Tulane facing pivotal period

Even as he relished an outpouring of support, Tulane University President Scott Cowen faced tough questions during a recent gathering in New York of alumni, board members and students. What's going to happen with the levees? With public schools? With housing? The mayor's race?

And, closer to home: How will Hurricane Katrina alter Tulane's future?

Cowen recalls being subjected to a bit of a grilling: "What's going to happen with Tulane long-term? What impact will this have on Tulane University, academically and financially?" Those themes have become familiar to Cowen as he summons his administration from exile in Houston.

Many wonder how Tulane, the only Louisiana research university ranked among the nation's top 50, will fare as it tries to attract new and returning students, retain top faculty and carry out building repairs expected to cost more than $100 million.

A key test will come in January, when Tulane finds out how many of the 13,000 students who enrolled for the fall semester return. Cowen feared at one point that as many as a quarter wouldn't show up, a huge financial threat to an institution that charges nearly $30,000 a year in tuition. Recent surveys, however, leave him optimistic that most will return.

Some students got a peek Saturday at Tulane conditions when they attended a Cowen talk and retrieved possessions left behind during evacuations.

Steady as she goes

As for faculty defections, only a couple of Tulane's more than 1,000 full-time professors have resigned since the storm, and administrators so far don't see forays by out-of-state universities to cherry-pick its stars.

While faculty members are apprehensive, "I sense very little desire to abandon the ship at this point," said Gary Roberts, deputy dean of the law school. "Everybody that I know is planning to come back and planning to dig in and try to make it a better place."

Rose Normann, a creative writing sophomore with family ties to New Orleans and Maine, said she took the fall semester off and will be back in the spring. But her enthusiasm for the school is tempered by the destruction she has seen.

"I hope it comes back," she said. "I think it has to open in January in order to ever come back. I think the make-up of the student body will change, the reason people will come here. Before the hurricane, it was just another good school. Now, it's a good school that might get wiped out at any time."

Much about Tulane's future is cloudy.

It may take a year or longer for itchy-footed professors to land jobs elsewhere. Tulane is just beginning to assess Katrina's damage to research labs at the Uptown campus and in downtown medical buildings. It's not yet clear when hundreds of medical school students, who moved en masse to Baylor University in Texas, will return to New Orleans, or when the Tulane University Hospital and Clinic, now run by a health care company, will reopen.

Working with a scaled-back development office, the university has raised about $12 million for storm recovery. The goal is $100 million by early 2008.

U.S. News and World Report, which ranked Tulane 43rd among national research universities in its latest report, is taking the extraordinary step of freezing data it reports on Tulane and other damaged colleges in its ranking of graduate schools this spring, and is likely to do the same in its general rankings in the fall, said Robert Morse, a research director for the magazine.

Academics across the country, whose views affect the rankings, will be sensitive to reports about Tulane's progress in coming months, he said.

"To what degree is it going to return to normal? People are giving them a pass to see what they do in 2006," Morse said.

If the quality of incoming students falls, disciplines are dropped and the prospects for full recovery become very long-term, "that would be reflected in how people view the school," he said. "But that's yet to play out."

A solid reputation

Judgments on Tulane's recovery will be driven largely by fallout, if any, within academic specialties, as well as whether a key faculty member stays or a research grant is lost, some experts say.

Louisiana's commissioner of higher education, Joseph Savoie, said Tulane should look good when the turmoil subsides and will remain a "destination" employer for professors.

"Tulane has an outstanding reputation that has been built over a long period of time," he said. "I believe that reputation will sustain itself, because they're working real hard to re-establish themselves, and many people are trying to help."

Despite the scary New Orleans images sent worldwide after Katrina hit, there are now far more students applying for admission than a year ago, Cowen said. Tulane's lofty name recognition at the moment and students' assumption that admission standards will be lowered are driving the increase, he said. There will be some flexibility in achievement test scores expected, but not much more than in years past, the president said.

As the parish's largest employer, with roughly 6,000 full-time staff members of all types, Tulane is critical to the local economy, Cowen said.

That, combined with Tulane's contributions to civic leadership, creates a scenario in which the fates of the university and larger community are inseparable, he said.

"New Orleans' recovery is going to be very contingent on Tulane, yet Tulane's long-term future is going to be very contingent on New Orleans," Cowen said.

That explains his commitment to serving on Mayor Ray Nagin's storm recovery advisory panel, as chairman of a committee on public schools, he said.

While he often consults with members of Tulane's Board of Administrators, Cowen has been the central figure in a many-faceted recovery agenda.

In contrast to some local colleges, Tulane retained all of its full-time professors, even as it laid off 243 support workers -- those it deemed least essential to operations in the next 12 to 18 months -- as well as hundreds of part-time instructors and other workers.

It is providing $1.5 million to help expand Lusher School, a high-performance Uptown charter school where children of full-time staff workers will be provided admission. The partnership aimed at faulty and staff retention.

Creative housing options

Determined to secure off-campus housing for displaced employees and students, the university is preparing a real estate venture, Cowen said, that could include dockside cruise ships or apartments.

Tenured professors have been told they will carry more of the load of teaching undergraduates, and they must report for duty in the summer for a seven-week academic session designed to help students catch up on academic credits missed during Katrina's immediate aftermath.

Tulane also froze tenure decisions for a year. The delay may upset some professors seeking that coveted job security, but Tulane spokesman Mike Strecker said those displaced by the storm may need extra time to complete research needed to qualify.

Staff cuts shut down the Deep South Regional Humanities Center, known for its study of Creole ethnic groups, and a few other research operations, so far undisclosed. And Cowen said he and other Tulane leaders are closely studying whether other program changes are needed.

Athletics will be scrutinized too, he said. Asked whether Tulane would revisit its 2003 decision to keep a money-losing but popular Division I-A football program, Cowen said: "We're not looking at athletics any more than we're looking at anything else."

About 15 of the athletic department's 100 employees have been let go and a committee has been named to the programs. But Athletics Director Rick Dickson has said the "period of austerity" facing athletics hasn't prompted discussion of drastic steps similar to those considered in 2003.

Cowen said Tulane will depend on insurance and Federal Emergency Management Agency payments to cover building repairs. He said the emergency fund-raising drive will help offset substantial losses in the university's operating funds, and Tulane is trying to avoid tapping any of its $850 million endowment. Cowen isn't counting on federal help to cover operating-budget losses, although Savoie said state officials are still lobbying for hundreds of millions of dollars for that purpose. Cowen said he wouldn't immediately offer more detail about the budget picture.

"We've got to be very deliberate, very careful, and may have to make some tough decisions about some things we do or don't do," he said.

Praise for administrators

Tulane's board chairwoman, Catherine Pierson, said she was pleased with efforts by Cowen and his team, and predicted Tulane will emerge stronger and more focused.

"This is a huge challenge and it's a painful thing that all the universities are going through, that the city is going through. But, looking forward, we have to figure out a way to survive, and survive in a way that we come out of this as a greater institution," Pierson said.

Some parts of the recovery agenda have met with criticism. The humanities center shutdown and consideration of other changes have caused a chill in some quarters. The law school's mandate that students who had "visiting" status at other law schools during the fall must return to Tulane in January met with bitter resistance from some who aren't eager to return.

Roberts wasn't sympathetic: "We need our students for academic reasons, for operational reasons, for financial reasons. I don't call it hardship; I call it inconvenience."

Biology professor Lee Dyer, who moved to Rice University in Houston in the fall, was appreciative of his uninterrupted Tulane pay, but said his required presence for summer teaching in New Orleans will jeopardize his long-term field research out of state. When he raised the concern with an administrator, Dyer said he was told this is no time to make waves.

"I've been working continuously for the last 12 years, and I have these long-term data, and something like that is almost catastrophic to my research program," he said. "If they're not going to support research, I would think about looking for jobs elsewhere."

Tulane administrators, while conceding they won't have a fix on the enrollment until students appear, take comfort in preliminary feedback. Among 1,782 residence-hall students surveyed, just 23 said they weren't coming back and 10 were undecided, Cowen said.

Among those returning will be Julie Prior, a first-year psychology major from Chicago who is temporarily attending St. Mary's College in Indiana. Her father, Gary Prior, a lawyer and 1965 Tulane graduate, said he joins his daughter in the belief that Tulane's setback will be brief.

As for his daughter's friends from Tulane, "She only knows one that's pretty much on the fence. The others have decided they're going back," Prior said.

Raising consciences

As it tries to retain students and attract new ones, Tulane, like other local colleges, is using disaster as a recruiting tool: Help rebuild a city while you earn college credits. The opportunities for learning through service are now boundless.

When asked what it will feel like to be a student at Tulane, Cowen responded that the campus will seem like "a small college town in a Peace Corps environment."

Some Tulane students launched their own service projects within days of their evacuations to places across the nation. Four students who took off the semester formed a nonprofit, the NOLA Hurricane Fund, to raise money for recovery work.

Results to date include roughly 30 chapters of the group at far-flung college campuses and a kitty of $50,000, part of which has been used to sponsor three families uprooted by the storm, said Finley Smith, a group representative. After Tulane reopens, the nonprofit wants to start a community center that provides free tutoring and computers for public school students.

Tulane administrators are discussing "how we're going to engage our students come January," and the university's rate of community service work -- roughly 60,000 undergraduate hours in a typical year, involving at least half the student body -- could increase dramatically, said Hamilton Simons-Jones, a campus service coordinator.

"I think students are going to jump at it. Over the last five to 10 years, we've really had a sense of students having more interest in service," he said. "There's this history right now that's being made, and they can become a part of it."

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Coleman Warner covers higher education and can be reached at cwarner@timespicayune.com or at (504) 826-3311.

Tulane President Scott Cowen addresses an assembly of students, parents and others at the university's Reily Recreation Center on Saturday. [1892765]