To forward our mission of advancing the art and science of watershed management, the Watershed Management Council needs to be thought-provoking by challenging our members and readers to look at the subject in different ways. The profession of watershed management is evolving rapidly, as it should be with increased experience and feedback. However, academic training may be lagging behind the real-world need for understanding and implementing watershed management. As a practitioner and sometime instructor of the subject, I have wanted to explore how various universities and other training institutions are preparing future practitioners. This section of The Networker is an initial attempt to pull together information about the available watershed management programs in academia (and in academies) for everyone to take a look at. It is by no means a comprehensive review of all the programs that exist in the western region, but it's a beginning.
"Watershedology" is the nickname for the study of watersheds in all their facets, reflective of both their natural and human-affected conditions. Preparing "watershedologists" for a successful career, or for a life-long stewardship ethic, should demand excellent preparation at the best "Watershed State University". But what is the ideal we should be striving toward, and how can we get there?
To effectively teach a subject requires considerable understanding of how to teach as well as what to teach. Several university professors and others in fields related to watershed management have recently expressed their frustrations and desires about the quality of professional education in meeting real-world needs (Refs #5,6,7,8,9). Bemoaning the difficulty of trying to adequately address complex natural resource issues in their existing programs, they identify some of the academic obstacles: excessive specialization of faculty, lack of appropriate social science training, students' insufficient preparation, student disdain and cynicism of unfamiliar disciplines, absence of faculty experience outside the university, and stifling of the creation and integration of new ideas.
Common to all five of these critiques
is their identification of the need to improve academic training in problem-solving
skills. Professor Stephan Chorover of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(M.I.T.), who specializes in the forms of pedagogy that promote learning and
stimulate retention of information, believes that students must be well schooled
in a wide range of disciplines, must be experienced in defining and solving
complex problems, dealing with uncertainty, and probing the unknown (Ref #4).
To help accomplish this, he has suggested that M.I.T. focus upon water and the
watershed for its proposed reform of the entire freshman curriculum (whatever
major). Water and watersheds "provide an excellent integrating theme as
a means of focusing the kinds of research, analysis, and judgment skills that
M.I.T. hopes to stimulate in its students in their freshman year".
For example, the physical, chemical, biological and mathematical characteristics of local and regional watersheds may be studied at various scales in terms of a nested hierarchy of natural systems and units. Near Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Charles River Basin would contain "many plausible foci (e.g., communities, societies, biomes, rivers and reservoirs, sewers, farms and factories, harbors, power plants, etc.). Everything that we know about learning tells us that cognitive and behavioral integration of core subject matter will be promoted and other relevant skills will be strengthened by the experience of interacting with the same system(s) from diverse disciplinary vantage points." (Ref. #5) As of January, Dr. Chorover reported that progress on the curriculum innovation is "proceeding predictably slowly" but "we are persevering".
Yes, the academic world can seem quite foreign and out-of-touch after one leaves its ivy-covered walls and ivory towers. For those of us out in the "real world", however, the university environment also beckons as a place of safety and opennesswhere we don't have to always watch what we say, where the status quo can be challenged, where crazy ideas can be tossed around and even thoughtfully considered. University of Michigan Provost Nancy Cantor says it best: (Ref #3)
"The University creates a structure and community that encourages [students] to stretch beyond their intellectual comfort zone, and that is one of the special things a great research university has to offer. This is at the core of why we need to cherish interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity Exploration rarely comes without a sense of place and security. Exploration is hard, it is tension-provoking. Our most fundamental problem is how we get together and learn from one another. This is hard because it's new. It's uncharted territory. There are no rules for stretching beyond boundaries."
Her comments bring us to the eternal need for better interdisciplinary effortswhich are inherent to watershed management. Here's a great comment on the forces keeping disciplines separate:
"The academic disciplines are continents of the mind, separated by very broad oceans, no doubt because of academic continental drift. Furthermore, they seem to be continents without any good harbors. It is a fundamental principle of economics that specialization without trade is worthless, but in the continents of the mind, specialization seems to feed on itself, and there are large invisible tariff barriers against the interchange of ideas." Kenneth Boulding and Sven Lundstedt (Ref #2)
WMC tries to promote professional and disciplinary interaction through its activities. As described in an article of a 1995 issue of the The Networker, an Oregon State University study (Ref #1) of interdisciplinary environmental research revealed why these efforts are so difficult to achieve among academic specialists. Commonly their work tends to "rapidly decompose into loosely related disciplinary studies". Reasons offered for this outcome were: (1) it is safer to stay within the confines of one's own discipline and avoid the risk of possible professional embarrassment or even ridicule; (2) being creative trying to think outside of the "norm" is difficult and requires additional time and energy, often in short supply; and (3) rewards are usually absent from within one's organization or profession.
Constraints are provided from many sources, including how we research articles in bibliographic databases. For example, Current Contents continues to require the searcher to look under the separate disciplines of the physical, biological or social sciences. Finding articles on the topic of "watershed management" requires searching at least three of its so-called "multidisciplinary editions".
Successful models of interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs exist but are still fairly rare. The School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Michigan is one example, where science and policy courses are offered (and promoted!) to all students within the school or in cooperating schools and programs (e.g., Engineering, Law, Urban Planning, Natural Sciences). In large university systems, like the multi-campus University of California, making changes in the department structure, the curriculum, or even a single course description takes an enormous amount of bureaucratic effort which moves at glacial speed. Therefore, it is very encouraging to see the emergence of a new interdisciplinary effort like the UC Davis Center for Integrated Watershed Science and Management, which succeeded due to the careful and patient nurturing of Geology Professor Jeff Mount and other sympathetic faculty members.
Is there an ideal set of courses for training future watershed management practitioners and researchers? While originating in the physical sciences, watershed management studies are tending to include the biological sciences as a core requirement, even providing for an emphasis in "watershed ecology" (e.g., Utah State's Watershed Science Program).
Social sciences and related skills are also beginning to be incorporated into some of the programs. For example, the University of Arizona's Watershed Hydrology and Management option for undergraduate studies emphasizes such non-technical tools as communication skills and policy analysis since they are "becoming increasingly important components of successful resource management activities" (says the program description). Creativity is showing up in some of the new watershed management courses being offered. Take a look at the University of British Columbia's CD-ROM course on Integrated Watershed Management, for instance.
Should Watershed Management be a specialty major unto itself, or an "overlay" on or option within other majors? One could argue that the content is too important to just be side-tracked as another speciality. A student in other majors should be able to understand basic upslope and instream processes without having to become a geomorphologist. Also, why can't Fish & Wildlife Biology or Hydrology or Range Science majors take applied social science courses to help them understand the "art" aspect and not just the "science" component of watershed management? Most major universities offer some very appropriate "art-ful" courses that are often not taken by students in these more traditional natural resource majors, courses such as: environmental planning, water policy and law, resource economics, human ecology, environmental politics and planning, public lands management, public speaking, conflict or dispute resolution, and technical writing.
For those who are going back for special training in watershed management, through short courses or certificate programs, their diverse backgrounds make a one-size-fits-all curriculum quite problematic for the program teachers. EPA's "Working at a Watershed Level" course may be of great benefit to some while to others it's too elementary. Responding to participant feedback is making courses in California's Watershed Academy and Portland State University's Certification in Watershed Management even more useful to their target audience.
I hope this section is useful to students seeking careers in watershed management and that it also stimulates ideas on how we're trying to create "watershedologists" for the real world.
Bella, D.A. and K.J. Williamson. 1995. Conflicts in interdisciplinary environmental research. Watershed Management Council Newsletter 6(3).
Boulding, K. and S. Lundstedt. 1988. p. 21 in: Peterson, G., B. Driver, and R. Gregory (eds.). Amenity resource valuation: Integrating economics with other disciplines. Venture Publishing, State College PA.
Cantor, N. 1998. In: Elgass, J.R., The University provides security within which to explore: Cantor. Michigan Today, Fall 1998.
Chorover, S. 1997. Re-invention: A note on process. MIT Faculty Newsletter (May 1997):4-5.
Chorover, S. and S. Humpheries. 1997. Learning from water: An educational resource for sustainability. Harvard Seminar on Environmental Values, Dec. 17, 1997.
Goldfarb, W. 1997. Teaching water resources policy to university science and engineering students: opportunities and challenges. J. Amer.Water Resources Assoc.33(2):255-259.
National Research Council. 1996. Freshwater ecosystems: Revitalizing educational programs in limnology. Summary report. National Academy Press, Wash. D.C., 9 p.
Noss, R. 1997. The failure of universities to produce conservation biologists. Conservation Biology 11(6):1267-1269.
Spangenberg, N.E. 1997. Professional water resources education for the future Are we ready? J. Amer.Water Resources Assoc.33(2):251-253.
