Meio's First Year as a Public University: Striving to Make a Regional Contribution

Senaha Eiki, Ph.D. President of Meio University

In 1994 Meio University was a publicly established but privately managed institution founded jointly by Okinawa Prefecture and the 12 villages, towns and cities making up the northern region of Okinawa's main island. After having graduated and sent out 4,550 promising individuals of talent into society, we closed the curtain on Meio University as a private institution and presented her a new stage as a public university on April 1, 2010. Indeed, it is a kind of renaissance. The mission of a public university is, of course, education and research, but through these activities a public university's mission must also be one of rendering service to the welfare of a region's citizenry as well as the cultural and economic development of those very citizens. And within this mission, most importantly, a public university is to train talented individuals who are capable of answering the needs of the region.

But this university's founding spirit of peace, freedom and progress is being passed on to us, and we will not in the least be shaken loose from that foundation. We have established the founding spirit based on Okinawa's historical context, and since then, the principles of peace, freedom and progress have not only become common knowledge among the students studying at this university and its teaching and administrative personnel, but have also been reflected in our research and teaching. Holding to these principles, Meio University can be no other than an institution contributing to the local citizenry as well as to the welfare of man. Furthermore, today, while emphasizing our regional contribution, we also welcome the age of internationalization and globalization, and strive to make an international contribution as well, and declare--as our basic principle of education--the training of individuals who are deeply aware of the international community and who can take an active role on the world stage.

In order to realize these educational ideas, we have structured and turned into reality Meio University's offerings of general education courses grounded in the liberal arts, what we call "a Meio-styled liberal arts curriculum."　The key principle, therefore, is the emancipation of the heart and the liberating of the intellect. We have been striving at Meio University to educate talented individuals who, in order to succeed in finding solutions to certain problems, do not view matters from a single perspective, who have had their minds set free, who have come to read and interpret written works with a keen eye, who have learned to consider and analyze both theoretically and critically, and are thereby able to judge from a sense of the whole. In order to accomplish this, we at Meio have made it our objective to cultivate individuals who are internationally cultured and endowed with a well-rounded character, by starting students out with language studies, and having them learn broadly within the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, thereby striking a balance between feeling and knowing.

And it is quite like this when educating students at Meio to acquire the knowledge of an expert, since by emphasizing a liberal view of education, and not drawing from a single area of expertise, but rather requiring a broader base of knowledge, we cultivate in our students an ability to synthesize. For example, when they pursue research in a specific field of expertise, and when students make full use of their skills and knowledge of psychology, philosophy, history, sociology, biology, and other sciences acquired in the general education they completed and the coursework relating to their major, it is of paramount importance that they apply their skills and knowledge to creating new knowledge and products. In this day and age learning has become more complex and diversified, and before long traditional areas of college majors will no longer be as valid as they once were. This then is the reason--as the trend in learning--interdisciplinary education and research are being encouraged.

This university is using its first year as a public university to take an opportunity to develop and supplement even more the current College of International Studies, the College of Human Health as well as the Graduate School for International Studies; and, moreover, to take this opportunity to establish as of April 2011 a Graduate School of Nursing. Thus, along with training talented individuals who can meet the needs and changes in both regional society and the international community, we promote research, and remain cognizant of our duty to contribute to the development of the regional society. On this campus endowed with a gloriously beautiful view of nature, surely one of the best in the whole country, with faculty and foreign exchange students from sister schools on the five continents all coming together, an environment, sufficient in terms of both education and research, has been provided for us to accomplish our mission as a public university.