Katrina Aftermath a Life-changing Classroom

Hands-on learning and real-world experience are touted as keys to reforming engineering education and teaching skills needed in the global economy. And so much more, especially when “hands-on” and “real-world” encompass the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

Junior electrical engineering major Charlene Reyes found a passion and a career path. Mayra Garcia, who will receive her civil and environmental engineering degree this summer, embraced the importance of bringing people and their needs to the fore in project planning.

The transformative catalyst was a winter quarter course titled “Impact of Katrina on Technology and Infrastructure,” led by Denise Wilson, associate professor of electrical engineering. She took five engineering students and seven from other disciplines to the Gulf Coast town of Bay St. Louis, Miss., to learn about natural disasters, emergency response, and infrastructure issues. Reyes and Garcia signed up for similar reasons. “I had never traveled outside the West Coast and this was the closest I could get to the experience of studying abroad,” Reyes said.

Wilson had more in mind than an introduction to different regional culture. Her own life-altering experiences volunteering on the Gulf Coast in 2005 inspired her to develop an undergraduate course that immersed students in community service work and exposed them to the societal, economic, and technological issues entangling an epic environmental and human tragedy.

In Bay St. Louis, population 10,000, the students bunked in the small, stuffy classrooms of a church and washed in a makeshift shower tent. “We complained for the first week,” Reyes said, “but we saw so many families still living in cramped FEMA trailers parked outside their wrecked homes. It was so humbling. I used to be all about ‘poor me,’ but now I appreciate everything.”

For their community service, the students spent three to four days a week repairing homes, learning how to install dry wall and do plumbing, electrical repair, tiling, and painting. “The local people were so friendly, optimistic, and grateful,” Garcia said. “One man whose house we worked on would bring us food like gumbo.”

The academic component of the course included field trips to study the effects of wetland degradation, weak infrastructure, and the problems with government response. Students looked at flood control structures along the Mississippi and were briefed on rescue operations by the Coast Guard in New Orleans and on electrical grid restoration by Mississippi Power. Wilson led regular discussion sessions to reflect on their experiences, and the students completed weekly writing assignments and wrote a term paper.

In researching her paper on the effects of Katrina on the power grid, Reyes discovered her engineering passion and mission — large-scale power systems. She’s eager to go to graduate school for training in this field. “The experience of this course changed my life,” Reyes said.

“Once you get out of your own bubble, you can’t get back in,” Wilson affirmed. “I’m encouraged that some students came back with a strong, enduring desire to serve the community.”

That’s the power of hands-on, real-world learning.

The UW’s Carlson Center assisted in designing the course. Wilson will lead another group of undergraduates to Bay St. Louis this summer.