Coastal territories face growing pressure to reconcile economic development with the protection of fragile marine ecosystems. Students trained separately in economics or in ecology rarely have the chance to test both perspectives together, on the same problem, in the same place.
At the University of Sassari, 22 students from across EUNICoast campuses spent five days in the waters and hills of Asinara, a marine protected area off the coast of Sardinia. The course, Ecology and Economics for Ecosystem Management, worth three ECTS credits, is a Blended Intensive Programme: a short international course combining several weeks of online classes with an intensive week on site, held here from April to May 2026, with the on-site week in Sassari and on Asinara from 25 to 29 May.
The nine online sessions covered the theory, from market equilibrium to ecosystem services. On Asinara, students put it to work on real coastal data, using open-source mapping software, QGIS and its field-survey app QField, to study the island's beaches and seagrass meadows firsthand. A nine-strong teaching team from the University of Patras and the University of Sassari led every session jointly, keeping economics and ecology intertwined throughout.
Feedback confirms the course delivered on its promise. Across 18 student respondents, overall satisfaction reached 4.9 out of 5, and all 18 rated their likelihood to recommend the course at 9 or 10 out of 10. Teaching staff were equally positive, with an average satisfaction of 5 out of 5 across 6 respondents. A participant from the University of the Azores (Portugal) said that arguing a coastal policy question from a different stakeholder's viewpoint, in a role-play exercise, pushed them to see the issue in ways they had not considered before. A participant from Burgas Free University (Bulgaria) pointed to learning QField, the field-survey app used to collect coastal data, as the most valuable new skill gained. A participant from Université Le Havre Normandie (France) added that snorkelling among the seagrass meadows made the academic content much more concrete and memorable. Knowledge exchange across partners and new collaborations were the outcomes most frequently reported by students, with ideas already forming around marine protected area management, sustainable coastal tourism, and future joint courses between the partner universities.
The course was coordinated and hosted by the University of Sassari (Italy) within the framework of the EUNICoast Education Commission, bringing together students and lecturers from Burgas Free University (Bulgaria), the University of the Azores (Portugal), the West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin (Poland), Université Le Havre Normandie (France), the University of Patras (Greece), and the University of the Balearic Islands (Spain).
