Effect of Hurricane Katrina on Tulane University
As a result of Hurricane Katrina and its effects on New Orleans, Tulane University was closed for the second time in its history—the first being during the American Civil War.
[1] The School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine's distance learning programs and courses stayed active, despite the storm displacing about 100,000 students.
[4] Tulane began to publicly respond to the arrival of Hurricane Katrina on August 27, 2005, with an initial plan to close the university until September 1.
[6] On August 30, the university reported that "physical damage to the area, including Tulane's campuses, was extensive" and conditions in the city were continuing to deteriorate.
The water levels stopped at sea level, resulting in standing water ranging from several inches to several feet on the half of the campus sitting north of Freret Street, but no flooding on the other half, which contains the historic academic quad and buildings that extend to Gibson Hall on St. Charles Avenue.
Tulane president Scott Cowen and an "emergency team" relocated to Houston, Texas to coordinate planning for recovery.
[8] After the levees broke as a result of Katrina on August 29, 2005, floodwaters started rising in the Tulane University Medical Center later that night.
[9] After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on August 29, 2005, the 40,000 square foot basement of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library was flooded with more than eight feet of water.
A temporary air circulation system run by generators was installed just 10 days after the storm and within a month, all of the water had been pumped out of the basement of each building.
The Maxwell Music Library had held more than 43,000 titles including books, scores, journals, and many rare and historic sound recordings on CD and LP.
Nearly all of the salvaged government documents were trapped in storage units containers that had to be ripped apart to access the saturated material inside.
A very large Microforms area on the north side of the basement had held more than 30,000 titles of collections of rare or scholarly material and newspaper archives.
None of the materials from the original 19th century Howard Collection could be salvaged, due to structural wreckage and especially dangerous conditions in that area of the library.
Despite the significant obstacles to success, more than 300,000 important print volumes, 18,000 reels of microfilm, and 629,711 archival items affected by the storm were salvaged and restored through an elaborate process.
The School of Medicine's stay in Texas ('Tulane West' or 'Tulane at Baylor') ended, with the students and faculty returning to New Orleans in July 2006.
[13][14] Tulane's responses purportedly showed that the AAUP's draft report was flawed significantly and contained numerous errors of fact, omission and interpretation.
On March 16, 2006, the board announced the establishment of the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College Institute, an umbrella organization for extracurricular programs, to enhance women's education at the university.
Critics of the Renewal Plan charge the school administration of using Katrina as the excuse to push an agenda that would otherwise have been difficult to accomplish.
The American Association of University Professors expressed concern at the lack of meaningful faculty involvement in crafting the Renewal Plan, as did many students.
[20] As a result of the impact, the entire Tulane football team was forced to play all their games away from home due to the Hurricane's destruction of the Superdome.
