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Interdisciplinary efforts in graduate education
The theme of the next issue of Professional Education News will be interdisciplinary efforts in graduate professional education. Do you know of a graduate project or program at UD that gets extraordinary results by crossing disciplinary lines? Do you know of an outstanding interdisciplinary effort to serve our professional graduate students? Please send your ideas for feature
articles or other comments on the newsletter to:
John Sawyer, sawyerj@udel.edu
Associate Provost for Professional Education
Office of Graduate and Professional Education
Water science, policy program launched
[Photo by Michael Chajes]
Water is a valuable resource that is critical for the health, vitality and long-term sustainability of all natural ecosystems. Worldwide, however, water resources are at a risk. Unsustainable population growth, land-use changes, pollution and global climate change all threaten the distribution, quantity and quality of the water on which all life depends.
Developing solutions to meet the growing need for clean water that are socially acceptable, economically viable and environmentally sustainable is the focus of the new interdisciplinary graduate program in water science and policy at the University of Delaware, which welcomed its first students this fall.
The program is housed in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and is directed by Shreeram Inamdar, associate professor of watershed hydrology. It was initiated under the auspices of the Delaware Environmental Institute (DENIN).
Students in the water science and policy program will have ample opportunities to conduct field research. Here graduate and undergraduate students test water clarity in a tributary of White Clay Creek. [Photo by Jerry Kauffman]
"We have a really top-notch cadre of faculty representing many disciplines," Inamdar said. "We may approach the problem of water from different perspectives, but we share a common goal of better understanding, protecting and managing our precious water resources. The beauty of this program is it provides students greater flexibility in shaping their curriculum and greater opportunities to collaborate with faculty from diverse disciplines and departments."
"Graduates of this program will be able to pursue exciting career opportunities close to home or around the world," said Inamdar. " The demand for clean, healthy water is going to be very high in the coming century, and so will the demand for our graduates' expertise."
