The University of Tokyo has established a strategic partnership with Princeton University that extends existing exchange agreements to promote collaboration in research and teaching and strengthens ties between faculty and students of both universities.
The strategic partnership builds on existing agreements between the two universities. University of Tokyo Executive Vice President Masako Egawa, who oversaw the agreement, said “I am very happy to see the signing of this memorandum of strategic partnership. This has been made possible by the mutual trust established between our two universities through years of research collaboration across a broad range of disciplines.”
Under the “Action Scenario FOREST 2015,” which lays out University of Tokyo President Junichi Hamada’s strategy, the University of Tokyo has been pursuing a program of internationalization that includes developing a global campus and promoting diversity and the pursuit of excellence in scholarship. This strategic partnership aims to strengthen the international presence of the university as a leading hub of global scholarship by
facilitating collaboration in research and teaching and faculty and student exchange at all levels. Egawa said, “In particular, the promotion of undergraduate student exchange is ground-breaking for the University of Tokyo, and will provide great opportunities for students at both universities. I am sure that this partnership will greatly accelerate internationalization at the University of Tokyo, and also raise the international profile of our research.”
The University of Tokyo has a variety of academic and student exchange agreements with about 360 partner institutions around the world, but this agreement with Princeton is the first in a plan to broaden and deepen strategic cooperation with a small number of leading global partners at the university-wide level. This agreement will be a model for future relationships, where both partners drive forward a common agenda towards a common goal.
Princeton University is also pursuing an active program of internationalization, developing strategic partnerships with select universities around the world. Agreements have already been signed with the University of São Paulo in Brazil and Humboldt University in Berlin, but this is Princeton’s first such partnership with an Asian university.
In addition to increasing student mobility through undergraduate and graduate student exchange, both universities will work to promote research collaboration and deepen faculty cooperation. A Joint Governance Committee has been established through the agreement, staffed by faculty and administrative staff members from both universities, to select joint research and teaching projects and oversee their implementation. Projects
may include research workshops, joint teaching programs, and joint postdoctoral positions. In January 2013, the committee launched a call for proposals for joint research and teaching projects, in response to which faculty of both universities are cooperating in the promotion of faculty and student exchange. The Joint Governance Committee will select those applications that meet the criteria of promoting internationalization and furthering scholarship.
This new partnership is built upon the achievements of academic exchange between the two universities in a broad range of fields, and will allow both universities greater freedom to develop that exchange to the benefit of faculty and students. The Graduate School of Science has established an observational cosmology project, collaborating with Princeton University and the University of Tokyo’s Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU). Professor Hirokaki Aihara, Dean of the Graduate School of Science, said “This strategic partnership will strengthen existing ties in physics and astronomy between our two universities, and provide even more opportunities for exchange. This agreement will be of great importance in raising the international profile of the University of Tokyo as one of the world’s leading research universities.”
The Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, Princeton University’s East Asian Studies Department, and Fudan University’s National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies have created an academic consortium that already organizes regular conferences in the field of East Asian studies. Vice President Masashi Haneda, Professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies and Director of the Division of International Affairs, said
“Personally, I think that this is a great opportunity to see young researchers’ work in the field of world history, an important theme in modern humanities, reach a global audience through Princeton University. We have already planned a workshop at Princeton in December this year.”
Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy have also been engaged in exchange of researchers, and now hope to extend that cooperation to include student exchange. Professor Kiichi Fujiwara of the Graduate Schools of Law and Politics, and Director of the Northeast Asian Security Unit at the Policy Alternatives Research Institute, said
“I am thrilled about our new partnership. We already enjoy the privilege of cooperation with Princeton University in the field of international studies; this strategic partnership will allow us to extend our student exchanges from the graduate to the undergraduate level. I trust this to be exactly the kind of initiative that our students have been looking for.”
Other exchanges between the two universities have further deepened relations. Graduate School of Science Professor Yasushi Suto (Astrophysics) and Graduate School of Engineering Professor Takao Someya (Electronic Engineering) have visited Princeton University on their Global Scholar program, through which that university invites leading scholars for the purposes of joint research. Additionally, in June and July last year, the
University of Tokyo’s Institute of Advanced Studies on Asia hosted Princeton University’s Global Seminar, a summer school for undergraduate students, and welcomed 14 Princeton students, who studied together with University of Tokyo students.
The University of Tokyo and Princeton University initially signed a university-wide agreement on academic exchange in 2010, based on this solid foundation of cooperation and exchange in teaching and research. This new strategic partnership takes that cooperation to the next level.
The University of Tokyo: http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/
Princeton University: http://www.princeton.edu/main/
Contact:
(Ms) Hiromi Koyama, Division of International Affairs, The University of Tokyo