It is with great pleasure that we received a generous donation from Solinst Canada Ltd for groundwater monitoring equipment for our partnering university Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania. SUA has plans for their first field school in May and are very excited to be able to have these state-of-the-art instruments with which to teach their students. Thanks very much Solinst!
UniWater and The Groundwater Project are now joined at the hip! Laurra Olmsted, our Executive Director, has been appointed as the Team Lead for Africa Education at the GW-Project. In this manner, Laurra is able to feed ideas into GW-Project on how to best tailor the on-line hydrogeological resources to applications for use in African universities. Please see www.GW-Project.org for more information on the free resources available globally.
UniWater is looking to source geophysical equipment used to conduct electrical surveys for a Field School at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania. If you, or someone you know, is willing to donate new or gently used equipment, please contact Laurra Olmsted at lolmsted@uniwatered.org
It is with incredible excitement that we can finally announce that our partnering university, Sokoine University of Agriculture, in Tanzania started classes in the first module of their MSc in Hydrogeology and Water Resources Management. This is the first of many universities who are trying to get to this point. The inaugural cohort of students numbers 4 in total, with another 4 students from a related MSc program joining them in some classes. The HWRM program is two years in duration.
The MSc program in Hydrogeology and Water Resources Management is set to begin in November 2020 at Aksum University in northern Ethiopia. UniWater Education is partnering with them to provide assistance with establishing their Field School and coordinating visiting professors from the University of California Santa Barbara and the University of Toronto. The Groundwater Project’s (www.gw-project.org) inaugural publications related to ‘anything groundwater’ will be used as an online resource (free of charge to anyone wishing to access these books).
In November 2019, UniWater Education signed an agreement with Aksum University in northern Ethiopia to support them in establishing an MSc program in Hydrogeology and Water Resources Management. The program will be housed at the School of Water Technology at the Shire campus. The university currently has more than 21,000 students at both a bachelor and masters level, and is one of the ten public “second generation” universities in Ethiopia. The School of Water Technology 
is an emerging water-specialized academic and research institute, serving the development of water infrastructure for water security, food security, energy security and ecosystem services by education and research. The new MSc program will be supported by visiting professors from other universities (currently the University of Toronto Scarborough, and the University of California Santa Barbara) for the first three years while staff members complete their studies as PhD candidates. Of critical importance in this relationship is the establishment of a Field School, where students learn to put theory into practice. Aksum University will be offering a number of scholarships for top quality applicants. UniWater is excited to help Aksum University to get this program established as soon as possible.
Every year, PPI Solutions holds a symposium for the benefit of their partnering investment firms. This year, they generously donated the proceeds from the symposium registration fees to UniWater in support of our general operating funds. These funds are gratefully acknowledged and will support travel expenses to Egypt as we develop the Terms of Reference for funding for a regional Field School at the Desert Research Centre in Cairo. This Field School is anticipated to serve as a practical, hands-on training school for Hydrogeology programs in all of Egypt, and possibly the whole Middle East. The Field School is expected to begin training of students in 2020.
Robert Siegrist, James McKinley and Rebecca Parzen have generously donated their module on Decentralized Wastewater Treatment and Reuse to UniWater’s program. This set of lectures was developed by Dr. Robert Siegrist at the Colorado School of Mines, to serve as a Master’s level course on decentralized wastewater treatment and reuse applicable to rural areas in the USA. Jim McKinley and Rebecca Parzen, former graduate students of Dr. Siegrist, subsequently adapted the curriculum for a Master’s course at The University of San Simon, in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Changes to the original curriculum included a larger focus on technologies available in developing countries and translating the course into Spanish. The latest version of this curriculum, for use by UniWater has been translated back into English and continues to prioritize decentralized wastewater technologies that are applicable to developing countries.
UniWater Education Limited.
We are pleased to share our newly released professionally designed annual report for 2017 which includes a message from the director, the year in review, annual achievements, financial updates and looking forward – to next year and beyond.
UniWater Education’s 2017 Annual Report (PDF)
Many thanks go out to Robert Bruce who has compiled a number of test questions for our borehole drilling module. Every donation of time is much appreciated. These are the things that make our program enriched – when people share their experience with others learning the trade.
