Rural Development Department was established in 1998 to improve the rural status and agricultural products by educating and training students to prepare them for careers in rural areas, government and academia. Our mission is to expand and transfer knowledge of rural development and planning to continually improve dimensions such as the socioeconomic, environmental, agricultural, cultural and physical infrastructure in rural areas. Our full time faculty members are teaching and investigating different fields of rural development and emphasize on new advances in this field. For us, rural areas are the real laboratories for research. Rural development department provides a lab with a range of electronic equipment and academic environment for discussion and presentation. Currently, the department offers programs in degree of MSc. The department consists of 6 full time faculty and staffs supporting a body of 40 students. The main goals of the graduate curriculum are to train students for professional careers, enabling them to manage research programs in the area of sustainable development, socio-economic development, rural cooperatives, institutional analysis of social ecological systems, agricultural extension and training, participatory rural appraisal and rural rapid appraisal, participatory natural resources appraisal and social accounting matrix modeling.

The Masters of Science graduate programs attracts students from different fields such as agriculture, economics, social science, engineering, and etc.

• Agricultural and Rural Cooperatives
• Qualitative and Participatory Research
• Water and Environmental Economics and Policy
• Integrated Project Appraisal