Transition in Leadership for the OU WaTER Center

“Please join me in holding up your glass filled with water”, he would often say at banquets and formal events. “Let us remind ourselves that over 1 billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water such as you and I have in front of us.” For Dr. David Sabatini, the mission of the OU WaTER Center was never just academic. It was personal. It was also spiritual. If God created us all equal in His eyes, then we should all have equal access to the basic necessities in life, including clean water and sanitation.

Dr. David Sabatini is the Founding Director of the OU WaTER Center
and has been its vision and inspiration for 14 years. 

In 2006, Dr. Sabatini founded the Water Technologies for Emerging Regions (WaTER) Center at the University of Oklahoma (OU). The Center is a grassroots, faculty-led effort whose mission is to promote peace by advancing health, education, and economic development through sustainable water, sanitation, and health (WaSH) solutions for impoverished regions. Since its inception, the leadership team of the WaTER Center has worked hard to tackle both the technical and non-technical issues associated with WaSH for peoples in need.

After 14 years of leadership, David has decided to step down as Director for the remainder of his professorship at OU. (He will continue in a Founding Director role.) Those 14 years have been packed full of research, education and outreach activities! David has directed graduate student research in Cambodia (arsenic mitigation), Ethiopia (fluoride mitigation), Ghana (sustainable water provision) and Thailand (ground water remediation and protection) and has mentored scores of undergraduate students through his teaching and kind support. He spearheaded the development of the WaTER Minor, which includes a curriculum designed to provide the knowledge and experience that students need to succeed in the important work of sustainable development. Both graduate and undergraduate students are being formed as people who are culturally aware and technically proficient. These students have gone on to leadership roles in NGOs, churches, and government agencies and to serve in Peace Corps.

 

Drinking water in Cambodia is scooped from a protective ceramic vessel.

Early on, Dr. Sabatini and the other five Co-Directors felt the need to acknowledge in a special way the people who were doing the hard and often unrecognized work in developing nations. Modeled after the OU Neustadt Prize for world literature, the OU International Water Prize is awarded on a biennial basis to recognize and honor an individual who has made significant international contributions, either through research or teaching or service activities, in the field of water supply and sanitation, with a focus on the world's poorest living in developing countries. Since its founding the Center has awarded six Water Prizes and held six International Conferences with participants from all parts of the globe. Through these outreach and research activities, “Dr. Dave” has acquired scores of colleagues and collaborations which continue to this day.

In 2010, the student organization “Engineers Without Borders” was changed to “Sooners Without Borders”. The move was made to develop the organization into a campus-wide group and invite involvement of all disciplines. With the support of the WaTER Center, undergraduate students have worked in El Salvador, Guatemala, Bolivia, Cambodia, Uganda, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Pine Ridge, South Dakota. In 2011, the Directors hired Dr. Jim Chamberlain as the first full-time staff member. Jim is now serving as the Interim Director of the OU WaTER Center.

Dr. Sabatini is joined by colleagues, Drs. Teshome Lemma and Jim Chamberlain,

on a trip to the Rift Valley in Ethiopia

David Sabatini is a David Ross Boyd Professor and Sun Oil Company Endowed Chair of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science at the University of Oklahoma.  After earning a PhD at Iowa State University in Civil Engineering, he joined the University of Oklahoma in 1989.  He is former Editor-in-Chief and current Associate Editor of the Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, Associate Editor of Journal of Surfactants and Detergents and an Editorial Board member of the Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development.  He has coauthored or coedited four books and over 200 refereed journal publications. His research funding has totaled $12.8 M (individual credit of $4.3 M) and has included funding from agencies such as NSF, EPA, DoE, DOD, DoEd. He is currently teaching in OU’s new online MS program in Hydrology and Water Security, and is writing a textbook on water security. Among his many honors, he was recently inducted into the 2020 Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame.

In 2019, Dr. Sabatini toured the NEWater wastewater reuse plant

and operations in Singapore.

 

 

Thank you, Dr. David Sabatini for your knowledge, experience, and extremely hard work in setting the WaTER Center on its course and steering it to its current success and fruition.

 

But most of all, thank you for your passion for water and for those who are in need!

We life our glasses to you!