MANAGING WATER RESOURCES Competing users and interest groups have varying, and often contentious, opinions on how water resources should be managed in the Intermountain Province (IMP) of the Columbia River Basin. The divisive issue is examined in the biggest monograph released by Eastern Washington University’s Institute for Public Policy and Economic Analysis. Operating under the premise that water is the lifeline of this region and plays an important role in the sustenance of life and development of the Pacific Northwest, the study was conducted by EWU Associate Professor of government Vandana Asthana, who has addressed important water issues on a global scale. Because of the volume of issues and stakeholders, the scope of the monograph only focused on the northeast corner of the state of Washington. It included in-depth interviews with affected tribes, environmental groups, utilities, state agencies, local government, non-profit organizations and other stakeholders involved in the management and use of these resources. “Water management decisions affect people throughout the Columbia River Basin,” said Patrick Jones, executive director of the institute. “However, there are many different ideas on how water resources should be managed - a process complicated by the incredible amount of overlapping responsibilities at all levels of government.” Jones points that out many experts believe water is the new energy issue, and the monograph does a great job of making one wonder if we can meet the difficult challenge of managing that resource. “It will take great teamwork because this is such a controversial and muddled topic,” added Jones, who points to the challenge of serving hydropower, flood control, navigation, irrigation and fishery needs, while juggling the interests of municipalities, environmental groups and recreation users. The institute utilizes the expertise of EWU faculty to sponsor research in social, economic and public policy questions important to the Inland Northwest. It also conducts contract research for various organizations and governmental agencies around the region.
STATE-of-the-ART COMPLIANCE TRAINING EWU has become a member of the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) making available state-of-the-art online training in the major research compliance areas of Animal Care and Use, Human Subjects in Research, Privacy/Protected Health Information and the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR). CITI was founded in March 2000 as a collaboration between the University of Miami and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to develop a web-based training program initially focused on human subjects research. Since then, CITI has added training modules in all the major areas of research compliance and is subscribed to by more than 1,100 universities and federal and state agencies. The training is required for members of the university’s research oversight committees and for faculty, staff and students working on federally funded research projects. Faculty, staff, university clinicians and students who are not required to complete the training but who would like to have more knowledge on RCR and related topics may also access and complete the training modules. RCR topics covered include, but are not limited to, conflicts of interest, authorship, collaborative research, data management, mentoring, peer review, research misconduct, plagiarism, human subjects research and animal subjects research.
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