Design Your Own Concentration

Designing your own concentration is an extension of the work you will do in your Learning Intentions and Pathway Design (LIPD) in the early phases of your program.

You may either have a very good idea of what such a concentration will be before you start a program and/or you may observe your LIPD material for coherent patterns and see if it makes sense (along with help from your main adviser) to aggregate topics to create a focused concentration for your program. At the same time you also design an approach that will enable you to access the learning and unlearning you require (via engaging with project work, studying and reading, attending courses, working with mentors, etc.).

Your concentration design will serve other associates who might like to consider adapting your concentration design for their own purposes.

Below we offer some examples of possible 'design your own' concentrations to inspire you to imagine how you might create a concentration custom tailored to suit your own personal passions.

In an Integrative Ecosocial Design pathway:

• designing and operating a keyline derived system for a given land division
• designing and implementing a holistic management approach to a farm
• creating a natural pharmacy suited to a particular micro-climate

In an Open Topic pathway:

• delivering group facilitation focused on participation and inclusion
• preparing and implementing a strategy for converting a share-held company into a cooperative
• integrating arts and ecology

Each of these possible concentrations would be named in a way suited to display on your diploma.