In the Storm’s Wake: Emergency Management at Tulane University After Hurricane Katrina

Abstract

In the last twenty years, some of the most high profile emergencies in the United States have occurred on college campuses. Accordingly, the ability to effectively manage large-scale crises has never been of greater importance for American higher education. However, many campuses still struggle to prepare for these events. Although the academic literature provides accounts of institutional responses to emergencies, there has been no examination of the long-term effects that large-scale emergencies have on an institution’s subsequent approach to emergency management. Does enduring a large-scale emergency fundamentally change the way university leaders consider effective emergency management and, if so, how is this translated into practice? This dissertation explores this question by analyzing the reverberations of one of the most devastating emergencies in recent higher education history: the evacuation and temporary closure of Tulane University in response to Hurricane Katrina. The study gains insight into the hurricane’s lasting impact on Tulane’s emergency preparations and procedures through qualitative interview data from conversations with current and former administrative leaders at the university (n=20). I analyze these data using Leonard & Howitt’s (2007) framework for emergency management, which asserts that making specific distinctions among emergencies may facilitate more effective preparations for events that are difficult to anticipate. This research is the first application of Leonard and Howitt’s (2007) framework to a collegiate setting. Findings suggest that the administrators who facilitated Tulane’s response to Hurricane Katrina exhibited the unique capabilities Leonard and Howitt (2007) deem necessary to manage an unprecedented disaster. However, the changes in the university’s post-Katrina emergency planning appear to have been oriented towards enhancing preparations for future routine incidents and did not formally incorporate the specific capabilities that had facilitated their success during the response to Hurricane Katrina.