Posted on 01/19/2006 2:08:57 PM PST by WestTexasWend
OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss. - The first week of class for one East Coast college is labor - toting and lifting Katrina debris. The rest of the course is economists, city planners and the like, lecturing for "Aftermath of a Storm 101."
The package is a four-week course during a mini-semester in January at Salem College in North Carolina. Eleven students took it for credit, and last week they did the hands-on part in Ocean Springs and nearby communities.
Salem College is just one of at least two dozen colleges and universities that have had students on the Coast in the last two months.
For some, such as the journalism students from the University of Mississippi helping the Sea Coast Echo in Hancock County, it's a teaching tool. For others, such as the premed students from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, it's a way to do more than donate money when moved by devastation in their own country.
Either way, there's a lot to be learned.
Juniors Rebecca Southard and Kimberly Zimmerman with Salem College said there are real lessons in their experiences. They demolished a horse barn in Woolmarket and culled lumber from marsh grass debris on East Beach in Ocean Springs.
It's helping others and the fellowship that has left an impression they say will be with them always.
Mathematics teacher Debbie Harrell, who organized the course, said in years past during the mini-term she has taken students on tours of historic Austria and Germany.
Coming to the coast for Katrina aid "is different from going to museums and concerts," Harrell said, covered with dirt and sweat and wearing workmen's clothes. "But this is more rewarding."
In December and January, students also came from Michigan State University, Emory, Binghamton University, State University of New York, William and Mary College, University of Wisconsin, Central Michigan University, Ashland University, Alma College, Georgia Tech, Tufts University, University of Tennessee, Savannah College of Art and Design, Wheeling Jesuit University, Dickinson College, Boston College and Acadia University.
There will be more next school break. They find work on the coast through local churches such as St. John's Episcopal in Pascagoula or the First Presbyterian Church in Ocean Springs. Both are among the many that house and feed volunteer workers from throughout the nation.
Universities and colleges encourage students to perform noncredit, volunteer community work. Some have offices that coordinate it.
Amy Cowles, in media relations for Johns Hopkins, said their students on the coast "are public health majors, but what they're doing is unskilled labor. Swinging sledge hammers is what I've heard," Cowles said. "They came up with it on their own."
At the Sea Coast Echo, editor Geoff Belcher said he got real help, the academic kind, from the Ole Miss students he had this month. They contributed four stories to one recent edition of the paper.
"They are bright and know their stuff," Belcher said. "They have a good professor."
Intellectual help is all he's getting, he implied jokingly.
"I tried to get them to paint my house," he said. "But they weren't interested."
Oh, Brother!
I have a friend from Sri Lanka that I met in the Army. He was in my wedding. He helped "clean up" after the Jim Jones Koolaid Suicide.
Now THAT'S something that should earn you some sort of "credit" in this world...not this cr@p.
A great chance to feel important and maybe get laid.
I know that is not the point for them, but it could be done right and make you feel good.
And, as a geologist, I should spell sedimentation right. Sorry, long day as an IT type not geo.
"Now THAT'S something that should earn you some sort of "credit" in this world...not this cr@p."
You have no idea how educational it would be to spend some time cleaning up the debris along the gulf coast and learning something about emergency management first-hand. I have yet to meet one person who has gone to the gulf coast and not been forever changed by the experience. Experiencing it myself has exceeded the sum total of my 21+ years of formal education.
I did emergency response to Hugo and Andrew so I agree with you.
My thesis advisor, professor and chair of the Geology Dept. at Southern Miss, had her house in Bay St. Louis flooded. It's up on pilings, and still had several feet of water in it, and she ended up with 6 inches of sediment through out the house.
When I finally got through to her on the cell phone to see if she was okay, she was telling me about the beautiful ripple marks she was able to photograph in her house! I told her once a geologist, always a geologist! :-)
As an undergrad, I was supposed to go to Turkey to view the solar eclipse in August, 1999, but backed out due to hostilities and missed the big EQ over there. As a grad student, I completed my thesis and left Hattiesburg right at a month before Katrina hit.... I've been very lucky when it comes to natural disasters!
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