Eugenia Santiago Reyes tugged on the oversized pair of waders, accompanied by some good-natured ribbing from her fellow students. The waders, property of the College of Natural Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, might have fit someone a foot taller. Undeterred, Santiago, a graduate-level student from Oaxaca, Mexico, was soon stepping into the Wisconsin River to take a water sample as part of a lab project on water quality monitoring.

The hands-on lab work is part of a special four-week seminar being conducted this month by the Global Environmental Management Education Center (GEM) at UWSP. Four Mexican graduate-level students, Alejandra de la Torre Yarza, Julia Z�rate Hern�ndez, Guillermo Aquino Martinez, and Santiago, will learn water monitoring techniques, study ecotourism, niche marketing and value-added production of agricultural products, waste management, payments for ecosystem services including water, biodiversity and carbon uptake, and gain practice in how to conduct workshops and community meetings.

The GEM training course combines classroom time, field work and tours. For example the students will visit the Farmers Market in Madison, gaining insights that may help make the Oaxaca Farmers Market more successful. And they�ll travel to southwest Wisconsin to meet representatives of Organic Valley, a family-farmer cooperative now over 1,000 members strong.

The seminar is taught by GEM staff and graduate students, including GEM Director Victor Phillips, Wes Halverson, John Sheffy, Marco Hernandez and Clarisa Jimenez.

The students will use their new skills to train residents in a dozen communities of the Sierra Norte region of the state of Oaxaca in southeastern Mexico. The work is part of a multiyear project to help people in the mountainous, rural region create healthy watersheds and sustainable livelihoods.

So far, the students have been impressed by both the class and Stevens Point.

"The people here are very kind," Santiago said. (With the exception of de la Torre, the students were interviewed with Jimenez interpreting.) "They understand that we don�t speak the language, they understand that we are not from here. They accept this and they protect us."

Santiago said she has also been impressed by how well organized the city is.

"It is so calm here and I think it is because of the organization of the city," she said.

De la Torre said what has most surprised him so far about Wisconsin is the great quantity of water -- all of the streams and lakes, and the wildlife they foster. And he has found the class work valuable.

"I am gaining great experience here that I can put into practice (in Oaxaca)," de la Torre said.

Aquino said that on his flight into Central Wisconsin Airport, he was surprised to see from the air the square blocks of land and roads and houses, like a patchwork quilt. That�s very different from the mountainous region he is used to. Two weeks into the class, he has enjoyed the hands-on learning and is already thinking of ways to use the knowledge in Oaxaca. He also enjoyed a Saturday float trip the group made on the Plover River from Jordan to Iverson parks.

Zarate said the mix of classroom and field experience is working well.

"I like the way the class is organized because we can learn about ecotourism, and waste water, and then we to the field and we can take this knowledge to the real world," she said. "It�s very important to learn about the waste water, because I see the same problems here as in Oaxaca."

Zarate said she�s been impressed by the learning resources available at UWSP, including Schmeeckle Reserve, the water labs, nearby rivers and streams, and all manner of agriculture.

"Everything is here," Zarate said. "We don�t have to go to another state to see things."

The Oaxaca project is a collaboration between GEM and three institutions in Mexico: the Autonomous University of Chapingo, the Technical University of Monterrey, and ERA, a nongovernmental organization in Oaxaca. The project is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

In the first phase of the project, staff and students from the cooperating institutions assessed current watershed conditions and livelihood status in the Sierra Norte, and facilitated community meetings to gauge support for sustainability initiatives such as value-added processing and direct marketing of produce.

The four students now at UWSP will complete the seminar June 23. Then they will deploy to communities in the Sierra Norte for several months of field work with local residents, under the direction of Marco Hernandez, a master�s degree candidate at UWSP. The project emphasizes grassroots involvement, so local residents decide priorities and implement actions. The Oaxaca project on healthy watersheds and sustainable livelihoods will be integrated into GEM�s Sustainable Community Network project, which is developing case studies on sustainability initiatives in Wisconsin, Mexico, Guatemala, Kenya, India and elsewhere.

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