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The Shell Creek Watershed (SCW) is a rural watershed in Nebraska with a history of chronic flooding. Beginning in 2005, a variety of conservation practices have been employed in the watershed. Those practices have since been credited with attenuating flood severity and improving water quality in SCW. This study investigated the impacts of 13 different controlling factors on flooding at SCW by using an artificial neural network (ANN)-based rainfall-runoff model. Additionally, flood frequency analysis and drought severity analysis were conducted. Special emphasis was placed on understanding how flood trends change in light of conservation practices to determine whether any relation exists between the conservation practices and flood peak attenuation, as the strategic conservation plan implemented in the watershed provides a unique opportunity to examine the potential impacts of conservation practices on the watershed. The ANN model developed in this study showed satisfactory discharge–prediction performance, with a Kling–Gupta Efficiency (KGE) value of 0.57. It was found that no individual controlling variable used in this study was a significantly better predictor of flooding in SCW, and therefore all 13 variables were used as inputs, which resulted in the satisfactory ANN model discharge–prediction performance. Furthermore, it was observed that after conservation planning was implemented in SCW, the magnitude of anomalous peak flows increased, while the magnitude of annual peak flows decreased. However, more comprehensive assessment is necessary to identify the relative impacts of conservation practices on flooding in the basin. 

Agriculturally-dominated rural communities are critical to the United States national economy, however the resilience of these communities has been noted to be considerably lower compared to their more urban counterparts. In August 2020, a derecho windstorm swept over 750 miles of land in the rural Midwest of the United States, inflicting particularly significant damage in the state of Iowa. While damage was observed to buildings, transmission lines, and other typical infrastructure, agricultural structures such as steel grain bins dominated damage reports. As a result, this storm provided an opportunity to study the performance of these critical agricultural structures under high winds as well as to evaluate the recovery of their functionality over time, in an effort to understand the unique contributors to agricultural and rural resilience. To this end, over 160 agricultural sites and over 700 individual steel grain bins were surveyed immediately following the storm and after one year. The state was split into seven widespread regions, which were then separated based on business site. Each bin was recorded by their initial state of damage, followed by other characteristics, such as dimensions, county socioeconomic factors, and ownership types. It was found that high initial damage, large bin capacity, and high county-level unemployment rates positively correlated with a change in functionality. Of particular note is the relationship with ownership type, where agricultural cooperatives initially suffered more bin losses compared to private farms, but were able to recover at a much faster rate. 

An ongoing focus of engineering education research is on increasing the number of women in engineering. Previous studies have primarily focused on examining why the number of women enrolled in engineering colleges remains persistent low. In doing so, while we have gained better understanding of the challenges and barriers women encountered and factors that contribute to such negative experiences, it also, as some scholars have pointed out, has cast a deficit frame to such matters. In this study, we take on a positive stand where we focus on women undergraduate students who not only “stay” but also succeed in engineering programs (that is, our definition of thriving) as a way to locate the personal and institutional factors that facilitate such positive outcomes. 

This paper summarizes the overall approach and assessment of a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates Site focused on sustainable civil and environmental infrastructure in rural areas. This site has hosted over 60 students over 5 years, including 1 year of virtual participation due to travel restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Detailed discussion and results are provided with respect to the recruitment approach, including particular attention to first-generation college students, and the potential negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on first-generation applicants. This site also incorporates targeted instruction on technical writing, which occurs over several weeks throughout the first half of the summer and culminates with a final conference paper deliverable. This approach has yielded over 20 peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, or national conference presentations, which have been co-authored by the undergraduate student participants. External evaluation of this site has included both formative and summative assessments, including pre-program, mid-program, and post-program surveys and focus groups, which has enabled a successful continuous improvement cycle, in which cohort-building activities, technical writing deliverables, and mentor training have been gradually incorporated or enhanced. Results of this assessment have also been used to quantify the site’s success with respect to student exposure and interest in research and graduate education. In addition to most participants persisting in STEM fields, many have gone on to pursue graduate school in civil and environmental engineering and win national fellowships. 

The crisis-induced changes in instruction during the pandemic presented a unique opportunity to study instructor adaptability, a possible contributor to future adoption of teaching-related best-practices. The purpose of this research is to identify the self-reported activities of engineering instructors and how this changed over the course of three semesters during the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 40 engineering instructors from a large Midwestern R1 University voluntarily completed online surveys in during Spring 2020, Fall 2020, and Spring 2021 semesters about their engagement in teaching-related activities and the perceived normality of that engagement. Descriptive statistics were used to examine general trends in activity engagement for each semester and to compare activity engagement across all three semesters. Across all three semesters, instructors most often reported engaging in self-teaching and casual conversations with their colleagues. Instructors cited getting help from staff and attending workshops less frequently. By the end of the third semester (Spring 2021), 85% of participants indicated normality of their teaching methods, compared with 25% at the beginning of the study (Spring 2020). The results of this study suggest that to encourage instructor adaptability in the future, a focus should be placed on developing a supportive instructor community as well as providing necessary space, time, and resources for instructor self-teaching. This research is part of a larger study, whose scope includes instructor interviews, an investigation of cognitive and emotional adaptability, and analysis of additional semesters as instructors continue to adapt.