Structure of Department and Major
Tokyo Zokei University is constantly endeavoring to improve the quality of education, in order to put our self-established educational theory into practice. Reconsidering what the higher education should be from today’s viewpoint, we have simplified our educational structure to make it easier to understand. Although the specializing majors are becoming all the more highly specialize and subdivided, at the same time we make it possible to study traverse or across the majors, in other words to study fields of other majors, so that the students can get an overall knowledge of art in general. So what we did was to eliminate the conventional fixed vertically layered structure of Majors, and to realize a new horizontal structure of Majors in which the flexibility is prevailing. The objective of our education being to grasp ‘Design’ and ‘Art’ comprehensively from a wide perspective, namely ‘Zokei(creating art and design)’, we provide two Departments under the ‘Faculty of Zokei’; ‘Department of Design’ and ‘Department of Fine Arts’. Under the Department of Design, there are nine specializing Majors. And under the Department of Fine Arts, there are two specializing Majors. Within the big frame of two Departments, we raise our original banners of eleven ‘Majors’, which are quite peculiar to our university, in that the fence between the majors is low enough to be jumped over. This makes our education very flexible. In doing so, we clearly deliver our message as to enable students to study with self-control, and to enable traverse and comprehensive relationship between the Majors. In short, our aim is to set up a flexible structure that activates students’ study and the creation of art.
Clearly indicating the educational axis and contents in its name, each Major serves as the entrance to each specialized area. Although the name of the Major may seem to set limits to the area you can study, we offer ‘Fields of Study’ from the second year through which you can broaden your knowledge beyond your specialized area.
Since April 2003, we have set up a new Major and one new Field of Study: It is ‘Animation Major’, and a Field of Study called ‘Expanded Expression’ in the Painting Major. It is an evolution for our university. The ‘Sustainable Major ‘ was set up from the basic thought that saving the environment is inevitable to our society today, and also because we are heading towards the theme- setting education. The ‘Animation Major’ was set up in order to reflect the most up-to-date global culture, which sprang out from Japan. The ‘Expanded Expression’ was placed in one of the Fields of Study in Painting Major, because we mean to explore the new potentiality of artistic expression, which is the aim of our university.