Natural disasters, such as 2017 hurricanes Irma and María, the 2020 earthquakes in Puerto Rico and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, affect students in many aspects including economic, socio-emotional, and academic performance progress. To ensure that students can cope with the aftermath of such searing events, it is necessary to develop initiatives that address these three aspects. Satisfying the financial need is essential, but a long-term solution is mandatory. Hence, providing socio-emotional and academic support and cultivating a sense of purpose are critical to prevent attrition. To secure continued STEM success among students affected by natural disasters, the National Science Foundation has funded several projects at the University of Puerto Rico, a Hispanic Serving Institution. This manuscript presents four NSF-funded projects sharing the common goal of providing support to STEM students to ensure that they succeed despite the said challenges. The first project, titled Nanotechnology Center for Biomedical, Environmental and Sustainability Application, leans heavily on research teams dedicated to design new Nanotechnology platforms to address biomedical and environmental challenges and simultaneously trains a new generation of nanoengineers and nanoscientists throughout the educational echelon starting from public intermediate schools through doctoral programs. The second project, entitled Ecosystem to Expand Capabilities and Opportunitiesmore »
Design and Assessment of Architecture/Engineering/Construction (AEC) Curricula for Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructure
The devastation caused by recent natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes, has increased awareness regarding the importance of providing interdisciplinary solutions to complex infrastructure challenges. In October 2018, the University of Puerto Rico received a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) collaborative award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop an integrated curriculum on resilient and sustainable infrastructure. The project titled “Resilient Infrastructure and Sustainability Education – Undergraduate Program (RISE-UP) aims to educate future environmental designers and engineers to design and build a more resilient and sustainable infrastructure for Puerto Rico. This paper presents the design, initial implementation, and assessment of a curriculum encompassing synergistic interactions among these four domains: integrated project delivery, user-centered design, interdisciplinary problem-solving, and sustainability and resiliency. The project seeks to foster interdisciplinary problem-solving skills involving architects, engineers and construction managers, in order to better prepare them to face and provide solutions to minimize the impact of extreme natural environment events on infrastructure. The new curriculum stresses on problem-settings, the role that participants have on defining the characteristics of the problems that have to be solved, learning in action, reflecting on the process, and communication between the different stakeholders. This multisite and interdisciplinary program provides more »
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10191810
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings Article published in 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Natural disasters, such as 2017 hurricanes Irma and María, the 2020 earthquakes in Puerto Rico and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, affect students in many aspects including economic, socio-emotional, and academic performance progress. To ensure that students can cope with the aftermath of such searing events, it is necessary to develop initiatives that address these three aspects. Satisfying the financial need is essential, but a long-term solution is mandatory. Hence, providing socio-emotional and academic support and cultivating a sense of purpose are critical to prevent attrition. To secure continued STEM success among students affected by natural disasters, the National Science Foundation has funded several projects at the University of Puerto Rico, a Hispanic Serving Institution. This manuscript presents four NSF-funded projects sharing the common goal of providing support to STEM students to ensure that they succeed despite the said challenges. The first project, titled Nanotechnology Center for Biomedical, Environmental and Sustainability Application, leans heavily on research teams dedicated to design new Nanotechnology platforms to address biomedical and environmental challenges and simultaneously trains a new generation of nanoengineers and nanoscientists throughout the educational echelon starting from public intermediate schools through doctoral programs. The second project, entitled Ecosystem to Expand Capabilities and Opportunitiesmore »
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Puerto Rico is exposed to multiple hazards including hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods. The Resilient Infrastructure and Sustainability Education Undergraduate Program (RISE-UP) at the University of Puerto Rico aims to introduce students to interdisciplinary problem-solving related to real challenges, especially those associated with the occurrence of natural disasters. The objective of this work is to share our experience with experiential learning related to structural engineering. The lessons learned from this experience, from the student ́s perspective, could encourage faculty members to develop similar undertakings in their programs and students to participate when opportunities arise. During the 2019 fall semester, we enrolled in a course which covered the relationship between design and natural disasters, with an emphasis on rapid response to recover during the aftermath. The course combined lectures and in-class exercises on basic structural analysis, classifications of structures and the use of the FEMA Rapid Visual Screening (P-154) form. This was complemented with field visits of structures affected by Hurricane Maria where we developed several case studies. From December of 2019 to February 2020, Puerto Rico suffered an earthquake swarm reaching magnitudes as high as 6.4, which caused structural damages throughout the South West of the island. Following these events, wemore »
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Undergraduate research experiences and internships enhance student learning in undergraduate programs. Due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, many summer research. experiences and internships were canceled or postponed to future summers. The Resilient Infrastructure and Sustainability Education Undergraduate Program (RISE-UP) at the University of Puerto Rico consists of a curriculum that is composed of four courses and an experiential learning experience (internship or undergraduate research). Due to the lack of alternatives for students to fulfill the experiential learning experience in summer 2020, RISE-UP developed a summer virtual undergraduate research experience which focused on developing basic research skills and to apply them to develop interdisciplinary solutions for real problems. We collaborated with students from several disciplines and two. campuses to analyze and address the seismic vulnerability of several structures. This experience allowed us to have a better understanding of seismic vulnerability, as well as finding interdisciplinary solutions to upgrade our infrastructure. It also provided us the opportunity to experience an internship without the risk of exposure to COVID-19. In this paper we share our experience and tools that aided us in our research to show that conducting virtual research is a viable and effective option for undergraduate students.
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After a natural disaster, multiple disciplines need to come together to rebuild the damaged infrastructure using new paradigms. For instance, urgent restoration of services demand to abridge the projects’ schedule and provide innovative solutions, thus making collaboration and integration essential for the project’s success. Commonly, the academic preparation of scholars on infrastructure-related disciplines takes place in isolated professional domains, rarely tackling interdisciplinary problems and/or learn from the systematic research of previous experiences. In Puerto Rico, the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria has heightened awareness regarding the education on infrastructure-related disciplines to provide transdisciplinary solutions to pertinent complex challenges. This taxing context compels the academia to train a new cadre of professionals properly prepared in those STEM disciplines. Further, current public awareness of the vulnerability of the existing infrastructure creates an opportunity to recruit and prepare students to become those much-needed professionals. The present work offers the conceptual framework of a collaborative effort among Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) to develop an interdisciplinary program in resilient and sustainable infrastructure. The framework includes the development of transformational pedagogic interventions and changes that will challenge the disciplinary splits among AEC. The framework targets values and skills for inter and transdisciplinary problem solving,more »