Universidad
Politécnica de Madrid

The Spanish Master in Ecosystem Restoration (MER) is a multiinstitutional postgrade program that is jointly offered by four major public universities in Madrid (UAH, UPM, UCM & UJCI), since 2006. This Master is consider, although still young, to be very promising for the long term as has a high student demand-about 900 applications this academic year for only 30 places, a remarkable 75% rate of professional poststudy employment in a period of economic crisis, and the high number (> 40) of prestigious organizations involved in the program.

The MER program has evolved as a network of knowledge and experience that links universities, lecturers, researchers, students, private and public companies, NGOs, and administration centers. Our aim is to help other groups that may want to launch similar graduate-level ecological restoration degree programs. This Masters allows to choose one Profesional direction or a Reseach direction.

This last one gives option to make Doctoral thesis. MER consists of 90 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System), 60 ECTS of subjects, 15 ECTS of Practicum and 15 ECTS of Master Thesis. MER is learning based upon individual or small group projects has increased at the expense of student work in classrooms and labs and on field trips. In this type of experimen­tal study, one credit is equivalent to 25-30 hours of a student's time.