Search

The population of students in Puerto Rico that has enrolled in higher education within the last six years has been severely affected by a compound effect of the many major humanitarian crises, including a deteriorated economy since the 2006 Great Recession, Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, earthquakes in 2019 and 2020, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic since 2020, and Hurricane Fiona in 2022. To ensure that students can cope with the aftermath of these natural disasters, the following programs were conceived: The Ecosystem to Expand Capabilities and Opportunities for STEM-Scholars (EECOS), the Resilient Infrastructure and Sustainability Education Undergraduate Program (RISE-UP) and The Noyce Teacher Scholars Program - (NoTeS), all three programs are funded by the National Science Foundation. EECOS developed a support ecosystem that consists of three elements: academic support, socio-emotional support, and financial support. NoTeS. provides talented Hispanic low-socioeconomic bilingual undergraduate or recently graduated STEM majors and professionals up to two years of scholarship funding as well as academic and professional support as they complete the requirements to obtain teacher certification to become K-12 math and science teachers. This program seeks to increase the number of K-12 teachers with strong STEM content knowledge to fill the need for teachers in high-need school districts. RISE-UP was conceptualized to educate architecture and engineering students to work in interdisciplinary teams to provide resilient and sustainable design and construction solutions to infrastructure challenges. To date, EECOS has directly impacted XX students and graduated XXX students. NoTeS has helped nineteen scholars and ten affiliates (participants of the activities without the scholarship) partake. Eight of the nine alums scholars now work as math or science teachers in a high-needs school. RISE-UP has had 127 scholars who are enrolled or have completed the RISE-UP curricular sequence. This paper provides effective practices and a baseline characterization that universities can use to help students overcome the effects of natural disasters and promote student success using ecosystems of support that expand capabilities and opportunities, particularly for STEM scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal Communities are exposed to multiple hazards including hurricanes, storm surges, waves, and riverine flash floods. This paper presents the outcome of a Basin-wide Flood Multi-hazard Risks module that was developed and offered as part of a collaboration between two research projects: the UPRM-DHS Coastal Resilience Center of Excellence (CRC) funded by the Department of Homeland Security and the Resilient Infrastructure and Sustainability Education Undergraduate Program (RISE-UP) funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The content was designed to give students an understanding of complex project management in coastal communities. The main learning objective was for students to be able to assess and recognize the actions that can be taken to improve resiliency in coastal communities. Students learned how to manage multi-hazard floods. Through knowledge gained by participating in lectures, discussions, and the development of case studies, students were able to assess flood risk and current mitigation strategies for coastal communities in Puerto Rico. The learning experience provided an overview of the history, needs, and challenges that coastal communities face regarding flood and coastal hazards. Through the case studies, students were able to appreciate and understand the risk exposure on the natural and built infrastructure, and the importance of always taking into consideration the social impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Puerto Rico, the exposure to extreme environmental conditions has become part of a new normal. Because of this, the education of professionals to face this new reality is part of the demands of the academia of the present, and to the core of it the concept of servingness as a tool contribute to the formation of students' and faculty sensibility to social dynamics connected to the educational experiences. The Resilient Infrastructure and Sustainability Education - Undergraduate Program (RISE-UP), funded by the Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) program of The National Science Foundation (NSF), has been conceptualized including elements of servingness by addressing aspects connected to the learning experience, leadership identity, critical consciousness, academic and research aspirations, and civic engagement all in the context of Puerto Rico's current infrastructural needs. This paper addresses those dynamics by means of the voice of RISE-UP participants, accounting for how the experience generated by the crossroads that the program creates between the professional interdisciplinarity, the approach to infrastructure's sustainability, and the concept of resiliency, have impacted the experience of servingness for students in the program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction industry is one of the most dangerous industries with a disproportionate number of fatalities when compared to most other industries. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the majority of construction fatalities happen due to the following four types of construction hazards: falls, caught-in or between, struck-by, or electrocution. To reduce the risk of fatalities among construction workers due to the lack of safety training, the authors conducted research to investigate safety training needs in the construction industry in Puerto Rico. The authors developed a structured interview questionnaire that was administered to construction safety professionals and Puerto Rico OSHA specialists to identify major construction safety concerns and training deficiencies. The authors also administered a survey to construction workers to investigate their safety training and risk perception in the construction industry. Based on the results of the interviews and surveys, the authors concluded that the two hazards where the workers need to receive training more urgently are falls and excavation cave-ins. Since falls has been the priority of OSHA for a long time, there are is significantly more training material available on this topic when compared to excavation cave-ins. Therefore, the authors decided to focus the BIM-enabled training module on excavation. The main objective of the training module is to provide general knowledge so that it can be used in commercial, heavy civil and residential projects to reduce the risk of cave-in fatalities. The authors will present the module to safety experts and to a group of students at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez to make an assessment and validate the learning outcomes of the module prior to implementation with construction workers. This paper presents an overview of the results of the interviews and surveys, and focuses on the development of the safety training module that will be completed by the students and construction workers in Puerto Rico. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by increasing the understanding regarding the current construction safety training needs in Puerto Rico and the development of a training module to make the construction industry in Puerto Rico safer for construction engineering and management students who will work in the construction industry and construction workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of effective strategies in preventing work accidents in the construction industry is an important topic not only for the industry sector but also for higher education programs. The current literature supports the view that training is a major factor in sustaining and improving safety performance. Particularly, learning is an important dimension of training. Traditional students, due to their youth and inexperience, often believe that they are invincible and that accidents will not happen to them. Construction Management and Civil Engineering programs are faced with the challenge of raising awareness among students about the frequency and severity of construction accidents and increasing their knowledge regarding social responsibility towards safety. In order to raise awareness about construction accidents, student enrolled in a Construction Safety Management course completed two case studies exercises. The first one was an in-class case studies group activity and the second an individual case study report including a presentation. For the in-class case studies group activity, the students were divided into four groups (6 students per group). Each group was required to review four case studies and they were instructed to discuss the physical and psychological effects of the accident on the injured, their family and coworkers. At the end of the activity, the instructor facilitated a general discussion in which the last group that had each case study commented on the answers provided by the whole class. The individual case study assignment examines students' personal experiences with construction related accidents. Students were asked to write a case study of a construction accident that they had experienced or witnessed. Students were also given the choice to interview somebody that had either experienced or witnessed a construction accident. The objective of the assignment was to increase awareness about the magnitude and frequency of accidents among people that they personally know who are involved in construction (co-workers, professors, family members, etc.). The assignment consisted of two parts: a written report and an oral presentation in the class. The interview and written report allowed the students to have in-depth knowledge about at least one construction accident that had involved somebody that the students personally know. After both the group and individual case studies were completed, the students were asked to complete a survey about their perceptions of the assignment's effectiveness in increasing their knowledge of social responsibility towards safety. The results of the survey indicate that students perceived that the second case study was more effective increasing their knowledge regarding social responsibility towards safety. The personal connection in the individual case study is essential for students to understand that accidents can happen to anyone. Also, having to present the results of these cases studies to the class provides more opportunities to students to reflect about the incident or accident. Particularly, students reflect during their oral presentation about incident/accident impact and how it could have been prevented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the effectiveness of an intervention model aimed at propelling low-income, academically talented (LIAT) engineering students in a Hispanic Serving Institution (HIS) into actions, immersing them into real-life contexts. The model, named the LIAT College Access and Success model (L-CAS), integrates elements from Lent's Social Cognitive Career Theory and Tinto's Departure model in a framework provided by a structured scholarship program designed to mitigate the economic hardship of students while also providing a multistage intervention plan to improve their success metrics. In this paper, we revisit the theoretical foundations of the LCAS model and the academic setting where it was implemented to look at the data acquired throughout its application during three years on a pilot group of 92 students. We assess the model effectiveness for springing LIATS into actions leading to their success while reflecting on the results obtained so far. We also discuss opportunities for improvements and the projections for a scaled porting of the model to a campus-wide level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]