Akita University provides the only foundation in Japan where students can consistently and systematically learn the process from explication of the resource generation mechanism to resource investigations, development, and production based on accumulation of special technologies and personal connections in Japan and other countries. The Faculty of International Resource Sciences collects researchers and engineers who actively work at the front line in the world to be the international base of education of resource sciences.
The Faculty of International Resource Sciences consists of three courses: Social Science and Humanities, science, and engineering. Those courses are closely related to each other. Our curriculums cover both Social Science and Humanities fields and science/technology fields so that students can mutually learn those special fields to become a resource earth science engineer who understands resource economy or a resource policy specialist who surveys the history of the earth.
The Faculty of International Resource Sciences provides a global environment where students normally communicate in English, for example, communication with foreign teachers and students, presentation of research results at an international conference. Students gain the fundamental ability of English by the special English program I-EAP (intensive university English) during the first and second years, and all specialized subjects in the second year are taught in English.
All students are required to participate in the compulsory practical training "overseas resource field work" for approximately four weeks in order to attain practical ability to understand and solve various problems that they may face at the forefront of resource development in foreign countries. Then, they will connect their experience during the training to their graduation work in the forth year, together with the "international resource creative exercise" before and after the training.
The Faculty of International Resource Sciences has the primary research facility and students are allowed to use the leading-edge facility under supervision by advising teachers. Because teachers also conduct the leading-edge researches under cooperation with overseas researchers and constantly release the results of their researches to international journals, students can attend lectures about those results of leading-edge researches in real time.