Cross-Disciplinary Education Managed by Faculty Members from Multiple Academic Departments Working Together

University Intoroduction

The University of Tsukuba Arts Organization started its activities in 1975, one and a half years after the founding of the University of Tsukuba. From the beginning, the educational and faculty organizations have been separated. The undergraduate art specialization programs and the department of arts were the first to be organized. The graduate school had an independent Master of Arts program and a five-year integrated doctoral of arts program. The system was such that students from the specialized school group had to choose either the master or the doctoral program. With design studies in graduate school during generalization in 1991, we can offer research and education in design at the master and doctoral levels.

Later, to cope with the graduate school departmentalization, we established the Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences in 2001 in association with Education, Disability Science, Psychology, Physical Education, and Medicine, and integrated the graduate programs. At that time, we established the Department of Sensory and Cognitive Brain Sciences, the Department of Sports Medicine, and the Department of Human Care Sciences as an organization for cross-disciplinary research and education. These departments were operated by faculty members who belonged to multiple “academic departments” and were truly symbolic of cross-disciplinary education. At that time, faculty members belonged to the graduate school, but by taking advantage of the proviso in Article 100 of the School Education Law, a “department” was established. Since then, faculty members have belonged to the “department”. In other words, teachers belonging to the “department” of the research field collaborated to engage in “specialized” education.

In 2020, we took this one step further and realized degree programs for graduate schools. The graduate schools of the entire university were integrated into three academies: the Graduate School of Business, Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences, the Graduate School of Science and Technology, and the Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, and the organizations that were once positioned as majors were reorganized as degree programs.

Faculty members in charge of the academy can be involved in one primary degree program and up to four secondary degree programs and provided research guidance beyond the academy in the form of “secondary supervision”.

In particular, the design degree program established in the Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences was launched as a cross-disciplinary and practical graduate program by combing the Master’s (Design) and Doctoral (Design) programs that have been in operation for 30 years since 1991, and the Master’s and Doctoral (Kansei Science) programs that have produced more than 30 doctoral students in the 20 years since 2001. We have launched the program as a cross-disciplinary and practical graduate program that integrates the composition (Science of Art and Design), product and information design, architectural design, and entertainment design.