"A professor cultivating future leaders" Kim Allen vol.2
【Students as future leaders】
-As a professor at ICU, has the meaning of education changed due to the current pandemic?
I think the meaning of the university has not changed. We live in an exceptional environment where online education has arrived. Our focus is on how we can maximize the benefits and reduce the disadvantages that come with it. The purpose of our liberal arts education is to offer expansive intellectual grounding in all types of human inquiry. We're trying to teach students to challenge their assumptions about the world and practice critical thinking, which is essential to prepare for the future. I think that there are solid prestigious universities in Japan, and we will still attract bright students. Currently, the number of 18-year-olds are going down, and universities are challenged to recruit from a smaller pool. In that case, I think ICU is well-positioned because students want to go to campuses that afford them opportunities. ICU has been doing this for a long time. The liberal arts education at ICU prepares students for the complexity of the future in numerous ways. ICU was the head of the curve. I'm positive that these well-rounded students will be most prepared to embrace the rapid changes that will come for sure.
-Do you think entrepreneurship should be part of the liberal arts education?
Yes, liberal arts education challenges you to consider not only how to solve problems, but also trains you to ask which problems to solve and why. It prepares students for positions of leadership, the life of service to the nation, and humankind in general. To have an extensive liberal arts education, you have to explore issues, ideas, and methods across humanities, arts, and sciences. You have to engage in many different conversations, identify the problems around the world, and offer solutions, which is what entrepreneurship is.
Therefore the definition of entrepreneurship is not just about starting up a company. Still, also it's finding an issue and solving it.
It can be a social enterprise or a business enterprise. All businesses offer services and products that meet human needs. And the liberal arts education lets you see how things are connected. People need an education that helps them become future leaders to address significant problems around sustainability. This is how I connect entrepreneurship and education. My wish for ICU students is to be future leaders. That's why I try to promote entrepreneurship. At the ENTREP event last February, you brought a former google director and presented examples for students to see how people experience and understand this particular area of life. I believe education and business are becoming more intertwined eventually in the future. Students have to know about the challenges, innovations, and opportunities that people are taking.
-What skills do you think students should acquire the most?
Empathy. One word. It's the pervasive trait that all successful entrepreneurs and teachers have. My mother has high levels of empathy. Empathy is to question if you know what people want and need. Empathy is an essential skill, it's the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
You can share how you feel, show gratitude or interest in people. You can be encouraging or supportive. There's no script, and those are the skills that are the foundation of all success. If you're an entrepreneur offering a new service or product and don't know what the user needs and feels with your product or service, you will fail 100%. You need to understand what the end-user wants. People who have high levels of empathy are ones that I respect at the end of the day.
【The meaning of success】
-What is your definition of success?
I think it's living out the talents that God has given you. That's when you feel most fulfilled, and that's when people are proud of you. You see the light that you had in your life, and that might be when God is also happy with you. This idea of letting your gifts flourish, helping other people, and making the world a better place is when you're truly happy. That happiness is really trident to being successful. It's not a monetary amount of what you built. At the end of the day, you want to make a positive imprint on society. I believe that's fundamentally what success is tied into. Everything will come to pass. Success, money, what you made, it'll all come to pass. Although, what you leave behind after you leave this earth should be a strong consideration in any definition of success. There are people we still admire and think about who passed away. Mother Teresa and Steve Jobs made the world a better place because they existed in this world. That's how I would, in an indirect way, describe the quality of the color and sound of success.
-As a professor, do you think you are successful right now?
No. I strive for success every day. I'm never satisfied. There's a lot more I can give and contribute. For instance, I worked together with ENTREP and hosted the first entrepreneurship conference, right. I think that was something we needed, and students had a lot of energy toward it. If you are the smartest and internationally focused, you should be the movers and shakers that make positive changes in society. Additionally, I think anyone satisfied with what they've done, stop innovating. In that sense, I'm not satisfied, and I'm always striving for the goal.
The sun keeps on moving. As it goes down, you walk forward to see where it goes, and that's where I am. Life is a gift, it's fascinating. And it's not just about me. It's about helping other people, including those who are outside of not belonging, those who are excluded, and those who experience economic inequality. When you can give that to people, which is part of the reason I enjoy being a professor, I want to be part of the solution. I want my voice to be a positive one for change, and hopefully, you guys will be successful and buy me Kobe beef at a really lovely restaurant.
