Why does ICU have a Faculty Advisor System?

At ICU, each individual student designs his or her own study plan. In this way, students can pursue their very own "learning" through the classes that they take.

However, ICU offers more than 800 courses. If you tell students who have just enrolled to choose whatever subject they like, they are likely to be overwhelmed. They are being asked to reexamine their own academic interests from scratch, imagine themselves in ten or twenty years' time, then calculate backwards and decide what they should learn in their four years at university. ICU has established its Faculty Advisor system as one tool to support students in this important process of deliberating on course content and making decisions.

On enrollment, every student is assigned a full-time faculty (an assistant professor or higher-ranking ) who serves as the student's advisor. During a student's first, second, and third years at ICU, the advisor was assigned upon enrolment gives advice on the student's course plan for each semester. When the student begins his or her graduation research in fourth year, a thesis advisor takes over from the student's original advisor to provide more specialized, fine-tuned guidance for their graduation thesis and helps ensure that the student successfully earns his or her degree.

The Faculty Advisor system is a distinctive system that ICU, which maintains a consistent focus on small-group education, is in a unique position to offer.