Nippon Steel & Sumikin Engineering Co.
CSR & Public Relations Department, Management Support Center
General Manager, CSR Office Hiroyuki Tanaka

Programs unique to engineering firms

'We provide an opportunity to challenge social issues for which there is no single answer.' In the Passionate and Advanced Mission-E, high school students take on social issues over a period of eight months. The three themes of the program are "utilization of waste heat from factories," "offshore wind power generation," and "large-space architecture," which the company is actually developing. Participating students were divided into teams by school to come up with their own solution plans. The mission is to create a model that can be verified, compile a presentation, and present it at the final contest. There are a wide variety of factors to consider in order to solve the problem: analyzing the problem to be solved, searching for technologies that could be used, calculating the expected cost of implementation, and dividing the work to be completed by the time of the contest and managing the schedule. The combination of all of these factors leads to the "answer" to each of them. There is no single solution to a real social issue, and I believe that Mission-E is a program that we can offer because we are working on it every day. The process of challenge is based on what you learn in school. We are happy if it also improves the students' motivation to learn on a daily basis," says Tanaka.

Involving the company to do better.

Many employees are involved in the implementation of the program, including "advisors" who are involved in the planning and development of the program to make it more realistic, a "team of young engineers" who take on the exact same challenges as the participating students to show how engineers think, and the company president and directors who participate in the appointment ceremony and contest. The involvement of employees working on the frontlines of solving social issues makes the program even more exciting and appealing to students. The program is designed to help foster the next generation of people and technology. We are convinced that this program, which can nurture the next generation of people and technology, is something we should be doing. However, social contribution activities are done as an additional job to the daily work of participating employees, so it is very important to motivate our employees," he said. One of Mr. Tanaka's important tasks is to spread understanding within the company in order to deliver better projects to high school students.

Face to face relationship with participating students and each othernature (of a person)

　The number of students who participate in this program is about 4 to 50 every year," says Tanaka. Although the program is not large in size, one of the attractions of this program is that we are able to develop a long-term, face-to-face relationship with the students," says Tanaka. For companies involved in next-generation education, the number of children participating in the program is a clear indicator of the significance of their activities both internally and externally. On the other hand, even if the number of participants is not as large as in the case of "Passionate Tip Mission-E," a company's involvement with each student may be a new way of getting involved in education. Some teachers and students have sent us very kind letters after participating in the program. I hope that the students' participation in Mission-E, in which they challenge social issues as a team using what they have learned at school, will be a turning point for them in their future careers. We will continue to work on the program with the hope of producing human resources who will be active in society," Tanaka says with a smile.