Interview Articles about Undergraduate Seminar Courses
Vol. 1-1

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSORYAMAGATA Tatsufumi

We Q Team members have observed that after the shift fromin-person to online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has
been very difficult for 2nd-year and 3rd-year students who areplanning to take seminars to choose their seminar professor and forprofessors to connect with their students. This project focuses onboth the seminar professor and student point of view to relay theelements and dynamics of seminars. Our interview articles onseminars introduce two professors at APU (one APS professor and
one APM professor) and their seminars, alongside a spotlight on oneof their seminar students. Through the student point-of-view focus,
we hope that in addition to conveying successful seminar methods
to other APU professors that they can incorporate into their own
seminars, we can have them discover successful teaching methods
through the student perspective as well.

I. Introduction
Professor YAMAGATA Tatsufumi is from Iwate
Prefecture and attended the University ofRochester in USA, receiving a PhD inEconomics. He specializes in international
development and cooperation. His hobby isplaying basketball.

II. Q&A about Professor
Yamagata’s Seminar

Although the seminar started in October 2018, it
did not succeed due to a lack of seminar
students. However, a year later, the seminar
was restarted thanks to APU student TABA
Taiki’ s passionate request to continue theseminar. It has been a year and a half sincethen. Firstly, we asked [Q]uestions about theseminar.

2. Please tell us about the format of yourseminar.
Currently, the seminar is mainly individual work,
but I would like to work on setting up a “mixingspace” for group work. It seems that someseminar students are able to have deep
interactions even without group work, but forme, it is important to see who is working welland who is not working well.
3. What are three benefits of taking aseminar for students?
Three benefits are: 1) having an academic
advisor, 2) easily being able to communicate
directly with a professor, and 3) being able tofind friends with the same interests.

learn without being particular about my own
research field. My seminar is characterized bya rich variety of research themes.

4. What have been some of the mostimpressive research themes from yourseminar students?
In the sense that it was able to contribute toseminar students’ research, the research on“Consideration for wheelchair use in Oita
Prefecture, where JR Kyushu is ‘unmanned’ atsome stations” and “Progress in applying forsame-sex partnerships in Oita Prefecture” wasparticularly impressive. Neither happened to bein the scope of “international development” , butthat is alright. I believe that a student should befree to choose a theme that they will still beinterested in even after graduation.

III. Q&A about Professor

graduating, rather than writing a graduation
thesis as the primary purpose.

1. Please tell us about the characteristics
of your seminar.
My specialization is international development
and inter national cooperation, but I am
focusing on what the seminar students want to

Ya m a g a t a ’s T e a c h i n gMethods

The seminar students’ research themes
demonstrate that everyone is free to have theirown ideas (i.e., “different strokes for differentfolks” ). How does Professor Yamagata teach inthis diverse seminar?

5. What do you value in seminar
instruction?
Seminar students should find out what they
themselves are unavoidably interested in andbuild their research upon it. I also want thestudents to continue to be interested in what
they have researched even after graduating. I
hope that they will come across such a big
theme through my seminar. For that reason, I
would like students to focus their seminar
research on what they will do in the future after

Project Q conducts the first face-to-face interview after COVID
with Professor Yamagata in his office at APU.

6. Please tell us in detail about threeteaching methods that you use in theseminar.
The three teaching methods in my seminar are
having students: 1) find objective variables(not only quantitative variables, but also
qualitative aspects), 2) confirm the variety ofobjective variables (for example, detecting
good cases and practices or bad cases andpractices), and 3) discovering thedeterminants of variables.
7. How do you teach and help students
when they are writing research papers?
When doing research, I emphasize theimportance of completely distinguishing
between objective summaries (what others
have researched) and subjective evaluations(what the author has done in the paper).
8. What do you place importance on inorder to carry out more specialized
research in your seminar?
As I mentioned before, for those who have astrong interest in a certain topic and want tostudy how to apply it practically, it is better togain experience as a member of society.
Experience in society is important, such as
experiencing the process of consensus building
by gathering opinions and experiencing
hierarchical relationships for the division ofroles.

I V. Q & A o n P r o f e s s o r
Yamagata’ s own research
and advice for futureseminar students

L a s t l y, P r o f e s s o r Ya m a g a t a a n s w e r e d[Q]uestions regarding his own research so far
and his advice for seminar students who will
study in his seminar in the future.

9. What was the first research theme thatyou studied?
Since I was studying in the field of economics atthat time, my research topic was “the need forpopulation control and the validity of population
control policies” . However, I realized that it isnecessary to promote development and todevelop so that humans can live, rather thancontrolling the population. This realization led toa shift from economic demography
to development economics research.
10. What kind of research themes are you
interested in for the future?
My areas of interest include employment,
health, disability, poverty, and gender equality in

Professor Yamagata shows the books and movies
he recommends students to use in his seminar.

developing countries. As an attitude in
conducting research, I would like to placeparticular importance on increasing theproportion of people who speak and giveopinions.

11. Is there anything you usually do or
keep in mind for your research?
I often touch on movies and books to expand
various images. As President Deguchi says,“traveling” is not only moving one’ s feet to theactual site, but can also be experienced inmovies and books, and I think that notion isimportant as it can become motivation forlearning.
12. Is there anything students should
prepare for the seminar interview?
It is important for students to ask themselves
what they want to do. In addition, for me, if
there are many students who want to enter theseminar, in addition to prioritizing the students
who want to take the main seminar, I place
importance on how much I can assist in thestudent’s field of research.

Professor Yamagata poses with Project Q interviewers Ayaha Shibata and Kelly Lorennij.

AUTHOR’S IMPRESSION
The interview with Professor Yamagata came after the interview about him with Taba-san.
Professor Yamagata’ s guidance to students and his approach and attitude toward learning
particularly drew my attention. As Taba-san said, I think, “I want to study under this teacher.”“The different folks, different strokes” seminar is a place of learning that can uniquely beoffered by Professor Yamagata. I myself would like to find “what I cannot help but beinterested in” and do my best to continue researching it.

INTERVIEWER and AUTHOR
Name：SHIBATA Ayaha
College：APS
Country : Japan
Message : Hello everyone! I am SHIBATA Ayaha, aQ-Team member with ALRCS since Fall 2021. My
hobbies are listening to music and looking atdesign. Through participating in Project Q, I havebeen able to get to know professors’ and senior
students’ views on learning at APU and strengthen
my desire to further deepen my own learning. I
would like to convey the appeal of seminars that I
learned and felt in the interview to all students!

INTERVIEWER and TRANSLATOR
Name：LORENNIJ Kelly
College：APS (ED)Country : Marshall Islands
Message : Iakwe (hello)！ I am Kelly, a 3rd year
Environment and Development major. I enjoy
traveling and taking my ukulele to play wherever Ivisit. As a member of the Project Q team under theAcademic Office’ s ALCRS, I have been able toget an inside look on the goals and expectations ofAPU’ s faculty teachers. Through these articles
detailing the methods and motivations of each
respective professor, I sincerely wish each reader
takes away a nugget of wisdom.

What is [Q]?

At APU there are many professors who put together wonderful classes, and if we could get toknow how these classes are planned, it would contribute to the improvement of otherprofessors’ classes. For that purpose, we have begun doing interviews in order to learn aboutclass planning. These articles have been entitled [Q], comprising a variety of meanings such as:increasing the [Q]uality of classes, answering [Q]uestions to increase quality, and forming a[Q]ueue, or line, of class improvements. We would be very happy if these articles could
contribute to the [Q]uest of APU professors’ class quality improvement.