About the Program

The nature of the program, and the fields to be included

The primary goal of the program is to develop highly qualified personnel in the area of water-health, broadly defined, to fill a growing global societal need for science and service, policy and practice, around the fundamental human issue of safe water provisioning.  Issues of provision, access, quality, equity, conflict, distribution, change, governance – are all of paramount importance to studying and responding to the water problematique.  Hence, we need highly qualified personnel from a range of sciences (natural, human, health) to work together in understanding and addressing the emerging global water crisis; in short, this is truly a transdisciplinary problem that requires a truly transdisciplinary program of study.
 

The learning objectives of the proposed collaborative program are three-fold:

• To create strong scientists in water-health across a range of disciplines;
• To create strong scientists with the ability to bridge science and policy; and,
• To create strong scientists with the ability to undertake related capacity building.

The basic foundation of this collaborative program is similar to that of the existing Ontario Training Centre (OTC) in Health Services and Policy Research (http://fhs.mcmaster.ca/otc-hsr/index.htm) jointly hosted by McMaster and five other Ontario Universities.  While the programs are marked by distinct differences, the fundamental similarity is that an in-coming student would undertake a graduate degree in a parent program linked to additional course requirements.  Within the parent program (whether it be Geography and Earth Sciences, Philosophy, Engineering and Public Policy), the student would undertake all normal requirements.  The student would also undertake 3 additional course requirements related to (i) a field course; (ii) a core course in science-policy bridging; and, (iii) a practicum with UNU-INWEH. 

Program Foundations

The basic foundation of this collaborative program is similar to that of the existing Ontario Training Centre (OTC) in Health Services and Policy Research (http://fhs.mcmaster.ca/otc-hsr/index.htm) jointly hosted by McMaster and five other Ontario Universities.  While the programs are marked by distinct differences, the fundamental similarity is that an in-coming student would undertake a graduate degree in a parent program linked to additional course requirements.  Within the parent program (whether it be Geography and Earth Sciences, Philosophy, Engineering and Public Policy), the student would undertake all normal requirements.  The student would also undertake 3 additional course requirements related to (i) a field course; (ii) a core course in science-policy bridging; and, (iii) a practicum with UNU-INWEH. 

The unique components of the graduate program are three-fold:

• Joint supervision of the graduate student with a UNU-INWEH faculty member.
• Undertaking the 3 additional courses.
• Undertaking the thesis/major paper/research project component of the degree within UNU-INWEH’s research program.

Having completed these three additional unique components, the students would receive the degree from their parent program (i.e., MA, MSc, PhD) along with the designation on the transcript and the degree conferred of ‘Completion of Collaborative Degree Program with the United Nations University International Network on Water, Environment and Health’, along with the seal of UNU-INWEH, and the signature of the Rector.