Making Progress

Once the wind, rain and water settled into a placid calm the morning after Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf Coast last year, the campus of Southern University New Orleans was left submerged under four to 11 feet of water.
Harold Clark, executive associate to the chancellor of SUNO, said there were 3,647 students enrolled at SUBR’s sister campus that year.
After the hurricane, the students and faculty of SUNO were forced to move their base of operations onto the system’s Baton Rouge campus in order to finish out the semester last year.
When SUNO reopened the following spring, the enrollment expectation was between 1,200 and 1,500 students, but that number was exceeded when the total number of students enrolled was more than 2,000.
Currently SUNO is operating on 38 acres of land approximately five blocks away from the main campus, Clark said.
A total of 45 modular trailers occupy that land with 26 of them functioning as classrooms for the campus. An additional 400 trailers sit behind the administrative and classroom trailers, providing living quarters for the campus’ student body for the first time.
“We are in hurricane season now,” Clark said. “The challenge regarding the living quarters is that there is the possibility of these living quarters being compromised by heavy winds.”
Clark said a resolution to this problem has yet to be seen.
“Although SUNO is having classes in FEMA trailers, all (the same) courses are being offered as before,” said Rose Duhon-Sells, vice-president of academic affairs.
Sells said the University holds classes in a block schedule format. The first block of morning classes are from 8 a.m. to about 12:45 p.m. The next block of courses are from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. The last block is from 4:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
The block classes are part of “dual enrollment schooling” which Sells said allows high school students, provided they meet certain requirements, to take college courses for credit.
“A vast amount of the courses are offered online,” she said.
Currently, Clark said the projected number of students, counting those who pre-registered, enrolled for fall 2006 semester exceed the enrollment count for spring 2006, but no definite count was available at press time.
Clark said SUNO’s main campus is still being revitalized due to the damages caused by the flooding. The Board of Regents approved Ray Manning, a SUBR graduate, of Manning Architect to spearhead the project of restoring the main campus to its full glory.