Only days before Hurricane Katrina pummeled New Orleans and left parts of the city underwater, three new professors had arrived at Tulane University to start their teaching and research. After weeks of uncertainly following Tulane's decision to close for the semester, they found a welcoming haven at Brown.
In addition to offering admission to students displaced from colleges and universities shuttered by Katrina, the Uni-versity invited faculty whose home institutions were affected to spend the semester at Brown as visiting professors.
"We're trying to give people some kind of ability to keep doing their research and keep pursing scholarly activity while the Gulf Coast is recovering," said As-sociate Dean of the Faculty Carolyn Dean.
Formal communication channels were disrupted by the hurricane, so University administrators relied on more informal means of spreading word of Brown's offer. Professors were encouraged to contact colleagues in the Gulf Coast region and post the offer to Web sites of academic and professional associations.
In a Sept. 2 e-mail to the faculty, Vice President for Research Andries van Dam encouraged departments that had available space and research facilities to open their doors to displaced colleagues.
Though the visiting professors would receive their salaries from their home institutions, Brown would provide them with limited travel funds, library privileges and office and research facilities on campus, according to van Dam's e-mail.
Ultimately, three professors embarked on hurricane evacuation paths that took them from low-lying New Orleans to College Hill.
Sangeetha Madhavan
Visiting Assistant Professor of Population Studies Sangeetha Madhavan was just settling into her new post as an assistant professor of sociology at Tulane when the hurricane hit. Only two days after her faculty orientation, she left the city with her husband and daughter to stay with a friend in Baton Rouge.
When it became apparent that the semester at Tulane would be disrupted, a colleague from Brown, Associate Professor of Anthropology Nicholas Town-send, invited her to study at Brown's Population Studies and Training Center for the semester. Townsend has also allowed Madhavan and her family to stay at his home.
Madhavan was no stranger to the University. She worked as a post-doctorate student in anthropological demography from 1999 to 2001. She worked closely with Townsend while at Brown, and, after she left, the two continued to collaborate on a number of research projects.
"As always, these social networks are very important," Madhavan said.
Though Tulane is still paying her salary for the semester, Madhavan said Brown has provided financial support, including office and research facilities and travel funds to fly from New Orleans to Providence and to attend an academic conference in Washington, D.C.
Diane Negra
While Madhavan had previous ties to the University, another visiting professor, Diane Negra, did not.
Negra, a senior lecturer and director of the School of Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, arrived at Tulane the week before Katrina hit. She was planning on spending a year-long sabbatical finishing writing a book on contemporary media.
She decided to leave New Orleans with a few friends before the mandatory evacuation order was issued, allowing her a trouble-free exit from the city.
"Because we left early, we, like most people, did not anticipate the chaos, danger and difficulty that would ensue. ... We didn't take very much," Negra said, adding that she left behind such important possessions as her laptop.
By the time Katrina made landfall, Negra and her friends were in Florida's Panhandle. When the hurricane's impact became apparent, Negra decided to travel to New York to stay with relatives there.
"It was a very strange time. My dean back at East Anglia was proposing that I forgo my sabbatical, come back to England and start (the sabbatical) again in September 2006. There was a lot to recommend that course of action at that time," Negra said. "But I really felt that I wanted to write (my book) now, that intellectually I was ready to write it now."
Negra was already familiar with Brown's Department of Modern Culture and Media but had no direct contacts at the University. She saw a posting by Philip Rosen, professor of modern culture and media, on the Web site of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies announcing that the University was accommodating displaced faculty from the Gulf Coast. Negra e-mailed Rosen and received a fast and warm response, she said.
Acknowledging that she did not have an existing relationship with the University, Negra said, "It's all the more wonderful that people were so hospitable to me. I didn't trade on a friendship or anything like that."
Negra was provided research support and an office in the Cogut Humanities Center. Money from the $5 million donation given by liquor magnate Sidney Frank '42 for the University's hurricane response effort was used to replace research materials that were destroyed when her New Orleans apartment building flooded, she said.
Negra said the University's offer was instrumental in allowing her to continue her sabbatical work.
"It's gone a long way toward helping me feel like momentum is reestablished," she said. "When something like this happens, you can very easily lapse into a coping mode, where you don't get as much done with your big projects as you need to. Instead, you chase packages, make arrangements, look for places to live. I really felt like I wanted to get writing again as quickly as possible. And that's happened."
Emily Harville
Like Madhavan, Visiting Assistant Professor of Community Health Emily Harville was also settling into a new position at Tulane when Katrina struck. She had recently been hired as an assistant professor of epidemiology at Tulane's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Harville, who evacuated New Orleans to stay with relatives in Dallas, had made contacts at the University during the job search that had landed her at Tulane. After the hurricane, she called her colleagues at Brown and was invited to continue her research at Brown for the semester, she said.
Two postdoctorate students in neuroscience, Galina Karashchuk and Xinhuai Liu, also came to Brown as part of the hurricane response program, Dean wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
Tulane plans to reopen its doors in January, and Madhavan and Harville are ready to return to their positions at the university. Both acknowledged that life in New Orleans will be different and mentioned that Tulane is incorporating the hurricane's aftermath into its research and curriculum.
"There is a very conscious effort on the part of everyone not to pretend that everything is normal," Madhavan said. "The goal is to get students very much involved," she added, citing new courses and research opportunities that will incorporate the "real-life" problems caused by Katrina.
Harville said public health researchers will be able to study the hurricane's impact on areas such as mental health and environmental health.
Negra, meanwhile, hopes to stay at Brown for another semester to finish her book before returning to England.
"I have found that my research has been so well supported here, things are going so well here and I'm enjoying it so much that my first choice is to stay here," she said.
The University's offer to displaced professors only covered the fall semester, but Negra said she is arranging to stay at Brown as a visiting scholar in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.
All three visiting professors emphasized their gratitude for the University's assistance.
"I've been incredibly appreciative of the hospitality that has been extended to me here, both institutionally and personally. ... Brown has made it possible for me to carry on this work," Negra said.
