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Hurricane studies help prepare helpers

Eight USF undergraduates are taking a course to be ready to help deal with the next big storm.

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published May 23, 2006

Brittany Meynardie, 20, is so fascinated with meteorology she looks forward to hurricane season. She caught the storm bug at age 3, when Hurricane Hugo blew through her native Charleston, S.C., and toppled a church steeple near her home.

USF sociology major Philip Bates gets heavy-hearted when he sees pictures of post-Katrina New Orleans.

"Hopefully, there's no next time," said Bates, 39. "But there probably will be, and I want to be better prepared to help."

His training is under way.

Casta, Meynardie and Bates are among eight USF students chosen for the university's first undergraduate research course on hurricane preparation and recovery.

With the class, USF joins a number of U.S. colleges that are using Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters to teach students about emergency management, environmental cleanup, health care and geography, among other things.

"We are located in a place where it's very easy to study hurricanes, obviously, and we have a lot of people at USF who are experts in those fields," said Naomi Yavneh, director of undergraduate research at USF. "This just made sense."

The eight students come from several areas of study and were selected based on their essays and recommendations from professors.

Their first class was last week, a daylong session that began at 8 a.m.

The next six weeks will be intense, Yavneh said, with lots of material packed into the abbreviated summer session.

Anthropology professor Beverly Ward will talk about transportation issues facing low-income communities threatened by storms.

Jennifer Collins, a geography professor examining why the number of hurricanes varies from year to year, will talk about the geographical outlook for the coming hurricane season.

The students also will train with American Red Cross officials, getting certification to work in the special-needs hurricane shelter on USF's campus. They will tour the county's emergency operations center and the National Weather Service center in Ruskin.

Later this month, they will turn the lounge of the USF Honors College into a mock shelter.

"You will be the best-prepared of anyone on campus," professor Jennifer Baggerly, an assistant professor of counselor education, told the students. "After this, I would want you on my team if I was going out after a disaster."

When the course ends, students will pair up with USF faculty to do hurricane research projects.

"You're not just here to learn about hurricanes," said Stuart Silverman, dean of USF's Honors College. "You are here because we want to turn you into researchers."

Large research institutions like USF generally focus on their graduate education, Yavneh said. "But the added value at USF is that undergraduates get those opportunities, too."

Across the country, college students are learning from the aftermath of hurricanes like Katrina.

In New Orleans, Tulane and Louisiana State University students canvassed neighborhoods, taking surveys that emergency operations and U.S. Census officials will use to better direct health care services.

Columbia University students traveled to the Gulf Coast to deliver medical care, and they tested mold and bacteria levels in hurricane-damaged homes.

At Bentley College in Massachusetts, students last semester created a business plan to revitalize a health clinic ravaged by Katrina.

USF's Baggerly, a registered play therapist, went to Sri Lanka after the December 2004 tsunami and worked with children. She also provided disaster response after Katrina.

She started her lecture Wednesday by playing a slide show of pictures taken along the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. The students grew quiet as the overhead projector flashed images of crying children, wailing mothers and makeshift coffins.

"Here Lies Vera," a sign on one coffin proclaimed. "God Help Us."

The slide show ended and Baggerly went around the room asking students what they thought.

"Something needs to be improved," said Dustin Hinkel, an environmental science and policy student, "so that doesn't happen again."

Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler can be reached at 813 226-3403 or svansickler@sptimes.com.

[Last modified May 23, 2006, 04:31:42]