty Innovation Fellows Candidate Stephane Yu Matsushita

Why is this project important to you, your department, & your Fellows?

This project aims to bridge the gap between students and faculty on E&I education. By gathering ideas on what students think about and want from E&I education, we can enhance the educational content on our campus and share them with fellows as an idea catalog for future initiatives at universities.

Description

In a typical university curriculum, students attend lectures designed by faculty. However, in the case of E&I education, there are various methodologies and wide contents that the programs designed by the faculty often mismatch with students' needs. In this project, we will allow students to freely and openly discuss what kind of things they would like to learn about E&I. Then, using the ideas generated in these discussions, we will fascinate the collaboration with faculty and students to co-create a new kind of E&I education.

First, we will hold an ideation workshop where students are asked to think about what kind of classes and content they would like to learn, and the generated ideas will be collected as an "E&I Education Catalog". Second, based on the collected ideas, we will work with the students to extract some of them with the most needs and incorporate the ideas into a more concrete plan (Prototyping workshop). Third, the prototyped plans will be tested as omnibus lectures or pop-up events to brush up to be prepared in the official curriculum in the university.

Stakeholders served

Prof. Masahiro Yamaguchi, Vice President for Education Reform and Global Engagement
Prof. Hiroo Yugami, Dean of School of engineering
Prof. Yoshiaki Ikenoue, Professor at Graduate School of Engineering

Key Milestones

December 2021:
- Hold the first ideation workshop with some students including UIF students
March 2022:
- Survey the needs of each idea among the students
- Hold the first prototyping workshop
June 2022:
- Holding the second ideation/prototyping workshop
- Create the first version of the “E&I education catalog” [50 ideas and 10 prototypes]
September 2022:
- Test the first prototyped education plans with students
December 2022:
- Gather 100 ideas, 30 prototype plans in total
- Tests 5 plans in total
March 2023:
- Create the second version of the “E&I education catalog” [100 ideas and 30 prototypes]
- Launch each education program in the catalog as an official lecture

An Innovation Portfolio

Slides and guide for the ideation/prototyping workshops
The “E&I education catalog”
The detailed description of each prototyped education plan and the feedbacks

Project Name: The establishment of start-up ecosystem network

Project by Faculty Innovation Fellows Candidate Takeshi Kato

Why is this project important to you, your department, & your Fellows?

Because I have crisis awareness that Japan is behind other countries in start-up environment from my point of view. Tohoku University is leading the start-up education programs in our region under the support by Vice President. I would contribute to this change & leadership with our UIFs.

Description

Current activities: Our University is the leader of Edge-Next program https://edge-next.eng.tohoku.ac.jp/english/ & SCORE program https://edge-next.eng.tohoku.ac.jp/event/score/ supported by Japanese government funding and under the leadership of Vice President. I have the responsibility to manage the programs in our consortium with 9 universities and have some start-up programs from my start-up experience point view.

My goal: I would like to expand start-up or change-leader education programs with our University Innovation Fellows (UIF) in 3 years. My goal is to establish the sustainable ecosystem to start up business and change leaders at our university and expand our influence into our region in 5 years.

My execution plan:

Phase 1: Idea generation and research activities to understand status quo of current start-up environment in university and region using UIFs’ SNS and research companies.,
Phase 2: Planning to make execution plans by research results and discussion with UIFs.
Phase 3: Start to make the network of ecosystem among technology center and regional universities with some start-up education programs.

Stakeholders served

Tetsuya Nagasaka, Vice President, Tohoku University
Yoshi Ikenoue, Professor at Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University
Hirokazu Moriya, Professor at Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University

Key Milestones

December 2021: Phase 1
- Make idea generation for start-up ecosystem establishment and change leader programs with UIF as phase1.
March 2022: Phase 1
- Make the plan of our sustainable projects and share the responsibility with UIFs & faculties would start the investigation of current regional ecosystems with some research companies.
June 2022: Phase 1 & 2
- Start to share our knowledge and experience of UIFs with other Universities in our consortium via students SNS to activate the student activities.
- Faculties would make the execution plan for start-up ecosystems by the research result.
September 2022: Phase 2 & 3
- Our faculties with Vice President start to establish the start-up network or database in the regional technology center to accelerate the prototype for the Proof of Concept or to do the matching customer needs with technical seeds in the start-up companies or the labs in the University.
December 2022: Phase 3
- Execute combination programs of start-up education by design thinking essence from UIFs, some start-up programs from our faculties by using the SNS research in our region.
March 2023: Phase3
- Faculties might make the network to support the prototyping with technology center and make the negotiation with some banks or VCs to accelerate start-up activities.