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

Progress Report
November 2007 - April 2009

The Program

The Cornell University/Bahir Dar University (CU/BDU) Master's of Professional Studies (MPS) program in International Agriculture and Rural Development officially began in early November 2007, when 20 students reported to BDU to begin studies in Integrated Watershed Management and Hydrology. This is the first graduate degree program where a student can earn a Cornell degree without setting foot on a Cornell campus. The core funding for the program for tuition and course-related expenses, but not research costs, is from the Development Innovation Fund (DIF) financed by both the Ethiopian Government and a World Bank loan via the Ethiopian government and Bahir Dar University to Cornell University.

This funding mechanism reflects commitment of financial resources that could have been used for other BDU initiatives and has helped to create a strong partnership between BDU and Cornell. Professors Tammo Steenhuis and Alice Pell have coordinated the program through the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD) and Dr. Ayalew Wondie has served as the Bahir Dar University side coordinator with Dr. Amy Collick as Cornell University coordinator in Bahir Dar.

The program is based at BDU, the primary university in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. BDU's location, adjacent to Lake Tana, makes it ideal for a program in watershed management. Lake Tana contains more than 50% of the stored fresh water in Ethiopia. Excessive siltation due to inappropriate water and vegetation management in the surrounding highlands is damaging the lake. Lake Tana is the source of the Blue Nile River, which has been the cause of several on-going disputes between Ethiopia, the Sudan and Egypt. The goal of the CU/BDU program is to train professionals who can help to institute more effective and sustainable watershed management practices.

The Blue Nile Falls, fed by Lake Tana during the rainy season.

The Classes

As of early July 2008, the students had completed all the course requirements which included:

1. Watershed measurement, design, and planning,
2. Watershed modeling,
3. Geographic information systems & remote sensing,
4. Technical writing,
5. Management of soil and waterborne pathogens,
6. Livestock in highland farming systems,
7. Research preparation/IARDseminar,
8. Participatory methods in community watershed management,
9. Nutrient management in Agroecosystems, and
10. Economic Analysis of Agriculture-based Livelihood Systems.

Seven Cornell faculty members: Robert Blake, Dwight Bowman, Steven DeGloria, Chuck Nicholson, Alice Pell, Dawit Solomon, and Tammo Steenhuis have traveled to Bahir Dar at separate times to teach an intensive two- or three-week session. Angela Neilan from Virginia Tech University was instrumental in making the participatory methods in community watershed management a success. The Cornell program coordinator, Dr. Amy Collick, has been responsible for teaching technical writing, supervising development of project proposals, and the day-to-day activities of the program. Each teaching block concentrated all of the hours of instruction of a particular course into a 3-4 week block.

During a typical week, there were more than 20 faculty-student contact hours, exceeding the minimum required. 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 during a semester. To ensure that students get adequate guidance in the preparation of their research proposals, an electronic advising system was developed. Bahir Dar University provided a coordinator Ayale Wondie, transport for the students to go out to the field and two rooms furnished with computers, classroom furniture, and internet access for use by the students.

During a typical week, there were more than 20 faculty-student contact hours, exceeding the minimum required. 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 during a semester. To ensure that students get adequate guidance in the preparation of their research proposals, an electronic advising system was developed. Bahir Dar University provided a coordinator Ayale Wondie, transport for the students to go out to the field and two rooms furnished with computers, classroom furniture, and internet access for use by the students.

The non-engineering students have also 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 of the students were able to model the future pollution of Lake Tana, assuming that the current degradation rates continue at the same rate. These skills are crucial if Lake Tana is to avoid the high levels of pollution evident in Lake Victoria and the other Great Lakes of Africa.

Field trips to nearby watersheds provide important context for the program. On one trip, the students visited a Canadian-sponsored watershed project that is being studied by regional and international researchers. This site, only 40 km from Bahir Dar, is the location for some students' thesis research. 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. Students visited a large-scale irrigation scheme that included a large earthen dam, reservoir, and irrigation area. This visit highlighted the importance of the perceptions of members of the upstream and down-stream communities, and the utilization and maintenance of the irrigation scheme to the management of the watershed supplying the reservoir. The third set of field trips focused on agricultural systems and their contributions to water pollution and soil erosion. For the participatory methods course, the students developed their community surveys pertinent to their research and were able to test out the questions during a 3-day field trip to Debre Tabor where integrated watershed management was in practice facilitated by the German-sponsored project.

Challenges and discussions during field research.

Challenges faced

The program has not been without some challenges: The broadband internet connection at Bahir Dar University is good when assessed by the prevailing standards in rural Ethiopia. However, when there is no electricity (during the end of the dry season there are outages every other day), there is no internet. Internet-based courses are yet not feasible, but the CU-BDU students can access the Cornell library system thanks to modifications made by the Mann Library staff.

There were misunderstandings about the value of the Cornell MPS degree. Inconsistent information given by the first two instructors was part of the problem. Lack of direct contact with other Cornell graduate students who could explain misunderstandings and differences between the Ethiopian and American educational systems also played a role. These issues have now been fully resolved. Students now are aware of the unique education they are receiving and are grateful to Cornell University sponsoring the program.

The Cornell admissions panel's merit-based selection criteria caused some misunderstandings with potential Ethiopian institutional sponsors, who had their own system of selecting criteria for further studies. Indeed, some institutions did not provide leave to the students and eleven students had to resign their jobs to enter the program, leaving them without income. Only Bahir Dar University and the GTZ were willing to pay the Ethiopian graduate students' university fee. Fortunately, a generous donation from a donor in the United States that covered the BDU fees, gave these students the chance to participate. Funds for support of students' research have been received from IWMI and two other U.S. donors, The tragic death of one of the students in an automobile accident was difficult for students and faculty alike. During a 3-week recess in January, one of the 3 female students, Emebet Negash, was killed in a minibus accident on the way to the capital, Addis Ababa. She was one of the program's most intelligent and dynamic students. The program continued, but students and faculty feel her loss daily and miss her smiling face full of hope.

Students have found it challenging and rewarding 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 directly related to Ethiopian conditions. The relatively informal student-faculty interactions with Cornell faculty differ from those that they experienced as undergraduates. While the less formal atmosphere encourages exploration and application of new ideas, students are not always certain about what is permissible and what is not.

Although the program focuses on training students, the participation of Bahir Dar University staff in each course was quite low; this likely poses a problem for the sustainability of the program. A better understanding of the mechanism for involving BDU staff is necessary to ensure they are able to participate in courses.

As students have reached the end of their course work and have started their community-based research and development projects, we would like to take this opportunity to commend the students, faculty and university administrators in both countries for their admirable and unflagging efforts to get this program going. We have all learned a tremendous amount in the process and are confident that the next group of students will gain from this experience.

Students of the Bahir Dar MPS Program.

Research Aspects

In order to earn a Master's degree, students must earn 24 credit hours of course credit and do a thesis (6 credits). The 19 students in Cohort I have completed their course work by the end of June 2008. They have been planning their research and development projects during the whole semester. We anticipate that they will have completed data collection and written up their results at the latest by March, 2009. The official graduation will on July 4, 2009 and it is likely that the President of Cornell University, Dr. Skorton, will be present at their graduation. The President is also scheduled to give the commencement address for the BDU seniors graduating that year

The students' research findings have been exiting and actually contributed to new knowledge in our understanding of watershed's hydrologic behavior. For example three students: Tigist, Aneteneh and Assafa all did their research in the Debra Mawe watershed 40 km south of Bahir Dar Tigist observed gully formation and proved that the greatest erosion rates occurred by gully erosion when the water table is above the bottom of the gully. Her findings explain the many gullies that form in the lowest part of the landscape where the slope is the flattest and the water velocity the slowest. Anteneh who cooperated with Tigist identified geologic features that explain why in certain places the water table was elevated. Finally Assawa measured in the same watershed the upland erosion and found that erosion rates were greater at the bottom of the hill with the flattest slopes than at the top of the hill with the steepest slopes. By measuring the moisture content at the different slope positions he could prove that more overland flow was generated downhill than upslope, causing more erosion down slope than upslope. A final interesting fact that upslope erosion caused on the average a 1mm per year soil depth loss while gully formation was equivalent to an almost 5 cm soil loss over the same watershed.

Another group of students Teganu, Haimanote, Elias and Biniam looked at the relationship between water table depth and runoff processes. They found high infiltration rates throughout the watersheds and saturated bottom parts where all the infiltrated water from the hillsides accumulated. Most the overland flow was generated in bottom part of the landscape with shallowest slopes, which may seem counter intuitive. They also showed that subsurface flow plays an important role in the hydrology of the watershed.

Achalew, Tegegne and Yidnekachew did surveys on water supply and irrigation and confirmed that systems in which people had a say in the design from initiation of the project were most successful. Tesfay who compared management systems in three watersheds similarly found that management in which the farmers could make choices in what measures should be implemented were successful. This is a similar finding to the NYC watershed in which farmers are also in the driver seat on how best to reduce phosphorus inputs in the reservoirs. In the Koga watershed, payment for environmental services was investigated by Habtamu as well as the factors that affect adaptation of soil and water conservation practices by Fikru. Tilashwork determined that likely the two most problematic features of eucalyptus trees on the surrounding crops is the minimum amount of light that can penetrate the canopy and the soil becoming water repellent. Although not investigated these trees are also more effective in removing water from the subsoil during the dry periods than other tree species. Finally Zelalem studied if the flow in the Nile is decreasing over time.