Experience, Learn, and Think!

Summer School 2011 is designed to broaden the available options for Japanese high school students and provide opportunity to seek their interest through the interaction with college students both from Harvard and diverse Japanese colleges.

High school students will stay in Tokyo and spend 8 days together with more than 20 Harvard students and about 30 Japanese college students.

Goal

Through the course of this eight-day long program, Japanese high school students can physically experience the model of world’s best Liberal Arts Education. To raise students’ awareness to be internationally active is one of our goals of this program.

More broadly, we aim to create human interactions beyond the ordinary borders surrounding high school students in Japan, such as one between schools, generations (lack of college-high-school student interaction), specialties and such. By providing more opportunities of human interactions among diverse communities, we seek to create a hub of information sharing through which high school students to find their interests and choose college and future paths with more accessible and accurate information.

We thus attempt to resolve the so-called “Uchimuki” tendency of Japanese youth not only in a global but also in a local atmosphere by implementing the model of Liberal Arts based on human interactions.

Program

Liberal Arts Seminar

Designed based on Freshman Seminar Curriculum of Harvard College, each college students participant will organize a seminar on the topic of his/her own interest.

Seminars will aim to offer Japanese high school students a brief introduction to Liberal Arts Education and its style of study as well as to enrich their educational experience.

Afternoon Session

Each day has the topic of the day such as “International development and human rights”, “Education”, “Technology”, and “US-Japan relations”.

In lunch-time, we have “luncheon dialogue” in which we invite one notable speaker based on the topic of the day and have a lecture/conversation.

In the afternoon sessions, a variety of events are organized on the topic of the day with a number of notable speakers in the related field in many forms, which includes: symposiums, lectures, panel discussions and TED-style talks.

We will follow up each activity with a small group discussion. Those speaker events are followed by the receptions in the evening at various locations.

College Fair

At the very last day of this summer school, with the support of the United States College Alumni Network of Japan (USCANJ), we will hold the College Fair. We invite current students, recent graduates and admission officers from more than 20 different Japan and U.S. colleges. This fair will be open to public.

Language

The entire program is conducted in English, but college students will help high school students to understand each content if necessary.

Read more information on HCJI-LAB Summer School 2011 website (Japanese) | Details in English

Harvard College Japan Initiative (HCJI) is an officially recognized student-run organization of Harvard College. The Harvard College name and/or shield are trademarks of the President and Fellows of Harvard College and are used by permission of Harvard University.