Professors teach classes on Hurricane Katrina

Shin-Mu · Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 34

BAY ST. LOUIS - On a recent sunny morning, college professor Denise Wilson found herself holding class in unusual surroundings more than 2,000 miles away from her normal teaching environment.

In ordinary times Wilson would have been in the classroom at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she is an associate professor of electrical engineering. But on this day she and another teacher were waiting for students to gather at the Mockingbird Cafe, a Bay St. Louis coffeehouse just off the beach.

They had traveled with their classes to South Mississippi for a combined mission of performing Christian volunteer relief work and studying the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina.

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Shin-Mu · Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 34

Wilson and Yolanda Jones, an assistant professor of chemistry at Alcorn State University, had teamed up to offer the class "The Impact of Katrina on Technology and Infrastructure." Wilson brought 12 students to the coast for a month of studies in the field. Jones' students were here for a week and completed the majority of their coursework back in the classroom.

What made the program even more innovative was the division of time and labor: Students went to class a couple of days a week. The other days they labored with volunteers working from First Presbyterian Church of Bay St. Louis - cleaning yards, clearing debris and repairing and painting the homes of hurricane victims.

Jones' students earned three semester hours of credit for their studies. Wilson's class got five quarter-hours. In the academic portion, the students covered the hurricane's effects on "everything from wetlands to power grids," Wilson said. "About 60 percent of the course was already obvious. The rest we figured out when we got here."

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Shin-Mu · Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 34

It was not easy putting the plan together, gaining approval, recruiting students or finding the money. "In general, we've had to look under rocks for funding," Wilson said.

It came from a variety of grants and contributions, and students stayed in unluxurious emergency quarters provided by First Presbyterian Church.

Wilson said it was tough to interest students in the unconventional program.

"Out of 25,000 people" on the University of Washington campus, she said, "we have 12." They represented a variety of subject majors, from electrical and civil engineering to sociology, law and social justice.

But the professors agree the idea paid off, both for students and themselves. Jones said some of her students are Mississippians and have relatives who are still displaced from their homes. She has tried to help her students "intellectualize" the storm's impact, she said, and has seen them touched by the appreciation of Coast residents they have helped.

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Shin-Mu · Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 34

"When they see the homeowners' faces, it's an amazing thing," Jones said. "It's humbling."

For Wilson's part, she considers the program a career-altering experience.

"I'm so surprised at what I've learned here," she said. "I can never go back to my ordinary ways of teaching."

For one thing, Wilson said she has seen firsthand the value in removing students from the four walls of a classroom and putting them out into the world to learn. She finds that especially important for engineering students, who study things intended to help advance society: "We are a service profession, but we have really diverged from our mission."

Wilson said her students also gained deeper understanding of the human condition and all they saw here. "This hurricane has just flipped all the inner turmoil inside out. I'm learning from their term papers. This has been an education unto itself."
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