Introduction

The local environment corresponds to the environment in which people conduct their daily lives. Environmental components are air, water, soil, landscape, buildings and cities, the green areas and all interactions between them, including cultural values??, traditions and customs that influence how people use natural, economic and social resources.

Local environmental problems such as illegal garbage, lack or deterioration of green areas, contamination of canals, rivers, estuaries and wetlands, air pollution, deterioration of areas of environmental value, transmission of vector-diseases, and nutritional deficiencies among others directly affects the quality of life of people.

To address these problems major efforts of the community are required making alliances with the Municipality and other stakeholders to promote Local Environmental Management initiatives to prevent and correct environmental problems, for the recovery and preservation of the environmental quality and quality of people's lives.

From this perspective, there is a need to train professionals from different areas involved in environmental issues, sensitive to social problems, with a systemic approach, allowing the performance of the Local Environmental Management in order to solve problems and use environmental opportunities for the local sustainable development in an atmosphere of community participation.

Overview

Target Audience

The program is targeted to professionals from different disciplines working in public institutions at national, regional or local universities, research centers, NGOs and consultants who have their field of action in environmental issues.

The student must demonstrate a professional degree and, if possible, experience in the environmental field. He / She must submit the requirements stated in Annex (1) to the Center of Registration and Academic Control in the Universidad Tecnologica de Pereira.  

Occupational Profile

Graduates will have analytical and technical capacity for assessing the environmental problems that affect communities, encouraging the most appropriate solutions from the perspective of the sustainability of actions and the follow up of the results of the executed actions. Its strengths are:

1. His capacity for action corresponds to the administrative and technical level, and can perform tasks in relation to inspection and control of community environmental management, as well as perform educational and organizational processes in the field.
2. As adviser to the communities in environmental monitoring, from a preventive perspective.
3. Collaborate with local organizations and institutions in the implementing and operational aspects of environmental management.
4. Collaborate in the development of diagnostics.
5. Perform monitoring and surveillance activities.
6. Identify polluting sources of the environment.
7. Manage inspection techniques that help the decision-making. Participate in processes aimed at creating environmental awareness by promoting the sustainability of actions and preventive function.

Curricular structure

The program is developed in 5 semesters with a total of 33 credits. In total the specialization requires at least 414 hours of academic work by students, distributed as follows:
279 hours of theory, 135 hours of practice and for each theoretical or practical hour, it requires 3 hours of independent study.

The curriculum is developed under the principle of academic flexibility, giving the student the opportunity to choose between 9 electives of which 4 are mandatory. These subjects correspond to the environmental problems and opportunities in which students deepen their knowledge and with the help of the subjects in the area will have the ability to plan, coordinate, evaluate and implement plans, programs and projects of environmental improvement.

To be able to graduate a student must pass all of the credits which include a thesis project.