Medium of instruction: Japanese
Language requirement: N2 level in Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT)
Location: Toyota campus

Overview of the School of Contemporary Sociology

Aiming to create new human connections in modern society, we offer four majors designed to give students the expertise and skills necessary for practical activities.
Our curriculum, comprising fieldwork and data analysis, helps students acquire problem-solving abilities.
The Projects for Social Connection is held for students to independently plan, manage, and organize events, which include support for town development projects and child cafeterias. This provides solutions for local issues and facilitates social interaction.
In addition to the "Career Design" class held during the spring semester for first-year students, the School of Contemporary Sociology also provides students with its own career support services throughout their four-year college life.

Features of the School of Contemporary Sociology

Department of Contemporary Sociology

Major in Sociology

Job scarcity for the youth, social division, poverty, social withdrawal, and other issues around us are attributable to various factors. Students focus on these issues while learning politics, economy, education, labor, culture, and other subjects in a cross-sectoral manner. This enables them to gain sociological imagination skills for a profound understanding of such issues.
After analyzing collected information and data, each student develops social concepts for new connections on the basis of their own theme.
Students learn techniques of "media and culture," which disseminate information widely to society. They also learn techniques of "education," which influences the habits and ethics of individuals, thus acquiring the capability to transmit information to society.

Major in Community Studies

Through experiencing, thinking, and getting involved in the "actual fields" (communities) where people connect and support each other, students enhance their practical skills to handle community problems scientifically and solve them.
Students learn both sociology--focusing on groups--and psychology--emphasizing individuals--and are expected to acquaint themselves with two survey techniques: social surveys and psychological approaches.
Students participate in town development projects jointly with local governments, large-scale social survey activities, and so on. Doing so allows them to acquire information collection and analytical capabilities, planning abilities, presentation skills, and other skills useful in the real world.

Major in Social Welfare

Aiming at a society wherein human lives are protected and people live an affluent life, students gain the ability of analyzing welfare issues and proposing solution-oriented approaches and practical actions. This major makes use of interdisciplinary approaches and draws upon sociology, psychology, and cultural anthropology.
The small-group training and seminars in this program help students understand people who are in need and cultivates their group skills as well.
Our small classes with face-to-face instruction from faculty members support students studying for the examination to become a Certified Social Worker, which is a formal national qualification for welfare professionals.

Major in Intercultural Studies

Students consider the forms of new human connections emerging in a multicultural society from an anthropological perspective.
Based on the combination of museology and cultural anthropology, students understand the lives of people that go beyond material objects (students who have completed this program are eligible to obtain a museum curator qualification).
Our Overseas Training Program and various other opportunities encourage students to have a global mindset.