The Physical Education Department of Shanxi Agricultural University, formerly known as the Physical Education Teaching and Research Group, was established in 1954. It was renamed as the Physical Education Teaching and Research Section in 1979. The Physical Education Department was established in 1999, it was renamed as the Physical Education Institute in 2017, and then again renamed the Physical Education Department in 2020. The Physical Education Department is in charge of organizing the physical education courses for freshmen and sophomores at the university. It is responsible for organizing and carrying out group competitions, competitive sports organization and training, national students' physical health standards testing, and guiding extracurricular sports activities of students' sports clubs. The Physical Education Department consists of the Party and government office, the teaching office, the ball game teaching center, the swimming track and field teaching center, the martial arts gymnastics teaching center, the physical testing center, and the venues center.

The Physical Education Department currently has 44 staff members, including 39 teachers and 5 teaching administrators. Among the teachers, there are 4 professors, 14 associate professors, 12 lecturers and 9 teaching assistants. Additionally, there are 2 PHDS, 27 postgraduates as well as 1 national referee and 27 national first class referees per event. At present, there are 24 sports courses including basketball, volleyball, air volleyball, football, tennis, table tennis, badminton, softball, shuttlecock, swimming, cheerleading, aerobics, yoga, martial arts, taekwondo, wushu sanda，as well as a health course and other special sports courses. Every year, we carry out sports meetings for teachers and students, guide more than 10 student sports associations, and guide students to carry out extracurricular activities that involve outdoor sports.

The Physical Education Department has 12 school sports teams including track and field teams, basketball teams, football teams, badminton teams, martial arts teams, aerobics teams and yoga teams. On behalf of the school, these teams have participated in national, Northern Chinese, and Shanxi provincial competitions many times and achieved good results. The wushu team has achieved good results in many national competitions. In 2017, the football team won the championship of the Campus Group of Shanxi University Football League. In 2018, the basketball team won the championship for the Shanxi University Basketball Championship and the women's championship of the 21st CUBA China University Basketball League grass-roots Competition. The track and field team has won the top three team and individual medals in Chinese higher agricultural colleges, North China Agriculture and Forestry Colleges track and field Games, and Shanxi University and Middle School Sports games many times.

  The Physical Education Department has an excellent teaching environment and complete teaching facilities. There are standard swimming pools, the cultural sports center, the dance hall, a gym and other indoor sports venues and playgrounds with basketball courts and other outdoor sports venues of varying sizes. In 2017, the first laboratories were built, including the anatomy laboratory, the sports health care and sports rehabilitation laboratory, and the  exercise physiology and physical fitness laboratory. These provide the resources and environment for teachers and students to successfully carry out teaching and scientific research practice.

   In recent years, teachers of the Physical Education Department have published more than 100 teaching and research papers on national open academic journals, including 5 papers in CSSCI journals. The department has prepared 3 textbooks on agriculture ministry planning, published 10 monographs ,participated in 5 national social science projects, and hosted 1 key project for the state general administration of sports. The department has also hosted nearly 30 projects on key subjects in humanities and social science by Shanxi Province department of education, the education department of Shanxi Province, and Shanxi Province sports bureau key topic. Additionally, the department has presided over and completed more than 30 teaching and scientific research projects set up by the university. In 2022, it became a member of Shanxi Sports Science and Sports Medicine Association.

Standing at a new historical starting point, the Physical Education Department adheres to the guidance of Xi Jinping's Thoughts on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and fully implements the Party's education policy. The department bears in mind the mission of educating people for the Party and the country by deepening the integration of sports and education, strengthening the characteristics of school running, comprehensively improving the ability of talent cultivation, concentrating minds and efforts, making reform and innovation, and working hard. The department strives to build a Chinese first-class, internationally influential, high-level application-oriented research university with distinctive regional characteristics.