St. Luke’s International University has developed from the High Grade Nurse Training School attached to St. Luke’s International Hospital, which had been founded in 1920 by the Christian missionary physician, Dr. Rudolf Bolling Teusler. His vision for nursing education was not only to provide high-quality professional training, but to also nurture nurses who would understand and appreciate human beings and their place in society, nurses who would have public awareness while embodying the Christian faith. Mrs. Alice C. St. John, an American with abundant teaching experience, was invited to direct this school, and it was founded with the aim of raising the level of the nursing profession and developing skilled nurses who can take leadership. Right from the beginning, the high standards set at this school created an educational environment completely unlike that at any other existing institution involved in women’s or nursing education in Japan at the time. Apart from clinical nursing, the curriculum also covered general health issues and included such courses as home-visit nursing, school health, and health education.
Since then, the school’s history followed a steady course of unremitting effort which has now evolved into the present university.