Working on the Senior Thesis

I am not sure how common this is in the other universities but here, our students have to write a final senior thesis before they can graduate. Of course, in English. This year I got some students who, for different reasons, could not take their first class on how to write their thesis. As usual most of them were assigned to me, so teaching this class what good for two reasons: first, students have to learn the basics before writing Read More …

Old vs New

I have always been a person who favors new things over used ones. There are mainly two reasons for that. The first reason is that usually the price difference is not that big so, why buy something that someone else was using? The second reason is that you cannot check how the previous person “treated” the thing. Specially in IT, it is often the case that you will find out something does not work only when you need to use Read More …

Online Security Presentation

It was a rainy Sunday yesterday and there I was, in downtown Miyazaki, to do a presentation about online security. This is not my usual type of talk, and to be honest, it was quite challenging. The audience was small (less than 20 people) with ages ranging from 20 to 60 (as far as I can tell). I was not really sure about how much the attendees knew about technology so creating the presentation made me a little bit nervous. Read More …

About students and horses

Oh my… it looks like a joke, but the last time I posted something here was… an year ago!!! I (and everyone else around me) have been very busy preparing for the new academic year. A new curriculum, graduate school prep, and of course all the normal work that we do at the college everyday running in parallel. It is really interesting how life happens and, suddenly, posting on my personal page looses its priority. In 2021 I worked really Read More …

2020広島韓国Forum

Today was forum day in Hiroshima together with Prof. Yasutomi and Prof. Hong. With topics ranging from the Korean Peninsula to the relationship of Asian countries with the U.S., I was surrounded by political scientists. As the Dean of Faculty, I was invited to do the opening speech (which was great, by the way). It was nice to be around so many scholars again. Of course, with masks and social distancing.

2nd year students’ orientation

Today it was the first orientation session before the semester starts. Second year students came to campus, in the big auditorium, and we had many people from the administration speaking to them. Of course today’s main menu was the explanation about the study abroad program. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, we were unable to send our second year students to their abroad program, and almost all students were waiting for the announcements in order to know what is going to Read More …

Open Campus

And we did it. July 19th was our open campus, and although we are all suffering from the coronavirus pandemic, it was nice to see so many high school students joining us. Of course, precautions were taken to make sure everyone had an enjoyable experience while keeping the coronavirus away. Students, staff and faculty were using alcohol on their hands when entering and leaving the rooms; Everyone were using masks at all times and instructors were offered face-shields (in addition Read More …

From online to face-to-face

Last Monday was the first day we had first year students on campus for face-to-face classes this semester. I was quite pleasant to see so many new faces and a vivid campus. One not so pleasant surprise was to see how much some students have to catch up. Because of the online classes, some students are not taking it seriously, and as a result, have not done the practice homework I have assigned since the beginning of the semester. It Read More …