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78 chapter five Building a Base of Support Once I went to that first short course, it just clicked in my head that this was what I was looking for: a quantifiable system that was repeatable . . . [and] that was based on nature. And that was it. —cheryl harrelson, principal, Steady Stream Hydrology In the previous chapter we explored the intellectual substance of the Rosgen Wars. The inescapable conclusion was that while substantive questions are central to the Rosgen Wars, so too are power struggles over what kinds of capital should have primacy in the restoration field. The existence of the Rosgen Wars begs a more fundamental question, however: how did Rosgen manage to build a base of support strong enough to allow him to challenge the elite of the restoration field in the first place? Part of the answer lies in the day-to-day practices of the participants and institutions that make up the field: the training, tools, and standards of practice that enable the restoration field to function. Thus this chapter focuses on basic questions of social practice in the restoration field. How does someone become a participant in the stream restoration field? Why do the majority choose to get their training from Rosgen rather than from a university? How has Natural Channel Design become the de facto standard of restoration practice in the United States? universities and the (mis)education of restoration field participants Let’s say you want to join the stream restoration field. How would you get the training you need? You might think a university would be the place to go, but it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to get stream restoration training within the American university system. No university in this country has a department of stream restoration. There are some state and polytechnic universities that offer concentrations in stream restoration as part of degrees in other subjects, such Building a Base of Support • 79 as environmental or watershed management. As described in chapter 3, North Carolina State University offers restoration training through its agricultural extension program (rather than through conventional course work). There are also three universities (Portland State University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Washington) that have restoration certificate programs. But it is not yet possible to get an academic degree in stream restoration in the United States. At best, people interested in stream restoration can attempt to cobble together a suite of reasonably relevant courses in ecology, geomorphology , hydrology, and/or engineering from the existing course offerings at their university. Nobody, including the students themselves, thinks this is adequate. The absence of academic training and certification is a serious issue in the stream restoration field. There are certainly professions where no university training is expected or needed (carpentry, aesthetics, farming, etc.), but stream restoration is an environmental science, and in the sciences the traditional source of training is the university. Even in fields with a strong industry presence in knowledge production, such as biotechnology and the petroleum industry , the university is the main training ground for practitioners. Thus the fact that academia has been slow to respond with programs focused on restoration science or practice makes it difficult to gain the knowledge needed to participate in the field and to tell who within the field knows enough to be a competent designer, manager, or regulator. There has been high demand for trained restoration practitioners for more than two decades. Why have universities so far been unable to develop the programs needed to educate and certify the needed restoration workforce? Based on my interviews with academics who tried to start such programs, there seem to be four basic reasons. First, the disciplinary structure typical of American universities creates some technical difficulties. Although interdisciplinary programs are very much in vogue at present, the vast majority of degree programs are still organized along disciplinary lines. Fulfilling the requirements of her home department typically makes it quite difficult for a student seeking a bs or ms degree to take the range of courses necessary to prepare her for work in the very interdisciplinary field of stream restoration. While ms students often have more flexibility, they are more limited in terms of available courses because they are only enrolled for one or two years. But even a PhD program may not have the necessary interdisciplinary scope. Steve Gough, a restoration consultant in Missouri, tried to put together such a course of study for his PhD at the University of Illinois and...

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