Brown Responds to Katrina's 'Tremendous Interruption in Scholarship'

by Tracie Sweeney

The best representation of Brown University's response to Hurricane Katrina may be a diagram tacked to the wall of Geri Augusto's office in University Hall.

On first glance, the drawing loosely resembles a spider's web of lines and arrows connecting various squares and circles. But after listening to Augusto review the many ways Brown is responding to the disaster, you know: It's a drawing of a safety net, woven by Brown faculty, staff, students, and alumni eager to help others in need.

An independent scholar and consultant, Augusto has expertise in organizational development, organizational learning, and transformation in higher education. Appointed by President Ruth J. Simmons in late September to coordinate the University's Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, Augusto sits at the crossroads of an undertaking that continues to unfold.

Many of the squares and circles in Augusto's diagram represent the Brown offices and organizations involved in supporting the fifty-nine undergraduates, twenty-seven graduate students, four professors, and one postdoctoral researcher who came to Brown after being uprooted from their home institutions. Brown was one of hundreds of institutions that offered to host Gulf Coast scholars whose work was interrupted by the storm. Enrolled as special students, the undergraduates and graduate students are attending Brown tuition free for one semester. A $5-million fund donated to the University in early September by Sidney E. Frank '42 helps provide additional assistance to many of these students - aid that ranges from health services and transportation to replacement books and computers.

Other squares and circles represent the creative ways the Brown community is raising relief funds. Augusto is opening lines of communication among the various groups mobilizing for additional response, helping many find common ground. With Augusto's assistance, joint working groups are discussing ways to organize a University-wide, multi-day, multi-site event that would channel social awareness into action by providing service opportunities, offering reflection and analysis, and raising money.

Still other squares represent the extension of Brown's safety net to places that are dealing with what Augusto calls Katrina's "tremendous interruption in scholarship." Through the Frank fund, for instance, the University provided $200,000 to Tougaloo College in Mississippi. Brown has had a longstanding relationship with the historically black liberal arts college. Tougaloo was damaged by Katrina, but was able to reopen. Like Brown, it has taken in student evacuees, and about 200 from Dillard and Xavier are now enrolled there. The Frank funds help Tougaloo assist these visiting students, and will help repair Tougaloo's damaged facilities.

A handful of visiting students at Brown were enrolled at Dillard University, President Simmons' undergraduate alma mater. The New Orleans school was hard hit by Katrina's storm surge. Flooding damaged all but one building, and fire destroyed three. Mold may render others beyond repair.

Brown has partnered with Princeton University to help Dillard rebuild. Augusto works closely with her counterpart at Princeton to ensure that the work runs as smoothly and effectively as possible. The specifics of the aid will evolve as Dillard's senior administration makes its needs known, Augusto said. "The lead is Dillard's," she noted, but the Ivy League schools may be asked to assist in such areas as physical planning, facilities, libraries, academic offerings, campus life, human resources, computing, and development.

Putting Out the Welcome Mat for Visiting Students

It's all hands on deck when you turn your campus into a lifeboat for students and faculty displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

The Office of Continuing and Summer Studies was at the forefront of Brown's response when the University offered enrollment to Gulf Coast students affected by the storm.

The office organized teams that worked throughout September to help integrate fifty-nine visiting undergraduate students and twenty-seven visiting graduate students into classrooms and campus life. It coordinated students, faculty, alumni, and staff who were eager to volunteer whatever assistance they could. It offered the visitors a "home base" of emotional and social support. It worked with scores of offices and departments responsible for meeting a campus community's needs - things like housing and meal plans, course registration and advising, health care and an Internet connection.

Wesley Hedden, left, a Tulane University senior who is concentrating in philosophy, arrived at Brown September 8, two days after Brown's classes had begun.

"Brown has done an absolutely tremendous job" of helping the visiting students "sift through the bureaucracy" that accompanies being a new student, he said. "Those people were working way overtime" to quickly provide services.

Hedden, who is from Ohio, was not in New Orleans when the hurricane and storm surge hit the campus. He hasn't been back to Tulane since, and doesn't know whether the belongings he left behind survived.

"I feel so lucky because all of my friends are OK," he said. And yet he also feels somewhat guilty for "abandoning the city in some way. At first I was totally outraged" by the experiences endured by people who were unable to flee New Orleans. "Now I feel bad because I'm a little self-involved."

Hedden says he's trying to make the best of his experiences at Brown by meeting new people and "taking the opportunity to take classes I wouldn't have taken otherwise." But he looks forward to returning to Tulane when it reopens in late January for the spring semester.

"Katrina was like a rallying cry," he said. "The city needs to be rebuilt, and the effort has to come from within" - from those who make New Orleans their home. "I'm inspired to get involved. ... There's an opportunity to play an important role." - Tracie Sweeney