Konan University
Located on the slopes of Rokko Mountain in Higashinada-ku at the city of Kobe in Japan, is Konan University, a privately owned university.
It sits on a scenic location and has more than 10,000 students enrolled. This university offers various programs not only to its citizens, but also to foreigners through its Konan International Exchange Center.
Konan University was established in 1918 and 1919 as Konan Gakuen Middle School and Konan Middle School respectively. Two years after the Second World War and in accordance with the country’s reorganization of its educational system, its Junior High School was established. A year later it discontinued its regular classes.
In 1951, Konan University was officially opened and the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences was added, but was abolished six years later. In 1957, Faculty of Letters and the Faculty of Science were added. Two years later, the Faculty of Science was also established. It was later followed by the Faculty of Law (1960), Faculty of Science (department of Applied Physics and department of Applied Chemistry) in 1962.
Several others followed in 1964, namely: Faculty of Science (Department of Applied Mathematics), Konan University Graduate School, Master's Programs established: Graduate School of Humanities (Japanese Literature, English Literature, Applied Sociology), Graduate School of Natural Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) Doctoral Programs established: Graduate School of Humanities (English Literature and Language), and the Graduate School of Natural Science (Physics).
Currently the school has the following faculties: Faculty of Business Administration, the Faculty of Letters, Faculty of Economics, Faculty of Law, and the Faculty of Science and Engineering.
At the faculty of Science and Engineering, the Department of Information Science and Systems Engineering was established in order to foster engineers to take vital roles in the emerging information age. Here, they are trained for systems analysis, human interface, intelligent information processing, and management information processing. Through these studies, students learn to engage in information technologies which are being applied in today’s businesses.
To show what the students of this department are capable of, they have unveiled a guide robot that is capable of communicating utilizing natural language: the Konan Robot ii-1. Professor Hirotaki Nakayama headed this project, and the robot can do Q&A tasks, answering using natural language which it gets from an internet database. The professor and his students hope that one day this ii-1 robot can be used to help humans in the real world.
