Michigan Tech hosts World Water Day events online

World Water Day is an international event to highlight the importance of freshwater put on by the United Nations. This year’s theme was climate change.

"Michigan Tech for about 12 years now has been a part of having world water day events locally, and in line with an educational institution we have a variety of events," said Emily Shaw, a Ph.D candidate in Michigan Tech’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

This year due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Michigan Tech has decided to keep the event going in the virtual world.

"To make sure these kinds of discussions about water are still happening locally. We didn't want to put all of this work aside, we had already coordinated with our keynote speakers and both of them were gracious enough to agree to do online presentations," added Shaw.

Hosting the event online had some benefits.

"The really wonderful thing about this is that we actually are now able to accommodate more people from a larger area. We're hoping that we can get people to participate in these events who maybe wouldn't have driven in from out of town," said Shaw.

The event is also acting as a trial run to see if running events like this online would be a good option in the future.

"The whole committee is excited to see how successful a virtual event is and if it's something that we should consider in the future, even if we aren't under social distancing requirements," added Shaw.