DOWN, BUT NOT OUT

Hurricane Katrina wreaked all sorts of havoc on New Orleans, forcing Tulane and the University of New Orleans to close their campuses and look for alternate ways to get their students into class.

IT'S BEEN ANYTHING BUT EASY. After Hurricane Katrina pummeled New Orleans in late August, Tulane University and the University of New Orleans (UNO) both had to shut their doors for the fall semester.

Tulane's engineering college has managed to place its students at other universities, while UNO is offering dozens of engineering classes online in subjects ranging from robotics to hydraulics and wastewater-treatment systems-a useful course given the city's vulnerability to flooding. Both schools vow to reopen their campuses by next semester. Gulf Coast schools beyond the Crescent City fared better, although some suffered serious damage. All told, the hurricane displaced an estimated 100,000 students and caused significant damage to 15 Gulf Coast institutions. Schools all over the nation reached out and offered homes to students arid faculty members alike.

The federal government also came to the aid of displaced students. Congress approved legislation allowing affected students to keep all of the federal grant aid they received for college this fall. That legislation allows the secretary of education to waive a requirement forcing students who withdrew from college to return a portion of their Pell Grants. A number of federal agencies and organizations have announced policies with respect to the hurricane's impact on faculty and research. The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have both said they will give scientists affected by the hurricane the time and money to get up and running again.

The American Council on Education asked its member institutions to help students remain affiliated with their home schools by admitting them only on a temporary basis. The council also recommended that schools not charge the students tuition if they had already paid at their institution and charge the home college rates to students who hadn't yet paid, holding those funds in escrow.

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

TULANE UNIVERSITY

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

But as university officials drafted strategies for Tulane's resurrection, they had an even more pressing and logistical problem to attend to: finding temporary homes for the university's students and faculty. For the engineering school, that meant seeking placements for about 700 undergraduate students and around 200 graduate students (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 come from outside Louisiana.

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

While there's a worry that some students will decide to give up on Tulane, the dean says he is "confident that the vast majority will return in the spring." Students have been telling him that they appreciate the school's efforts to find them places at other schools for the fall as well as its plans for a flexible spring semester, ensuring that they won't lose time toward their degrees.

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