Introduction
A ‘virtual symposium’ was held by Kagoshima University and its partner universities from USA and Asia focusing on how peoples’ lives were affected during the pandemic.
Three main themes were explored: Closed Borders / Connecting Technologies / Creating the Future.
The Closed Borders theme explored the social and cultural impacts of the pandemic on our lives. Restriction of physical movement on the population as well as limiting direct contact has had a toll on our day to day lives. Negative aspects which include banning of cultural norms such as hugs, widening economic disparity, breakdown of the medical system, discrimination etc. are explored and expressed under this theme.
Connecting Technologies theme focused on the technologies which were leveraged to get around the limitations on social contact with lockdowns in place. How did education and teaching evolve to get around this situation? ZOOM, social media, COIL and other technologies were discussed.
Lastly, Creating the Future theme created a discussion around how we build a resilient community post COVID-19. What do we want the future to be? How do you imagine the world after ten years post COVID-19?
PROGRAM
The symposium consisted of two parts:
Session 1 Virtual Symposium held from March 3, 2021 until March 31, 2021
KU called for video presentations from students and professors from KU as well partner universities of the US-Kagoshima-Asia Triad Program in a Multi-Polar World Inter University Project and sister universities of Kagoshima University. Online discussion was facilitated via comments on the Virtual Symposium website.
Session 2 Online Symposium and Guest Lecture was held on 15:00~18:00 (JST) March 9, 2021.
Mr. Shinjiro Nozaki, Compliance and Risk Management Officer, Office of the Regional Director, World Health Organization | Regional Office for the Western Pacific, kindly agreed to give a guest lecture on ‘COVID-19 Update in the Western Pacific Region and For the Future’ at the request of Professor Rika Yatsushiro, Professor of Nursing, Kagoshima University.
Overall, we had a fantastic response to the symposium.
We received a total of around 183 applications to join the symposium.
Session 1 Virtual Symposium held from March 3, 2021 until March 31, 2021
From table 1 you can see that we received 22 video presentations from Japan, USA, Taiwan, Thailand, Korea, and China. These videos were uploaded to YouTube and links were supplied on the Symposium portal website. For our partner university in Hunan, China, we provided links through Mediasite Server on our university to circumvent geopolitical website blocking in China.
Online discussion was via comments on the videos directly on the symposium website. Students from various countries were able to have an online discussion and share their impressions of their counterparts’ video presentations about the pandemic, as well as share their own experiences
Table 1 Session 1 Video Presentations
| Theme | Video Title | Presenters | COUNTRY |
| Closed Borders | My Experience with the COVID-19 Pandemic | Kate Dietzen (University of Wisconsin La Crosse) | USA |
| Closed Borders | Prevention Measures to Protect the Community From COVID-19 Infection | Jaeeun-Kim (Chung- Ang University) | Korea |
| Closed Borders | DACA | Leonardo Medina (SJSU) | USA |
| Closed Borders | Go to Travel! & Go to Eat! Campaign Suspended Due to Corona Virus | Yin Jianjie (Kagoshima University) | Japan |
| Closed Borders / Creating the Future | Homelessness at SJSU | Gabe Contreras (SJSU) | USA |
| Closed Borders | The World Under COVID-19 : The effects of beef production in the United States | Professor Stephen B. Smith (Texas A&M University) | USA |
| Closed Borders / Connecting Technologies | Life and research under Covid-19 outbreak at Hunan Agricultural University | Professor Jianhua He and Ruizhi Hu PhD (Hunan Agricultural University) | China |
| Closed Borders / Connecting Technologies | How to adapt and overcome in light of the COVID-19 Outbreak | Taichi Nakamura, Faculty of Agriculture, (Kagoshima University) | Japan |
| Closed Borders | The Impact of Covid-19 In the Veterinary Field | Associate Professor Naoki Muira (Kagoshima University), Nanami Arikawa, (Kagoshima University) Riai Okamoto (Kagoshima University), Juliet Hill (University of Georgia) | Japan USA |
| Closed Borders | Students’ life , teachers’ life and ordinary peoples’ daily lives in Taiwan during the pandemic. | Professor Chi Chung CHOU, Professor of Veterinary Clinical Pathology National Chung-Hsing University | Taiwan |
| Closed Borders / Connecting Technologies | Covid-19 and University of Georgia Teaching Hospital | Professor Benjamin Brainard VMD Director of Clinical Research Veterinary Teaching Hospital, University of Georgia | USA |
| Closed Borders | Our Year Under COVID-19 | A presentation by the Laboratory of Food Function and Nutrigenomics (Kagoshima University) | Japan |
| Closed Borders | Effect of COVID-19 on Inter-university Exchange Project | Haru Ueda (Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Kagoshima University) | Japan |
| Closed Borders / Creating the Future | Infection control measures of Covid-19 in the US, Korea and Japan | Natsumi Abe, Suzuka Sakamoto, Mao Sezaki, Chiaki Tenjin, Miki Yoshimura (School of Health Science, Faculty of Medicine, Kagoshima University) | Japan |
| Closed Borders / Connecting Technologies / Creating the Future | Burapha University 3rd year Japanese Major Students’ Experiences During COVID-19 Pandemic | A video presentation by 3rd year Japanese Major Students from Burapha University (Thailand) | Thailand |
| Closed Borders / Connecting Technologies | How the Coronavirus outbreak affected an international student’s life | Jihwan Eum, Faculty of Agriculture, Kagoshima University | Japan |
| Closed Borders | Tuskegee University and Life Under COVID-19 | Roderick Fluker Associate Professor of Architecture at Tuskegee University Robert Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science | USA |
| Connecting Technologies | COIL Class Using Videos and Cloud Services as Connecting Technologies | Dr. Yoshiro Kaneko, Professor (Polymer Chemistry, Material Chemistry), Kagoshima University | Japan |
| Creating the Future | Creating The Future From Lessons Learned In The Past | A presentation by Berea College (USA) students: Payton Cavazos, Jonathan Colins, Marley Lawson, Hannah Malyuk, Elizabeth Owens, Peyton Peardon, Phurbu Tsetan and Hannah Wilson | USA |
| Creating the Future | Beef Production and SDGs | Professor Gotoh Takafumi (Meat Science, Kagoshima University) | Japan |
| Creating the Future | Beef Production and Market in Thailand | Prof. Dr. Sanchai Jaturasitha Director, Science and Technology Research Institute Chiang Mai University | Thailand |
| Creating the Future | Creating the future : Learning SDGs in Kagoshima | Professor Nakatani (Kagoshima University ) | Japan |
Session 2 Online Symposium and Guest Lecture was held on 15:00~18:00 (JST) March 9, 2021.
Kicked-off at 15:00 (JST) via ZOOM online. The number of participants who joined ZOOM was in excess of 150. Professor Miki Namba opened the proceedings and welcome address. This was followed by a short introduction by Professor Rika Yatsushiro for our guest speaker Mr. Shinjiro Nozaki from the World Health Organization.
Mr. Nozaki gave the audience a brief history of his career and his current work in the WHO. In 2019 he was appointed as the Compliance and Risk Management Officer in the Western Pacific Region. Responsible for supervising a dealing with all the risks within this region, he then gave a thorough briefing on the COVID-19 situation update. He described the situation in the countries in this region citing numbers and showing graphs of trends in infection. He also talked about the phylogenetic tree of SARS-CoV-2, global tracking of the virus and the vulnerable communities that have been impacted by COVID-19.
He then went on to talk about why the number of cases has been increasing in Europe. Towards the end of his talk, he discussed the “For the Future” four thematic priorities for the WHO as well as what the Western Pacific Region Office is doing for its response to COVID-19.
Mr. Nozaki, fluent in both Japanese and English gave the lecture in both languages so as to make difficult technical explanations easier to understand for both English and Japanese audience.
After the lecture, the Q&A session was opened and through Zoom chat, participants were able to send their questions for Mr. Nozaki to the Zoom chairperson, who then read out the questions for Mr. Nozaki to answer one by one. Questions and comments were made not only by the students abroad, but also by the nursing students who gathered at the face-to-face venue in Kagoshima University.
The session was so active that we were unable to have Mr. Nozaki answer all the questions in the limited timeframe. Mr. Nozaki kindly agreed to answer the questions offline and send his answers the following day. We then uploaded the answers to the virtual symposium website so that everyone can see it.
Professor De-Xing Hou from Kagoshima University gave the concluding remarks and thanks to Mr. Nozaki and all participants who joined.
After a short break, the remaining participants listened to a plenary discussion by Professors in charge of each course within the US-Kagoshima-Asia Triad Program in a Multi-Polar World Inter University Exchange Project. The meeting was then closed by Professor Sumie Nakatani.
The Session 2 Online Symposium and Guest Lecture video can be viewed via this link:
All participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire at the end of the symposium to give us feedback and their impressions so that we may improve on the success of this symposium.
Some photos from Session 2:
Nursing students watch online symposium at Global Initiative Center (Kagoshima University) 
Professor Nakatani Sumie speaks during plenary discussion 
Projector screenshot of online symposium.
