UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The Center for Watershed Stewardship, a collaboration between Penn State's School of Forest Resources and Department of Landscape Architecture, is seeking graduate students for spring and fall 1999. The center offers a graduate program in watershed stewardship that prepares students to work in the emerging field of watershed planning and management.
"In traditional programs, students learn the physical aspects of planning, such as resource analysis management and design," says Kerry Wedel, director of the center. "This option also provides training in the social and political aspects of watershed management. Students will work with a variety of groups and learn the consensus-building processes that are involved in putting together and implementing a community-based watershed management plan."
. Wedel, a landscape architect, has more than 14 years of experience as a water resource planner and manager at the Kansas Water Office. He identified water resource issues within the state's river basins and state, federal and other programs that could be used to address them.
"In watersheds, planning issues are really integrated," Wedel says. "What you do with community development and land use has a direct effect on water quality and supply, stormwater, wildlife habitats and stream management. In our graduate option, we'll promote training in interdisciplinary, comprehensive planning and management, so students will be able to go out and address these kinds of issues."
Community service projects, called "Keystone Projects," will be conducted in partnership with local governments, nonprofit organizations, landowners and businesses to help students gain collaboration and problem-solving skills. Students will form year-long interdisciplinary teams that will address real watershed stewardship challenges in Pennsylvania communities.
"To solve these kinds of problems, local grassroots organizations need partners and collaborators," says associate director Lysle Sherwin. "Our students will help nonprofit organizations build their capacity so they can be effective catalysts in their communities."
Sherwin, a wildlife biologist, served more than 20 years as executive director of the Loyalhanna Watershed Association, a private, nonprofit, regional group in western Pennsylvania. Sherwin helped build a small, volunteer group into a broadly supported organization by raising funds and building collaborations with a wide array of agencies and organizations. Recently, the association helped establish a 22-acre passive treatment system of designed wetlands to remediate a serious abandoned mine drainage problem near Latrobe.
"First you have to get consciousness raised and all the stakeholders together," Sherwin says. "Then, once you get people thinking of the watershed as their 'environmental address,' they realize we're all connected and need to work together to improve the community's quality of life and economic prosperity."
Over the next five years, the center plans to help six Pennsylvania communities through Keystone Projects, train approximately 60 watershed stewardship graduate students and offer at least 11 educational programs and workshops to practicing professionals and community leaders. The first continuing education course, "Principles of Wetland Design," was offered in August.
Prospective students can apply for the option through the School of Forest Resources in the College of Agricultural Sciences, or the Department of Landscape Architecture in the College of Arts and Architecture. Fellowships are available for selected students. For information, contact Kerry Wedel or Lysle Sherwin at 8B Ferguson Building, University Park, PA 16802; 814-865-3334; http://www.larch.psu.edu/watershedstewardship.html/watershedstewardship.html.
The center is funded by a five-year, $1.78 million grant from the Howard Heinz Endowment of Pittsburgh.
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EDITORS: For more information, contact Kerry Wedel or Lysle Sherwin at 814-865-3334.
Contacts: Kim Dionis KDionis@psu.edu 814-863-2703 814-865-1068 fax