University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
IN-2: Innovation 2

River Rangers

Rivers represent perhaps the most complex biological and physical systems in the world. They supply drinking water, water for power and for irrigation, and recreational assets to tens of millions of people worldwide. Yet our great rivers are threatened: water quality and quantity both are at peril from overuse, from competing uses, and from a generalized failure to recognize how valuable and imperiled the resource really is.

Our future life with rivers requires that we develop more sustainable and equitable relationships between our human society and the values we depend on rivers for, and the complex systems that our rivers contain. Future “river managers” will, we believe, need to know the complex sciences that allow them to understand how riverine systems work. But they will also need to understand human systems, embodied in policy and planning, in engineering and design practices, and, not to be overlooked, in the writing and expressive arts that convey the significance of rivers. Future river managers will have to have expertise in knowing, doing, and expressing the wonder and mystery of rivers. River Life and our River Rangers program are dedicated to forming this next generation of leaders.

The River Life program starts with the Mississippi River, one of the great rivers of the world and our “home river,” passing as it does through the University’s Minneapolis campus. Our work coordinates river science to planning, public art to urban design, educational programming to community development. Throughout our efforts, we strive to be inclusive and to build communities of interest connecting the campus to public agencies and nonprofit organizations across the region and the country. As we are able, we intend to establish international connections as well.

River Rangers are students who have committed to making the river a substantial part of their educational and career development experience while at the University. We feel that the next generation of river leaders will need to be conversant in three areas: in river-oriented science, in planning, design, and management of river-related places, and in engagement with river communities and populations. Our River Rangers gain this expertise through classes, through specialized study programs and capstone/thesis projects, through community service projects, and through internships and other career-development opportunities. And of course there are the many opportunities for hiking, biking, canoeing, and just relaxing along the river that runs through all of us!