This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) project is a multidisciplinary graduate training program in resilience and adaptive governance in stressed watersheds at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Resolving complex water issues requires the best and clearest scientific information from interdisciplinary and integrative science. This program will train the next generation of natural resource scientists, managers, and policymakers by increasing scientific understanding of how resilience - the ability to withstand multiple stresses without losing critical structure and function - is generated in complex systems of people and nature. It will provide cross-disciplinary academic and experiential training for a diverse group of doctoral graduate students in natural, social and computational sciences, and provide opportunities for minority students. Broader impacts include training in the complex interactions of ecological and societal systems affecting water management and in the use of sophisticated mathematical and computational tools for decision support. IGERT doctoral students will receive academic training in resilience and adaptive management and will participate in externships and workshops that expose them to real-world applications that transfer knowledge in a way that is useful to policymakers. Local, state and federal agencies will help shape curricula in natural science, policy and law by developing student research externships. Students will benefit from an international experience comparing compromised watersheds in the Great Plains of the United States to similarly challenged watersheds in Europe. This program will assist in fundamentally changing academic culture by coalescing students and faculty from natural science, social science, computational science and law around a common goal: the responsible management of over-appropriated watersheds. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.
