*4.3. Spring Preparatory Course*

We designed the spring preparatory course to build a common foundation of knowledge among students with diverse educational backgrounds, and to encourage students to apply their disciplinary skills to pursue individual research. We built foundational knowledge through introductory lectures focused on the disciplines necessary to achieve our objectives of water resources research in the URW and the construction of irrigation canals in Zurite: regional geology, the puna landscape, the Andean cosmovision, Incan and contemporary irrigation practices, and the community of Zurite. These lectures were accompanied by exercises and discussions that combined to form an interdisciplinary focus on water, which included physical hydrology, agricultural water needs, regional and local water management, and the issues of water quantity and quality encountered by local communities and community organizations. We fostered feelings of empathy and connectedness, developed communication skills, and engaged students in teamwork through exercises connecting our scientific objectives to the points of view and needs of the Indigenous and farming community of Zurite. These exercises were designed to instill a sense of respect for people of other cultures, which, through the international summer research, grew into intercultural competence or cultural humility (see, e.g., [58–60]).

Concurrently, we guided students through the research process by leveraging their disciplinary and newly acquired skill sets. Students worked independently to develop research questions, conduct literature reviews, generate hypotheses, and construct a plan for field research. The full list of projects and skills gained by the students associated with each project are provided in Table 1. Example projects included a simple hydrologic model to inform site selection for the installation of stream gages, a flight plan to collect drone data to generate a digital elevation model, an assessment of current and projected irrigation needs, a calculation of crop-specific irrigation needs and irrigation canal capacities in Zurite, and the hydraulic engineering of proposed sections of irrigation canals. These projects integrated our growing data set with the varied skillsets of the students in the class, and directly contributed to our objectives of understanding water resources in the Andean puna and informing sustainable water use in the community of Zurite. At the conclusion of the semester, students presented a progress report and a testable hypothesis, and identified their responsibilities and needs, to test their hypotheses in the summer field research.


**Table 1.** List of student projects, contributions to ILEK in Zurite, and the skillsets acquired by students. For the locations, U indicates upstream, and D indicates downstream.






**Table 1.** *Cont.*

### *4.4. Summer International Research Experience*

We led month-long research and community development trips to Zurite in 2018 and 2019. Students stayed in the homes of three different host families, with shared meals and discussions at the home of a centrally located host family. The homestays and engagemen<sup>t</sup> with the community encouraged open-mindedness, and exposed students to a diversity of values and cultural backgrounds e.g., [61].

Much of the logistics and the execution of fieldwork were led by the students, with the program faculty providing guidance in the field and through evening discussions. In the URW, fieldwork included geologic field mapping, the installation of hydrologic monitoring equipment—including rain gages, subsurface moisture probes, and groundwater monitoring wells—soil substrate measurements, and intensive geophysical surveys. In Zurite, fieldwork included surveys of the irrigation water distribution infrastructure, measurements used to design the construction of new canals, and gathering of water use information from local water officials. U.S. students worked alongside Peruvian students, providing mutual learning opportunities for field techniques such as geologic mapping, hydrologic monitoring, geophysical surveys, drone flights, rotary drilling, and well installation, as well as sharing customs. The unique experience of working in Zurite, including the strong tropical sun, the exhilarating thin air, and unique smells, tastes and sounds, provided a learning experience that cannot be replicated in a classroom [62].

Members of the community contributed to our fieldwork as part of the organized faena, or work patronage paid to the community. We offered training focused on gaging rivers, learned local perspectives, and explained our scientific objectives. Incorporating local representatives in our fieldwork allowed for an exchange of ideas between the local knowledge-holders and the students, and also demonstrated the community's investment in our research and in the water development project. The shared experience between students and volunteers provided an opportunity to both gain linguistic and cultural capital (see, e.g., [59,63]) and carry forward an experience of seeing the world through someone else's eyes.

Our role in Zurite, beyond the scientific objectives in the URW, and our contributions to the design and construction of irrigation canals, was as facilitators of knowledge coproduction contributing to ILEK. Our approach has been inclusive and participatory. Rather than communicating in one direction from science to citizens, we followed the best practices of including stakeholders (see, e.g., [64]) to identify community needs to help inform best practices in society-environment interactions (see, e.g., [65]).
