This year, the university had a wonderful beginning to 2022, as the Ekiden team finished 7th overall in the Hakone Ekiden and earning one of the ten  seeds for the third consecutive year. I would like to express my gratitude to all those involved in the Ekiden road race and to those who supported our university throughout Japan and around the world. I sincerely wish you all good health and happiness. 

Our education and research activities have been conducted in-person and online while paying the utmost attention to infection countermeasures during the Covid-19 pandemic this past year. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the faculty, staff, and students, and to all others for your cooperation. Regarding the class policy for the 2022 academic year from April, we are preparing for in-person classes where students are able to learn together on campus. In April last year, when the university celebrated its 50th anniversary, we launched a new mid to long-term plan “Soka University Grand Design 2021-2030”, with an eye toward 2030. In particular, our efforts to build a diverse campus received the highest rating of “S” for the second consecutive time following the previous interim “S” evaluation in 2018 for the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s "Top Global University Project". In addition, we were able to improve our ranking to 351-400th overall (tied 58th in Japan) in the QS Asian University Rankings. We also successfully completed our 50th-anniversary projects, such as the” Value Creation x SDGs” serial event, with the cooperation of many people. 

In the field of research, we have been focusing on activities that contribute to the SDGs, such as promoting “human glycan research”, one of the nation’s prioritized academic research projects, and international joint research in Ethiopia aimed at building a sustainable society in developing countries. In addition, the success of students was remarkable even in midst of the pandemic. Besides winning the RoboCup 2021 league championship, our students participated in various business contests and international conferences, made contributions to the local community, and demonstrated the results of their daily activities in a variety of fields, including certification exams, music, and sports. For more information on last year’s major topics, please refer to "Sodai’s 10 Major News Stories of 2021". This year will mark the second year of the new grand design. In the 50th Anniversary Project, we will steadily promote initiatives in the four fields of "education," "research," "SDGs," and "diversity," under the theme of "a university that fosters ‘global citizens’ that can create value, while maintaining our philosophy and traditions, and producing global citizens who have acquired the ability to continue learning in response to all kinds of changes and contribute to the well-being of others. This year, in particular, in cooperation with various organizations, we will steadily advance as a hub for "global citizenship education" by promoting joint research and holding symposiums. This year, based on the founding spirit as expressed by our founder, Daisaku Ikeda, all faculty and staff will continue to make efforts to develop the potential of each student on our richly diverse campus. 

Yoshihisa Baba
President
Soka University
January 2022