On February 25th, a briefing session was held for NAIST's 2018 Overseas Staff Development Training Program.

This program began in 2007 to further develop support for international education activities and to improve general planning skills and abilities for promoting the systematic globalization of graduate school education through language training, on-location surveys, debates, etc. at overseas universities.

This year, NAIST sent two administrative staff members to the University of California Davis (UC Davis) from January 4th to January 18th, 2019.

The staff participated in a practical English training program and pursued investigations on their own research themes at UC Davis through lectures and interviews with various UC Davis administrative staff members.

In their reports, the trainees explained what they learned through the program and their research findings in areas such as 1) accounting services including the methods and procedures for administrative purchasing, where the trainee was introduced to professional staff who offer training and support to the U.C. Davis procurement staff, 2) support for collaboration between industry, government and academia, where it was explained that collaboration utilizing university resources is carried out in a variety of fields outside of research activities and that intellectual property services encounter the same difficulty in approaching companies, which is the same situation as Japan.

In the following question and answer session, President Naokazu Yokoya, Executive Directors and staff members actively asked many questions about their experiences.

Finally, the Executive Director Goro Watanabe gave encouraging remarks expressing his hopes that though it is challenging to boost language skills in the short term, the trainees will continue to strive for excellence in the internationalization of Japanese universities, successfully ending this briefing session.