Connecting Wisdom, Through Wisdom: Reflecting on my Eight Years as President -Part 2-

One Year of Progress in Creating a More Diverse Campus
Since assuming office in 2017, President Terumichi has been at the University’s helm, weaving the history of Sophia. Before the end of his eight-year term, we look back on his efforts during his tenure and his thoughts during that time in a three-part series.
2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, was indeed a frustrating year in which education and research activities were restricted. However, in retrospect, it was also a year of budding changes resulting in greater campus diversity.
SPSF (Sophia Program for Sustainable Futures), which launched in September 2020, is a six-department collaborative course in which students study specialized subjects in English under the theme of “Sustainable Futures.” While centered on the department to which the student belongs, students also take courses in five other departments to learn in an interdisciplinary manner. The program is now highly regarded around the world for the way it allows young people from diverse academic backgrounds, including foreign students and Japanese students raised abroad, to draw and discuss a common vision of the future.
It was also in 2020 that “Professional Studies,” a liberal arts course for working adults, was launched. We launched this program as a liberal arts course because we felt a sense of urgency regarding the meaning that “liberal arts” had begun to take in Japan and how it was not up to global standards. “Liberal arts” are often thought to refer to accumulated knowledge, but in essence, liberal arts are a form of power, meaningful only when used to create new perspectives through which to view an issue. We hope subjects like philosophy, religion, science, and others offered in our courses will inspire participants to challenge the everyday, accepted ideas and concepts, and ultimately shift their views on work and life.
Embedding Opportunities for Growth Throughout Campus
If the professionals participating in the Professional Studies course are those who are seeking to learn strategically to create business value, then the participants in the Sophia Global Citizen program (launched in 2024) are those learning for pure interest and curiosity. The very essence of academia can be said to be the fullest pursuit of intellectual curiosity as a reflection of one’s way of life and role in society.
We invite professionals to be part of the Professional Studies and Global Citizen programs to make the campus more diverse. Undergraduate programs follow meticulously structured and coherent curricula, which provide advanced expertise. However, such structured and predetermined education concerned us in terms of the level of achievable personal growth.
I believe that human growth is a chain of incalculable influences, a butterfly effect, so to speak. Without us realizing it, one experience combines with another, amplifying, and bringing about growth. If a campus is to be a hub of knowledge filled with those experiences, limiting the demographic to those in their early 20s will limit the mutual stimulation that can be traded.
College students are free to express their opinions to professionals learning on campus. College students can also take on “big brother” or “big sister” roles to high school students looking for guidance. There should also be a place for high school students to be able to talk with managers of major corporations or leaders of international organizations. Although the Yotsuya campus has always attracted students and faculty from around the world, we felt that it should strive to become even more of a place for diverse exchange.
Creatively Thinking Beyond the Degree Framework
The Office of Sophia Future Design Platform (SFDP Office), an organization dedicated to creating a multilayered learning space for discussions that transcend age, gender, nationality, profession, and social status, was established in 2023 with the stabilization of the COVID-19 situation. This Office freely conceives of initiatives that support human development separate from the framework of credits and curriculum, such as the Professional Studies and Global Citizen Programs, as well as the “World Exploration Club (Sekai Tankyubu),” an exploratory learning program for high school students launched in 2020.
The newest initiative launched by the SFDP Office is in entrepreneurship education: the Sophia Entrepreneurship Network (SEN) launched in November 2024. Sophia-style entrepreneurship is not just about starting a business. It is about fostering the spirit of challenge, and overcoming difficulties to realize a vision for the future with others and in the face of risk. Here, we also see the importance of a global perspective. We collaborate with the Global Entrepreneurship Network, a non-profit organization that develops entrepreneurship ecosystems in 180 countries around the world. Through workshops available to students of any grade or department, and programs for networking with alumni, people, and communities around the world, students can acquire entrepreneurship skills fit for our international society.
While enhancing opportunities for a diverse range people to engage in various experiences as a means of fostering growth within the Sophia University community, we have also worked on renewing the existing undergraduate education framework. This led to the development of ‘Liberal Education and Learning,’ which is based on the philosophy that learning and growth are lifelong pursuits, not confined to one’s time at university. (continued)
