Background

The Department of Water Resources and Irrigation Engineering /WRIE/ is one of the lately established departments in Kombolcha Agricultural College. The department and its  curriculum has been designed in accordance with directives from the Ministry of Education to address shortcomings in existing higher education programs and to develop improved, practice-oriented curricula with measurable outcomes, particularly in the Water Resources and Irrigation Engineering discipline. The curriculum was designed in due anticipation of concerned stakeholders.

It is on this solid ground that the Department of Water Resources and Irrigation Engineering was officially established in July 2008 E.C. the very objective of the department is to produce highly qualified and internationally competitive professionals in the area of water resources development and management. Accordingly, the department strives for producing competent and innovative engineers in the water sector through high-quality education and training, conducting demand-driven, problem-solving research endeavors in the field of water resources and irrigation engineering and providing community and consultancy services to support the country’s development by optimizing its water resources.

Programs in the Department of Water Resources and Irrigation Engineering

The department is currently engaged in training prospective water resource and irrigation engineers in two modes of trainings (degree and level based) and two modes of admission (regular and extension) programs. Accordingly,

• A four-year regular degree program is launched and run on tri-partite affiliation basis (Amhara National Regional State Bureau of Agriculture, Wollo University and Kombolcha Agricultural College) to produce competent water resource and irrigation engineers in which students are enrolled for Bachelor degree in water resource and irrigation engineering. Besides, a regular admission is also made for small scale irrigation development on level- based training (Level I – Level IV). But currently, this program has been changed to irrigation and drainage design.
• A level-based extension program has also been admitting students in small scale irrigation development till recently, but this has also been modified to irrigation and drainage design, too. The level based extension program is run by the college.

In general, the department has always been lucky in exploiting projects like SMIS who enormously extended either financial or material support all through along with capacity building schemes that ultimately contributed for the remarkable achievements we have made so far. We are grateful for what have been done for the department in particular and the college at large and also look for further assistances of such kind to make our endeavors fruitful so as to contribute more in our field of study.