FYI

 
__________________________________________________________________________
Monday, October 31, 2005

Hurricane-Ravaged Xavier U. to Cut Its Faculty and Staff by More Than Half

By KATHERINE S. MANGAN

Faced with staggering cleanup costs after Hurricane Katrina and the likelihood that fewer than half of its 4,000 students will return, Xavier University of Louisiana laid off more than half of its faculty and staff members last week as it prepared to reopen a much smaller campus in January.

In addition to cutting 58 percent of its full-time faculty members and 53 percent of its staff members, the New Orleans institution suspended all of its intercollegiate athletics programs for the rest of the academic year, said a university spokesman, Warren A. Bell. All of the university's graduate classes will be held exclusively online.

"This is a devastating action for a close-knit community such as Xavier, but the tremendous financial challenges we face post-Katrina forced us to make difficult decisions," said Calvin S. Tregre, senior vice president for administration. The layoffs will save $5.8-million this academic year for Xavier, the nation's only historically black and Roman Catholic university.

Xavier officials estimated it would cost them more than $90-million to rebuild the campus, pay additional financial aid to students whose parents lost homes and jobs in the hurricane, and recover from the loss of tuition and other revenues for the fall 2005 semester.

Classes, which were abruptly canceled just before Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, on August 29, are scheduled to resume on January 17. Some will be held on Xavier's 23-acre campus, which suffered extensive flooding and mold damage. Others will be held at Tulane University, which has also offered classroom space to another historically black institution hammered by the hurricane, Dillard University.

Even though Tulane's campus was spared any serious physical damage, it has also had to lay off hundreds of faculty and staff members in the wake of Katrina (The Chronicle, October 24). In fact, most of the colleges and universities hardest hit by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have either announced layoffs or are expected to do so by the end of the year.

Layoffs and program cuts were also being debated over the weekend at the Southern University System's Baton Rouge headquarters. Southern's New Orleans campus, located in the city's impoverished Ninth Ward, was decimated in Hurricane Katrina, with 11 feet of water in many of the buildings.

It is unclear how many can be rebuilt, but in the meantime, the university has asked federal authorities for up to 100 trailers to serve as temporary classrooms in January, and hundreds more to house displaced faculty members. On Saturday and Sunday, chancellors and vice chancellors of the system's five campuses met to prepare pared-down budgets to present today to Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.

The governor, a Democrat, has asked state agencies to plan for budget cuts of 5 to 10 percent. A 10-percent reduction would cost the Southern University System $8.2-million.

Xavier officials had held off as long as possible before announcing cuts, hoping more hurricane relief would be coming, Mr. Bell said. But with the end of the year looming and people moving back into ruined neighborhoods, the university wanted to give them time to find other jobs or homes.

After determining that the university faced a financial crisis, Xavier's administration terminated the contracts of all 246 of its faculty members, many of whom had tenure. It then hired back 103 of them.

The 143 who were terminated will receive medical benefits, but no pay, through the end of December. They were told that some might be rehired once the university had a better idea of how many students would be returning in January. "That's the big question," Mr. Bell said. "On our campus, we're a beehive of activity, but that isn't necessarily the case throughout the city. Some parents may decide the city isn't up to speed."

Both Mr. Bell and the university's president, Norman C. Francis, live a few blocks from one of the levees that broke, and their homes are gutted and unlivable. Both have been frustrated by the pace of repairs in much of New Orleans.

Many of the faculty members who were laid off were in Xavier's mass-communications program, whose television gear and other electronic equipment were ruined when their first-floor storage rooms were flooded. Xavier, which sends more black students to American medical schools than any other college in the country, will continue to make a priority of programs in science, Mr. Bell said.

In selecting the professors to rehire, the university retained more than 90 percent of the faculty members in its highly regarded pharmacy program, which graduates the most black pharmacists of any program in the country. "We know the retention rate for those students is going to be high," Mr. Bell said. "Many are second- and third-year students, and they fought like hell to get into the program, and they aren't about to drop out."

Overseeing it all will be a man who will have plenty on his plate. Xavier's president, Mr. Francis, has served as president of Xavier for 38 years, longer than any other sitting college president. In addition to leading Xavier's resurrection and his own house's reconstruction, the 74-year-old president is heading a 24-member statewide commission charged with overseeing statewide reconstruction.

The commission, which was appointed by the governor, will work closely with the 17-member "Bring New Orleans Back" commission appointed by New Orleans's mayor, Ray Nagin. Tulane University's president, Scott S. Cowen, is a member of that commission, where he will lead efforts to revive the city's public-school system.

Copyright © 2005 by The Chronicle of Higher Education