In mid July, Tarleton State University welcomed international guests from Ethiopia for a workshop on watershed management.

Kalyn Brymer, graduate assistant for Texas Institution for Applied Environmental Research said the workshop is called “Watershed Management Workshop 2013.”

In the workshop four people from Ethiopia came to Tarleton according to Brymer. “They’re teachers and deans at universities. They came over to get a better understanding of our standard operating procedures for water quality and how you can make sure the water is OK to drink and how you can reverse some of the things in the past that made the water bad, ” Brymer said.

“In part of the workshop, we are trying to make it to where we can get some collaboration going with Ethiopia and Tarleton to where we can maybe have some labs set up in Ethiopia where Tarleton can go and help them with what we’re trying to implement,” said Brymer.

The guests who were at the workshop for around a week, “have done all sorts of things like, listening to lectures about standard operating procedures and different things about water quality, they’ve gone out in the field and got some hands on experience with what we do here at Tarleton,” according to Brymer.

TIAER executive director, Dan Hunter said, “This is a great opportunity for Ethiopian Universities to collaborate, develop standard operating procedures, and improve quality control for surface water quality research data gathered.”

Nikki Jackson, who is the TIAER senior project and policy director, said,  “This workshop provides an excellent opportunity to develop long lasting relationships with multiple Ethiopian universities. We hope this will be the beginning of long international partnerships, both academically and in the research arena.”