I have been chosen to serve as the 20th Aoyama Gakuin University president for a term of 4 years. With your kind cooperation and support, I hope to help the University grow during these years.

The main premise of assuming office is "preserving the founding spirit of AGU." What is the founding spirit of this private school? As a non-Christian, I believe "education based on the Christian faith" means turning to the Bible and Christian teachings when I take the time to reflect on my own efforts. I particularly think of the school motto “the salt of the earth, the light of the world”, from Matthew Chapter 5, verses 13-16, as well as the Serenity Prayer, which goes: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” For myself, preserving the founding spirit of AGU is achieved by careful observation of our past, present, and future.

The biggest tasks we are facing now are how to improve the system of the university, faculties, and graduate schools in preparation for the coming decline in birthrate, and how to maintain and develop the quality of Aoyama Gakuin University as an entity that we can be proud of and that lives up to its history and traditions. In other words, I believe it is time we return to the starting point of enhancing research and education, and the development of human resources and successors. Each undergraduate and graduate school should organize their own curriculum to meet the demands of the times, should convey advanced specialized knowledge based on the latest research, and work to enable students to move on into the diverse world. In order to establish the infrastructure for this purpose, it is the greatest responsibility of the head of university to develop common platforms, such as improving facilities, enhancing support systems for students and faculty, and to promote internationalization and computerization.

The year 2024 marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of the university, and the 150th anniversary of the founding of Aoyama Gakuin. Since its establishment, the university has built a culture that naturally nurtures "respect for diversity" and "the power to work together beyond boundaries” based on the perspectives that stem from the founding spirit of AGU: contributing to society and maintaining an international view.

This liberal school culture, the unique liberal arts education that fosters rich humanity and a wide range of knowledge, together with a wide range of humanities and social studies fields based on a track record of language education, has become the face of AGU. However, although we tend to lose sight of it, our university has also achieved various remarkable results in the field of science and engineering. Therefore, in order to create a unique style of research and education at AGU, we intend to promote the expansion of research and education in which each field stimulates the others and transcends educational borders. It is clear that in recent society, there is a limit to how many problems can be solved by studies of individual academic fields alone. For example, we focus on data science and AI as typical fields where specialized areas can be linked and revitalized, and incorporate them into the “Aoyama Standard”, a university wide educational system that allows students to learn beyond the boundaries of faculties and departments. We expect to achieve greater research results by adding advanced approaches backed up by data to the fields of humanities and societies, which are the strengths of our university.

In this way, Aoyama Gakuin University aims to further improve the quality of research and education through "respect for diversity" and "the power to work together beyond boundaries." We hope to continue to be an educational and research community that is useful to people, with the ability to "serve God and persons, contributing to society.”

December 2023
Aoyama Gakuin University
President, INAZUMI Hiroshige