The Summer School for Junior and Senior High School Girls 2025 (hereafter referred to as “Natsu-gaku”) is a three-day, two-night residential program where female students engage with researchers, engineers, university students, and graduate students in science and technology fields. Through these interactions, participants deepen their interest in science and engineering, while also exploring their future academic and career paths.
This year’s theme is Prism — From a Single Ray of Light to Infinite Adventures. Just as a prism disperses a single beam of light into a spectrum of colors, the program aspires to help students—who may carry uncertainties or concerns—discover new possibilities through diverse encounters at Natsu-gaku.
Starting from Natsu-gaku 2025, the venue was moved to the National Olympics Memorial Youth Center (hereafter referred to as NYC) and the program was held from Saturday, August 9 to Monday, August 11. The program was organized by 34 university and graduate student teaching assistants (hereafter student “TAs”) together with more than 250 staff members from academic societies and companies in science and engineering fields. They conveyed the appeal of science and engineering to 90 female junior and senior high school students from 29 prefectures across Japan.
Although it was only for a short period of three days, we think it helped to reduce anxiety and improve self-esteem by interacting with many researchers and engineers active in science and engineering fields, deeply experiencing the appeal of science and engineering fields, and visualizing a concrete image of oneself in the future with fellow students.
This year’s Natsu-gaku was the first to be held at a new location in NYC. The change from last year’s event, which was held at the National Women’s Education Center, caused a lot of anxiety, but thanks to everyone’s cooperation and flexibility, we were able to hold the event without major problems.
Next year, based on this year’s experience, we would like to further develop and continue the summer school together with everyone.
We look forward to your continued support for Summer Institute.
For more information, please download the report here.
