Cornell's Master of Professional Study Program in Integrated Watershed Management and Hydrology at Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia

Progress Report
February 2008

Program launched

The Cornell University/Bahir Dar University (CU/BDU) Master's of Professional Studies (MPS) program in International Agriculture and Rural Development officially got underway at the beginning of November 2007, when a group of 20 students reported to BDU to begin their studies in Integrated Watershed Management. This is the first interdisciplinary program to be offered at an Ethiopian university, as well as the first CU graduate degree program where a student can earn a CU degree without ever setting foot on a Cornell campus.

The program is based at BDU, the principal University in the Amhara region of Ethiopia; the campus' location, adjacent to Lake Tana, makes it an ideal location for the program. Lake Tana holds more than 50% of the stored fresh water in Ethiopia and it being damaged by excessive siltation due to inappropriate water and vegetation management practices in the surrounding highlands. Lake Tana is also the source of the Blue Nile River, which has been the cause of several on-going disputes between Ethiopia, the Sudan and Egypt. Effective and appropriate watershed management requires interdisciplinary teams of qualified personnel, and these are the people that the CU/BDU program aims to train.

The Blue Nile Falls, fed by Lake Tana.

The Students

The first group of 20 students admitted to the program included 17 men and 3 women from diverse undergraduate backgrounds (Figure). These students were chosen from a field of more than 100 Ethiopian applicants who met CU admission criteria. CU admission's panel selected these students on the basis of their academic performance at the undergraduate level, recommendations and personal statement outlining their motivation for pursuing advanced training in integrated watershed management.

The Program's First Students

The Classes

As of early February, the students had completed two courses: Watershed measurement, design, and planning and Watershed modeling, taught by Engineering Professor Tammo Steenhuis, with assistance from Cornell post-doc and program coordinator, Amy Collick. The students are halfway through an intensive writing course and are looking forward to the arrival of Dr. Steve DeGloria, who will be teaching the course on Geographic Information Sytems (GIS) later this month.

By the end of the program, approximately 8 Cornell faculty members will have traveled to Bahir Dar at separate times to teach an intensive three-week session. Each session concentrates all of the hours of instruction into a 2 or 3 week period and covers the same amount of material that an Ithaca-based student covers over the course of an entire semester. Practically, this means that the Ethiopian students are completely immersed in one class at a time as opposed to their Ithacan counterparts, who typically take multiple courses concurrently in a given semester.

The program has been designed to offer students a blend of theoretical and practical studies that will build student expertise in watershed management and hydrological sciences. The courses cross the disciplines of civil and agricultural engineering, crop, soil and animal sciences, natural resource management, and economics and other social sciences. Professor Tammo Steenhuis has been quite impressed at how well the students are performing outside of their (undergraduate) disciplinary comfort zones. The non-engineering students have shown an excellent grasp of hydrological engineering concepts and the ability to utilize these concepts in practical applications. For example, on a recent exam, all the students were able to model accurately the pollution that Lake Tana faces in the future when more development will take place. These types of skills are of critical importance for preventing that Lake Tana goes the same way as Lake Victoria that is now completely polluted and varies in color from fluorescent green to blue. Similarly, the engineering students have also shown themselves capable of grasping the social, economical, and biological complexities of integrated watershed management as well, which if not understood can undermine the best technical design.

Challenges and discussions on the field trip

Field trips to nearby watersheds provide important context for the program's academic offerings and the group has managed to go on two field trips to date. On one trip the students visited a Canadian-sponsored watershed project, soon to be implemented as an experimental watershed by regional and international researchers. This site, which is only 40km from Bahir Dar, is likely a location for some students' thesis research for the program. The other field trip allowed the students to mingle with water resources and watershed management specialists from the International Water Management Institute and other national and international organizations. One of the stops on this trip was at a fairly large scale irrigation scheme that included a large earthen dam, reservoir, and irrigation command area. This visit highlighted how upstream and downstream community reactions, and the utilization and maintenance of the irrigation scheme will be of critical importance to the management of the watershed supplying the reservoir.

Challenges faced

The program has faced a number of challenges:
We discovered that the CU panel's merit-based selection criteria caused some misunderstanding with potential Ethiopian institutional sponsors, who has their own system of selecting criteria for further studies. Indeed, some institutions did not provide leave to the students and ten students had to resign from their position and did not have any income. None of the institutions with the exception of Bahir Dar University and the German Aid agency were willing to pay the Ethiopian graduate students university fee. Fortunately, with generous donation from a unnamed donorto the program helped to give these bright young Ethiopian students the chance to participate by paying the BDU fees on their behalf. Funding for their research is not yet in place but we are working on it.

Professor Tammo Steenhuis, the CU faculty member who has thus far interacted with the students most extensively, speaks at length about how difficult it has been for students to meet the costs of their personal upkeep. About 50% of the students were forced to resign from their institutions to take up the scholarship (the remainder were granted an official study leave, which in some cases included financial support). At the start of the program, the students who lacked external support for their living expenses were living in a one room hovel that they'd rented on the outskirts of campus. But, after a short time, the program students formed a welfare committee and successfully lobbied BDU to be allocated 4 dorm rooms on campus, which they now share amongst themselves. However, as the students are not able to cook in the dorm, this new arrangement has made it more costly to eat.

The group has also been challenged by the tragic loss of one of their members. While on a 3 week recess from campus last month, one of the 3 woman students, Emebet Negash, was killed in a minibus accident on the way to capital, Addis Ababa. She was one of the program's most intelligent and dynamic students. The program is going on but the fact that her smiling face full of hope is missing, is a constant reminder of this tragic loss for those remaining.

Challenges and discussions on the field trip

During the first part of the program, students have also found it challenging trying to adjust to the less formal and practical style of American higher education. Instead of teaching theoretical principles, the program teaches practical application of theoretical principles that are directly related to Ethiopian conditions. In one of the exam questions, the students calculated the decrease in flow to Sudan and Egypt when dams would be installed on the Nile for generating electricity. They found that the loss of water out of these dams due to evaporation would be extremely small. Moreover the sale of electricity could help the country bootstrap itself out of poverty. Another aspect is that the Ethiopian professors have still the allure of the old European professors and students' access to faculty is much more limited than it is in the US. Thus, it has been a major adjustment for students to interact with less formal American instructors and, in fact, working up the courage to call the instructors by their first name without the "Dr" title has been difficult . But they are learning fast to be less formal. They have formed a committee that formulates their problems (such as students who had lost their jobs andt could not pay for their own food) and brings them for consideration of the program leadership. As a sign of appreciation during the first part of the program, the students invited Tammo, Ayalew Wondie (Bahir Dar University coordinator of the program), and Amy (Cornell University coordinator of the program) for tea and coffee at a nice restaurant on the shores of Lake Tana. They presented some beautiful Ethiopian gifts to the program organizers, including a full traditional holiday dress for Professor Tammo. Everything fit him exactly-- even the traditional horse-hair fly swatter.

Delivering a course in a developing country setting also presents a number of logistical challenges. Generally, flexibility is key and patience is a virtue. Electricity outages are a common fact of life in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. When students are working on projects on the computer, the mantra is "save, save, save". These outages also keep the instructors on their toes, and make them realize the peril of relying too heavily on a powerpoint presentation.

Academic resources that we take for granted - textbooks, functional computers, well-equipped classrooms and well-stocked libraries - are in short supply. For example, the group had just two copies of the textbook for their first course and no internet connection in their classroom until Amy and Tammo bought a hub and did all the wiring in the program classroom/computer room. Things really started looking up around January 10th, when the group was able to access Cornell on-line library resources. Although the volume of information now available to them is certain to keep the students on their toes, they are happy to finally have access to the type of up-to-date information (even at internet baud rates less than dial up during the day time).

Three months into the program, we would like to take this opportunity to commend the students, faculty and university administrators in both countries for their admirable and unflagging efforts in getting this program up and running. We have all learned a tremendous amount in the process and are confident that the next group of students will find that things run quite a bit smoother. Finally, we are deeply grateful for the financial and moral support that we have received from Cornell University, Bahir Dar University and the program's friends and sponsors.