About Toyo University Message form Dean
Take a New Step to Creating a Bright Future
Congratulations to all our new students on starting school life at Toyo University. Our senior students can use their experience of surmounting difficulties last year to enjoy their new university life. I have no doubt all of them had a tough time dealing with various constraints throughout academic year 2020 as the entire world struggled with the novel coronavirus pandemic. While we must unfortunately be prepared to live with this virus for some time to come, it`s time for us to take a new step forward. Our university will be joining all of you in taking on the following challenges.
The first is providing a campus life oriented around better classes. We are making preparations in the hope of surmounting the constraints on our learning environment by employing new ideas to have proper face-to-face classes and online / on-demand classes as we employ new ideas. We will implement a plan for the digital transformation of education so that faculty and staff can work as one to support you all. As part of this, our efforts were adopted as the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s “University and Technical College Enhancement Plan Utilizing Digital Technology” at the end of academic year 2020, adding to it our own subtitle of “A Compass for the Learning Journey of 30,000 People.” We will be working alongside you in a variety of ways to ensure all students are able to continue their learning journeys. It has become difficult to delineate clear career prospects in today’s society, but we will assist students to live robust and independent lives no matter how society changes and to enjoy a fruitful learning journey.
The second is relentlessly continuing reforms. The Faculty of Human Life Design has been relocated to the Akabanedai Campus as of this April. The public is looking on full of expectations to see how this faculty will help us manifest the idea that “no one must be left behind” in the present circumstances. At the Hakusan Campus, a new Department of Global Diversity Studies has been created in the Faculty of Sociology. Given the current realities of international interaction that make it difficult to directly travel back and forth, the faculty will begin by seeking to define “internationalization” as it works together with other faculties to present the vision of life in a global society that our university is pursuing.
The third is contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, advocated by the UN. Much of the research and education embedded in our university’s history are very much efforts aimed at achieving the SDGs. Many of you can get inspiration from people around the world struggling to improve themselves in order to help out others during the coronavirus pandemic. This also happens to be the “Spirit of Toyo University” that has been carefully passed down to us as a legacy.
Finally, there are many things that we can learn in such trying times as these from our founder Enryo Inoue, and I especially would like you to take to heart the words “Fear rightly”. This way of thinking was mentioned by Inoue in both his “Youkaigaku kogi(Lectures on demonology)” and “Shinkai(The True Mystery)”, published three months before his death. To select “correct information” from among all the information available through the mass media and online and rationally process it, you must have the ability to discern what is correct. Answering questions such as who determines on what grounds what constitutes a scientific explanation, why many people think they are OK, and why others contrarily wonder why they cannot free themselves of anxiety requires deep contemplation in search of the truth or, in other words, philosophizing. This is the starting point for learning at Toyo University.
Let’s all work to create a bright future for humanity as we enjoy our new campus life.