Message from President

Message to New Students for 2021

Welcome to the Yokohama National University—the campus of studies and science nestled in a beautiful greenery setting.

In this academic year, YNU have welcomed 1,726 undergraduates and 928graduate school students. Congratulations on your admission to YNU. I would like to express my deepest respect to you for your hard work as well as to your family members and others for their dedicated support during this pandemic.

This pandemic made last year a challenge for us, too, compelling us to launch online classes almost at full scale, take thorough infection prevention measures to ensure safe research practices, and put restrictions on the use of facilities on campus. None of them have ever happened in the long history of our university and, in retrospect, we keenly feel that we did everything we could every single day.

Under such circumstances, there is something I came home to learn and feel convinced of, which is that the YNU forms a robust community with diverse stakeholders such as students, faculty and staff, alumni, and people in the community where we belong. Universities are institution of research and education. They are indispensable like a pair of wheels in a car, and I believe that elements like internationality, regionality, and diversity are an axle interconnecting the wheels.
We have strived to continue education over the past year. We held online classes and prepared YNU guidelines for online classes based on a student questionnaire. Some extracurricular clubs achieved wonderful results through concerted efforts under severe constraints on the hours of activities and use of facilities on campus.
Regrettably, on the other hand, new students who joined our YNU community last year could not adequately participate as members of the community due to restrictions on activities on campus; the students found it difficult to get to know each other and practically engage in research activities on campus. In an effort to secure connection, we organized opportunities to promote communication between students, faculty, and staff, such as a virtual online campus tour. In research, we never spared our efforts to continue our activities by taking thorough anti-infection measures and achieved excellent results. One of them is the development of a remote-controlled and automated PCR inspection robot through medical-engineering collaboration. This is a splendid achievement contributing to the prevention of the spread of the virus even though we don’t have a medical school as such.

To support these activities, our alumni and many others contributed a total of more than fifty million JPY to provide emergency support to our students, which reassured us of how robust our YNU community is.
History tells that the Black Death or the Plague, rampant in the 14th century, was one of the factors that brought about the Renaissance in the 15th century. A likely explanation is: When society needed a change, the plague took place, which primed humans to think profoundly about life and death in order to get out of their despair with culture and civilization. And, after a century of contemplation, they garnered the victory of the Renaissance.
Many people assume that we are in such an era. Today, Japan and other advanced counties are facing a number of challenges, such as slow economic growth, financial crisis, an aging society with a declining birthrate, and environmental issues. And because we live an age of such adversity, national universities are asked to contribute to academic development, construction of knowledge that generates new values, and creation of innovation. For the first time in fifty years, we at YNU established a new faculty— the College of Urban Sciences—to tackle issues faced by Yokohama as well as other cities and regions in Kanagawa, and new talents are being developed under the programs which merge humanities and social sciences with sciences and engineering and use metropolitan cities as venues for field work. The College of Education and Human Sciences will function as the College of Education specializing in school education curriculum, while the Professional Degree Program (Professional School for Teacher Education) will play a central role as an advanced teacher training course. The College of Economics and the College of Business Administration have been reorganized to be placed under an educational system that enables acquisition of a wide range of knowledge required in the era of globalization. The College of Engineering Science and the Graduate School of Engineering Science have been restructured to foster advanced engineering science talents who will create new knowledge and lead technological innovation. The Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences and the Institute of Urban Innovation, which are embodiments of integration of arts and sciences, are active in education and research. In this academic year, we started recruiting students for the Interfaculty Graduate School of Innovative and Practical Studies and the two social-science related programs—the Data Science Education Program (DSEP) and Lawcal Business Economics Education Program (LBEEP). Along with this comprehensive restructuring, we aim to further enhance academic exchange with universities of excellence in the world, develop practical human resources, and become among world’s leading education and research institutions.

You are now a member of our YNU community.
Everyone, let’s grow together.
Welcome to the Yokohama National University—the campus of studies and research nestled in a beautiful greenery setting and congratulations on your enrollment in our University and advancement to graduate studies.

UMEHARA Izuru
President, Yokohama National University