On March 14, 2024, the Selected Universities Liaison Meeting for the Inter-University Exchange Project -Indo-Pacific Region- (a project launched in FY2022) was held online. Many stakeholders from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Tohoku University, and all selected universities participated in the meeting.

Following the opening remarks from Shinji Kaneko (Executive Vice President, Hiroshima University) and greetings from Masaki Uemura (MEXT, Deputy Director, International Affairs Division, Higher Education Bureau), the meeting was called to order.

The presentations began with an introduction to the current and future initiatives of Hiroshima University as the lead school, reaffirming the overall project’s impact on society such as the target number of exchange students and the combined project budget for the selected universities.

The participating universities provided updates on the implementation status of their programs afterward. As the alleviation of COVID-19 restrictions has allowed international travel, the successful practices and issues of each distinctive program were introduced.

In the later part of the meeting, Hirotsugu Takizawa (Executive Vice President for Education and Student Support, Tohoku University) delivered a speech on digital badges (Open Badges), covering the process of introduction and examples of its application, which is a topic of great interest for the universities.

There was also a session for questions, answers and exchanging opinions on the project amongst the selected universities. Establishing new interactive programs such as joint degree programs, solutions for overcoming different standards and operation systems between countries in order to facilitate collaboration, and possibilities of applying digital badges to the international exchange programs were actively discussed.


Finally, a summary was given by Masaru Ichihashi (Director of the IDEC Institute, Hiroshima University) and the meeting was brought to a close.

Hiroshima University continues to provide opportunities for exchanging information and opinions with the selected universities as the lead school for the Inter-University Exchange Project -Indo-Pacific Region-, while aiming to expand and disseminate the program’s insights into neighboring organizations.