Experiences of engineering students in post-Katrina service learning programs

This paper discusses two case studies of engineering student experiences in a 10-week fully integrated academic/service learning program on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi in the hurricane Katrina recovery effort. The program delivered in the Winter of 2007 combines a service learning component oriented to hands-on reconstruction of a Gulf Coast community and a formal academic curriculum that emphasizes a birdpsilas eye understanding of the hurricane Katrina story, from a perspective of the technology that helps and hinders natural disaster recovery. The pilot program was a full load (12 quarter credits) program that placed 12 students from a major Northwest University on the Gulf Coast for an entire term. The case studies of two engineering students presented herein demonstrate a level of advanced performance (as compared to campus-based learning) that has been often suggested but rarely documented in the literature. Improvements in affective measures (such as belonging) and academic outcomes (such as demonstrated understanding of broader impacts in persuasive writing) are significant for both students, despite the significant differences between them.