Center for Interdisciplinary Graduate Education

We are a university-wide organization responsible for Interdisciplinary Graduate Education such as “Doctoral Program for World-leading Innovative & Smart Education (WISE)” and “Program for Leading Graduate Schools”. We promote graduate school innovation by implementing these programs, and plan and develop Interdisciplinary Graduate Education course based on these programs.

Doctoral Program for World-leading Innovative & Smart Education (WISE)

Doctoral Program for World-leading Innovative & Smart Education (WISE) is designed to promote initiatives for establishment of centers of excellence whereby researchers can engage in self-development as they network with peers to create innovative joint research ventures on a sustainable basis. Under the Program, each university cultivates prominent doctors with the capabilities to take on leadership roles in every sector by offering a five-year integrated doctoral degree program taught by world-class educators and researchers, while concurrently leveraging their core competencies and utilizing the benefits reaped from graduate school reforms to cooperate with universities, research institutions, private enterprises, and other organizations from around the world.

To date, Kyoto University has had the following program adopted under this Program, which is sponsored by MEXT.
Through provision of education programs that tap into the unique strengths of Kyoto University and the Program, efforts are being made to spearhead creation and application of new bodies of knowledge, thereby creating trendsetting value for the future. The common objective is to cultivate doctors (high-level “knowledge professionals”) who will be capable of working on solutions to social issues and will foster innovation in the global community.

Program for Leading Graduate Schools

The Program for Leading Graduate Schools works to advance the establishment of university graduate schools of the highest caliber by supporting the dramatic reform of their education programs in such a way that they will institute degree programs recognized as top quality around the world. To foster excellent students who are both highly creative and internationally attuned and who will play leading roles in the academic, industrial, and governmental sectors across the globe, the Program brings top-ranking faculty and students together from both in and outside Japan and enlists participation from other sectors in its planning and execution, while creating continuity between master’s and doctoral programs and implementing curricula that overarches fields of specialization.

By the end of fiscal 2013, five of Kyoto University’s programs had been adopted under this Program sponsored by MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology). All five programs implement educational curricula that tap into each of their unique strengths in order to develop not only researchers but also individuals capable of taking leadership roles in various fields in the arena of global competition.