Marine biologist explores mysteries beneath the waves

BY SALLY ACHARYA
adrienne frank and mike unger CONTRIBUTED TO THIS STORY.

The students sitting outside an AU office didn’t know each other. But they had an instant bond.

“You know the Walmart in Harahan?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s flooded up to the Walmart sign.”

Enrique Quevedo shook his head in disbelief at what has happened to his college town of New Orleans. The Miami native was a student at Loyola; Elissa Weingart was at Tulane. Now they’re trying to settle into life at an entirely different university, while still wondering what has happened to their apartments, their friends, and even their college transcripts.

Students from campuses forced to shut down after Hurricane Katrina are being welcomed at AU, where the university is waiving tuition, administrators are finding them housing, advisors are finding them classes, and fellow students are doing their best to help them feel at home.

The hurricane left thousands of students without a campus as Gulf Coast colleges and universities struggle with the aftermath of America’s worst natural disaster in a century. The calls to AU from displaced students and their parents started coming even as people were still being evacuated from the flooded region.

By Thursday, 105 displaced students had already enrolled, with another 23 in the process of registering, according to acting provost Ivy Broder. There were 45 students at the College of Arts and Sciences, 21 at Washington Semester, 18 at Washington College of Law, 17 at Kogod, 12 at the School of Public Affairs, 9 at the School of International Service, and 4 at the School of Communication.
And the calls were still coming.

About 90 percent of the incoming students have arrived from Tulane, but students from Loyola, Xavier, and the University of New Orleans are also on campus. As a rule, these students have already paid their tuition at their home schools and will not need to pay for their semester at AU. Tulane president Scott Cowen has publically thanked those universities who, like AU, are stepping up to help by waiving tuition and permitting late registration.

“These are students who adore their home schools and we know that,” said Meg Weekes, associate dean of academic affairs, School of Public Affairs (SPA). “We just want to help them continue their education while their home schools get back on their feet.”

The hurricane struck just as the fall semester was getting underway. Barely a week ago, Quevedo was being roused by his roommate and being told they needed to pack up and evacuate. Weingart was at her parents’ home in Pentagon City, preparing to get on the plane back to New Orleans.

Now she turns to Quevedo and says, “Have you seen that picture of someone rowing a canoe [near Tulane]?”

“It’s surreal,” he says.

“I’ve heard there are two feet of water by my apartment, five feet, no water—nobody knows,” Weingart continues.

That’s perhaps the hardest part. Nobody knows. Cell phones with Gulf Coast area codes have been out of commission, so friends can’t be reached.

Both Tulane and Loyola are said to have suffered only minimal damage, but both are closed indefinitely and operating from temporary administrative bases in Houston. Tulane’s temporary Web site is still calling on faculty to “make every effort to contact their department chair or dean.”

Meanwhile the students have scattered, by necessity. Even as refugees were still being evacuated, the phone began ringing with inquiries from students determined to continue their studies.

Some were seeking to enroll as provisional students. Others, like Quevedo and Weingart, decided to make the best of the situation by spending a semester with the Washington Semester Program, which by late last week had accepted 19 Tulane students and two from Loyola. The majority have tuition waivers. Dean David Brown expects those numbers to increase slightly, though he said, “we’re near our saturation point, both in terms of our housing and classroom capacity.”

Nearly all of the program’s 13 seminars are full, though students are still being placed in the journalism and American politics sections. “We’re focusing on getting students up to speed quickly, helping to place them in internships, and making them feel welcome here,” said Brown.

Kogod School of Business has worked hard to integrate students into classes that mesh with their areas of interest. “It certainly was something of a challenge to find space in the classes, but our faculty did a great job of over-enrolling students into classes,” Kogod assistant dean for undergraduate programs Lawrence Ward said. “Our dean, Dick Durand, was absolutely adamant that whatever it would take to accommodate those students, that’s what we would do. He expressed the need to reach out to these students before the phone calls started, so we were all ready when the calls did come.”

Most displaced students are drawn here for a variety of reasons. “There’s no pattern,” says CAS academic advisor Anne Kaiser. One temporary CAS student lives two blocks from campus, but another came all the way from the Virgin Islands. Weingart had a sorority sister already enrolled in Washington Semester, while Quevedo had considered it for himself. Many have friends on campus or relatives in town. A big plus has been AU’s ability to house the unexpected students, either in residence halls or Park Bethesda.

Many students acted quickly when they realized their campuses wouldn’t be open this semester. “The hurricane hit on Monday. I committed to this on Thursday,” says Weingart, who enrolled in the Washington Semester Program and is now moving into Park Bethesda. “Everyone has been so accommodating. I’m sure as soon as we get settled in, we’ll have a good semester.”

They’ll find no shortage of concerned faculty members and staff, many of whom have ties to the Gulf Coast themselves. Beth Cralley of the psychology faculty did her doctorate at Tulane, and although her course on Understanding Human Behavior already had a large enrollment, it was being held in a big room. “I knew last week I had extra chairs. So as soon as I knew that, I said, ‘Go on, fill ’em up.’” At least two displaced students have joined her class.

Some classes incorporated the hurricane into the syllabus, with SOC students analyzing the media’s coverage of Katrina and, in Wendell Cochran’s Advanced Reporting class, spending the semester on Washington’s response to Katrina.

Staff members, too, have been affected by the tragedy. Rachel Friedmann, gallery manager at the Katzen Arts Center, recently received undergraduate and graduate degrees from Tulane and has family in New Orleans. Two of her aunts stayed and weathered the aftermath together, living on peanut butter sandwiches while waiting for a boat that could let their pets come along. Friedmann is inviting any displaced students or alumni to drop by the Katzen gallery if they’d like to talk.

A memorandum from acting president Neil Kerwin was issued on Sept. 2, in the midst of evacuation efforts. “True to our university’s tenet of ‘ideas into action, action into service,’ a number of efforts to help have been launched by students, faculty, and staff,” he said, noting events that included a Service of Reflection at Kay Spiritual Life Center and a variety of student government initiatives.

“AU has moved magnificently and quickly to help serve these displaced students,” says Nanette Levinson, associate dean, SIS. “Everyone at this university has really stepped up to the plate.”