All classes at WCU were suspended from Sept 26 through Oct 11 due to the impacts of Hurricane Helene. WCU’s fall break, Oct 14 through Oct 18, continued as scheduled, leaving students out of the classroom for nearly three and a half weeks. To accommodate, professors had to restructure their courses to make up for lost time.
“Faculty were informed we had to be sure our courses were still meeting the syllabus outcomes to be aligned with the accreditation standards,” Christina Reitz, music professor, said.
Figuring out how to still meet these outcomes with the remainder of the semester looks different for every professor and course. Professors have to decide what content can be cut from the syllabus to be able to still fit in the essentials. Common changes have been shortening lengthy assignments and combining future lectures.
“The biggest challenge is figuring out how to balance covering essential course material with being responsive to student needs and realities. To make these decisions, I return to the course objectives and ask what students absolutely need to know if they’re going to say they’ve taken a class in this subject,” Emily Naser-Hall, assistant professor of film and new media studies, said.
Other professors decided to ask their students what content should be prioritized with the now-shortened semester.
“For my first-year class, I asked them to vote on which six days previously on the syllabus we should drop, instead of dumping all the content from the two weeks we’ve missed,” Gael Graham, history professor, said.
Reitz also decided to give her students options. She gave her students the choice to remove one of their three major research projects. Reitz hopes that this choice will reduce student stress.
However, eliminating content is not feasible for every course. For example, courses in the pre-health discipline have had the challenge of fitting the same amount of content in the remainder of the semester.
“Anatomy and physiology is an important course for our pre-health professional students, and so my greatest concern is how to make sure they’re not short-changed,” Joe Bill Mathews, associate biology instructor, said. “At this point, though, I have a pretty good idea of where they’re more likely to struggle, so I’m trying to find ways to move a little more quickly through those straight-forward parts that don’t require much explanation, so that I can still go through the difficult material in a digestible way.”
Throughout all these changes, many professors emphasized their concerns for their students. With unstable internet and Wi-Fi connections across Western North Carolina, many professors had not heard from most of their students before classes resumed.
“I’ve heard from a number of students, but I’m concerned about the ones I haven’t been in contact with. That’s been the most unnerving part of this for me – not being able to check in with my students,” Naser-Hall said.
Professors acknowledge that the hurricane will have lasting effects on students’ mental health, even if they were physically unharmed.
“Even those who were spared the worst of Helene are likely struggling with the enormity of the damage and the uncertainty of how best to help. This is a hard time,” Matthews said. “I’ve been surprised by how many have emailed to check on me, which was the last thing I was expecting, and very kind. My hope is that those students who have been quiet are simply busy, and my guess is that for many of them, my classes are low on their list of things to be triaged, which is how it should be right now.”
“I’m more concerned about how the hurricane and its lengthy effects will impact every aspect of their lives. It felt immediately like COVID – where everything changed, adjustments had to be made all the while knowing students were trying to deal with unbelievable challenges,” Reitz said.
