Interdisciplinarity in action: IHE Delft students’ experiences during MSc field trip to France

Armano Cibaric, from Croatia, called the field trip “truly inspirational” and said it had demonstrated the need to combine social, environmental and engineering sciences to create a sustainable approach. That solutions cannot be created in isolation was also a main takeaway from the trip for Bryan Cancimance Nino, of Colombia. “Integration is the key for a sustainable future,” he said.

For South Sudanese MSc student Tibi Nicholas Justine Isaiah,  the field trip was “an eye-opening journey into the complexities of flood resilience and coastal protection.” He added that applying the theory learned in the classroom in a real-world setting “underscored the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in tackling environmental challenges.”

Exploring water quality analysis techniques, including macroinvertebrates and bed sediment analysis, helped Joab Jared, a Kenyan student in the Limnology and Wetland Management joint MSc programme offered by IHE Delft, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Austria and Egerton University in Kenya, learn what’s needed to assess and preserve water resources. He called the trip “an intensive journey of skill development”.

Karis Migwi, a Kenyan student in the MSc in Water and Sustainable Development programme, was part of a team that interacted with local communities, collected data and samples, and made observations. They analysed and interpreted the data and created an improvement plan and recommendations. The experience, he said, will come into use in future professional challenges: “This is in preparation to what we are about to face in the job market after graduation.”