Kobe Gakuin University

Kobe Gakuin University was founded in 1966 with Shigeki Mori as its first president. Its core values are ‘love of truth and respect for individuality’. Initially offering a single course of study in the Faculty of Nutrition for 100 students, the university now contains nine faculties and seven graduate schools, and has expanded to two campuses. The largest private university integrating the cultural, social and natural studies in Kobe City, Kobe Gakuin University currently has a student body of 10,000 students, and is proud to have graduated over 80,000 students from its university graduate school courses. The university’s founding philosophy,‘ love of truth and respect for individuality’, is interpreted to mean the process of “finding joy in acquiring the wisdom provided by the universal academic framework through learning and the pursuit of knowledge, and in the process of doing so, to become aware of and develop a deep respect for our own and others’ individuality”. We feel great pride, as well as a great sense of responsibility, that our students spend their precious youth on our Kobe Gakuin University campuses. I believe that Kobe Gakuin University’s mission is to provide education that allows students to feel their own growth, become proud members of society, and based upon this founding philosophy, support them in the pursuit of their dreams and goals. The Kobe Gakuin Educational Foundation celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding in 2012, while the University marked the 50th anniversary of its founding in 2016. This timing presents an excellent opportunity for Kobe Gakuin University to make a drastic change: the Kobe Gakuin 100-Year Declaration. This represents our vision for the next 100 years. We also put together a mid-term action plan over the five years from AY2013 to AY2017.‘ 50 Years in the Future—Kobe Gakuin University’s Path for the Next 50 Years’ has been published as a way of stating clearly the challenges that the university must tackle over the next 50 years.