University of Nagano

Close-up of the entrance

Cafeteria at Miwa Campus during construction

The main university campus in Miwa, near Miwa Jinja (美和神社), was completed in 2018. It currently houses a complex which is over 10,610 square meters, not including the grounds. Built of native Nagano Prefecture lumber and other building materials, it boasts a natural geothermal air conditioning system, glass-walled classrooms and offices, a spacious cafeteria which is also open to the public on weekdays, and a library which is also open to the public on weekdays and Saturdays.[12] The Miwa campus was built directly behind the Nagano Prefectural College campus, which was torn down in 2019.

The Global Center serves as the international affairs office for the university. This includes organizing the study abroad program, as well as providing materials and support, academic training, and opportunities for foreign language study. It has an office staffed by multi-lingual employees who are available for consultation by university students and faculty, as well as international students during their study in Japan.[13]

The University of Nagano Library[14] is a community accessible library, open to students, staff, and the general public, Monday-Saturday. The library was constructed using various wood and lumber materials from Nagano Prefecture. The library includes counters and tables for study as well as booths and rooms for individual or group study. In addition to its collection of Japanese books, the library includes a large collection of graded readers in English, newspapers and magazines, and offers access to online data bases including ProQuest, OPAC, CiNii, J-Stage, Webcat and JAIRO.

Gocho Campus

The university dormitory and community campus in Gocho was built on the site of a decommissioned elementary school Nagano Gocho Elementary School (長野市立後町小学校, Nagano-shiritsu Gocho Elementary School) in the downtown area of Nagano. The Gocho community campus includes rentable kitchens, conference rooms, and a lecture hall.

All first-year students are required to live in the centrally-located student dormitory to foster relationships between students and the community.[15][16] The student dormitory system is highly unusual for a university in Japan.[17] It is similar to dormitories which exist in overseas universities, such as in the United States. Each dorm room houses two students in a partitionable room, and a group of eight dorm rooms share a common living room, kitchen, eating, and study area.[12]

Zozan Dormitory is named after the 19th Century Japanese rangaku (literally "Dutch learning", and by extension "Western learning") scholar, engineer, and politician Sakuma Shōzan who was born in Shinshū (信州) (or Shinano Province) (present day Nagano Prefecture) during the Edo period.[13]

Sakuma Zozan, a scholar of Western learning in the last days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, was born in Shinshu. The young people who learned at his private school became a driving force in pioneering a new age. The University of Nagano aims to act as a source for regional revitalization and reinvigoration and as a base for knowledge that will activate industry, culture, and lifestyles in Nagano.[13]

The Center for Social Innovation Initiatives (CSI), which aims to connect academia, industry, government, and the community, is also located in Gocho. The CSI focuses on developing solutions, products, and services for contemporary social problems, such as the declining birth rate, aging population, and environmental pressures, from a business perspective.[18]

On 5 February 2019, the university signed a comprehensive cooperation agreement with the Nagano Prefectural government and Nihon Unisys on social innovation to solve regional issues.[19]

The university comprises two faculties and three departments:

• Faculty of Global Management Studies[20]
  • Department of Global Management Studies
    • Global Business
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Public Management
• Faculty of Health and Human Development[21]
  • Department of Food and Health Sciences
  • Department of Child Development and Education

Unlike other universities in Japan, the university operates on a quarter system. Each academic year is divided into four-quarters instead of the traditional two semester system. In addition, each class period is 100 minutes in length instead of the typical 90-minute university class. Finally, many courses meet twice per week, compared to the more usual once per week schedule at other universities in Japan.

The Eminent Speakers’ Forum on Global Development, which began in 2019, provides a series of English-language public lectures on global development. This Forum covers a range of topics and issues, including economics, finance, human development, regional integration, environment, climate change, and career development. Speakers have included[22][23] Shinji Asanuma (Hitotsubashi University); Fernando Aldaba (Ateneo de Manila University); Emanuel Mori (former President of the Federated States of Micronesia); and Andrew Parker (regional Asian senior adviser at the United Nations Development Programme).