School of Interdisciplinary Science and Innovation Kyushu University

MESSAGE

Vice President・Prof.

KABURAGI Masahiko

 

degree/Doctor of Laws
area of expertise/History of Political Thought

Professor KABURAGI's introduction page

Welcome to the web-site of School of Interdisciplinary Science and Innovation, Kyushu University (ISI). ISI was founded as a new type of undergraduate school in April 2018. It may be difficult to imagine what one would be studying from the name alone.

ISI aims to recreate undergraduate education. We want each of our students to choose problems from around the world and work at finding solutions to them, using skills learned from multiple fields, breaking down the walls between the arts and sciences.

Our goal is to cultivate individuals to be powerful and intelligent, who can work on the various complex problems faced by humankind in our ever-changing world.

Universities in Japan are often criticized for being narrow-minded and staying “stuck in their octopus-pot” -- that is, stuck in their own specialized area of study, instead of associating with people from other academic fields. This situation occurs because typical universities have various departments and faculties for specific academic fields, and those faculties are further divided into more specific majors and courses. Most times have no idea what their peers in other majors are studying.

At the same time, each field of study is too wide and too deep to master several of them at once, and it is highly competitive internationally. Therefore, we can say that there are good reasons why students pursue their studies in specific singular fields. Surely there are treasures in the “octopus pots.”

Nonetheless, we live in the time when things are constantly changing. What once was thought of as two separated fields may suddenly become tightly knit together by the advancement of human-made high technology and new social systems. Work which we have assumed could only be done by humans can suddenly be replaced by machines.

Today, we can’t simply cling to the traditional disciplines. Instead, students need to go beyond them according to each person’s awareness of issues and understandings of problems, to discover new knowledge and values in new fields, forged by creative intertwining of multiple fields.

In order to solve problem in such new fields, ISI aspires to excel providing the setting where students can gain the knowledge, skills and wisdom of “interdisciplinary science and innovation,” which associates different disciplines and creates the knowledge and wisdom needed for today’s problem-solving.

Thus, with the aim of providing a great educational environment where students with various interests can engage in addressing problems in the world by integrating multiple disciplines, we allocated 50 faculty members and 29 adjunct faculty members in charge of various subjects, featuring a diversity in both arts and sciences. We also use a framework by which students can invite professors from other departments and faculties to supervise their work at ISI.

ISI is a unique undergraduate school where each student accomplishes their projects individually, beyond the existing framework of departments and faculties. Would you like to join us? We are looking forward to seeing the challenges you make for yourself