I assume that those of you who picked up this Guide are leading busy lives with club activities, school events, and studies. This may also be the time for you to start thinking and seeking advice about your future path.While imagining all of you as prospective students and contemplating with you what it means to study at university, or even graduate school, we will introduce the academic experiences and features of the Faculty and the Graduate School of Science and Technology of Sophia University.
Studying at university means learning an area of specialization in depth and systematizing it into universal and general knowledge. The Faculty of Science and Technology consists of three departments that allow students to learn a broad range of subjects without narrowing down to a field of specialization in the initial years of study, that is, students can gain “interdisciplinary knowledge” in the initial years and focus on a field of specialization in the later years of university life (eight divisions of Graduate School: Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Applied Chemistry, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, Biological Science, and Information Science). Our educational system is designed to accommodate the interdisciplinary nature of science and technology, which is expected to become more and more diverse in the future.
In addition, with the aim of fostering individuals who can actively contribute to solving various problems occurring on a global scale, such as environmental destruction, on the global stage and from a global perspective, both undergraduate and graduate programs offer English courses in which students can acquire the necessary credits in English classes and graduate/complete their degrees. After joining a laboratory, students from both the Japanese course and the English course conduct research together. Students in the Japanese course naturally acquire English communication skills and diverse values through seminars, experiments, and day-to-day activities. Students in the English course can act as coaches of students in the Japanese course who have to make a presentation at an international conference, and such an environment prepares students to become active participants on the global stage. Whereas the main focus of learning up to the third year of the undergraduate program is to “learn the achievements of academic fields in the past” and “be able to have the same basic knowledge as others have,” as in high school, the focus shifts to “tackling unknown issues” and “being able to express ideas different from those of other people” from the fourth year where one conducts graduation research to graduate school. The graduate program of Sophia University has a variety of research projects rooted in social contribution, including the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The university campus, which is located in the center of Tokyo, also serves as a “place for knowledge exchange” among the industry, government, and academia, attracting researchers in Japan as well as overseas. It is an inspiring environment for students as they can absorb the results of cutting-edge research right there on campus.
For almost 60 years, the Faculty of Science and Technology and the Graduate School of Science and Technology have been passing down the “baton of knowledge” that they had inherited from their predecessors to future generations, with students and faculty members working together to impart new wisdom unique to Sophia University, toward the goal of making the world a better place. We look forward to working with you, who will become leaders on the global stage and open the way to the future, to pass the baton down to the next generation.