After 3 years of dwelling at the Open University of Catalonia’s Campus for Peace, we are excited to announce that Gaia Education’s Design for Sustainability course, GEDS, has become an official postgraduate course!

As the first official course on sustainability offered by UOC, the postgrad GEDS programme will be part of the Area for Cooperation and Sustainability within the International Graduate Institute. The programme will commence as soon as October 2011 in Spanish, while the English version should be on offer from October 2012. Plans to upgrade the programme to a Masters degree, inclusive of European credits, are underway and it should be released in the near future. The Masters programme will use the existing GEDS programme as the first part of the two year long programme.

The postgrad GEDS programme will be offered as two different Specialisations or majors, taking place over a period of two semesters. The first semester will focus on the socioeconomic aspects of sustainability, weaving together the social and economic dimensions of the current EDE. The second Specialisation focuses on a whole systems approach to sustainable design, equivalent to the existing Worldview, but with emphasis on ecological design. Students who enrol in either of these will be required to take an additional subject, Principles, Scales and Attitudes for Sustainable Design, serving as an introduction to the major ideas of sustainable design.

As an essential part of the postgrad GEDS training, students will be required to work together in designing and presenting a real case scenario. These projects, developed through the span of the course, will enable students to tackle complex designs in a practical manner while applying the communication and collaborative skills learnt during the course. Projects will be incentivised with awards going to the top rated and UOC has committed to publicising the projects through different university media, including the magazine EcoUniversity.

We are hoping the postgrad GEDS will attract more young students seeking to complement their undergraduate training with a cutting edge program in sustainability. With this wider audience we are aiming for a greater impact on mainstream organisations and communities. Not wanting to miss the potential grassroots leaders who currently enroll and who may not have the financial resources needed to complete the postgraduate course, new courses are being planned at the Campus for Peace. These will remain affordable to everyone and provide the training, knowledge, skills and sustainable tools to all those already committed to “be the change we want to see in the world”.

A big thank-you to UOC who has put all their resources at our disposal and continues to give their full support to the GEDS programme!

Thank-you for spreading the word!

The Peace for Campus is a section of the Open University of Catalonia, UOC, which is open to collaboration with NGO’s such as Red Cross, Engineers Without Borders and Amnesty International.

To date, nearly 90 students have participated in the Spanish GEDS & 50 in the English GEDS, representing 20 countries from around the world.