Scott S.. Cowen y Amanda P.. vaca
Innovation Amidst Crisis
Tulane University’s Strategic
Transformation
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of
comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and
controversy.
—The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
When Hurricane Katrina swept ashore in New Orleans on August 29, 2005, el
destruction left in its wake was unparalleled in U.S. historia. In the months and
years that have followed, the fallout of this disaster has been well-chronicled,
including its tragic effects on individuals, communities, and institutions in the
Gulf Coast region. While the impact of the storm was devastating, the challenges
of recovery also have served as a crucible for social innovation and entrepreneur-
barco. These stories of survival and renewal are the focus of this issue of Innovations;
they are also the stories that have reshaped Tulane University and its relationship
to the city of New Orleans over the past five years.
Tulane’s journey from the brink of ruin to a flourishing institution trans-
formed by its commitment to community engagement has at times been harrow-
ing and difficult, but also inspiring. In the days following Katrina, the university
was faced with major physical damage, staggering financial losses, and the dis-
placement of over 20,000 estudiantes, faculty, and staff. The storm also exacerbated
problems that had long plagued the surrounding community—deficiencies in the
city’s education and health care systems and its infrastructure. Sin embargo, amid this
crisis came unexpected opportunities. For the city, the attention generated by
Katrina brought resources and ideas to problems that had been too long ignored.
For Tulane, the storm was equally important in raising strategic questions about
the mission of the institution, its interdependence with the local community, y
the role of universities in producing engaged citizens and future leaders.
Scott S.. Cowen is President and Seymour S. Goodman Memorial Professor of Business
at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Amanda P. Cowen is an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia in
Charlottesville.
© 2010 Scott S.. Cowen y Amanda P.. vaca
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For the city, the attention
generated by Katrina brought
resources and ideas to problems
that had been too long ignored.
For Tulane, the storm was equally
important in raising strategic
questions about the mission of
the institution, es
interdependence with the local
comunidad, and the role of
universities in producing engaged
citizens and future leaders.
Históricamente, Tulane University’s mission was focused on research and learning.
Like other major research universities, we believed these activities were our pri-
mary vehicles for improving the world, and so we focused heavily on the interna-
tional reach and impact of our work. The aftermath of the storm brought into
sharp focus; sin embargo, the extent to which the well-being and success of individu-
als and organizations con-
tinues to be profoundly
shaped by the health of
local communities.
insight
trans-
Este
the university’s
formed
strategic focus. Our Katrina
experience convinced us
that building vibrant and
sustainable communities is
essential
addressing
a
many of society’s most
pressing issues in the 21st
siglo. Universities, allá-
delantero, must see community
engagement as a critical
component of their mis-
siones. This belief has given
rise
Tulane
Community Engagement
Mission, which is to identi-
fy and empower individuals
who have ideas for building
better communities locally and around the world. We now aspire to become the
leading university in the country with respect to community engagement and its
integration with research and education. In the pages that follow, we recount the
journey that led to this strategic transformation and share some of the innovative
initiatives the university has undertaken to forge lasting social change in Gulf
Coast communities and beyond.
el
a
THE JOURNEY BEGINS: HURRICANE KATRINA AND ITS AFTERMATH
Tulane’s response to Hurricane Katrina began well before the storm arrived. On
Friday, Agosto 26, three days before Katrina made landfall, our first challenge was
what to tell a group of entering first-year students and their parents gathered on
campus for orientation. At convocation, we normally welcome them to Tulane and
to New Orleans and offer advice about their college years. En cambio, we found our-
selves telling students to leave their belongings in their dorm rooms and either
return home with their parents or board one of several buses that would take them
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Innovation Amidst Crisis
out of harm’s way until the storm passed. Given our past experience with hurri-
canes, we were confident they would be able to return to campus in a few days.
We did not see these students again for five months.
En el momento, Tulane’s hurricane response plan called for the president to remain
on campus along with other members of Tulane’s emergency team. The team’s
experiences during the week following the storm and the levee failures have been
recounted many times over the past five years. Primero, being trapped on a flooded
campus; then a helicopter rescue; and then the long, dark days that followed in a
Houston hotel suite, where a handful of people tried to figure out if, and how,
Tulane University could survive.
When the floodwaters receded and we were able to assess the damage, we faced
grim numbers. Seventy percent of our main campus and our entire health sciences
center had been flooded. Our financial losses would eventually exceed $650 mil- lion. Tulane became the first major U.S. university since the Civil War to close its doors for an entire semester, resulting in 13,000 students and 8,000 employees being displaced for five months. The numbers faced by the city of New Orleans were even more sobering: 1,836 deaths, 400,000 jobs lost, 275,000 homes destroyed, and over $110 billion in dam-
siglos. With city services in disarray and conflicting political entities hampering
relief efforts, New Orleans’s recovery was even less assured than Tulane’s.
SURVIVAL AND RECOVERY
Our earliest post-Katrina efforts focused on the practical aspects of survival. Nosotros
had to find our students, let them know Tulane would not reopen in the fall, y
find a place for them to study for the semester. This was done in an amazingly
short time, through an emergency website and the cooperation of hundreds of col-
leges and universities. We established an online student registry and published reg-
ular information updates. Universities across the country stepped up and took our
students in for the fall semester, in many cases allowing Tulane to retain tuition
payments that were essential to our survival. Thanks to the incredible support of
the higher education community, Tulane students attended approximately 600 columna-
leges and universities in the fall of 2005.
The other immediate need was to locate our employees and reconstruct our
payroll records. We felt it was imperative that we continue to pay our employees,
even though the university was closed, so that they would have time and resources
to devote to addressing the hurricane’s impact on their homes and families. Nosotros
reestablished contact with faculty and staff through our emergency website, y,
using a single campus phone directory, our small Houston team worked tirelessly
to re-create our payroll. The decision to continue paying our employees cost
Tulane approximately $30-$35 million a month at a time when we had very little
cash coming into the university, but we believed it was the right decision for both
business and moral reasons.
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Tulane as a Social Innovation Laboratory
Tulane’s strategic transformation has led to the development of several innova-
tive community-based initiatives that are closely aligned with the university’s
strengths and core mission. Four of the most notable are briefly described below.
Public Service: En 2006, Tulane became the first major research university to
integrate community engagement into its core undergraduate curriculum. El
process required a sea change in how the university community approached aca-
demic program delivery and content. To facilitate this, Tulane established the
Center for Public Service (CPS). Hasta la fecha, the CPS has developed approximately
300 service-learning courses. It has also forged relationships with more than 100
community-based organizations that serve as worksites for our students. En el
past four years, 5,600 undergraduate students have participated in unique cours-
es, such as Aristotle in New Orleans. This undergraduate English course edu-
cates students in rhetoric and logic, skills they then use to coach students in
debate at three New Orleans public schools.
Tulane students are now spending about 300,000 hours a year rebuilding the
community in novel and valuable ways. The community service initiative has
also had a profound impact on the growth of undergraduate applications (de
18,000 a 44,000), as well as student retention and quality.
Public Education: Following Hurricane Katrina, Mayor Ray Nagin estab-
lished the Bring New Orleans Back Commission (BNOB). The commission was
charged with addressing the city’s most pressing recovery issues, such as health
care and education. The goal of the education subcommittee (chaired by this
paper’s first author) was to develop a plan to rebuild and transform New
Orleans’s public schools, historically among the worst in America.
After a six-month study, the BNOB education committee proposed a new
system of schools centered on the creation of autonomous, but accountable and
conectado, escuelas. This system creates a greater sense of engagement between
escuelas, padres, and the community. Under the plan, the vast majority of pub-
lic school children attend charter schools, and significant investments have been
made in human capital and curriculum reform. Hasta la fecha, this model has led to
meaningful improvements in student achievement and graduation rates while
fostering a sense of hope about the future of public education in New Orleans.
Tulane is actively involved in school reform. The university’s faculty, staff,
and students now operate 70 programs that serve local children in four dozen
Orleans Parish schools. These initiatives range from mentoring school-age chil-
niños, to piloting Advanced Placement courses in high schools, to enhancing the
An interesting thing happened, sin embargo, as we began to move past the initial
crisis and plan for the university’s reopening in January. Although Tulane is a glob-
al institution, in confronting the realities of a post-Katrina New Orleans, nosotros
learned the true extent of our local interdependencies. Before the storm, Tulane
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Innovation Amidst Crisis
variety and content of afterschool programs. The university also established a
Public Education Institute, which engages in applied research, policy formula-
ción, incubating educational programs, and convening those interested in the
advancement of public education.
Delivery of Health Care: In the days immediately following Katrina, medical
residents and faculty from Tulane established urgent-care facilities on the streets
of New Orleans. Their efforts were especially focused on meeting the health care
needs of the indigent population. Since these early initiatives, Tulane University
School of Medicine has been at the forefront of building a community health
system that provides all citizens with access to high-quality, neighborhood-based
primary care.
Tulane Community Health System now operates eight clinics and runs sev-
eral others in partnership with other organizations. These facilities employ over
50 medical professionals and help to teach the next generation of physicians,
nurses, and technicians the best practices of health care reform. Actualmente, el
Community Health Centers serve 16,000 gente, with an anticipated annual
growth rate of 20 por ciento. Most patients are low-income, uninsured working
adults from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds (p.ej., 60 percent African
Americano, 12 percent Latino, y 6 percent Vietnamese American).
Physical Revitalization: Tulane’s School of Architecture is helping to rebuild
the city through the Tulane City Center (TCC) initiative. TCC matches architec-
ture faculty and students with local nonprofit groups to provide design and
“visioning” services to underserved segments of the New Orleans community.
Hasta la fecha, students and faculty have collaborated on the design and construction
de más de 50 projects in support of the city’s recovery. These projects include
six ecologically sound single-family homes, several green markets and related
“urban agriculture” facilities, shade and water collection pavilions, and cooper-
ative “healthy grocery” stores in low-income communities.
All TCC projects focus on improving the environmental quality of urban life
and reducing the carbon footprint of buildings and their landscapes. The bio-
remediation of contaminated sites, the recycling of urban rainwater runoff, y
the use of experimental construction systems are just a few examples of TCC’s
environmentally progressive work. TCC is also running innovative projects that
allow flood-prone areas of the city to function more effectively in concert with
their low topography, rather than struggling to overcome it. TCC hopes to
ensure a gradual and positive transformation of low-lying communities and
their residents, many of whom bore the brunt of Katrina’s destruction.
was New Orleans’s largest private employer. Tal como, we viewed the institution as
an economic catalyst and a local resource for research and service-learning pro-
gramos. Sin embargo, although we’d been in New Orleans for 175 años, we were not
quite of New Orleans.
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It was clear that this relationship had to evolve if the university had any hope
of surviving and flourishing in the difficult years that lay ahead. Tulane’s recovery
was inextricably linked to that of the city. Our students and employees lived in its
houses, shopped at its businesses, participated in its rich cultural life and history,
and depended on its utility and transportation services. We were not an island
unto ourselves, but had a symbiotic relationship with this city we called home.
With this perspective in mind, we began to think more broadly about the
January reopening. We focused not just on how to repair our institution, pero también
on how to begin restoring the community on which it depended.
• Remediation teams were hired to tackle the laborious process of ripping out
waterlogged floors, walls, and even ceilings which had molded as they sat for
weeks in nearly 100-degree heat. Working without electricity and relying on
generator-powered equipment, the teams rebuilt damaged facilities, repaired
roofs, and hauled off fallen trees. Five months and over 800 workers were
required to get the campus ready for students again.
• Most New Orleans public schools had been badly damaged, and the school sys-
tem did not plan to reopen until the following year. Knowing that our employ-
ees’ children would need schools when they returned, we worked with the
Orleans Parish School Board to transform a local elementary school that was
damaged into a K-12 charter facility sponsored by Tulane.
• Modular housing was set up on university property to house students, faculty,
or staff members who had lost their homes or rental units. We also purchased
an undamaged apartment complex and even leased a cruise ship to provide
additional housing for employees and students.
• All of our students had to be re-recruited. They were leery—and their parents
downright afraid—about returning to New Orleans after the frightening
images they had seen on television. This was accomplished through online
forums, town-hall meetings in locations around the country, y, as recovery
progressed, visits to campus.
Tulane University reopened for business on January 17, 2006. Approximately
85 percent of our undergraduate students and virtually our entire full-time facul-
ty returned for the spring semester. It is estimated that within 72 hours of our
reopening, the population of Orleans Parish increased by 20 por ciento.
BEYOND SURVIVAL TO RENEWAL
Of course our challenges did not end in January. Tulane’s long-term financial via-
bility was still in question, and we needed a plan for how Tulane would move for-
ward in the coming years. Rather than ignoring the potential for future financial
shortfalls and crises, we decided to address these issues head on by restructuring
the university to save costs and maximize efficiency, while ensuring that it would
continue to grow in academic stature and quality.
This required making some tough decisions, and shortly before reopening we
unveiled the “new” Tulane—a smaller university that would build on its strengths
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Innovation Amidst Crisis
by focusing resources in areas where it could truly excel. We revamped the under-
graduate experience, streamlined academic programs, and joined forces with three
other New Orleans universities—Xavier, Dillard, and Loyola—to launch coopera-
tive projects.
The most far-reaching aspect of this renewal plan came in the form of a com-
mitment to community engagement that permeated every facet of university life,
and which made our ideals
of social innovation and
service a reality. A core
component of the plan was
to elevate the importance
of community engagement
and to link it more effec-
tively with our research
teaching missions.
y
This strategy was intended
to further distinguish the
university while also help-
ing to rebuild the New
Orleans community, y
eventually other commu-
nities around the world.
Our commitment to the revival
of New Orleans had to extend
beyond areas that impacted
Tulane as an institution, como
housing, health care, and public
escuelas. To truly invest in the
city’s renewal and instill in our
students a passion for social
cambiar… this commitment had to
be a strategic priority for the
entire university and an integral
part of our daily activities.
We realized that our
commitment to the revival
of New Orleans had to
extend beyond areas that
impacted Tulane as an
institución, such as hous-
En g, health care, and public
escuelas. To truly invest in
the city’s renewal and instill in our students a passion for social change, commu-
nity involvement would have to be more than a “lip-service” component of the
Tulane experience. This commitment had to be a strategic priority for the entire
university and an integral part of our daily activities.
FROM TRAGEDY TO OPPORTUNITY: THE IMPLICATIONS1
Universities have long thought of themselves as global organizations. Before ques-
tions of international expansion became common in corporate boardrooms, aca-
demic institutions focused on having an international reach and impact. Desde
intellectual capital is at the heart of teaching and research activities, it was easy to
forget the enduring influence of local communities on universities and their suc-
cesses. Sin embargo, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the institution’s local
interdependencies had never seemed more salient or critical to its mission. A pesar de
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the cultural diversity of Tulane’s faculty and students and the strength of their
ideas and research, there was little we could do to leverage these assets in a com-
munity devoid of adequate housing, infrastructure, health care, or public educa-
ción.
The extent of our local interdependencies prompted a greater commitment to
community engagement, but it also forced us to think more explicitly about the
communities on which the university depended. We found that the university was
embedded in a diverse set of communities bounded by geography (p.ej., Nuevo
Orleans), by industry (p.ej., higher education), and by shared experiences and val-
ues (p.ej., Tulane alumni and friends). Although the storm had recently exposed the
threats posed by our local interdependencies, it became clear that Tulane’s mem-
bership in each of these communities presented both strategic risks and opportu-
niidades. Como resultado, we began to pay more attention to Tulane’s roles in these com-
munities and how they should inform our strategy, resource commitments, y
activities.
In undertaking this analysis, we learned several important lessons. Primero, nosotros
recognized the inherently dynamic nature of all communities. Hurricane Katrina
altered New Orleans in a matter of hours, and although a dramatic shift like this
may be rare, the evolution of communities is inevitable. The implication was that
we must constantly monitor the communities to which Tulane belongs, be aware
of our interdependencies, and be prepared to shift our activities or involvement as
required. Por ejemplo, over the past five years, the recovery process has meaning-
fully changed New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region. Certain needs have been
met while new ones have emerged. Tulane has monitored these developments care-
fully to ensure that our resources and programs continue to be aligned with the
city’s changing physical, demographic, and economic landscape. Segundo, tenemos
sought opportunities to more effectively integrate and connect the communities
on which Tulane depends. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, that meant
coordinating efforts among fellow universities, exalumnos, and health care networks
to marshal resources and address Tulane’s most urgent needs. More recently, nosotros
established a community engagement information-exchange website for our
alumni and other prospective volunteers, which directly connects them with com-
munity organizations in need of project assistance. This website has facilitated a
number of projects, ranging from building homes to oil spill cleanup. Finalmente, nosotros
have learned that effectively managing our interdependencies requires having
strong ties to other organizations in our communities. We have made it a priority
to build relationships with other universities and local organizations as a way to
share resources, collaborate, and maximize the impact of our social initiatives.
De este modo, Tulane’s new focus on the role and importance of communities has not only
speeded our own recovery, it has left us all better prepared for future challenges.
The elevation of our commitment to community engagement has not come at
the expense of research and education. De hecho, we constantly strive to synergisti-
cally and strategically integrate research, education, and public service, as illustrat-
ed by the four programs described above. It is our hope and our expectation that
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Innovation Amidst Crisis
other major universities and colleges will continue to escalate their commitment
to community engagement as well. Now is the time for us to become even more
externally focused and linked, rather than being inwardly driven.
CONCLUSIÓN
It is simple to embrace an ideal in theory. We acknowledge the need to be citizens
del mundo, Por ejemplo, and most of us recognize our obligation to help others
in less fortunate circumstances. In the context of higher education, most colleges
and universities say they strive to produce graduates whose minds and hearts reach
far beyond the sphere of their immediate influence.
In practice, sin embargo, the details of our daily life and the comfort of routine
often overshadow our ideals. We fit them into our existing lives, add them to our
schedules, and take comfort in knowing we’re doing what we can. Sin embargo, cuando
ideals meet catastrophe, one of two things can occur: either ideals are abandoned
in the struggle for survival, or they take root and help drive and shape recovery. On
Agosto 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina provided Tulane University with these two
opciones. Five years later, we are a far different university, thanks to the trustees,
administradores, faculty, staff, exalumnos, amigos, and students who were able to look
past the chaos of the moment and see an opportunity not only to help our city
recover but to reshape our university into an institution that incorporates its ideals
into every aspect of its mission.
Five years after Katrina, a storm of a different kind has hit Tulane’s campus.
Our programs are gaining momentum as socially conscious students seek a Tulane
education, and as their spirit of civic engagement generates ever more new and
innovative ideas. It is now our hope that Tulane’s success can serve as a model for
encouraging other institutions to provide human and intellectual capital to the
communities in which they operate. These resources are essential ingredients in
addressing our long-term social challenges, and in preparing students to become
engaged citizens and leaders of the world.
1. See Amanda P. Cowen and Scott S. vaca, “Rediscovering Communities: Lessons from the
Hurricane Katrina Crisis,” Journal of Management Inquiry 19, No. 2 (2010): 117-125.
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