“Engineering” is now expected very much to play an important role to make our society, even local, national and global societies, more active, advanced, human-friendly and innovative for the promising future, through producing not only advanced scientific and technological achievements, but also highly educated engineers as world-leaders.
Of course, “engineering” is the fundamental driving force of society today. Here, I would like to say “engineers” are, in other words, ”Social Doctors”, because, engineers need to keep the society healthy in hard and soft aspects, and when the society has problems, engineers should properly act to recover society’s health. We have a lot of challenges for the bright future.
Engineers should work so hard for the people and for the society. In addition, as you understand, engineers also create new concepts and new values that will become realities, for the future society. This means, engineers are the “Creator” as well. Creation is a top-level activity of human beings. Thus, engineers need to be highly educated, not only in science and technology in their major fields, but also in social sciences including ethics to provide for a wealthy and affluent society.
The National Institute of Technology (NIT), Japan, which organizes 51 Colleges of Technology (KOSEN, 55 Campuses, including 5 Colleges of Maritime Technology), provides a unique and successful higher-education system, the main five-year engineering education and the additional two-year advanced course as well, for young students from an age of 15, under close cooperation with industry, to foster top-level practical and creative engineers as human resources (or as “Treasures of the Society”).
As the president of NIT, Japan, I promise you all to bring you up to be world-class engineers with the challenging “KOSEN Spirit”, which I am very much proud of. We are very happy to promote international collaboration and invite you to join us from all over the world.
Thank you very much.