Nihon Fukushi University Graduate School Programs
NFU has combined and expanded its undergraduate offerings and established a graduate school with four post-graduate programs (seven majors). We nurture outstanding practitioners, researchers and leaders who can assist the health and welfare industries locally, in the business world, and internationally.
Graduate School: Social Welfare Major
Social Welfare Major （Correspondence Course）
This program takes advantage of the depth of experience in graduate school education acquired by the NFU Graduate School over the years, carrying out social welfare research and education with foresight regarding clinical and policy-related developments. Our graduate school aims to produce leaders for social welfare institutions and allows students to study while working. Students can use the Internet to study according to their own schedules. We want to attract individuals who spend their workdays thinking how they would like to start over and study something new, individuals who want to discover the means of solving the problems they see before them, and individuals who want to forge the social welfare systems of the future through practical research.
Clinical Psychology Major (Evening Classes)
We face the emergence of various problems as our population continues to age and various gaps in modern society grow, leading to the abuse of children and the elderly, a rise in depression and suicide among the middle-aged and elderly, and increases in truancy and social withdrawal. Psychology, and clinical psychology in particular, can help us understand and treat people’s minds, while social welfare studies can help us understand and support people’s livelihoods.
This program aims to nurture specialists in clinical psychology grounded in an understanding of social welfare, who can react to the needs of our time and deal with these social trends. We believe this is also important in order to address the current noteworthy move toward community-oriented approaches in clinical psychology, including psychology offered in schools, in businesses, and also used to assist victims of crimes.
Health and Social Services Management (Master's Program), Graduate School of Health and Social Services Management, Nihon Fukushi University
Health and Social Services Management Major (Evening Classes)
There are diverse needs and administrative issues that need to be managed on behalf of the users at health and welfare institutions where graduates of our graduate school work.
In order to meet the requirements of these times, we established the Health and Social Services Management Program in April, 2009. Many social workers from health and welfare institutions are studying in conjunction with our graduate school’s evening class system. We have drawn up a practical curriculum and adopted an inter-professional education approach. We are training highly specialized workers for health and welfare institutions, who possess both knowledge and spirit in the areas of welfare service management and health and welfare management.
Nihon Fukushi University Graduate School of International Social Development (Master's Program)
International Social Development Major （Correspondence Course）
International development cooperation has begun shifting from support focused on economic development to human-oriented support that includes basic education and the development of local welfare. As a result, there has been a growing demand for cooperative assistance from Japan and other developed countries to help with educational facilities and local welfare in developing countries. It is expected that, in addition to traditional development specialists, many different members of society, including local educators, will participate in the local social development of developing countries.
Courage is needed In order to carry out this development, as well as the ability to provide guidance for methodologically correct analysis by applying appropriate experience. Insight into the effective resources of a given locale will also be necessary in order to devise local projects, working with government administrations and development workers in the target countries.
For the International Social Development Master’s Program, we have prepared a development and education research program that can meet these demands.
Nihon Fukushi University Graduate School of Social Well-Being and Development (DoctorateProgram)
Social Welfare Major
This program nurtures the ability of students to carry out social welfare research independently, and in addition to our goal of producing workers with a focus on the traditional fields of social welfare research and education, we aim at producing workers who can cooperate with specialists in related fields. They will be working as specialized professionals with advanced research and leadership skills based on social welfare study carried out at social welfare institutions. This program covers three areas: Social Welfare Theory and Special Research on History; Social Welfare Policy and Special Research on Planning Theory; and Social Welfare Implementation and Special Research on Assistance Theory.
Healthcare Management Major
In this program, students research the current state of healthcare and welfare management, looking at organizations that provide continuous high-quality health and welfare services, with a focus on user-centric safety. We also study the current state of management in private-sector businesses that produce and sell health- and welfare-related equipment, tools, materials, medical products, financial products, and information systems, as well as other types of companies. Our studies will encompass the dimensions of strategy, marketing, accounting, finance, and venture business.
Through this kind of research and education, our program targets adults employed by companies, particularly in the areas of health insurance, health care, and welfare, as well as adults who work for businesses that target these areas, with the aim of producing highly skilled professionals.
International Social Development Major (Correspondence Course)
This program was established in 2002; it is highly regarded as a correspondence education graduate school program that can be accessed throughout the world over the Internet. On the research side, our instructors and graduate students are cooperating in the government’s 21st Century Center of Excellence (Hereinafter referred to as COE) program, and on the education side, we have been chosen to participate in the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Attractive Graduate School Education initiative in 2005. Based on a foundation of experience and the results of these activities, the goal of our program is to train highly skilled researchers and leadership specialists who can train specialists in social development and developmental education. The key to approaching the creation of a “welfare society” from the aspect of international social development is the insight gleaned by constantly checking back and forth between field work and theory. In this major, we believe it is possible to advance independent research by taking advantage of all the benefits of correspondence, sharing theoretical study areas with development practitioners living on the front lines around the world and systematically utilizing diverse fields located overseas.
The guidance system built by our instructors includes a network consisting of many welfare development researchers in the field and resource people in different regions and at leading overseas universities. This system combines field studies that involve traversing village rice paddies to speak with locals and exchanging information that makes full use of IT. We will also create a connection between research guidance conducted through centralized meetings hosted around the world, and network discussions involving all instructors and graduate students. This is the research environment provided by this program.
Graduate School of Nursing Science (Master’s Program) * Application for approval pending
We plan to open the Graduate School of Nursing Science (master’s program) to train researchers and educators able to systematize nursing science based on tested nursing practice and thus develop health, medical, and welfare care.