University of the West

University of the West (UWest) is a private Buddhist university in Rosemead, California. It was founded in 1990 by Hsing Yun, founder of the Taiwan-based Buddhist order Fo Guang Shan and Hsi Lai Temple, the North American order headquarters. The school offered its first class in spring of 1991. UWest is accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission. Founded by a Buddhist organization, UWest is described in their official documents as a "Buddhist-affiliated university" that is "informed by Buddhist wisdom," but UWest students are not required to subscribe to the Buddhist faith or practice Buddhism in any form. Indeed, UWest's undergraduate and graduate programs in business administration garner higher enrollment numbers than its undergraduate and graduate programs in religious studies. History University of the West, originally incorporated as Hsi Lai University, started in a small classroom in Hsi Lai Temple, the North American head branch of the Fo Guang Shan order. In its first semester (1991) the school had only four professors and a student body of around 30 students made up of monks and nuns from the temple. Early instructors were Roger Schmidt, Dan Lusthaus, Jim Santucci (now chair of the Department of Comparative Religion at California State University, Fullerton), and Lewis Lancaster, an eminent Western scholar of Buddhism, a former UWest president and now Chair Emeritus at University of California, Berkeley. Over the years, each of those original professors has returned to the UWest campus to teach or act in administrative roles (or both).