Coming up to Speed:

A quick flash back  (Jan-Mar. 2012)

I have always had a passion for my country despite having been in the U.S for approximately five years now. When I decided to go to Grad school to pursue an MFA in Visual communication Design, I  knew that I wanted my thesis study to comprise a topic that is relevant to my Ugandan heritage. I know the power that design research has and I wanted to make sure that as I continue to learn more about it, I put it to good use in an area that best interests me.

I chose to do  my research study on design education specifically for Ugandan secondary schools because of the rising need for more practical and hands on skills in the education system. This is well explained in my proposal below;

Thesis proposal:

A need to widen the scope of art and design education exists in Uganda today (kwesiga, 2000). There is a high demand for qualified individuals in design-related professions with average salaries ranging from $800 to over $1000 per month (Ouma, 2008). Due to the lack of qualified individuals in this field, employers have turned to overseas design firms for design expertise. With eight million young people aged 15-30 and an unemployment rate of approximately twenty percent, Uganda has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite this predicament, young adults have the ability and the capacity to drive positive social change and economic growth, if given the appropriate resources and opportunities
(International Youth Foundation, 2011).

This thesis study will create a secondary school level design education curriculum/program inspired by the Ugandan culture, empowering youths with basic skills to become self-sustaining, proactive professionals and preparing them for more rigorous study at the university level.

Increasing accessibility to design education will;

1. Help combat the alarming unemployment rate among young people by giving them the required skill-sets to compete for jobs in the growing design market.
2. Familiarizing students with potential design professions while in secondary school will encourage them to pursue a more rigorous study in visual communication design at the university level. In the long run, this will provide young people with higher paying jobs that will help boost economic growth and also reduce the country’s young adult unemployment rate while increasing the country’s annual per capita income.

NEXT STEPS…

• First this proposal was submitted to IRB (Institutional Review Board) and after thorough scrutiny, it was approved as a thesis worthy/ human subject safe research topic.
• A production schedule was created to help guide this research process from beginning to end.
• Secondary research starts.

Secondary  Research Begins: Summer 2012

– Scholarly articles
– Journals
– Government/embassy websites
– Newspaper articles
– Books
– Academic papers
– Publications