IDEAS Studio (Integrating Design Education and Action for Sustainability) is an extracurricular initiative that offers
unique service-learning, career development, and community engagement opportunities for Vanier College
students. This initiative brings together several distinct interdisciplinary student projects coordinated by Richard
Klopp under one umbrella, including: TreeTag, a campus tree survey and replanting initiative; a new educational
garden installation; an alumni database; and this design-build competition.
The principal objective of IDEAS Studio is to engage students in community outreach, multi-class collaborations
and research activities during the academic sessions with the intent of developing projects of a scale that can be
realised in a 2-4 week period during the summer. These intensive summer “boot camps” challenge students to
apply the skills and knowledge acquired in their programs towards addressing specific needs in their community.
They can be executed in a variety of ways: as an internship, summer job, volunteering opportunity – or eventually,
as a complimentary course. Two students are currently doing internships with IDEAS Studio and a web platform for
sharing project information is under construction.
For more information about IDEAS Studio, please contact: Richard Klopp
kloppr@vanier.college
514-744-7500 ext. 7239