Survival Anecdotes
Professor Polly Hardee clearly showed how much she cared about her students
During her fall address 2017, President Renu Khator shared the post Harvey story to illustrate the spirit and character of the University of Houston. She exemplified the email exchanges between professor Polly Hardee and one of her students during Harvey. In the emails,
Professor Lorraine Stock Shared Harvey's Impact
The water saturated the lower drawers of nine 5-drawer file cabinets full of 42 years of collected research for my scholarship and teaching plus various books that I used for teaching and scholarship. Whatever was salvaged is now packed in boxes in a storage unit and I don’t have easy access to my teaching materials. I had to move from my gutted house to a small apartment and this displacement added to my sense of not knowing where anything is. Coincidentally with Harvey, in September I had much needed hip replacement surgery and I did not teach in the Fall semester; my scheduled course was assigned to a doctoral student and I “shadow” taught and advised her while she was teaching. Here again, I sometimes did not have my work materials at hand to advise her or lend to her to use while teaching my course. Now I am back at work, teaching a new course preparation in the spring semester. I do have access to most of the films and books I need, but my photocopied scholarly articles are a hodgepodge. The main impact of Harvey in my teaching is being separated from my research and teaching materials or not knowing where to find them. Some of my students were also displaced by Harvey and I sense a lot of disorientation and lack of concentration among them.