89 / 188
87
Problem: Together, these three stresses – climate change, urban population growth,
and land use change – have placed enormous pressure on the water management capacity
of the cities of the American West.
University researchers also stand to gain from such collaborations by refining their
assumptions based on the perspective of practitioners and gaining insights based on internal
management perspectives that may not otherwise be accessible. Additionally, university
researchers engaged in collaboration may co-design their research with practitioners and
conduct research together. Such collaborative research is highly like to result in mutually
beneficial outcomes to both parties, fulfilling of intellectual scientific inquiry of university
searchers while meeting the practical decision-relevant needs of utility managers. The
involvement of students in such collaborative research further fulfils the missions of both
institutions. With explicit local community partner engagement, university researchers
educate students who, at the end of the students’ education, are highly knowledgeable in
local water issues and thus are readily employable to partner organisations.
Results: utility personnel felt that engagement with local universities had the potential
to provide several benefits to both utilities and researchers, including opportunities for
data sharing, pooling or sharing resources, sharing of experiences, making professional
connections, the co-development of research tools, training opportunities for utility
personnel, student opportunities and joint research opportunities.
Trust makes social life predictable, it creates a sense of community, and it makes
it easier for people to work together. Trust can be said to be the basis of all social
institutions. Trust, they continue, is related closely to social capital, which also includes:
reciprocity, common rules, norms, sanctions and connectedness in institutions and
serves as the foundation upon which adaptive capacity and collaboration are built.
Conclusion: this research has identified three significant barriers to collaboration
between water managers and university researchers that impede adaptive water resource
management. The first barrier is a lack of transparent communication and trust between
potential collaborators, which suggests that steps must be taken to develop regular
communication so that strong, trusted working relationships are in place before a new
challenge emerges. The second barrier has to do with a mismatch in both the spatial
and temporal scales at which water managers and scientists tend to operate. Spatially,
university researchers engaged in water management research do not always operate at the
local scale that tends to be most relevant to the work of water utilities. Temporally, there is
an incompatibility in the timeframes in which utilities seek to serve the immediate needs
of their customers and researchers seek publication and funding opportunities in a slow-
moving reward structure. Finally, there is the issue of misaligned institutional expectations
and what is ultimately rewarded for utility personnel and those operating in academe.
Shu-Chin and Tzong-Heng: A qualitative study of interdisciplinary
cooperation on computer and English: A case study of Aletheia
University participated in international volunteer service learning
to Inner Mongolia [40]
The project was supported by the cooperation of cross-university volunteer services,
including computer donations, computer classroom construction, and Technology and