What I want to learn through this program and my project extends in many ways what I want to learn from life. I want to learn living life as a fully conscious being with the highest qualities of the heart, soul, spirit, mind and body. I want to learn to be consistent in action, thinking and feeling and create a way of living that is truly sustainable, restores and revitalizes, where appropriate the natural resources and inspires others to do similar, appropriate for their situation. I want to learn how to walk gently and harvest respectfully in all areas of life. I want to learn how to give and receive. I want to fulfill my human potential and my life to be an expression of the philosophy "For the highest good of all". I want to grow and learn, study and have fun.

Some of my expectations I have described before in my application for admission to Gaia University, mostly in the section titled "What are your long term goals and visions?" and in the career review.

Recently I have made a more comprehensive list of my more specific learning expectations in regards to the IESD program.

While a Google search for "social ecology" returns hundred thousands of hits and "ecosocial" still returns 10,000s, a search on "EcoSocial Design" returns about 199 hits (as of March 31st 2007), many of them from the Gaia University web site, and the rest of other people that either have been publishing information on GU programs, are affiliated with GU or are pursuing a degree with GU.
In order to better grasp what ecosocial design is or better what this discipline will contain, I want to learn more about the fields of ecology, sociology, social equity, sustainable economy and design and their application in a variety of disciplines that use quite different methodologies, like architecture, landscape design, product design, interior design, software design, systems design and others. This, I expect, to be a process that will start during this year of study and continue well afterwards. For that purpose I am starting to gather information resources and review literature.
I hope to learn about "Social Ecology" and research other existing or emerging disciplines or fields of expertise that could be relevant to the core development of ecosocial design, like for example biomimicry.

During my work with the Inland Northwest Eco-Center, it became very clear to me that besides ecological design, also social and personal "design" are necessary for a long term future of humanity on this planet. If we do not know how to really communicate to each other, if we cannot make decisions and agreements that we all honor and feel good about, we will not be able to create a world we all want.
The Inland Northwest Eco-Center was successful in the ecological and the economic portions of the design, but failed quite miserably in the social design. I was not able to create a forum that everyone interested could partake in and make it their own or attract an enthusiastic support group.
I want to improve this situation for this project. It will not become a community project, but the goal is to reach out and involve friends, neighbors and the community in various ways.

Another learning outcome I am expecting to have is a pretty clear understanding of a sustainable way of living in an urban residential situation, at least for comparable weather, landscape and cultural situations. How to achieve such a type of lifestyle over time, within the existing built, planned and regulatory framework. That I know about the difficulties and the challenges, as well as the possibilities and the joy.
I deem it important to find ways to convert existing systems that often have a big part in degrading nature, like our homes, into systems that restore the environment, become part of nature and provide for our and the planet's needs. This during the whole lifecycle - from the beginning till the end - including its yards, surroundings and the infrastructure development that so often goes hand in hand and so often contributes so much to the pollution of water, air, land, organisms, including, eventually, us.
Currently, based on a research project called GRUMPS done by the Earth Institute at Columbia University, close to 50% of the worlds population already lives in urban areas (and occupying 3% of the Earth’s land surface). So, to find ways of taking what is already there, and changing it from an all destructive process, urban housing, that it has become to be in so many countries, and reverse that trend could be an important and influential part of changing the world.
Moreover, it is most likely much more sustainable in most cases to retrofit existing systems, including homes, to be more natural and sustainable, than tearing them down and rebuilding them.

I will have learned how to apply some modified form of a complete design cycle in the field of sustainability. Within the survey phase, possibly often a starting point of the design cycle, after the definition, clarification what the object or objective (including finding the objective) of the design is, I will have used the SADIE (this is 6MBs!) - model of design and expanded as needed and applied in a fractal manner (see Designing)- the survey phase of the SADIE model itself follows that model and so on.
I plan to use some CAD or modeling software tool, make drawings and potentially models by hand. I will use mind maps and various software tools to prepare my outputs, including blogs, web design and graphic tools and will increase my skill of online research.

Putting in words and trying to put it into a form that others can relate to, will improve my skills of writing, organizing and presenting material in the area of ecosocial design in English.