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	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}WIGD_1.png" style="width: 250px; height: 188px; float: right;" />Many courses at Au Sable are admirably devoted to specialization and fine-focused investigation of particular areas of environmental science. In contrast, Watersheds in Global Development provides students with a course investigating a fundamental and increasingly used worldwide management unit, the watershed. Although watersheds are fundamental and truly reality-based ecosystem management units in traditional management-oriented conservation sciences, they are also of increasingly vital importance in the work of mission and development, as the problems of developing sustainably clean water and sanitation systems for people in developing countries will become an increasing concern for Christian mission and development organizations.</p>
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	Integrated to include best current practices of watershed identification and management as identified by national and international standards, students who complete Watersheds in Global Development not only gain skill in various types of water monitoring, but also receive four certifications from Global Water Watch after successful demonstration of these skills, as well as certification in Watershed Science from the Watershed Academy of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 16 EPA modules in watershed identification and management. By the time the course is finished. Students in Watersheds in Global Development will have learned essential principles of watershed ecology, best practices of community-based water monitoring and watershed management for developing and developed countries, and how to create data access and analysis using an online relational database and data-to-action strategies.&nbsp;</p>
