スクリプトは事前提出されたものですので、ビデオの音声とは異なる場合があります。

The CA Café Operation

Tokuyama National College of Technology

We are members of Civil Engineering and Architecture department at Tokuyama Kosen. Today's presentation keynotes our project to save our department that is in crisis. This project is known as the CA Café Operation. CA stands for Civil Engineering and Architecture.

Our crisis is a decreasing number of applicants to the department every year. The professors in our department have been making every effort to increase the number. But it has not brought satisfactory results. Sharing their concern, we decided to investigate the situation ourselves.

Please take a moment to examine the data on screen. This visibly demonstrates our crisis. The numbers of applicants to the CA department have decreased year by year.

Moreover, the number of applicants to the CA department is apparently smaller than those to the other departments. In order to understand one reason for this, let's listen to the following conversation in the family of a junior high school student.

Hatano (daughter): Mom, I want to be an architect. So I hope to enter the department of Civil Engineering and Architecture at Tokuyama Kosen.

Nakami (Mother): Don't be silly. You can't find any jobs even after you graduate from that department.

Hamasaki (Father): You know, the government is always saying, “From Concrete to Human”.

This may be a very common scene and may explain to a great extent why the number of applicants has been decreasing. The faculty approach is clearly not bringing the desired results. We, as students being close to the applicants in age and social concerns, believe we can create a more appropriate recruiting approach.

This was the genesis of the CA café project.

Let us demonstrate a scene from our open campus.

Hamasaki: Well, which department will be better? Robots? Computers? …What is this CA?

Nakami: Welcome to CA! CA is civil engineering and architecture. We study architecture of buildings, bridges and other infrastructures.

Hatano: One of our graduates became a designer and she designed her own house by herself! It is very exciting to build what will remain for many years, isn't it?

Nakami: My senior went to a university to be a researcher. His experience along with many others is that entering a university from Kosen is a lot easier than from high school.

Hamasaki: Wow! There are various choices of careers after graduation. How is the college life?

Nakami: No doubt you can enjoy your student life. For example, we may design and model our dream house as one class project. We learn practical surveying techniques in the field rather than simple classroom lectures.

Hamasaki: Sounds interesting but a bit difficult. I wonder whether I can do that.

Hatano: It's true, sometimes the study is trying. But seniors and friends will kindly help you with reports or experiments. So don't be afraid.

Nakami: Besides, there are many events. Sport competitions, school festivals, and even school trips to foreign countries like France or Hawaii!

Hatano: Also, the rate of boys and girls in a CA class is 50-50. So you enjoy the best opportunity to interact in a co-ed situation.

Hamasaki: Great! Now I'm determined. I will enter CA at any cost!

We offered opportunities for junior high school students to talk with senior Kosen students over a piece of cake and soft drinks. This time our department attracted much more visitors than last year and the project was very successful. Our café contributed to the success of the open campus activity. Out of 55 events, the CA café received the highest reviews from participants in the popularity vote.

Here, you can see the results of the questionnaire given to the visitors after the café. The questions were: Did your knowledge of Kosen increase after visiting the CA café? Did your knowledge of CA increase? Did your interest in CA increase?

These two pie charts show 95% of the visitors said that the knowledge of both Kosen and CA had increased. This one shows that 83% of the visitors said that their interest in CA had increased by experiencing the CA café.

These results have given us and our department new hope. Yet, we have noticed some points for improvement. First of all, the number of student staff members was just four, so it was difficult to treat each visitor fully. Also, the open campus was limited to the third-year students. Many of them said that their grade is not good enough to pass the exam though they wish to enter Tokuyama Kosen. They felt that it is too late to make their grade high enough. In order to solve these problems, we have come up with the following ideas for the next open campus.

①(First) Increasing the student staff members.

②(Second) Allowing the prospective applicants to choose their own guide and advisor for a guided tour and for any questions they may have.

③(And finally) Allowing the first and second-year junior high school students to participate in the open campus.

With these new ideas, many more junior high school students will hopefully be attracted to CA. As they become familiar with our department's work, goals and graduate opportunities, junior high school students' parents' concerns will be addressed personally, putting them at ease with their child's choice to pursue a career in civil engineering and architecture. So we can appeal not only to the students but also to the parents. This is important because they usually have a considerable influence on their children's choice of schools. The next CA café in the open campus appears to be more promising than the previous one. We are convinced that the effect of the CA café will be found in the following conversation of family members who have joined the open campus next year.

Hatano: Mom, I want to be an architect. So I hope to enter the CA department of Tokuyama Kosen.

Nakami: Yes, after that CA café experience, I believe your choice is a wise one.

Hamasaki: As long as people are living, building houses and roads is needed. The CA department at Tokuyama Kosen is the best place to learn it.

We hope today's demonstration of our work can be an inspiration to anyone who may be experiencing a similar crisis. We look forward to sharing the results of our continued research and progressive work as it unfolds into stage two next school year. At our next presentation, we hope we may be able to say we have surpassed our own hopes and current goals. Thank you.