Join us for the first S+DP City Design Hack: ‘the Collaboration’
April 22nd 2022 Friday, from 2:00pm – 6:00pm (+ dinner) a THINK PLAY HACK™ event
bringing together the Sustainability + Development Program from SMU, and the Urban Research Initiative from Paul Quinn College.
- - - to imagine sustainable solutions for urban challenges in Dallas’ underserved neighborhoods - - -
Register HERE contact Jessie Zarazaga
A Prototype for the S+DP Program:
Starting next academic year 2022-23, we will launch ‘The Collaborative Studio’, an annual, intensive 2-3 day Intercollegiate accelerator as a required new element in the program for all SDP students. Taking place over a weekend each spring, all SDP students will work together; distance students will travel to Dallas for the event and graduates of the SDP program will also be invited to sign up to take part, creating a powerful collaborative context and an important networking opportunity for current students and recent graduates. You will get a chance to return to meet and work with everyone!
Developed through a grant with Venturewell, this collaboration with Paul Quinn College, Dallas’s HBCU, to include students and researchers from their active Urban Research Initiative. Students and graduates will form teams, formed around the concerns of sustainability, urban equity, environmental justice and inclusive entrepreneurship, and teams will compete in a fast-paced design-charette, finishing with a pitch before a jury. Winners will be invited to present their work to the City and the local press. The specific challenge for the Studio will change each year, but will be focused around the integration of experiential learning, data science, technology, design and team-led innovation to build sustainable solutions for urban challenges in Dallas's underserved neighborhoods.
What is a ‘collaborative design studio?
This year- you have the opportunity to help us develop the prototype! The 4 hour design competition will be held on the afternoon of 22nd of April.
Participants will select teams based around a thematic focus (landscape and food/ health/ equity/ use of community space) with a mix of for SDP, URI and SDP graduates. A You will be led through the design process with introductions and data from two specific Dallas neighborhoods, given strategies for brainstorming and idea creation, and asked to create a project proposal (for example this might be a policy, a communication strategy, a place-making solution or an idea for a business approach). Ideas will be presented in a ‘pitch’ to a panel of community and experts, and the winning proposal(s) will be presented at the Environmental Justice Symposium the following day! There may even be a chance to present this work to D Magazine!
All current SDP students should plan to take part. It is Friday 22nd April from 2pm-6pm, after which we will all eat together. The event will be held at Paul Quinn College.
WELCOME to S+DP
We are excited to announce two new collaborations:
Building on the synergistic relationship with the Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity, S+DP is excited to launch a new pathway in Climate-Smart Inclusive Economic Development: CIED
As part of the development of 3d-City, an intercollegiate curriculum development and research collaboration with Paul Quinn College Urban Research Institute, S+DP is excited to offer a new transcripted specialization Environmental Justice: EJ
What’s New?
Approaching its 10 year anniversary, the Sustainability + Development Program at SMU has developed a strong reputation as a collaborative, interdisciplinary program, supporting students to develop expertise in the development of innovative resilient solutions for community and the built environment.
A graduate-level degree for advanced education in the growing fields of sustainability and development, the program aimed to produce graduates with both technical, design and humanistic skills, who would connect with and contribute to the local community, helping to deal with environmental problems on the national and international stages.
S+DP teaches students to brings together social, ecological and economic aspects of sustainability, integrating engineering skills, community participation, and creative design-thinking to find innovative solutions to real-life urban projects. Our current areas of specialization include Sustainable Global Development & Design : CITIES and Sustainable Management : SERVE
Who Are We?
Based in the Lyle School of Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering this multi-disciplinary program integrates design-thinking with systems-thinking. We draw students from a wide range of disciplines including not only all branches of engineering, but anthropology, sociology, human-rights, environmental studies, public policy and administration, design, planning, landscape and architecture, construction, urban development, economics and finance, biology and earth science, and have a strong cohort from STEM education, art and theatre.
We pride ourselves on being a close, and tight-knit program with small, intimate class sizes that allow for memorable connections and class interactions. With these connections, we excel in networking which has led to collaboration with your colleagues, professors, and guest lecturers.
Founded by Dean Orsak, and Betsy Del Monte FAIA, and linked to the Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity, the MA in Sustainability and Development aimed to include classes and, site-based internships and service learning opportunities, both locally and internationally. Sustainability was to be examined through the lens of social, legal, and economic as well as environmental and civil technical issues.
While many students undertake the full program while working, others develop strong networks and connections during the program, and often move to part-time internships based on contacts made through the coursework. These internships and research participations often develop not only into the basis for the capstone research projects but also job opportunities post-graduation.
Dr. Jessie Zarazaga
Program Director S+DP
Director of the Sustainability & Development Program in the Lyle school of Engineering, and the Initiative for Spatial Literacy (GIS@SMU), Zarazaga focuses on the development of educational structures which integrate community research into project based learning. Her teaching brings together GIS mapping and global sustainable urban principles to support a range of projects in support of social and environmental equity in engineering. Central to this process is the integration of geo-spatial design thinking and creativity within project-based engineering education, an issue she explored in her doctoral research.
A landscape-urbanist and architect working across the fields of GIS, landscape, urbanism and theatre, Jessie Marshall Zarazaga has both worked and taught in Hong Kong, Tanzania, Finland, Chile and the UK, as well as in the US, focusing on the operation of the infrastructures of landscape, and their impact on urban space. Investigating the social and physical structures of city neighborhoods, her research integrates processes of landscape mapping and public engagement, to analyse overlapping environmental, social, economic and cultural spatial impacts, connecting culture and community to place. Zarazaga undertook a Fulbright in Valparaiso, Chile, where her research at the Ciudad Abierta in Ritoque, investigated how temporal events, from shared dining to wind and water flows, impact the design of a physical territory. Zarazaga’s ongoing projects in Tanzania and Kenya as well as Texas, seek to exploit the creative possibilities of landscape and infrastructure, focusing on designing beautiful, equitable urban environments, buildings and public space, through creative participatory mapping and collaborative design processes.
Contact us.
For any further questions about the program, reach out directly to the program director, Dr. Zarazaga jzarazaga@smu.edu or an SMU program representative.
For any questions regarding financial aid or the admissions process, reach out to Alaazar Musie, Associate Director Lyle Admissions amusie@mail.smu.edu
Program Director: jzarazaga@smu.edu
Program Representative: masd@smu.edu
Admissions Counselor: lyle@smu.edu
Phone: 214 768 4960