Enjoy our FREE Earth Week Activities [day 2]

About the MA Program

Happy Earth Week!

To help you celebrate, MCAD’s fully online MA in Sustainable Design program is posting 3 days of FREE Earth Day activities to help you engage. We’ll follow the themes SEE, DO, THINK, SHARE. Enjoy!


SEE: What is Sustainable Design?

It’s a term we’ve heard before, but what does it really mean to design sustainably? Discover what we’re talking about when we talk about sustainable design in this open lecture from Fundamentals of Sustainable Design, an MCAD course in the fully online MA in Sustainable Design, featuring instructor Deann Garcia.

[watch] What is Sustainable Design?


DO : Learn about Whole Systems Mapping

How might we shift our focus from seeking money and status to seeking a simpler, balanced life that is rich with connections to people, community, and environment?  Sustainability experts universally agree that we must think in systems, but in practice this is usually hard. We need tools to make it easier. One tool for enabling this shift is Whole System Mapping. In this mini-course, you will have a chance to explore and experiment with Whole System Mapping and how it can be used for Delivering the Good Life. An exercise at the end of the course allows you to create and leverage your own systems map.

[mini-course] Introduction to Whole Systems Mapping


THINK: What do you value?

Designers are imaginative, creative, and pragmatic. Sustainable designers are those things AND they take a systems view, leverage nature’s design principles, and analyze complex data. They are well equipped to address the world’s sustainability problems; however, they face another challenge: Most of us, perhaps unwittingly, favor value over values.

[read] Value or Values (the sequel)


We hope you join us tomorrow for another set of activities!

Denise DeLuca / Former Director

Denise DeLuca is the Director of MCAD’s Sustainable Design program. She was co-founder of BCI: Biomimicry Creative for Innovation, a network of creative professional change agents driving ecological thinking for radical transformation. Denise is author of the book Re-Aligning with Nature: Ecological Thinking for Radical Transformation, which was illustrated by MASD alum Stephanie Koehler. She also teaches with the Amani Institute.

Denise’s previous roles include Education Director for the International Living Future Institute, Project Manager for Swedish Biomimetics 3000, and Outreach Director for The Biomimicry Institute. Denise is a licensed civil engineer (PE) and holds a master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering with a focus on modeling landscape-scale surface and groundwater interactions.  In addition, Denise is a Biomimicry Fellow and a member of the Advisory Council of The Biomimicry InstituteBoard Member of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP), on the editorial board of the Journal of Bionic Engineering, and an Expert with Katerva. Denise is based in Oregon.

contact:  [email protected]