What is GDP?
The Discovery Program for Global Learners, or “GDP” (short for Global Discovery Program), is an international Bachelor’s program at Okayama University that offers a liberal arts education in natural and social sciences and humanities.
GDP is like an island with its own culture. The primary language of instruction is English (in classrooms and beyond, you find students engaging in serious discussions in English, working out their confusions about assigned readings and other aspects of life, and collaborating on projects, common and individual). But once you step outside of GDP, you are surrounded by Okayama dialect and the quotidian life of this mid-sized Japanese city.
Today’s world requires us to think and act differently from our conventional, accustomed ways. By exploring diverse academic fields and collaborating with peers from around the world, GDP students hone their abilities to navigate and make a positive impact in an interconnected and rapidly changing world.
What can you study at GDP?
At GDP, instead of focusing on one specific academic discipline, students use the available educational resources to construct their own personalized interdisciplinary curriculum.
Our courses are organized under the three themes of “diversity,” “social innovation,” and “sustainability.” “Diversity” here not only refers to cultural, ethnic, and gender diversity, but also to the diverse modes of generating knowledge and diverse ways of being and imagining our future. “Social innovation” refers to the non-technological means of realizing these diverse futures in collaboration with others. Combined with techno-scientific means of addressing the problem of global “sustainability,” these three themes constitute GDP’s core values as well as study areas.
GDP’s courses are divided into the following academic clusters:
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