The major aim of Physiological Society of Japan (PSJ) is to promote research in the physiological sciences by providing free communications to members and by actively committing itself to the national and international scientific communities. Research field of physiological science deals with a wide variety of areas, from cell physiology to system physiology of various organs. Because of development of modern science, sessions of PSJ annual meeting are finely divided and thus researchers who are outside of the area cannot understand the presentation. As a consequence, many researchers tend to attend other meeting that deals with their own area of interest, such as Society for Neuroscience. On the other hand, to obtain a tenure-track position in academic area such as Medical School, ability to teach a wide area of physiology is strongly required. Until recently, however, PSJ has provided little opportunity to learn teaching skill during annual meeting. Furthermore, to promote globalization of PSJ annual meeting, it has been required that all scientific sessions are presented in English since 2006. This reform was effective in developing an international collaboration by increasing the number of non-Japanese attendees. However, many physiology teachers, who mainly do teaching rather than research, have stopped attending the annual meeting. Such teachers may not be able to obtain up-to-date knowledge of physiology. Thus, quality of teaching may be declining. To provide an opportunity to learn a wide range of knowledge that is required for physiology teaching, Education Committee of PSJ has started a lecture course of physiological science together with model lectures that are designed mainly for undergraduates. These lectures are given in Japanese. To obtain Physiology Educator license, applicants must attend sufficient number of lectures. In addition to lecture attendance, there are additional several conditions that fulfill license application. We hope that these systems may improve physiology teachers’ quality of teaching, help to promote postdocs to obtain academic positions, and to increase attendees of the annual PSJ meeting.
37th Congress of IUPS (Birmingham, UK) (2013) Proc 37th IUPS, PCA163
Poster Communications: New challenge of Physiological Society of Japan – Reform of annual meeting and establishment of Physiology Educator
N. Koibuchi1,2, A. Nakashima2, M. Ishimatsu2, S. Okumura2, T. Okumura2, Y. Kawai2, M. Kuno2, A. Koizumi2, M. Shiibashi2, A. Suzuki2, T. Matsuda2, H. Morita2, T. Yamashita2, A. Yamanaka2
1. Department of Integrative Physiology, Gunma University Graduate School of Medicine, Maebashi, Gunma, Japan. 2. Education Committee, Physiological Society of Japan, Tokyo, Japan.
View other abstracts by:
Where applicable, experiments conform with Society ethical requirements.