CCAD professors head to Peru to help launch new university

A cohort of Columbus College of Art & Design faculty will share their international expertise and help design a new Peruvian undergraduate program with an innovative educational model.

Mercè Graell Colas will be the first to head to Lima, Peru, Oct. 28 through Nov. 5. There, she’ll share her international expertise with the founders of three Peru-based education groups, Nido La Casa Amarilla, Aleph, and Dinamica, as they navigate the accreditation process for a new university called UPAL. UPAL’s undergraduate program will educate future Peruvian leaders in design, entrepreneurship, business, sustainability, democracy and citizenship, and leadership and innovation.

Graell Colas will serve on an international panel recruited to provide “big picture” brainstorming and analysis. UPAL founders hope to complete accreditation and launching by fall of 2020, and open in fall of 2021, Graell Colas says. She linked CCAD’s Sapna Singh, Department Head for Business, Math & Entrepreneurship, and Tom Gattis, Dean of the School of Design Arts, into the project to provide valuable insight into the future of design education and a project-oriented approach to undergraduate education.

“I am thrilled to be part of an innovative approach to undergraduate education,” Graell Colas says. “For decades, I’ve been seeing the unresolved gap between what the industry needs and what universities are offering, especially in the context of business design innovation. The educational model that UPAL is intending to implement might do the trick.”