Comprehensive Collaborative Agreement Signed with Izumo City, Shimane Prefecture
December 6, 2024
On Tuesday, December 3, 2024, TUFS signed a comprehensive collaborative agreement with Izumo City, Shimane Prefecture.
The signing ceremony was held at Izumo City Hall, with Izumo City Mayor Iizuka Toshiyuki and President Hayashi Kayoko concluding the agreement. In addition to President Hayashi, Vice President Nakayama Toshihide also attended the signing ceremony. It is hoped that through mutual cooperation and collaboration in the fields of culture, education, international exchange, regional revitalization, etc., the university will contribute to the development of human resources who will lead the future development of local communities.
The main purpose of this agreement is to work with Izumo City as a base for activities that contribute to the formation of diverse career paths for graduate students and young researchers. Based on this agreement, young researchers from our university will stay in the Izumo area for a certain period of time to discover issues and pursue intellectual pursuits. By overlapping the “cultural diversity” of the Izumo area with the “strengths of research into languages and cultures around the world” possessed by young researchers from our university, we plan to create a model for regional development.
After the signing ceremony, President Hayashi and the others visited two locations in Izumo City. The first was the co-working space “Izumo Nomad” in front of Izumo Station, run by People Cloud Co. This facility is a place where people from diverse backgrounds, including highly skilled IT engineers from Eastern Europe, gather. It not only provides employment support, but also a wide range of initiatives to support adaptation to Japanese culture and life, and it serves as a hub connecting the local community with the world.
Next, we visited Izumo Municipal Chubu Elementary School, which is a base for the education of children with foreign roots in Izumo. The school provides education that supports the balance between learning Japanese and academic subjects, and also makes use of teaching materials developed by the Center for Intercultural Studies of TUFS.
Through this visit, we were able to get a glimpse of the advanced efforts being made towards multicultural coexistence in the Izumo region. From now on, we will deepen our collaboration with the people of the Izumo region, work to solve the issues arising from diversity, and create a practical educational and research environment for graduate students and young researchers.
