MURFREESBORO, Tenn.
More than a year after Hurricane Katrina, Southern University at New Orleans is still operating in a temporary campus of FEMA trailers and waiting for money to rebuild.
So its chancellor, Victor Ukpolo, turned to his former colleagues in Tennessee for assistance.
Middle Tennessee State University announced Tuesday an academic partnership to help rebuild the New Orleans branch of the historically Black Southern University.
Ukpolo characterized the partnership as the first of its kind for any New Orleans university. Some colleges in the city, like the private Tulane University, have expanded the scope of existing partnerships with other schools while hundreds of colleges nationwide offered tuition exchange programs for students affected by Katrina.
“After Hurricane Katrina, there was some discussion to close down the school,” says Ukpolo, who served as an associate vice chancellor at the Tennessee Board of Regents from 1997 to 1999 before moving to New Orleans.
Flooding and mold damaged much of the school’s facilities near Lake Pontchartrain and forced faculty to relocate to more than 400 trailers that serve both as housing and classrooms. Only 2,300 out of the 3,600 students enrolled before the hurricane have returned, and faculty numbers have gone from 160 to 91.
