The One World One Water Center: Educating University Students and Water Professionals About the Water Industry
The Auraria campus, home of MSU Denver.
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Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position. Tom Cech: I grew up on a nonirrigated farm near Clarkson, Nebraska, and then attended Kearney State College. I taught
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high school math for a few years in Wilber, Nebraska; then moved to Salt Lake City to work at a consulting firm; and then went back to Nebraska to work on a master’s degree in community and regional planning at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. I was then hired by the Central Colorado Water Conservancy District (CCWCD), a threecounty organization along the Front Range of Colorado. We worked with groundwater users, irrigators, municipalities, and surface water users and were immersed in surface and groundwater law in Colorado. I worked there for about 30 years as the district manager. We also lobbied at the state and federal levels. We’d go to Washington, DC, a couple of times a year to lobby on various water issues, and with federal funds, we developed some of the earliest nonmunicipal groundwater quality programs along the Front Range. We were also one of the first in the country to develop water education materials for students from irrigationleadermagazine.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MSU DENVER.
he One World One Water (OWOW) Center was created at Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver) in Colorado to offer classes on water law, water history, global water concerns, and other water-related issues to university students who have a passion for water. It soon became clear that many water industry professionals were also interested in these classes. In response, the OWOW Center established a selfpaced online certificate course open to professionals from across the nation. In this interview, OWOW Center Codirector Tom Cech tells us about the center’s mission, its in-person and online courses, and how it is helping educate a wide range of people about water.
