Building Global Leadership through Hands-on Practice and Intercultural Exchange

In the 2025 academic year, the Institute for Liberal Arts (ILA), anticipating future global developments in education, launched two collaborative intercultural exchange courses with students studying Japanese at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany: the "Intercultural Exchange Workshop" (for undergraduate students in their second year and above) and the "Intercultural Exchange Workshop Advanced" (for master's students in their first year and above). These courses were realized through the planning of ILA faculty and the cooperation with the Center for Entrepreneurship Education.

The course is worth two credits and combines online exchanges (during the second quarter) with a five-day in-person workshop held during the summer break. This year, 16 students from Munich visited Japan in early September. A total of 11 students from Science Tokyo participated, including three who were going to TUM as exchange students this autumn. Through group work and collaborative activities, students deepened their understanding of different cultures.

The online classes in the second quarter consisted of three parts: an icebreaker activity where students introduced their daily lives and cultures using photos in both Japanese and English; short English lectures on Tokyo’s environment, history, and culture as preparation for the fieldwork; and English discussions comparing Tokyo and Munich based on related themes. In the final week of the online sessions, students formed groups based on shared interests and planned their in-person fieldwork activities.

Multicultural Experience through Exchanges with Students with Different Native Languages, and Cultural Backgrounds.

The in-person workshop began with a welcome session, followed by a joint lunch and campus tour. Afterward, the students finalized their plan for their fieldwork.

On the second day, each group conducted fieldwork based on their research themes. In the following days, students prepared for their final group presentations.

During the final presentations, a variety of topics were covered, including urban environments, food culture, and youth culture. The Q&A sessions were lively and very engaging.

Although some students initially felt anxious about communicating in English, the strong interest and proactive engagement of the TUM students helped foster a friendly atmosphere, enabling active exchange of ideas. In the final course survey, students reported enjoying the experience of successful communication, learning not to fear small grammar or vocabulary mistakes, gaining insights from the TUM students’ enthusiastic attitudes, discovering commonalities among young people, and feeling more motivated to study English. Many students also found opportunities to discover and demonstrate their own leadership.

Furthermore, this course served as a valuable preparatory course for students planning to study abroad in Munich. We have heard that some of the TUM students who participated in the course are planning to organize an event locally to welcome the students from Science Tokyo in October.

Science Tokyo has so far engaged only in student exchange programs with TUM, and this course marks the first joint courses between the two institutions. Through this course, we expect that the exchanges between the two universities will continue to develop on multiple levels.