Author(s): H. Kobus
Linked Author(s): Helmut Kobus
Keywords: Continuing education; Professional development; Doctoral programs; Water engineers; Interdisciplinarity; Teleteaching; Distributed learning; Global scale
Abstract: IAHR has initiated activities in continuing education and professional development at its biennial congress in Madrid in 1991. The growing importance of continuing education at increasingly international scale has led to the formation of a new Committee on Education and Professional Development (CEPD), which focussed on the demands of the profession and of research institutions for qualified education and on the possiblities of interaction with educational institutions towards satisfying these demands. A joint study with UNESCO in 1994 has outlined the broad scope of education of hydraulic engineers, and a consortium of European universities started a pilot experiment of a “European Graduate School of Hydraulics (EGH)” with support of the European Union (1997-1999). From this nucleus, the “Engineering Graduate School Environment Water (EGW)” emerged in 2000, which covered a wider range and was considered as a regional experiment to be tested in Europe with a global perspective for IAHR. A close interaction with internationally oriented university programs such as WAREM (Water Resources Engineering and Management, M. Sc. course at Universitat Stuttgart) and others evolved, and the increasing role of teleteaching and distributed learning was actively pursued. After 12 years of development on regional scale and with many lessons learned, EGW can now embark on becoming a global IAHR activity under the guidance of the Committee on Education and Professional Development (CEPD).
Year: 2003