Dear Colleagues:
Although each hour brings new word of the destruction left by Hurricane Katrina, it is already painfully clear that this is one of the most devastating disasters in our nation’s history. As this critical situation continues to unfold, our University at Buffalo community extends its heartfelt sympathies, concern, and support to the thousands who have been affected by this disaster.
“University at Buffalo community extends its heartfelt sympathies, concern, and support to the thousands who have been affected by this disaster” President
As a public institution of higher education, one of the most significant ways in which our UB community can offer assistance is by reaching out to our fellow academic institutions that have been impacted by this disaster. A growing number of colleges and universities along the Gulf Coast have temporarily shut down because of severe damage from Hurricane Katrina. In addition to extensive structural damage, widespread power outages, flooding, and serious health and safety issues that these institutions are currently confronting on their campuses, this disaster has left thousands of students stranded at the beginning of the academic year.
To date, at least four undergraduate students who have been evacuated from Tulane University in New Orleans are in the process of enrolling at UB as visiting students. We are doing everything we can to ease their entry into UB, facilitating the application and registration processes, coordinating the transfer of course credits and financial aid where applicable, providing housing as needed, and helping to put them in touch with faculty and academic advisors. As a comprehensive public research university, we are also committed to reaching out to graduate and professional students in need—for example, the UB Law School will make its fall courses available to third-year law students from Tulane University and to second- and third-year students from Loyola University.
UB is committed to providing assistance to those in need, and we are continuing to explore the strategies by which we can respond most effectively to students, faculty, and staff at all affected institutions. Plans are underway for a number of additional UB response initiatives, including outreach to UB students with home addresses in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, a fund drive to be conducted at the opening football game, and informational lectures on weather, disaster relief, coastal environments, and related topics. Leveraging UB’s significant expertise in catastrophic event response, a reconnaissance team from UB’s Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research is preparing to travel next week to impacted areas in Mississippi to assess the specific structural damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, with the goal of identifying engineering solutions that will ultimately help to design structures capable of better withstanding a wide variety of hazards in the future.
In addition to these efforts taking place on our own campus, we are also working closely with state and national organizations—including the larger SUNY community and the Association of American Universities, of which Tulane University is a fellow member—to address this serious national disaster, and to create the conditions that will make it possible to prevent and mitigate future disasters.
As part of this national effort, our UB community will do all it can to lend assistance both in the immediate aftermath of the disaster and during the long period of clean-up and reconstruction to follow. In the meantime, our Student Response Center (716-645-2450) stands ready to respond to requests for information and assistance, and updated information about disaster-response efforts underway at UB will be posted to the university website, www.buffalo.edu, as it becomes available.
Sincerely,
John B. Simpson
President
