*4.1. Program Development*

The development of the SUD program began in 2018 when two universities in the city of Tampere—University of Tampere and Tampere University of Technology—were preparing a merger. There were many drivers for the merger but an important one was the belief that the new structure would provide better opportunities for interdisciplinary

research and education. The merger was completed in 2019, and the merged university was named Tampere University. In order to support the merger process and facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration, pilot projects were identified and given financial resources. SUD education was selected as a pilot project because of the societal relevance, and because there was an existing research collaboration between the scholars of the merged universities.

The planning of the SUD program took two and a half years. During the first year, several seminar events were held, during which the theme and the idea of the program was discussed and developed by urban development practitioners and scholars. Based on these seminars, it was decided that the new program would be at bachelors' level, delivered by three collaborating faculties. The faculties and disciplines were chosen based on relevance to the theme, the existing research connections, and participants' engagement in planning.

The first year of program development was challenging because the new interdisciplinary and multi-faculty program did not fit existing institutional structures, and it was not clear how it would be connected to existing programs or their resources. It took time to develop a model that was acceptable to key stakeholders. A key decision was to develop an international English language bachelor's program—novel in contrast to the existing bachelor's programs at the participating faculties that were all in Finnish.

The second year of planning involved detailed discussions of the learning objectives and content, mainly by a team representing the three participating faculties, but with several events for faculty members and stakeholders, e.g., representatives of the City of Tampere, to provide feedback and ideas. Substantial iterations were required to develop a curriculum that would cover both the common SUD learning objectives, discipline-specific postgraduate eligibility, and various administrative and other requirements from the three faculties. At the end of the second year, three lecturers were recruited to take over the final planning and launch. The first intake of students was admitted during Spring 2020, and teaching began in August 2020. Detailed planning is still being undertaken as the new courses are being developed and delivered.
