By PIPER FOGG, ERIC HOOVER, and KATHERINE S. MANGAN

January 20, 2006

New Orleans

They carried boxes, suitcases, and hopes. Last week, nearly five months after Hurricane Katrina swept them off their campuses, thousands of college administrators, faculty members, and students here began a new semester.

Throughout New Orleans, homemade banners bore inspirational scrawls. In the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood, a sheet with a spray-painted message hung on a fence: "With a little help we can help ourselves." The area's college officials were saying the same thing about their institutions, which in turn, they promised, would do much to mend this broken city.

But as the colleges opened their doors under unseasonably sunny and warm skies, tough questions lingered. Could the now smaller, poorer colleges recover from multimillion-dollar damages? Could they recruit students and retain professors? Could they adapt to the new realities of New Orleans without sacrificing their missions? So far, at least, no colleges in and around New Orleans have shut down as a result of the hurricane, but not one has been left unscathed.

Academic programs took as big a hit on several campuses as did bricks and mortar. Southern University shut down 19 programs. Tulane University laid off more than 200 professors. And Dillard University and Xavier University of Louisiana cut their faculty and staff by more than a third.

Katrina dealt one of its biggest blows to Dillard, which suffered some $400-million in damages. The historically black institution's beloved campus, which had sat under eight feet of water for days, was still unusable last week, as Dillard students moved into the institution's temporary home, a high-rise Hilton in downtown New Orleans.

Dillard's president, Marvalene Hughes, was encouraged that almost 1,000 students had returned for the spring semester — nearly half of the university's student body, and far more than the 500 she had initially hoped for.

"I've been relying on a lot of adrenaline, but when students returned, my mood lifted," Ms. Hughes said. "All of the naysayers out there didn't listen when we said Dillard was coming back and that it would be better."

Christy Malbrew, a Dillard senior who took classes on Southern University's main campus at Baton Rouge this past fall, said she never considered not returning to New Orleans. "I love Dillard because there's this sense of family," she said. "And we've become so much more unified now."

Dillard students attended classes in a cavernous second-floor ballroom, where gray partitions divided the space into 14 "classrooms." But the barriers were hardly soundproof. Students in an urban-studies class could hear the bonjours uttered in a French class meeting a few feet away.

In a kindergarten-education class, Ramona Jean-Perkins, an assistant professor of education at Dillard, discussed "poetry therapy" and asked her students to write a five-line stanza describing their feelings about Hurricane Katrina. One student's poem began, "Displaced, homeless, afraid ... "

Cortez Watkins, a senior and president of the student government, was trying to help returning students feel less displaced in their hotel-home by planning a back-to-school party, but he had yet to find a venue for it.

"We have to get creative to do the things we want to do," Mr. Watkins said. "It's going to be an education in and of itself."

So would simply navigating daily life. The students were required to wear photo-ID badges at all times. To buy textbooks, they had to hop on a shuttle bus that took them to a bookstore across town. Other buses ferried them to Tulane University, where officials had agreed to let Dillard students use libraries and science labs.

Although Dillard officials plan to reopen their campus this fall, Ms. Hughes, said the university's insurance would cover only a portion of the damages. She has spent the last five months raising funds to bolster the federal aid that Dillard receives.

"Dillard has been here for 137 years," she said, "and I feel like the burden was given to me to carry that history forward."

'We Came Back'

Xavier University of Louisiana suffered one-tenth of the damage that Katrina wrought on Dillard but faced its own challenges. The nation's only black and Roman Catholic university was forced to lay off more than a third of its faculty and more than half of its staff last fall (some staff members were later rehired).

But President Norman C. Francis struck a defiant tone when asked if he had considered waiting another semester to reopen his campus. The 74-year-old has presided over Xavier for 38 years, longer than any other sitting college president.

"We are too important to the health of New Orleans and the health of this country to not come back," he said. The small, Jesuit university reports that it has sent more black students to medical and pharmacy schools than any other institution in the country.

"When Katrina came along, it was like someone hitting your little brother," said the president. "I said, You're not going to get away with it."

He forged ahead with repairs, authorizing about $22-million in work that the federal government and insurers have yet to reimburse. He expects the tab eventually to top $35-million.

"We didn't have an endowment, so we had to borrow money," he said. "We did what we had to do."

During an interview last week, Mr. Francis's phone rang repeatedly. The Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers that were supposed to arrive that day to house faculty members would not be ready until spring, so he needed to find more hotel rooms. An administrator stopped by to tell him that the cafeteria would not be ready to serve students the first week, but Mr. Francis wasn't buying that.

The food-services director "swore on the Bible that when the kids got back, the food would be ready," he said. "There's no excuse for that." (Contacted later, a Xavier spokesman said the problem had been ironed out and food would be served, even if it had to be delivered from another college.)

A strip mall across the street that students used to walk to was boarded up and littered with piles of debris, and the president worried about where they would shop and go out to eat.

Still, as he stood on a sixth-floor library balcony and surveyed the campus, he smiled. "You'd never know this campus was under seven feet of water," he said. "People will look to us and say maybe we were visionary or maybe just stupid, but at least we came back."

At Southern University at New Orleans, yellow signs proclaimed "SUNO is back." But the storm had rendered all of the university's buildings unusable. The damage will take months — and an estimated $350-million — to repair. Officials commissioned temporary buildings on a 38-acre stretch of land on the northern edge of its campus, near Lake Pontchartrain. As of late last week, though, the 400 housing trailers that Southern had requested for the site had not arrived, so officials had to make even more-temporary arrangements. They secured 400 rooms for students and employees at a Marriott hotel downtown, and planned to hold classes in a middle school.

Hidden Impacts

On the other side of town, in front of Loyola University New Orleans, the statue of Jesus stood as always, arms outstretched, seeming to welcome people back for the spring semester. Posters reminded students not to miss Saturday night's Swamp Stomp, a popular fall-semester dance at the local zoo that, like so much else, had to be put on hold when Katrina swept through.

The floodwaters had stopped literally at the edge of Loyola's campus, and outwardly the university seemed fine. But closer inspection revealed the full impact of the storm.

Magazines and newspapers on display in the library were eerily dated the week of the hurricane. The streetcar that normally ferries students from St. Charles Avenue to the French Quarter wasn't running. The recreation center, where a skylight had shattered above the indoor pool, was closed for repairs. Workers were busy fixing the roofs of the chapel and another historic building, which had taken a beating. And the student body had shrunk by nearly 600 people.

At a faculty-and-staff convocation, held the Friday before classes were to begin on January 9, the president, the Rev. Kevin W. Wildes, spoke frankly. He announced to a packed auditorium a $24-million shortfall in tuition revenue. Though the university had raised $2.4-million from donors since the hurricane, and hoped to collect $15-million in business-interruption insurance, he said, its current losses for the year were $20-million.

He expressed "deep concern" about Loyola's dependency on tuition, noting that it accounts for 72 percent of net revenue. Many expenses were tied up in salaries for tenured faculty members, none of whom had been cut. He appealed directly to older professors in the audience to consider retiring.

Father Wildes also noted that the city's challenges had become Loyola's. Two-thirds of the university's students normally live off campus. With landlords raising rents in New Orleans, and many apartments still uninhabitable, housing on the campus is tight. Double dorm rooms had become triples, and students were being housed in common rooms. Some faculty and staff members had lost their homes and were commuting to work from out of town or living with friends or in hotels. The university was planning to set up 43 trailers to house them, supplied by FEMA, on a lot that is a 20-minute drive from the campus.

After the convocation closed with a prayer, a few faculty members lingered before heading off to a reception in the library. Georgia C. Gresham, chair of the department of drama and speech, said her house had been destroyed. "I'm the proud owner of a piece of swamp and a pile of bricks," she said. Her department's budget had been cut in half, but the show must go on — literally. Her department would stage Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale on a shoestring budget this year, recycling last spring's set for Nickel and Dimed.

Loyola, like other institutions across the city, had placed heavier teaching loads on its faculty to enable students to make up classes lost in the fall. But Marcus M. Kondkar, an assistant professor of sociology, said he did not mind the extra work. "Most people will bend over backwards to get this place up and running," he said. Mr. Kondkar's house was badly damaged, and he lost all his books and his photographs. "It's been one big Zen exercise in nonattachment," he said.

Gary Dominique, the maintenance manager at Delgado Community College, echoed that sentiment. About half of the college's employees lost their houses in the storm, which left Delgado with $75-million in damages. Roofs caved in. Skylights shattered. And a flood of water people here called "toxic soup" left many walls with black-and-gray splotches of mildew that have climbed all the way to the ceiling. Mr. Dominique has lost half his 20-person crew since the hurricane, and part of his job now includes giving pep talks to his remaining employees.

"In life, everything's temporary," he said. "There will be a beginning and an end to this. The campus is gonna be back, you can feel it in the air. People who lost their homes and cars don't want to lose their jobs, too."

In the college's temporary headquarters on the city's West Bank, employees scrambled to prepare for the new semester, wearing green buttons that said "Come home to Delgado."

In one office, Randall Frederick, the college's coordinator for fiscal services, and Jean Woolledge, a programming analyst in the information-technology department, were folding 843 pay stubs and stuffing them into envelopes. Thanks to such low-tech efforts, Delgado had managed to pay its employees on time every two weeks even though the hurricane had knocked out its computerized payroll system. Folding was tedious work, Mr. Frederick said, "but there isn't a Kinko's to take these to."

Delgado said nearly half of its 17,000 students would return, but that meant the college was losing 50 percent of its revenue. Christopher LeBlanc, a biology instructor stopping by to see about a problem with his paycheck, worried that the college could not afford enough instructors to teach all of its classes. Although Delgado had retained 370 of its 400 full-time professors, it had laid off all of its 900 part-time employees.

Following a convocation for Delgado employees, professors shared their worries.

"I can see some enthusiasm waning," said Kathleen Joffrion, an assistant professor of visual communications, who must teach an additional class this semester because of Delgado's cutbacks. "How can you keep enthusiasm up when the campus looks like a piece of trash? How are we going to keep students coming back?"

Nonetheless, Ms. Joffrion, who said she loved teaching at Delgado, looked forward to the semester. "We were advised to be compassionate and listen to students' stories," she said. "Being someone to talk to is going to be a big part of our job."

Being Available

That was the theme last week at Tulane, where about 150 resident advisers participated in an intensive orientation to prepare for students' return a few days later.

"Part of what you'll be doing is managing expectations," said Cynthia Cherrey, vice president for student affairs. "This is not the New Orleans that they left." Nor is it the Tulane that they left on August 29, just hours after settling into their dormitories at the start of freshman orientation.

Hundreds of faculty and staff positions have been cut — mostly in engineering and medicine — along with several majors and sports teams, but the university has vowed to strengthen its focus on undergraduates and immerse them in the work of rebuilding New Orleans through mandatory community service.

Students who spent the fall semester dispersed among 592 colleges and universities would reunite with their fall-semester classmates at dinners with Tulane deans aboard a cruise-ship-turned-campus-dorm. (See article on Page A14.) They would talk about what they liked best about their host institutions and how practices there might be transferred to Tulane.

The resident advisers were brimming with excitement and full of questions.

"To get a refund for my fall-semester books, do I have to have my books?" one RA asked. "Mine are under water."

"Does Tulane have a plan for if we get hit with another hurricane? I don't know if we will be welcomed back to all of those 592 colleges," asked another.

"Do I have to boil the water and save it, or is it safe to drink?"

Probably not, yes, and no, replied Ms. Cherrey, to whom the term "campus environment" has taken on a whole new meaning since Katrina.

"I've become an expert on toxins in the soil," she told the students. "I never thought, as vice president of student affairs, I'd have to know about dirt."

During a break in their training, several RA's led a reporter on a tour of their refurbished ground-floor apartments, many of which had to be gutted. Hundreds of new plastic-encased mattresses leaned against trees outside dormitories as moving and construction crews swept, hammered, and hauled the last bits of debris from the buildings.

Kristin Lynch, a junior majoring in cellular and molecular biology, said she had just met her 40 freshman girls when the order came to evacuate. "I can't wait to see them and reassure them that everything's going to be fine," said Ms. Lynch, who spent the semester at Louisiana State University at Shreveport.

When she returned to the campus in November to check on her belongings, her "heart was broken" to see the damage the flood had rendered, but thrilled to find her pink-and-purple bicycle, which she'd had since she was 7, still chained in front of her dormitory — rusty, but rideable.

"It was a pleasant surprise," she said. "Kind of like a symbol, I guess, that I could make it through the storm."