Education Policy

Policy and structure of education

The earth, a blue planet in the dark, exhibits its beauty as an oasis in the cosmos. Such an appearance is strongly related to the earth environment itself. Our blue wide ocean and green continents are wrapped by atmosphere with white clouds and ice maintained by the relatively warm climate condition which itself is a result of the subtle balance of them.
What maintains the earth’s environment and climate? How were they variable since its origin? What is the future of the environment and climate under the pressure of anthropogenic green house gasses? How does the global change affect the beauty of nature around us?
We aim to provide you scientific basis to answer questions above.

Policy and structure of education

We feel the environmental or climatic conditions in the life through landscapes and daily average of weather. These, of course, are determined not only by the local phonomenon but also by the global-scale atmosphere-ocean circulation, concentrations of green house gasses and aerosols, and earth surface conditions such as vegitation and ice-cover. The earth environment is exactly the complex interaction among them.
In order to understand the whole, we need a lot of knowledge from wide field of science such as physics, chemistry, biology, and geology, which go beyond the indvidual effort. Therefore, a holistic understanding of the earth system requires cooperation between many kind of people from various sceintific fields. Assuming such significance of interdisciplinary efforts, we have established our educational structure described below.

Highly specialized laboratory: We need a really sophisticated specialty to provide a valuable technique and knowledge for others. This can be nurtured through your research activities in the laboratory maintained by your supervisor.
Educational courses developing and successing the tradition of specific science: Science of the earth surface has been studied by various kind of traditional specialties. We classfied these traditions in three courses such as;

Students belong to one of these Courses and learn their specific science field systematically. The course is an essential unit of student’s research life, and all the educational activity such as field / laboratory works and seminars are conducted here.

The Division as a field of interaction: We all aim to understand the earth in spite of the difference in specialty. Interdisciplinary cooperation and research become more important as each field of science advances. Students are required to recognize their own standing point within the earth science as a whole. Moreover, it is very useful to know how the others in different discipline treat your specialty for them, which may tell you a new frontier of your science.
We hope our division is functional for your knowledge exchange and interaction beyond the discipline. Four fundamental lectures are set to open your eyes to other discipline.

Policy for education in this Division is characterized by establishment of advanced specialty based on the tradition and nurture of inteligence applicable beyond the discipline.

Join us today

Though Graduate School of Environmental Science does not have undergraduate education sturcture, we, the Division of Earth System Science, open the door to all the people who did not have chance to study the earth science in spite of his / her interest to this field. Many of students learning here came from various scientific fields other than earth science and we are proud of our basic training for them. There are about 60 scientists who are engaged in our education with wide variety of technique such as field measurement, satelite observation, chemical and physical laboratory experiments, computer based simulation, and theoretical treatments. We believe that you will be able to find your own field of science depending on your favor to outdoor works or deep consideration in library.
We sincerely welcome you who intend to learn and research the nature, disaster, and any small phonomenon in detail around you or the earth system globally based on your interest and motivation.