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During the Spring 2020 semester, universities shifted into emergency remote teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally, the pandemic disrupted students learning, their support structures, and interactions with other individuals both socially and academically. In addition, it created lasting impacts on professionals in determining strategies and altering objectives to help undergraduate engineering students achieve their learning objectives. Previous research on social support during the pandemic has focused primarily on singular cultural context, this study was conducted to understand the impact of the pandemic on students support in different cultural contexts. The purpose of this research was to explore how students experienced social capital structures at two institutions: one in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and one in the United States (U.S.) during the period of emergency remote teaching. The survey was designed around social capital theory, it provided demographic information, students agreement with their educational and social interactions, and names of individuals as well as resources they utilized during the pandemic.Results revealed similarities and differences between the two groups. Both case studies had the same top three alters: friends/roommate, professor, and family members, and reported almost the same frequency in communication with their alters. Participants in both case studies also hadhigh rates of support in both expressive and instrumental categories from their top two alters. Examiningthe differences, the UK case had a lower mean response for both sense of belonging and satisfaction at the university. Finally, there was a difference in the types of alters identified in each case due to different cultural contexts. 

This research investigates how reaction induced phase separation (RIPS) of thermoplastic, which occurs during glassy polymer network cure, is determined by viscosity. Utilizing high Tg engineering thermoplastics in high viscosity thermoset systems, dissolution of multiple loading levels of thermoplastic and thermoset pre-polymer conversion will be achieved through use of a high shear continuous reactor. Samples will be cured using various isothermal curing profiles and characterized for morphology type and domain size as well as rheologically to determine minimum viscosity, time to gelation, time from phase separation to gelation, and average viscosity. The influence of cure conditions, thermoplastic loading levels, thermoplastic composition, and molecular weight on structural morphology will be resolved, establishing a well-defined rheological well during cure that leads to tunable and controllable phase separated morphologies, from dispersed droplet to co-continuous. By controlling viscosity of thermoplastic dispersed network pre-polymers through phase composition, cure schedule, molecular weight, directed phase separation will be achieved. Rheological profiles will be related to resulting network structure, which will lead to the ability to control and direct complex thermoplastic filled thermoset systems to targeted unique morphologies.