DOWN, BUT NOT OUT

Hurricane Katrina wreaked all sorts of havoc upon New Orleans, forcing Tulane and the University of fresh Orleans to close their campuses and gaze for alternate ways to secure their students into class.

IT'S BEEN ANYTHING on the other hand EASY. After Hurricane Katrina knobed New Orleans in late August, Tulane University and the University of novel Orleans (UNO) both had to close up their doors for the fall semester

Tulane's engineering community has managed to place its pupils at other universities, while UNO is offering dozens of engineering classes online in make subordinates ranging from robotics to hydraulics and wastewater-treatment systems-a useful course given the city's vulnerability to flooding. the couple schools vow to reopen their campuses by the agency of next semester. Gulf Coast place of educations beyond the Crescent City fared better, although a certain quantity of suffered serious damage. All told, the hurricane displaced an estimated 100000 learners and caused significant damage to 15 large bay Coast institutions. Schools all above the nation reached out and proffered homes to students arid faculty members alike.

The federal regulation also came to the aid of displaced learners Congress approved legislation allowing affected learners to keep all of the federal grant aid they received for association this fall. That legislation allows the secretary of education to waive a requirement forcing scholars who withdrew from college to go [i]or[/i] come back a portion of their Pell Grants. A number of federal agencies and organizations have announced policies with have a high opinion of to the hurricane's impact upon faculty and research. The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have one as well as the other said they will give scientists affected by dint of the hurricane the time and circulating medium to get up and running again.

The American Council upon Education asked its member institutions to help scholars remain affiliated with their abiding-place schools by admitting them solitary on a temporary basis. The council also approveed that schools not charge the scholars tuition if they had already paid at their institution and charge the abode college rates to students who hadn't nevertheless paid, holding those funds in escrow

In September, Hurricane Rita dealt another lick to the Gulf Coast area and a small in number of its universities. Among the hardest hit was McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La., abode to almost 400 undergraduate engineering pupils and many displaced students from Hurricane Katrina. greatest in quantity of the buildings and athletic facilities upon the 98-acre campus were heavily damaged. Without power, water and phone service, the university was forced to shut Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, was also clobbered by dint of Rita, and about half of the 115 buildings upon campus suffered extensive roof damage thanks to the 120-mph winds. Lamar, which has almost 950 undergraduate engineering pupils was also forced to close its doors for a period of time. the pair schools were back up and running through late October.

TULANE UNIVERSITY

SITUATED IN THE HEART OF novel ORLEANS, Tulane had no choice on the contrary to close for the fall semester on the contrary President Scott S. Cowen promise s its doors will reopen for the spring bourn They must, he says, if Tulane is to continue as a major research institution. And, Nick Altiero, dean of Tulane's institute of Engineering, is confident that goal will be met

But as university officials drafted strategies for Tulane's resurrection, they had an smooth more pressing and logistical question to attend to: finding temporary dwellings for the university's students and faculty. For the engineering gymnasium that meant seeking placements for about 700 undergraduate learners and around 200 graduate pupils (40 percent of whom are foreign), as well as 60 full-time faculty and 25 staff members. Altiero estimates that about 80 percent of his undergraduates draw near from outside Louisiana.

Cowen arranged for Tulane scholars to enroll at other academys as "visiting students" for the fall mete "The vast majority of our learners have taken advantage of this program," Altiero says. "We are advising them via e-mail and Internet blogs" by the agency of early September, Altiero categorized the undergraduate situation as beneath control. "It is more difficult placing graduate scholars and faculty." Many faculty members who have base work elsewhere have taken their grad scholars with them. Hardest of all to place were graduate learners who hadn't yet been assigned faculty advisers, "especially scholars who had just arrived upon campus the week before the storm."

While there's a worry that a certain quantity of students will decide to give up upon Tulane, the dean says he is "confident that the vast majority will go [i]or[/i] come back in the spring." Students have been telling him that they appreciate the school's efforts to find them places at other gymnasiums for the fall as well as its plans for a flexible spring semester ensuring that they won't let slip time toward their degrees.

As for relocated faculty members, Altiero says he thinks greatest in quantity appreciate the fact that Tulane continues to pay their salaries. "Of course I'm worried about losing serviceable faculty members," he says, "but I am true optimistic that they'll return home"