This 2 year graduate program is delivered in a richly blended model of both online and face-to-face learning with the distinct benefit of three short on-campus residencies. An education of personal significance, you’ll study with masterful faculty to explore: creativity, beauty, despair & grief, systems thinking, change-making, diverse worldviews, ecological identity, communication & learning theory, and critically applied research methods. In each course in this program, you will have the chance to experience profound mentorship and peer-to-peer learning in and outside of class where important knowledge can accrue at a new, integral, and critical edge.
Transformational experiences are more likely to occur when a link is made, and capacity is built, between the interiority of the student and the external world. With time enough to deeply look into subjects rather than merely at the surface of things, we will immerse in the rich terrain of knowledge and intelligence derived from both intuition and analytical reasoning. Cultivate meaning from direct unmediated experiences as an education - faithful to your own interests and experiences - prepares you in meeting the dazzling complexities and challenges our world faces with the wisdom to act ethically and the passion to do so.
The Master of Arts in Environmental Education and Communication students critically examine the issues and perceptions of our world through various lenses, perspectives and multiple modalities revealing more of the interdependencies and correspondences that exist within the larger context rather than focus on what may be erroneously identified as “the problem”. And by the larger context, that means students often get outside – outside boxed-in mindsets and outside the classroom as well.
Typically, you are a professional with a bachelor’s degree and at least two years' experience working or with significant interest in environmental education and communication. If you do not have the formal academic education to qualify for admission you may be assessed on the basis of both your formal education and your informal learning, in accordance with the Flexible Admission Process.
A highlight of the MA in Environmental Education and Communication program is the 1-week field school where students immerse in the experience of Indigenous ways of being and knowing and learn in nature. Situated in traditional coastal territories within various Indigenous communities, you will study biodiversity and adaptation within a “living laboratory”. Guest lecturers and Elders from the communities bring and share their knowledge in-situ, allowing you to explore ecological principles that govern ecosystem dynamics and sustainability alongside Indigenous customs, heritage and lands. Locations may vary from year to year.
A synthesis of all you have learned in the Masters in Environmental Education and Communication is a course entitled, Implementation to Action: Living our Learning and makes up the entire final 2-week residency. This required course provides a unique blended opportunity to integrate the important learning that has occurred during the program. Using your thesis or major research project as a primary case study, you will review key learnings, identify current opportunities, and create an action plan to take the work forward in academic and applied settings. Designed to deepen self-awareness, nurture individual and collective action, optimize opportunities for peer exchange and encourage reflection on the pillars of life-long learning, this course takes the Royal Roads motto of “living our learning” as a call to action.