Introduction

The Department of Land Development, Urbanization, and Regional Development at the University of Thessaly was created in 1989, the first of its type in Greece. The department’s priority themes concern agricultural policies, rural development, development engineering, and environmental protection. Emphasis is placed on the use of technology (computers, software, etc.) for the analysis and interpretation of spatial phenomena. Students receive expanded theoretical training including geography, sociology, and economics, but especially technical, through internships and concrete research carried out in partnership with social players.

Activities

The Department of Land Development, Urbanization, and Regional Development offers 2 Master’s Degrees in the area of development, « Land Development, Urbanization, and Rural Development » and « Land Dynamics and Rural Development ». The latter is conducted in partnership with the University Blaise Pascal of Clermont-Ferrand in France.

The main goal of this Master’s Degree is to train young people capable of understanding the problems encountered during development and management of land in rural areas. These problems are studied using a multidisciplinary approach calling upon concepts and tools from the areas of human and technical science in order to understand the real interactions between concrete objects studied and the actors manipulating these objects. Space is regarded as an object both physically and socially constructed. Teaching is done in the French language and the Master’s Degree is open to students as well as educators, researchers, and professionals, if they are Francophone, from throughout Europe and the Mediterranean basin. The Master’s Degree program accepts around 20 students per school year. The purpose of the training is to train young people capable of understanding the problems encountered during development and management of land in rural areas. They will then be able to train companies and institutions whose objective is local and rural development and institutions that schedule and plan development in a given area, using new technologies.

Teaching team

The Greek-French Master’s Degree program entitled « Land Dynamics and Rural Development » functions mainly with 12 professors from the University of Thessaly or invited professors, as well as two professors from the partner University of Clermont-Ferrand in France. Among these professors, 8 are highly proficient in English, 4 in French, and 5 in both French and English. Several members of the team are proficient in specialized software such as databases and statistical analysis, thematic cartography software, GIS software, teledetection software (Idrisi, Erdas), 3d-visualization software, and topographical software.

The department possesses a large amount of space analysis software meeting educational and research needs (ArcView, ArcGIS, Erdas-Imagine, Idrise, etc.), as well as a series of statistical, econometric, topographic, and tracing software. The Department also possesses, for the Master’s Degree program, two classrooms, one reading room, and an administrative office. A computer laboratory with 50 state-of-the-art PCs is open to the students. Four Laser printers and a Plotter are also available to them.

 

Interest of FORMDER project for the institution

In the constant quest to perform as highly as possible, the new Master’s Degree program must create new course modules adapted to the latest rural development needs and reinforce the existing curriculum via the co production and exchange of educational materials.