College of Arts and Sciences: Senior Division

The Senior Division of the College of Arts and Sciences is composed of three departments: the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Department of Interdisciplinary Sciences, and the Department of Integrated Sciences, each of which provides a distinctive education. The Senior Division, which comprises both the arts and sciences, further advances the spirit of the Junior Division. Based on the key concepts of “interdisciplinary”, “internationality”, and “innovation”, the Senior Division strives to develop individuals with an “interdisciplinary intellect” – those who actively seek to challenge themselves in multilingual and multicultural environments, and who have a cross-disciplinary interest and a pioneering spirit that seeks to develop new fields of research.

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences places an emphasis on an advanced liberal arts education, whilst aiming to carry out interdisciplinary teaching and research that embraces the diverse developments within scholarship. Its fundamental principle is to prize teaching and research that opens up a global vision to address our rapidly changing world, to foster confidence in each and every student, and to train individuals who can thrive in this age and society. The Department is made up of three fields of study, differing in their focus and approach: “Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies”, “Area Studies”, and “Social and International Relations”. Each field of study consists of multiple courses, and, all together, there are 18 unique courses that are interconnected with one another, creating an interdisciplinary intellectual space.
Key features of the curriculum include small-group lectures that value student initiative, a sub-major programs system established to address increasingly complex issues and diverse interests, and a requirement of two foreign languages and advanced foreign language training in response to our increasingly globalized society.
The Department aims to train cosmopolitan individuals who can think independently and go forth into the bustling world of today.

Department of Interdisciplinary Sciences

With the advent of the 21st century, there is an ever-growing need to tackle complex and global challenges such as energy and climate change, global inequalities, and the future of information and scientific technology. Traditional approaches, based around narrowly compartmentalized individual disciplines, are fast becoming insufficient to address such major issues in modern society, and there is now an urgent need to cultivate professionals who can tackle these new challenges with a flexible and holistic vision that transcends the traditional arts-sciences barrier.
To distill this new vision, the Department of Interdisciplinary Sciences offers five interdisciplinary courses: Science and Technology Studies, Geography and Spatial Design, Informatics, General System, and Environmental Sciences. In addition, the Department offers common subjects so that students can understand the unique characteristics of the entire department and share an awareness of cross-disciplinary issues. Furthermore, in addition to the five main courses, the Department also combines six sub-programs as sub-majors: Science and Technology, Geography and Spatial Design, Informatics, General System, Environmental Sciences, and Evolutionary Biology, allowing students to design multiple specialties on their own.

Department of Integrated Sciences

The Department of Integrated Sciences helps students develop into researchers who can both stay one step ahead of the current boundaries of science, and freely traverse multiple academic areas so as to integrate the natural sciences and develop new areas of research. The Department’s students become specialized, but also retain a wide range of knowledge that extends across the natural sciences.
The Department offers a curriculum that has both breadth and depth. It integrates subjects from both the traditional biological, physical and chemical sciences that deal with the molecular units of atoms, molecules, genes or proteins, as well as subjects such as cognitive and behavioural sciences or sports sciences that take humans as the unit of study. These subjects, along with the deep mathematical structures that underlie them, are encompassed in the Department’s five courses: “Mathematical Sciences”, “Matter and Material Science”, “Integrated Life Sciences”, “Cognitive and Behavioral Sciences” and “Sports Sciences”. In addition, the Department has a strong and flexible partnership with other departments in the College of Arts and Sciences that allows its students to acquire knowledge from a wide range of disciplines.

 

Cross-disciplinary Programs

Many of the problems that demand solutions today require contradictory skills: the ability to traverse a wide range of academic fields while at the same time having a high degree of specialization. This requires developing a sense for uncovering the seeds of basic research in society, as opposed to the usual flow of research which moves from the basic to the applied.
The Cross-disciplinary Programs are designed to develop human resources who can respond to these demands. Currently, there are five programs that are not affiliated with a specific department: Global Ethics, Evolutionary Cognitive Brain Science, Science Interpreter, Global Studies, and Trilingual East Asian Studies Program.