In 2012, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) selected "Tri-Institutional Collaborative/Cooperative Educational Reform Project -Fostering Globally-Engaged, Practical and Innovative Engineers- ,jointly implemented by Toyohashi University of Technology, Nagaoka University of Technology, and Institute of National Colleges of Technologies. As a main undertaking of the project, Toyohashi University of Technology has established an overseas education base in the rapidly growing ASEAN area, sent our Japanese students there for a fixed period as exchange students. In implementing these activities, we are taking the lead in the activities of the project to develop global engineers with a global point of view.

Currently, Japan is in desperate need of global human resources. Toyohashi University of Technology thus focuses on addressing this need from an "engineer education" viewpoint. The University is playing a leading role in that area of education, through cooperation with Nagaoka University of Technology and the Institute of National Colleges of Technology, by providing an environment where students can gain a global perspective and heightened awareness of multicultural coexistence through on-site overseas experiences, as well as providing state-of-the-art technologies. With this in mind, we have begun to the tri-institutional project to nurture globally-engaged practical engineers who will become pioneers of the new era.

In October 2013, the Center for International Education (CIE) was established within the Institute for Global Network Innovation in Technology Education (IGNITE) of the University. This center's main responsibility is to take charge of the global programs in our university.

So far, the center have established and operated the overseas education base in Malaysia Penang and implement overseas internship program, well designed for our university students, in cooperation with Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). We will continue with this program, and expand our activities such as faculty development (FD), staff development (SD) programs with an international viewpoint, in tandem with Nagaoka University of Technology and Institute of National Colleges of Technology. We will also consider opening co-education courses of the three institutions.