Program helps Dillard U. professors rebuild course materials, raises spirits

By KATHERINE S. MANGAN

Georgetown, Tex.

When Hurricane Katrina's storm surge overwhelmed New Orleans's levees, the murky waters of Lake Pontchartrain swallowed up Gloria C. Love's ground-floor office at Dillard University, ruining her computers, books, research notes, and syllabi.

Three months later, with no home, no electricity in her recently installed government-issued trailer, and a shuttered campus, the professor was hard pressed to begin planning for spring-semester classes, which are scheduled to resume at a downtown hotel and various campuses around New Orleans on January 9.

But for two weeks in December, she and a dozen colleagues were invited here to Southwestern University to begin resurrecting their course materials and creating new ones so they would have something to teach with when classes start. The program was established by the Texas university and its regional technology laboratory, with the help of a $160,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

As visiting scholars at Southwestern, a small undergraduate university of 1,200 students, they lived and worked in a quiet bedroom community outside Austin. The Mellon grant covered their transportation and lodging, while Southwestern picked up the tab for meals on the campus, along with a $1,500 stipend.

Ms. Love, an assistant professor of mathematics and computer science, used her central Texas respite to work on her department's Web site and prepare syllabi for courses she expects to teach. Many of Dillard's professors lost everything when their campus of gleaming white buildings and towering oaks sat submerged in up to eight feet of water for three weeks (The Chronicle, November 11). She said her time at Southwestern was "a breathing moment — a chance to recapture our spirit."

"They brought us from a ghost town and helped us regain our sanity," said Ms. Love.