The natural resource sector requires leaders who can navigate technical complexity while making strategic, economic, and socially informed decisions. MEERL prepares future leaders with the interdisciplinary knowledge and leadership skills needed to guide resource projects from exploration through development, operation, and closure.
Graduates of the program develop a deep understanding of how earth science and engineering decisions intersect with business strategy, economics, policy, and stakeholder expectations. MEERL emphasizes applied learning, ensuring students can translate course concepts directly into their professional roles and drive meaningful, system-level change within their organizations.
Core Courses Descriptions
This course will progress through an overview of the entire resource life cycle for energy and mineral commodities. The geological nature of the resource itself, its role as a commodity, and environmental aspects associated with its development will be considered. Concepts of sustainable resource management, including an emphasis on other related natural resources, such as ground and surface water, will be studied.
This course will be structured around four key elements of the role of a General Manager, applied specifically to the management and leadership tasks inherent in the Resource Sector: understanding business context and environment, providing direction and leadership, establishing priorities and meeting commitments, and leading change and innovation.
This course covers the basics of investment, financial analysis, project finance, and risk pertinent to the resource extraction industries. This includes investment opportunities, fundamentals of cash flow analysis for decision making, risk analysis and project finance, and the relationship between projects and the enterprise.
This course will build on EERL 803 by broadening considerations from strictly financial measures to include integrated financial models, which incorporate socio-economic and environmental considerations essential for decision-making, stakeholder analysis, sustainable development, and negotiation and social license to operate.
This course focuses on current and emerging legal, policy, and ethical issues at each stage of the resource discovery, acquisition, extraction, and closure process. Students will improve their understanding of land and resource rights; Indigenous rights; corporate governance and social responsibility; climate change, environmental and resource regulation; permitting; community engagement and social license to operate; capital raising and disclosure obligations.
This course will expose students to approaches and methodologies essential in developing effective stakeholder engagement and partnerships between the private sector, government, international organizations, communities, and non-governmental organizations. It will also address conflict management in the extractive sector and develop skills to support effective leadership and team-building strategies in challenging multi-stakeholder environments.
Design thinking, systems thinking, and futures thinking will be used to examine what technology is, explore the complex industry challenges, and rethink our approach to technology, innovation, and leadership. This course challenges students to reframe their jobs, their relationship to technology, and their approach to leadership and innovation.
Elective Course Descriptions
Take 3 of 4 elective courses, where you will examine in-depth the energy or mineral life cycle, take a field-based synthesis course, or explore a topic of interest through a sector-focused project.​
This course is an in-depth study of the minerals' life cycle, considering resource aspects of geoscience and engineering, along with social, environmental, business, and economic attributes, in an integrated manner. Both technical and non-technical risk aspects and concepts of sustainability will be considered.
This course is an in-depth study of the energy resources life cycle, including exploration, development, processing, marketing, and transport process. Topics will focus on conventional and unconventional petroleum resources. Resource, business, and economic aspects will be examined in an integrated manner, and technical and non-technical risk will be considered.
This course will provide intensive analysis of a case example that is an actual resource development challenge related to either energy or mineral development, or both. Students will work in teams, as part of a field and/or site visit for approximately one week duration. Field trip fee will apply.
This course provides flexibility for the student to focus on a topic of interest related to the program's content but does not directly address other coursework. A student may bring a pertinent challenge from their work setting or develop a project idea in consultation with the program faculty. All project plans must receive approval from the course professor prior to commencing this course.
Geology Bootcamp
New to geology or coming from a non-technical background? To help you start MEERL with confidence, we created Geology Bootcamp, a free resource that introduces the core concepts of geological sciences for students entering the program from outside the geosciences.
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