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“The Roles of Program Officer in Grantmaking: A Comparison of the Commonalities and Difficulties in Program Officer Systems between the U.S. and Japan”
Organized by Obirin University
Sponsored by The Sasakawa Peace Foundation
Supported by The Japan Foundation Center and The Nippon Foundation
- Admission Free -
Sponsored by The Sasakawa Peace Foundation
Supported by The Japan Foundation Center and The Nippon Foundation
- Admission Free -
- Date:
- December 10 (Sat.), 2005, 14:00-18:00 (Open 13:30)
- Venue:
- The Conference Room, Nippon Foundation Bldg. 2F
1-2-2 Akasaka Minato-ku, Tokyo
Program (Simultaneous Interpretation Available)
- 14:00~14:10
- Opening Remarks
Yoshinobu Fujita
(Vice President, Obirin University) - 14:10~14:55
- Jan Jaffe
(Project Leader, “GrantCraft,” The Ford Foundation)
“Good Program Officers in the U.S. Private Foundations:
From the Experiences of the ‘GrantCraft’ Project” (tentative) - 15:00~15:45
- Junku Yuh
(Director, Tokyo Regional Office of the U.S. National Science Foundation)
“The Roles of Program Officers in the NSF” (tentative) - 15:45~16:15
- Break
- 16:15~17:45
- Panel Discussion
“A Comparison of the Commonalities and Difficulties in Program Officer
Systems between the U.S. and Japan: Cases of Governmental Agencies and Private Granmaking Foundations supporting Scientific Research, Arts, andSocial Work”
Moderator:
Toichi Makita
(Professor, Obirin University)
Panelists:
Jan Jaffe
(Project Leader, “GrantCraft,” The Ford Foundation)
Junku Yuh
(Director, Tokyo Office of the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Masao Katayama
(Executive Director, The Saison Foundation)
Masaaki Kusumi
(Program Advisor, The Japan Foundation Center) - 17:45~18:00
- Closing Remarks
Yoshihiko Kono
(Executive Director, The Sasakawa Peace Foundation)
18:30~20:00
Reception
(The Nippon Foundation Bldg., 8F / Admission Fee:1,000 Yen per person)
Background and Aims of the Symposium:
The program officer system was recently introduced to the Grant-in-Aid Program of the Japanese Ministry of Education and Science, the national competitive research grant system for the development of science and technology, after rigorous surveys of similar grant systems in other developed countries. The government concluded that the program officers (POs) are necessary for the effective management of the governmental funding schemes. However, not a few stakeholders have expressed their concerns as to whether this new PO system will function well in the Japanese context or whether a PO system will be any different from the previous peer evaluation system managed by each bureaucracy. This is not the first time that a PO system has been introduced in Japan. Under the leadership of Professor Yujiro Hayashi, the Toyota Foundation, established in 1974 as the then largest private foundation in Japan, adopted a PO system similar to those that already prevailed at the time in the U.S private foundations, and has maintained it for more than 30 years,. With this start, the PO system is now, to a substantial degree, acknowledged and accepted by Japanese private foundations to implement their grant-making activities. So then, can it be said that the PO system has been successful in Japanese private foundations? Many think no, albeit with some exceptional successes. On the occasion of the beginning of the PO system in the largest governmental research grant program, it is necessary to rethink and reexamine such basic questions as what differences in terms of output and impact can be expected from having POs as compared with a grant system without POs, and what kinds of conditions and environment are necessary for the desirable functioning of POs in both private and governmental grant-aid programs. Therefore, we would like to take the opportunity to deliberate the value of POs in grant systems with the participation of two knowledgeable guests invited from the U.S., where the PO system is considered to be most developed. The first presentation at the Symposium will be by Ms. Jan Jaffe of the Ford Foundation, who based on her knowledge and experiences with GrantCraft, a Ford Foundation project to produce a series of videos and other teaching materials for the in-house training of new recruits. She will address such points as the expected roles of POs in the U.S. private foundations in general; differences from the roles of the project executers in terms of added value to the project; the profile of a ‘good PO’ as conceived by private foundations; and how potential new recruits can become ‘good POs’ through training, The second presentation will by Dr. Junku Yuh, a representative of the Tokyo Office of the National Science Foundation, which is the largest governmental grant-making institution with a PO system. We will learn from Dr. Yuh about the expected roles of POs in the NSF; the kinds of authority they can exert in reality in the grant-making process; how being a ‘good PO’ is conceived at the NSF; and how new POs are recruited and trained at the NSF. Then, in addition to those two American guests, a panel discussion session will be held with Dr. Jaffe and Dr. Yuh as well as two invited Japanese veteran POs at private foundations, Mr. Masao Katayama of the Saison Foundation, who has been active for more than two decades as a program officer in an art support program, and Mr. Masaaki Kusumi of the Japan Foundation Center, who has worked for the Toyota Foundation’s research grant program, mainly in the scientific field. Dr. Toichi Makita of Obirin University, who previously worked for the Toyota Foundation’s international program as a program officer, and studied for his Ph.D. thesis as a beneficiary of the Ford Foundation grant programs for Asian countries, will moderate the panel discussion. The panel will focus mainly on the common as well as different roles and added value of POs by comparing POs in government and private foundations, POs working in scientific field and fields of arts and social work, and in the U.S. and Japanese contexts.
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