57 president of the university, yet at that time I made a special request to the board of trustees to permit me to travel to Cambodia two or three times a year. Sophia University is known owing to its history of foreign language education. Besides that though, there was a desire to utilize the spirit of Catholic service activity to expand the base of education and research. This was to meet the needs of society, such as in welfare, nursing, global environment, grief care and so on, and aspire towards developing human resources that are useful to the world. With that objective, the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies was established in 2005, the Department of Nursing in 2010, and the Grief Care Institute in 2010. Among activities such as these, there arose in 2009 a “Project for Establishing Internationalization Centers,” wherein the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology recruited universities with a view to opening up lectures in English and enhancing the reception of international students. Our university was chosen as one of 13 base universities (7 national and 6 private universities), and this was an event demonstrative of the university’s reputation. Sophia University has been conducting lectures in English since 1949, and it has a track record for granting degrees. As regards our university’s social evaluation, it has a background wherein graduates with high language skills contribute to society, and we have been able to set up English courses in the Faculty of Science and Engineering as well. As president I urged the students to develop ideas and measures that may be of aid to the world’s vulnerable people, rather than think of economic supremacy or money worship. During the one night and two days of the orientation camps for new students we have held so far, I communicated to the students in about 40 departments comprising all the faculties, information linked to our university’s origin as well as my personal views, devoting around 30 minutes for each. From my own experience in Cambodia I apprised them of the actual daily lives of the Cambodian people, who set out to work in the fields in the early mornings. While not economically affluent,
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