Chris Jones’ primary responsibility as a Fulbright Fellow at the Universidad del Valle Guatemala–Altiplano was as a lecturer, specializing in water and watershed management. He used extension’s hands-on, active learning techniques and styles with his students whenever possible, both in the classroom and outside. Click on image to enlarge.

Chris Jones on Sabbatical Leave

Core Project

Master Watershed Stewards – ¡En Español!
I offered two semester courses based on the Master Watershed Steward curriculum, I titled “Introducción al Manejo Integrado de Cuencas Hidrográficas” one for the university’s Agroforestry students, and another to the Sololá community. The 35 college students were mostly of Mayan descent, six of whom were women, ages 18 through 20. Most were well motivated and interested. The participants in the Sololá community course were professional and technical members of the departmental and national agencies, international non-profit organizations and the university who work together to address watershed issues in the department. There were 16 adult participants in this course.

In order to teach the course, I translated Master Watershed Stewardship materials into Spanish. I have compiled the materials and presentations on a cd-rom and plan to submit it as curriculum for peer-review.

My efforts to develop a working group was not successful because the working group model for my programming is unusual in this culture and my limited communication skills to express the need. In any case, I networked to gain information and build relationships, used the participants in the Sololá community class to learn about local issues and challenges. I am using this information to write a grant to the National Sciences Foundation to conduct an international workshop in 2010 to discuss and present innovative and technology appropriate solutions for waste management in the Lake Atitlan watershed.