The purpose of this paper is to clarify the aim, contents and significance of the education for sustainability (ESD) , together with the background of the Japanese proposal at WSSD. In 2002, a worldwide activity for the education for sustainable development was proposed by the Japanese Government in the occasion of World Summit of Sustainable Development (WSSD) which was held at Johannesburg. The proposal was formally adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2005 and then the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) was inaugurated by UNESCO which was designated its lead agency. Prior to the Japanese proposal, there have been discussions about the necessity of the education of sustainable development, because it requests people to think nature and society in considerably different manner from the traditional way. The characters of the traditional education such as disciplinary structure of knowledge, the basic aspects of science that are directed to analysis and separation of natural sciences and social sciences ; reveal the insufficiency of educating people who would act and confront the difficult challenges of sustainability. The Japanese proposal has given a timely trigger for the world to start cooperative actions for the ESD. We are now on the half way of DESD and must step into the phase of integrating our achievements cooperatively, not only within Japan but also internationally.

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The reason why engineering education should cover the wide area of engineering and science is for designing. Designing requires the broad knowledge from science and engineering to economy and law. Students in engineering courses should acquire designing ability to start their career as engineers. Teaching designing is rather difficult comparing teaching science or mathematics. It is described as an analogy with teaching painting.

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On substance of “Interdisciplinary or Merged Education” in Japan, we have many points to be discussed. Especially from the view of corporate side, we have to develop more proper and practical program in higher education system.

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In the manufacturing enterprise, the engineer who has a deep specialty is requested. On the other hand, when the technology develops rapidly wide interdisciplinary and united knowledge is being requested by the engineer. In the Toshiba group, the business skill training in the new employee training, and engineer acquires his special knowledge by OJT and the specialized instruction and educations, etc.

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A process is proposed to realize effective engineering education program utilizing the basic idea adopted by subject evaluation and accreditation. In the subject evaluation process, programs are required to be equipped with their own vision, goals, curriculum, and the evaluation method. In the present proposal, the programs are shown to be materialized when they are integrated in the order, vision first and then goals, curriculum and evaluation method. The goals for each program can be set by customizing the ones required by JABEE and/or ABET. Rubrics are generally used as the evaluation method. Due to its complicatedness, the best way to introduce it into many engineering education should be studied.

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The advanced course was developed from the course of two specialties graduations, and established in the technical college. Afterwards, the Sendai College of Technology was founded as the sophisticated organization, namely a super college by unifying two colleges. What the interdisciplinary education should be is mentioned driving from the progress and the introduction of the new college. Specifically, this article refers to the proposals of categorizing accreditation of bachelor on the field of the interdisciplinary education giving the benefit to the graduate of the accredited education institute. Further, it deals with the method to improve nature about the field of industry-university cooperation of the teacher, and the program of interdisciplinary (Fused and Multiple) education in the future.

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As global threats such as climate change and economic crisis have been emerging, the demand for the establishment of integrated disciplinary education programs is increasing. The Research Institute for Sustainability Science (RISS) at Osaka University started a new program on sustainability in October 2007. The RISS program addresses the ways to utilize knowledge effectively to understand the dynamic interactions between nature and human society. This paper first overviews the RISS Program for Sustainability Science. The paper then discusses the main problems as well as attempts and efforts to challenge those issues. Although issues including institutional barriers and faculty development yet remain in promoting integrated education, the RISS program functions as a platform to disseminate the idea of sustainability science across the university.

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As an example of interdisciplinary education for engineers in private companies, IED (Integrated Engineering Development) course at HITACHI Ltd. is presented. To help 30 years old or so promising engineers create a new product based on a new technology, one year term course is designed for four types of engineers; mechanical, electric & electronic, information software, and digital systems. Each course has core basic technologies plus related supplementary subjects to promote an interdisciplinary integrated engineer. Not only lectures given by university professors but heavy duty home work is also given by senior engineers of HITACHI to make them apply basic theory to practical problems. Furthermore, self development planning, leadership development program and technology-marketing project are introduced to promote human skills and business sense needed for technology leaders in company.

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Japan is an island nation with moderately ‘Wild’ and ‘Mild’ climate and, therefore, we Japanese have the special feature with both moderate logic and flexibility against unpredictable event from old times. The above-mentioned characteristic of Japanese can be made the best use to create a ‘Cultural Engineering’ , which can offer the individual technological values together with mental satisfaction, against a variety of individual desires with different standpoints in unsteady and diverse era. It is useful for an ‘engineering education’ as a practicable technique to employ the ‘Assent-Dissent Discussion method’ that creates a new concept through ‘Sublation-Aufheben’ of disagreement opinions between different fields.

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We developed a training course to enhance motivation and promote innovation in order to cope with increasing diversity of personal values. It is important for engineers to understand the relationship with their companies, and to acquire ability to create new business concepts through the training. This paper illustrates the outline of the course and effective instruction methods to improve motivation and innovation.

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Sasebo College of Technology established the Advanced Engineering course ten years ago. Initially, students in the course felt dissatisfied with their education. Then around five years ago, the curriculum was reevaluated and changed to the General and Combined Engineering program to meet the requirement in accordance with JABEE standards. As a result, students felt satisfied with their education and the popularity of the course rose and, then many excellent students chose to take this course. Since an organization of College of Technology is small, cooperation between each department is easy. That is, the advanced engineering course at college of technology is suitable for the education of the general and combined engineering.

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The importance of design education that cultivates integrated competences has been suggested in higher educational institutions in fields of engineering in relation to quality assurance of engineering education. However, it is also pointed out to lay stress on cooperative education in collaboration with the community because there is a limit to correspond to the design education only by a group of educational institutions. This paper reports the outline of the practical engineering education, which is executing in the project learning of Hakodate National College of Technology, based on regional needs and the result of the activity as a model of education program for fusion and combination.

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In this paper, a new subject based on PBL (Project Based Learning) and its educational effects are discussed. The feature in this subject is that problems are solved based on the division of labor. In this subject, students break into four-member groups, and develop a line trace robot together cooperatively. Then, they share their responsibility for mechanism, electric circuit and programming, and learn basic knowledge of assigned area from teachers. After that, they develop the robot based on discussions. This procedure is like that in companies and the main objective of this subject is to get this skill. Each robot is evaluated by competition held in a public space of campus. From the questionnaire, very active posture and high attendance degree of satisfaction was gotten.

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Importance of effective practices in engineering education has recently been increased in order to enhance students′ interesting and motivation to subjects. This paper presents an attempt to produce the more educational effects in the required experimental subject “Basic industrial measurement” for Advanced Engineering Course and its evaluations. The subject consists of several themes on three different engineering courses. All students in the first grade of the course are required to take the subject. The attempts are performed in the experiments on Environmental and Construction Engineering Course. In this attempt, the self-check sheet by students and the report evaluation sheet by the teachers are used. By using sheets, the students are able to understand signification in taking the subject. It is evaluated from analyzing the self-checked data and reports written by students that the presented attempts are effective to produce the more interesting and motivation in taking the subject.

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The knowledge and skills in systems engineering including project management are necessary for engineers who are engaged in planning and developing systems. Experiences of project execution are necessary for understanding systems engineering. Challenge is how to teach systems engineering to students who have scarce project experiences. In the education, giving the experience including a real experience and a pseudo-experience will be indispensable. In this paper, systems engineering education by evolutional Project-Based Learning (PBL) is designed and evaluated. In curriculum, exercises and lectures are executed alternately and evolutionally in three steps of PBLs ; Workshop of System Thinking, mathematical knowledge and technique are delivered in the first step PBL. Techniques of systems engineering are provided in the second step PBL. Finally project management is obtained in the third step PBL. Execution and evaluation of the education show that the Evolutional Project-Based Learning of systems engineering is effective not only to improve knowledge and experience of students but also to motivate students to study systems engineering.

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