Last week was historical for the University of South Carolina. Due to local flooding and contaminated water in the pipe systems, the Richland County government decided to cancel all classes last week. This has caused professors to alter syllabi and students to change their schedules in order to stay on track with class work and assignments for the rest of the semester.
Many students were stuck on campus while others took advantage of the cancellations and booked flights home.
“I spent the second half of the week at home with my family. I only live about an hour from here so it wasn’t too hard getting back,” first-year chemical engineering student Jacqueline Phillips said.
While students had a whole week to either relax in their dorms, hang out with their family, or volunteer with the local flood relief, the consequences of missing a whole week of class — in terms of making up work — hung over everyone’s head. Both students and professors now have to adjust due to the loss of class time.
Astronomy professor David Tedeschi, when asked how he has dealt with the class cancellations, said he was prepared for something like this to happen. Tedeschi purposefully scheduled an extra day the week of Thanksgiving break in his schedule in case anything happened. In this case, he has pushed back his course’s third exam to this vacant day.
“Something always happens, and this was an epic week for our university,” Tedeschi said. “I had some room in the schedule because I always anticipate something going wrong.”
One teacher has found a way to help the community with flood relief as well as students with their makeup work. For every two hours of volunteer work her students complete management science professor Kathy Langston is giving students credit for class material they would have otherwise had to complete.
”The people in the area are in need and there is a lot of good labor here at the university and I want my students to be rewarded for helping the people, even though it’s volunteer. And my students are responding very well to this,” Langston said.
This may have been a once-in-a-thousand-year-flood, but teachers and students will resume classes as normal with only minor setbacks to schedules.