Where We Started
Global Education Designs was founded by Dr Doug MacLennan
Global Education Designs was founded by Dr Doug MacLennan
Founder
Doug was raised on pastoral stations in outback Queensland. At the age of 10, he commenced formal study as a boarder at Toowoomba Preparatory School and graduating as Dux, continued on to Gatton Agricultural College, graduating in Dairy Manufacture. Realising that he needed more intellectual stimulus, at the age of 22 he joined the Australian Armed Forces as an officer, became a specialist in Vietnamese languages, teaching in the Army Language School until he returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam as Captain. On his return to Australia, he specialised in large scale Logistics, but he realised that he might prefer to work with animals rather than people. So at the age of 31, he left the army and enrolled in a Science Degree at the University of Queensland, and while working as a tutor there, completed his PhD. While tutoring in the Biology Department at the time, he realised that hands on learning was not being sufficiently emphasized and set about designing a program that would focus on experiential learning. That initial 6 week field program was offered to several Australian Universities, but the uptake was slow, so in 1986, he realised that his idea of adding field components to enhance theoretical knowledge needed to be taken elsewhere. At the age of 44 this polymath, cheese maker, retired Army Captain, Vietnam veteran, linguist, logistics expert and biologist, founded GED, because he realised that education was where he should focus his skills.
Some of the Colleges in the USA with whom Doug formed initial relationships, and who jumped at the opportunity to send their students to study abroad, are still GED’s clients today.
Doug retired in 2002, leaving us with a set of operating procedures written to Australian Army standards! Without Doug’s procedures manual, we would not be able to attain such high quality programs, nor operate so efficiently.