Learn State-of-the-Science Skills and Essential Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration Techniques

This program is designed for both current private/public professionals as well as those beginning, advancing, or updating their river restoration career. It does not teach the fundamentals of individual technical disciplines. As per the list of prerequisites, the program assumes that you come into the training with your own technical discipline. It also assumes you are up-to-date with your training/education and knowledge of best practices in your field.

You will benefit from this program in two ways. First, you will learn technical, scientific, policy, administrative, and regulatory basics of river restoration. Whether you take the courses in professional short-course format or the four-week intensive Summer Field Institute, you will have a chance to work through exercises drawn directly from restoration projects conducted in the Pacific Northwest. You will receive targeted, practical lectures and field trips. If you are long on classroom instruction and short on field expertise, we encourage you to join the Summer Field Institute, where you will have fully two weeks in the field working on an ongoing restoration project.

Second, our instruction is designed to foster awareness of the interdisciplinary nature of river restoration, to help you develop an awareness of where your discipline fits into the restoration framework. As you work through the courses with classmates from many different disciplines, you will learn to recognize the areas where the disciplines most need to communicate and collaborate, and you’ll learn practical techniques to keep interdisciplinary teams on track throughout the restoration process. You will come away with more respect and understanding for the other disciplines.