| Aichi Gakuin University | |
| Native Name: | 愛知学院大学 |
| Image Alt: | Aichi Gakuin University |
| Type: | Private |
| Academic Staff: | 513 [1] |
| Students: | c.12,000 |
| Undergrad: | 11,424[2] |
| City: | Nisshin, Aichi Chikusa-ku, Nagoya |
| Country: | Japan |
| Coor: | 35.162°N 137.047°W (Nisshin campus) |
| Campus: | Multiple campuses |
| Other Name: | AGU あいぐ |
is a private university in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. It has campuses at the city of Nisshin, Aichi, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya and Meijō Park in Nagoya.The predecessor of the university, a Soto Zen college, was founded in 1876, and it was chartered as a university in 1953.
The university began[3] as a Soto Zen school in 1876, and retains strong connections to Soto Zen. In 1903 in accordance with revisions to education regulations, it was renamed the Sotozen No. 3 middle school. In 1925 it was renamed the Aichi middle school. In 1948 it was reformed as a high school, and in 1950 it became Aichi Gakuin Junior College. In 1953 it was finally established as Aichi Gakuin University. Over the next two decades it added the Faculty of Law, the School of Dentistry (including Aichi Gakuin Dental Hospital), the Faculty of Commerce, and the Faculty of Letters. In 1974 it opened its Nisshin Campus.
It began offering masters and doctoral courses in 1974 and 1976, initially in religious studies and psychology, expanding to all subjects over the next few years. In the 1980s it created departments of Japanese Culture and International Culture (the latter now the Department of English Language and Cultures). In the 1990s, it oversaw the creation of the graduate School of Business, and graduate studies in Japanese Culture and English Language.
In 2002, the graduate School of Policy open. A satellite campus opened in Sakae in central Nagoya in 2003, with the graduate schools of Commerce and Management and of Law moving there. The School of Pharmacy Science was opened in 2005, with graduate studies beginning six years later. A new Department of Global English was established in 2007.
In 2013, the Faculty of Economics was established, while in 2014, the new Meijo Campus next to Meijo Park in Nagoya was opened, housing the faculties of Business, Commerce, and Economics.
The university currently consists of the following faculties and other divisions:[4]
Aichi Gakuin is sister school to two other universities originating in Soto Zen institutions, Komazawa University in Tokyo and Tohoku Fukushi University in Sendai. Internationally, it has overseas partners in Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK, Bond University in Australia, University of Victoria in Canada, University of Arkansas-Fort Smith in the US, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman in Malaysia, and Dongguk University in South Korea. It has academic cooperation agreements with Elmira College in the US; Hanyang University in South Korea; Hunan Normal University, Dalian University, Changchun University, Ludong University, and Linyi University in China; Tzu Chi University and Tzu Chi University of Science and Technology in Taiwan; University of Education at the University of Da Nang in Vietnam; the National University of Laos; Padjadjaran University in Indonesia; and Hacettepe University in Turkey.[5]
In 2003 on the 50th anniversary of the university's charter, former US President Bill Clinton was invited to give a lecture and received an honorary doctorate for his dedication to world peace, following which he met the parents of Yoshihiro Hattori, a Japanese high school student whose death in the US ten years previously had prompted worldwide calls for stricter US gun control.[6] In 2015, the Dalai Lama gave a speech and interview with journalist Akira Ikegami.[7]