Sustainable Ecosystems
Participate this summer in a community-based international service learning program in multicultural Thai Buddhist, Muslim, and Sea-Gypsy [Moken] coastal communities. This program emphasizes project-based, collaborative, community engagement, and integrates social and natural science field research methods and techniques. You'll engage in sustainability fieldwork, intercultural activities, and community service. The academic portion of the program focuses on social, ecological, and environmental engineering theories, fieldwork, analysis, and practice. In the community service activities, we participate, collaboratively, with Thai villagers and organizations in developing sustainable community practices, restoring tsunami-damaged ecosystems, regenerating coastal biodiversity, and building resilience to climate change.
The first segment is in Bangkok, Thailand's cultural and political capital, and Southeast Asia's center for international development agencies (i.e.- USAID, IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature), and World Wildlife Fund (WWF). We will meet relevant officials, green social entrepreneurs, and nonprofit organizations engaged in sustainability and climate change issues, and initiate our group research process. The next three plus weeks of the program emphasize fieldwork in the North Andaman Region, just north of Phuket Island. Your capstone activity is a mentored community-based team research project analyzing social, environmental, and ecological dimensions of a local sustainability issue.
Directed by Michael Silverman, Lecturer, UCLA Institute of the Environment, and Jenny Jay, Assistant Professor, UCLA Department of Environmental Engineering, and assisted by Rita Kampalath and Christine Lee, Ph.D. candidates, researchers and members of UCLA's chapter of Engineers without Borders. For more program information, please click on the links above.
Financial aid is available to qualified UCLA students. All other students should inquire about financial aid at their home institution.