【Message from TUFS President】 Welcome to the Fall Quarter

September 28, 2020

Dear students,

This is a message to everyone prior to October 1 – the beginning of the fall quarter. I am sure there are many of you, especially first year students, who will be coming to TUFS for the first time since entrance examinations were held. As you may have already seen, we have prepared "A Guide to TUFS, Fall Quarter". I hope this will help you to be able to safely reach classrooms and take classes.

http://wp.tufs.ac.jp/tufstoday/tufsfeatured/20100101/

However, we are also very concerned about COVID-19. Please check your temperature, wash your hands, and take measures to avoid crowding during lunchtime. In particular, I ask that you pay special attention to social gatherings on and off campus. Examples from other universities and other countries have indicated that the source of clusters is not classes, but rather parties. We do not want to "ban" anything, but we do ask that you act responsibly and sensibly.

Face-to-face classes account for 27% of undergraduate classes. 48% of first-year students' and 43% of second-year students' major language courses will be held on campus. Especially for first-year students, we have made adjustments to prevent entire courses from being held online, but we regret that for various reasons, we were unable to offer face-to-face options for some major language courses. On the other hand, some students have expressed their wish to take their courses online from home. We will accommodate these requests by offering online delivery of face-to-face classes. We will continue to take every possible measure to ensure a balance between health and study opportunities for our students.

For those of you who were planning to study abroad this year, although the government has started to accept international students, the "risk level" for Japanese people traveling abroad has not been lowered, and so many of you will most likely be commencing your studies at TUFS in the fall quarter. I am sorry that ultimately, there was not much that the university could do to help with your situations. I hope that those of you who have made changes in future plans in response to this will be able to move toward new goals with a fresh start.

https://www.tufs.ac.jp/student/NEWS/study_abroad/200512_1.html (Japanese only)

https://www.tufs.ac.jp/student/NEWS/study_abroad/200915_1.html (Japanese only)

Lastly, to all the fourth-year students who are preparing to graduate: provided the infection levels do not significantly worsen in the future, the graduation ceremony scheduled for the end of March will be held on campus, possibly in separate classrooms. Please do your best in your final quarter so that the ceremony can be carried out safely.

With the start of full-scale face-to-face classes, the upcoming quarter will be a new and challenging semester for the university as well. We will support you as much as possible for the new challenges you will also face, such as the online gaigosai. Although difficult times still lie ahead of us, I wish you all good health and a meaningful campus life.

HAYASHI Kayoko
President, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies