The Education for Sustainability (EfS) Masters is a dynamic program that features an innovative collaboration between the University of British Columbia, the City of Vancouver (Canada), and CityStudio.

CityStudio is an acclaimed hub for experimentation and innovation that specializes in linking City of Vancouver staff and officials, who are urban sustainability leaders, with community members, professionals, and university students from six post-secondary institutions in the City of Vancouver.

Using the Adaptive Education model (VanWynsberghe & Herman, 2016), participants will co-create an effective community of practice that inspires urban sustainability leadership, and prepares graduates to influence change. Adaptive Education, conceived by VanWynsberghe and Herman (2015, 2016), offers a theory of change based on habit disruption that, when applied as pedagogy, can address the question of behaviour change through education. This program creatively disrupts traditional notions of learning in a classroom environment.

Students are given the flexibility to follow their interests, gain valuable skills, and network for future employment opportunities, through the delivery of a mentored real-world sustainability action project in partnership with the City of Vancouver in Canada. In doing so, both the participants and the community served by the project become subjects of behaviour change.

EfS will work alongside CityStudio to increase the number of UBC graduate students who can develop key employment skills related to public sector involvement, community leadership, soft power, and collaboration. The program has access to unique physical spaces in the City, experts in university-city relations, and other unique learning and networking opportunities.

Participants will spend one year working on projects that aspire to make Vancouver and Metro Vancouver better places to live, work, and learn. Overall the program is a 2-year, part-time, cohort-based, degree program.

As mentioned in the summary, please see the following site (http://efs.edst.educ.ubc.ca/) for details of the program and the current group projects.