2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

On September 18, 2022, the Hurricane Fiona entered Mayagüez with a wind speed of 150 mph and dwelled longer than five hours since she moved with a linear velocity of only 5 mph! Our campus was totally devastated, and there were neither class lectures nor real labs for over two weeks. Immediately thereafter, the campus was again closed for a week due to the students and workers strike.
This hampered very seriously all our undergraduate and graduate courses, and particularly those courses related to materials science and engineering, because such courses are offered in several departments in our engineering faculty as well as in the faculty of pure sciences. For example, in our Mechanical Engineering Department, we offer courses on Biomaterials in cooperation with the Department of Biology.
The present paper illustrates how we handling the current situation in teaching , research and services related to materials science and engineering for not losing a full semester in this Fall. Furthermore, there is a move that in the coming semester the class schedules will change from five days a week to four and half days a week , thereby leaving the Wednesdays afternoon only for "extracurricular activities". We have to accommodate both time schedule and available space for lecture halls as well as lab spaces. This is again a challenge for the materials courses and in the allied fields because they are much larger in numbers for properly distributing over four and half days a week. Hence, this is really a "Work in Progress" real situation during the next two semesters. We will report more development of the current situation and its challenges during the ASEE Annual Conference in Summer 2023 .