Water Harmony ll

Water Harmony – Integration of Education, Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

        Water Harmony – Integration of Education, Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Water Harmony-II) re-orientates water-related graduate teaching practices towards a greater focus on the needs of the society and labor market. This is built on the solid foundation laid by the Water Harmony- Phase 1 (2011-2014), where consolidation of water related education was in focus. It intends to establish a scientific and pedagogic consortium including 10 partner universities from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Republic of Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine  and Norway to harmonize water related higher education to increase the relevance and quality. 

The Water Harmony –II has four goals:

1. Strengthening and expansion of institutional partnerships between NMBU and nine universities in seven partner countries through academic collaboration

2. Development of existing graduate programs towards more research, innovation, entrepreneurship and labor market orientation through partnerships with public and private sectors

3. Increase international orientation of study programs and competence of supervisors through academic partnerships and student-staff mobility between the partner countries and Norway and

4. Dissemination of the revitalized curricula, teaching tools and concepts to other universities associated with the partner universities and to other resource persons and entities.  

The project is organized in such a way that large number of teaching staff (over 40), students (over 100) and resource persons (over 30) from public and private organizations will be physically meeting each other at the partner universities. The project management will benefit with the previous four years of collaboration experience. The project is structured with 15 activities. The project goals will be achieved through:

  • networking, interactions, workshops, inter-partner supervision, research etc.;
  • sharing of best practices among partner as well as dialogues and job fairs/”career days” with future employers;
  • the iterative process of improvement through student and staff evaluations of the project results;
  • the large number of student staff mobility’s across countries and joint research, lectures and publications;
  • alongside a more active and quality-oriented publishing culture as well as the involvement of associate partners from the public and private sector and associated universities.