The University of Saskatchewan is currently on its first leg of touring the province, which is a part of planning a project that is in its final stages. 

Staff met with the Mayor, Fraser Tolmie, and gave a presentation to local producers. They toured the city including the Dr. F.H. Wigmore Regional Hospital on Thursday during their visit.

Vice President for the post-secondary education facility, Debra Pziega-Osburn, said they wanted to meet local residents, hear what they have to say and detail what kind of projects they do that impact Moose Jaw. 

"A big part of that process is our commitment to our communities, our commitment to collaboration, and our commitment to doing the sort of curiosity-driven work that we think really only universities can undertake," said Pziega-Osburn. "So we have a role to play in our communities that we think is really important."

One big piece of their mission was explaining projects that take place in and around Moose Jaw conducted by the university and its staff and students. 

"At Buffalo Pound Lake we have work that is being led by Helen Baulch and she's one of our researchers from the Global Institute for Water Security, and she has been doing this work for several years now. The work involves finding new ways to continuously test the water quality in the lake."

She noted that their researcher will be able notify officials of a change in water quality to respond to the situation and bring in new technology, but she is most proud of the benefit it provides to residents who rely on the water quality. 

Pziega-Osburn said since 1970 they've developed 400 new crop varieties at the U of S, which she said is essential due to climate change, market changes, droughts, variations of soil. 

She said they plan to advance in engineering, agriculture and bio resources, computer science, arts and science as well as environment and health sciences as they see a growing demand in all of these areas.

Among the 25,000 students currently Moose Jaw has a large number of people who call this university home during their post-secondary education years or have called it that.

"We know that we have over a thousand alumni in the Moose Jaw area, and we try and stay in touch with our alumni as best we can. And then interestingly at last count, we counted 3,120 students currently enrolled from Moose Jaw."

Staff said they hope in a few years they will do another tour of cities around the prairies to see if the communities' needs and wants have changed.