President's Message
Welcome to Soka University of America
I hope this website will answer many of the questions you may have about our university. Although you'll find many details about Soka University of America on this site, let me highlight some of our achievements.
SUA's graduate school opened at the Calabasas campus in 1994 offering a Master of Arts degree in Second and Foreign Language Education with a concentration in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). The four year liberal arts college began offering its Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts program at the Aliso Viejo campus in 2001. In June 2005, SUA was accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) four years ahead of schedule. That same year our first undergraduate class graduated, with every student who applied to graduate school being accepted.
SUA students have now been accepted to graduate schools at many prestigious universities, including:
- Harvard
- Yale
- Oxford
- Stanford
- USC
- UCLA
- UC Berkeley
- UCI
- Georgetown
- Columbia Teachers College
- University of Hawaii Law School
- Cornell
- Duke
- Boston
- NYU
- Cambridge
- London School of Economics
Every undergraduate at SUA graduates with a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts, which has qualified our students for graduate school in such diverse fields as:
- law
- education
- economics
- statistics
- urban planning
- psychology
- diplomacy
- environmental studies
- mathematical finance
- international development studies
- international education policy
- international studies
- conflict analysis and resolution
- Japanese language and literature
- Latin American politics and human rights
- environmental legal studies
- history
- peace studies
- East Asia regional studies
- public affairs
- sociology
- anthropology
- entertainment industry management
- second and foreign language education (TESOL)
- creative writing
- screenwriting
- literature
- global affairs
- art education
- medicine (with extra science classes)
Soka University also participates in intercollegiate sports through the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA.) Our students compete against other colleges in soccer, swimming, track and field and cross country.
In 2007 the graduate program moved to our Aliso Viejo campus, just one mile from the Pacific Ocean in South Orange County. This united both programs on one campus for the first time, and was one more step in our growth as we focus on the overall mission of Soka University of America to foster a steady stream of global citizens committed to living a contributive life.
In 2008 SUA announced the Soka Opportunity Scholarships which offer free tuition (room and board fees still apply) for eligible admitted undergraduate students whose families make $60,000 or less a year.
In 2009 our Graduate school announced a new Certificate Program in Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language and SUA began construction on our new 1000-seat Soka Performing Arts Center, which was dedicated on May 27, 2011 with the commencement of the Class of 2011.
SUA is committed to providing students of the coming century with an educational opportunity that fosters love for humankind, develops character, provides an intellectual basis for the realization of peace and empowers learners to contribute to and improve society. This is the challenge given to us by our founder, Daisaku Ikeda, and this is the challenge we will strive to meet with the generous support that SUA is receiving from individuals all over the world.
I invite you to explore our web pages to discover more about our history, our academic programs, our exciting growth, and our founding spirit.
Sincerely,
Daniel Y. Habuki, PhD
President
