The MDes program learning in Woodhaven Regional Park.
UBC Okanagan’s Master of Design (MDes) professional graduate program recently welcomed its inaugural cohort of students.
Rooted in critical design thinking, creative practice and design principles, the program—collaboratively delivered by the School of Engineering (SoE) and Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCCS)—empowers students to tackle real-world challenges alongside industry, community and public sector partners.
In this blog series, Professor Dr. Kenneth Chau and the MDes Team reflect on the cohort’s journey as they work together to solve pressing societal problems and embrace new ways of learning, teaching and innovating.
MDes: One Month In
Dear MDes Community,
One month into the inaugural Master of Design cohort, we find ourselves reflecting on a question that has surfaced repeatedly throughout the journey so far: What if graduate education looked different?
Not different for the sake of being different, but different because the challenges facing our communities increasingly demand new ways of learning, collaborating, and creating change.
Over the past month, our students have spent time in municipal offices, heritage centres, forests, wetlands, entrepreneurial forums, community organizations, and countless conversations with people working to improve the places they care about. They have met entrepreneurs, city leaders, artists, researchers, educators, investors, community builders, and knowledge holders. They have explored the histories, opportunities, tensions, and aspirations that shape the Okanagan. And perhaps most importantly, they have reflected.
MDes students and faculty tour Lake Country District hydroelectric facilities.
Every week, the cohort gathers to make sense of what they are seeing, hearing, and experiencing.
Together, we ask questions about leadership, creativity, innovation, community, place, purpose, and the role each of us might play in contributing to a better future.
What is emerging from these conversations is a growing realization that many of the challenges we face today cannot be understood through a single lens. The issues that keep municipal leaders awake at night are connected to housing, infrastructure, ecology, economics, governance, culture, and human behaviour. The opportunities pursued by entrepreneurs are often rooted in the same systems. Community organizations, educators, artists, researchers, and business leaders frequently find themselves navigating different parts of the same complex landscape.
The MDes program explore downtown Kelowna, Okanagan Lake in the background.
To engage meaningfully with these realities requires more than expertise alone.
It requires curiosity.
It requires the ability to connect ideas across disciplines.
It requires comfort with uncertainty.
It requires learning how to listen deeply before acting.
In many ways, the first month of MDes has been less about teaching students what to think and more about helping them learn how to see.
To see opportunities where others see constraints.
To see relationships where others see isolated problems.
To see themselves not simply as students preparing for the future, but as active participants in shaping it.
This shift has been one of the most encouraging developments so far. Increasingly, the cohort is beginning to think less like students completing assignments and more like a studio engaged with real people, real challenges, and real possibilities. Conversations that begin during a site visit continue over coffee. Questions raised during reflection sessions become project ideas. Community introductions lead to collaborations. New opportunities emerge unexpectedly through relationships.
MDes students, faculty and guest speakers at Wood Haven Regional Park.
The boundaries between classroom, community, and workplace are becoming increasingly blurred. While we are still early in the journey, we are beginning to wonder whether this may be one of the most important lessons emerging from the program.
Perhaps education is at its best when learning is not separated from life.
Perhaps students grow most when they are trusted with meaningful responsibility.
Perhaps innovation emerges not from studying systems at a distance, but from becoming active participants within them.
We do not yet have definitive answers to these questions.
In truth, we are still experimenting.
We are learning alongside the students.
We are testing assumptions, discovering what works, identifying what does not, and continuously adapting. Some ideas have exceeded expectations. Others have revealed new questions. Much remains uncertain.
Yet despite that uncertainty, there is a growing sense that something meaningful is taking shape. What began as a graduate program is gradually becoming something else: a community of builders, thinkers, creators, and changemakers connected by a shared desire to contribute positively to the world around them.
Kenneth Chau and the MDes Team
about the Master of Design program
The UBC Okanagan Master of Design (MDes) program brings together creativity, human-centred design, entrepreneurship and community-engaged learning to help students tackle complex challenges and create meaningful impact.
I was initially drawn to UBC Okanagan because of the location and the School of Engineering itself. Kelowna is absolutely stunning, and I loved the idea of living in a place surrounded by so much natural beauty. The SOE felt like a strong fit for me. The smaller class sizes and close-knit environment suited the way I learn, and I appreciated having access to opportunities that supported growth outside the classroom. It felt like a place where I could challenge myself while also being supported as I developed into an engineer.
