Research
Center For Environment, Education, and Design Studies
Sharon Sutton, Director
Center For Environment, Education, and Design Studies Website
The Center for Environment Education and Design Studies (CEEDS) brings together a culturally diverse, interdisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students to enhance learning and community well-being through participatory research and design with K-12 schools, government agencies, and grassroots organizations. Although its work focuses primarily on communities in the greater Seattle area, CEEDS has established interdisciplinary collaborations that extend nationally. In the last decade, faculty and students affiliated with CEEDS have collaborated across the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and planning, social work, and education to address problems in disadvantaged communities, while also advancing the capacity for self-determination within those communities. Its activities include holding seminars and conferences for faculty, graduate students and community members, leading a 2.5-year Ford Foundation-funded national study of youth involvement in inner-city community redevelopment, offering graduate-level course work, and carrying out local demonstration projects ranging from involving youth in cognitive mapping of their neighborhoods to facilitating community design workshops, and creating public art with elementary school children.