New Year's Message (January 2018)

Happy New Year!

As we celebrate the arrival of this new year, I want to extend my warmest wishes for your health and prosperity in the year ahead.

Under the Yokohama Campus Improvement Plan that this university had in effect, until last year we worked on renovation of the library, development of a new student lounge, improvement of Hepburn Field, and introduction of an autonomous energy system, among other improvements. Now we are looking ahead to focusing our resources on upgrading the university's teaching and research activities with a view to further reforms, including improvement of our Shirokane campus. All the members of the university community will join as one in these efforts and in advancing our work of contributing to society on a local and global scale.

Efforts to date have been promoting improvement of facilities and other aspects of the university's "hardware." What we want to work on this year, with a view to the year to come, is focusing our resources on further improvement of our "software" aspects and bringing our flexible organizational capabilities to bear.

This year we plan to establish a new Department of Global Legal Studies in the Faculty of Law. We will engage in developing talented people with global competence who have the flexibility to understand different cultures and the ability to communicate in English that together will provide them with a foundation for the capability to deal with issues in accordance with the objective rules of the law.

Throughout his life, the university founder Dr. Hepburn espoused the spirit of "Do for Others," which we have made our educational philosophy. We are committed to developing people who have the flexible strength and the gentleness to know themselves, to think about what this equips them to do for others, and to put that into action.

January 2018

Yasuo Matsubara
President
Meiji Gakuin University