International trends
International education partnership builds future leaders in water management for agriculture By Dean Eisenhauer, PhD, and Molly Nance, MLA
When Mumba Mwape was a young girl, she loved to join her father in their farm field outside their small village in Zambia, pulling weeds and watching the maize and groundnuts grow. She knew she wanted a career in agriculture, and after graduating from college, she earned a coveted spot in an international education program focused on advanced water management for food production. The program is offered by IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in The Netherlands, the world’s largest post-graduate water education facility, and the University of Nebraska– Lincoln, with support from the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute [DWFI] at the University of Nebraska.
The joint double master’s degree program launched in 2011 and is targeted to professionals from developing countries who are interested in learning more about water resource identification and development, water allocation and distribution in food production, plant- water interactions and maximizing crop yields while minimizing water usage. The partnership allows the participants, many of whom have never traveled to the United States previously, to put their
education into practice outside the classroom in Nebraska — an ideal natural laboratory for hands-on learning.
The 20-month program offers students an in-depth learning experience with both classroom and hands-on field experiences. Students participate in eight IHE Delft modules in The Netherlands, each three weeks in duration, and 10 semester courses at Nebraska. As part of the program, students are required to complete a research project in their home country and present and defend their thesis to faculty from both institutions. Upon completion, students earn a Master of Science in water science and engineering with a specialization in land and water development for food security at IHE Delft and a Master of Science in agricultural and biological systems engineering at Nebraska.
“The students are highly motivated to expand their expertise in order to address complex water and food security challenges in their home countries,” said Dean Eisenhauer, program coordinator and biological systems engineer at Nebraska. “This partnership provides them
Mwape presenting at the DWFI Student Forum before returning home to Zambia
with opportunities for hands-on research, experiential learning and other support — tools to make a real difference at home.”
A two-week Nebraska irrigation field methods course is a core feature of the program. In addition to gathering data in the field, they are able to meet with Nebraska farmers, researchers and other professionals to learn firsthand about new technologies, drawing on the state’s long history of expertise in food production, irrigation and water-use efficiency.
IHE Delft and UNL students doing field research in Nebraska
The course emphasizes field and laboratory measurement and/or evaluation techniques and proper analysis of irrigation, hydraulic and hydrologic systems: flow in streams, canals and irrigation pipelines; irrigation pumping systems; surface, sprinkler and drip irrigation systems; irrigation well hydraulics; pipeline hydraulics; and soil water properties. The laboratories are combined with a field trip where students visit agricultural irrigation water supply projects, hydraulic structures, dams, hydroelectric plants, irrigated cropping systems field research at industry and university sites, and industries that manufacture and install center pivot systems, subsurface drip irrigation
28 Irrigation TODAY | January 2018
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