Commitment, Caring Key to Students’ Return to Xavier, Symposium Attendees Learn
Eleven days after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in August 2005, causing levees to break and flood the city — including the campus of Xavier University of Louisiana — university President Norman Francis met with his leadership team and made an announcement: “We’re coming back Jan. 17.”
Some in the room thought he was crazy, he said. At that time, mid-September, the campus was flooded, students had evacuated, and the city where the university is located was experiencing an unprecedented catastrophe.
But Francis knew there were students who started the fall-2005 semester at Xavier who were looking forward to graduating in spring 2006. “They were sitting at home watching all of this unfold on TV, and they were wondering, ‘Am I going to get back? Am I going to have to go to another university?’”
Francis, 76, has been president of Xavier — the nation’s only historically black and Catholic university — for 39 years. He recently addressed minority-serving-institution administrators, faculty and student-services and financial-aid professionals at the USA Funds® Symposium “Pursuing Excellence in Student Preparation, Access and Success” in New Orleans.
He told the 160 administrators representing Tribal Colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-Serving Institutions that running an institution of higher education requires two basic elements: a commitment to serve students, and faculty and staff members who care.
Xavier, Francis said, has both. “Eighty-five percent of the people who worked to bring us back lost their own homes in the storm,” he said. “They worked because students are our priority.”
Communication with students and with family members was extremely important. The school made sure that students got information about returning to Xavier and understood their financial-aid options. About half of the school’s students come from Louisiana, most of them from the New Orleans area. The rest come from across the country.
‘Exactly as they had left it’
Nearly three-fourths of Xavier’s students returned in January 2006. Francis insisted that the campus look almost exactly as they had left it. Dorms were clean, the school’s 38 elevators were working, and the cafeteria served a hot meal.
“I wanted everything as right as it could be,” said Francis. “The students had been through so much.”
The school held two consecutive academic semesters between January and August, allowing the class of 2006 to graduate just three months later than originally scheduled.
The most-difficult decision Francis had to make, he said, was determining what courses to offer and then reducing faculty and staff to meet the lowered enrollment.
Today, more than a year and half after the storm, Xavier’s enrollment stands at about 73 percent of pre-Katrina levels. More than 3,000 students currently are taking classes, and the university has received about 2,100 applications from prospective freshmen.
Financial aid is the university’s biggest challenge in retaining students and applicants, he said. “We have to find the financial aid to bridge the gaps for people. Families lost jobs and homes.”
Surviving the crisis
Francis offered symposium attendees a few words of advice if they ever face a crisis the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina:
- Keep your wits about you and make people think everything will be OK.
- Get every bit of information you can.
- Secure what you own.
- Determine what you need to do for the people.
- Make sure you have communication devices that work.
- Have faith — it can act as a compass.
Two weeks after students returned to campus last year, Francis spoke with them and emphasized how important the students were and acknowledged how their faith helped them to survive one of the greatest crises America has ever faced.
“You are going to face crises in your life,” he told the students. “When that first one comes, look it dead in the eye and say, ‘I’ve been there.’”
Symposium organizers conducted the event in New Orleans to support the city as it continues to rebuild after the hurricane. Attendees donated supplies to New Orleans schools still recovering following Hurricane Katrina.
PowerPoint presentations and handouts used in the symposium sessions are available on USA Funds’ Web site.