Inter-University Exchange Project (Latin America) Returnee Debriefing Session held at TUFS

March 5, 2019

On Monday the 23rd of April 2018, a returnee debriefing session for “A Co-Creative Education Program of Humanities and Sciences to Solve Global Issues Confronting Japan and Latin America”, a collaborative initiative between the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT), the University of Electro-Communications (UEC) and TUFS, was held in TUFS’ AGORA Global. This session was attended by students who went to Latin American partner institutions through this program and returned sometime between the end of 2017 and March 2018.

12 returnees from the three universities, who went to Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Peru with their research topics and goals, presented their results as a conclusion to their one month to one year exchanges. These presentations were of an astonishingly high-level, a feat which probably could not have been achieved through a regular exchange.

The three students from UEC went on short one month exchanges to Mexico, yet were still able to gain new skills and knowledge on local technology and their research topics, which included “problems with local wind power”, “signal amplifier circuit design using ADS software” and “applying the Monte Carlo method to skin cancer detection”.

The three students from TUAT each went on one year long exchanges, and worked towards solving problems throughout Latin America with their research on “salt damage of corn farmlands” (Mexico), “positive effects of purple corn on osteoarthritis” (Peru), and “the reality of environmental education in elementary schools” (Brazil).

The six students from TUFS engaged with problem solving from a different perspective than the two science-heavy universities, and conducted research based on Latin American history and culture. Picking the dark topics of their exchange destinations, the students raised consciousness concerning problems such as “Argentinian perception of the negative legacy of abduction and murder during the Argentine military dictatorship era” and “the current state of white supremacy in multi-ethnic Brazil”. Some students researched topics they already know a lot about such as karate and kendo, and contributed towards popularizing Japanese culture in their exchange destinations.

This debriefing session is scheduled to be held again in November 2018.