Loyola rebounds after disaster

Hurricane Katrina hurt everyone and everything, but according to University President the Rev. Kevin Wildes S.J., Loyola is a stronger university than ever because of it.

After the hurricane had passed Wildes was given a mandate by the Board of Trustees to balance the budget.

"We're like most universities, our economics are pretty straight forward," Wildes said. "We're tuition driven and our biggest costs are salaries. So one of the biggest things I had to do was reduce the overall cost."

A major move taken to help balance the budget was putting a hiring freeze into effect. "If a faculty or staff member had left we froze those positions," Wildes said. "We weren't doing any new hiring."

Certain programs Loyola offered before the hurricane were cut as well. "Sometimes what something like Katrina does, is it forces you to refocus yourself," Wildes said.

Programs such as physics were temporarily suspended after the storm, but others such as broadcast journalism and elementary education remain missing from the curriculum.

Seventeen faculty members were fired after their programs were terminated. Of those 17, 11 held tenure. In an official report put out by the American Association of University Professors Loyola is accused of, "...gross disregard of its own applicable policies and of the Association-recommended standards with which those policies comport." The AAUP is holding Loyola in violation of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure as well as the universities own tenure policies.

Eight lawsuits have been brought against the school, seven of which have been settled outside of court.

The final professor waiting for their trial is Mary Blue, former broadcast communications professor. Her court date is set for Nov. 8.

Loyola is currently still on the AAUP's censure list of it's violations of tenure policy.

Loyola was able to fall back on a business interruption insurance policy to bridge the budget deficit.

"Using that money to balance the budget while we rebuilt enrollment allowed us to rebuild in a systematic and careful way," Wildes said.

Loyola had to maintain a projected enrollment size and slowly expand in order to rebuild its first year enrollment, according to University Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Ed Kvet.

"As part of our initial planning for the Strategic Plan one of the initial decisions made was the right size for undergraduate enrollment based on considerations such as facilities, program enrollment capacity, and future faculty and staff resources," Kvet said.

According to Wildes, the university is now in a stronger position because of the cut backs and careful planning done after Hurricane Katrina.

"A lot of other universities across the country are doing the kind of painful things we did five years ago in terms of balancing and budget cuts," Wildes said. "In a certain sense we're actually ahead of the curve."

Loyola is now growing while most universities are dealing with economic problems, according to Kvet.

This has given Loyola the opportunity to become even more competitive when hiring new faculty.

The university is expanding its facilities as well.

"Within the next five years based on our capital improvement plan, our facilities will be far superior than before Katrina," Kvet said.

Though Wildes believes Loyola emerged from Hurricane Katrina a better university than it had been five years ago, the memories and damage the storm caused cannot be forgotten.

"I wouldn't relish going back and doing any of this over again," he said.

Sam Winstrom can be reached at sdwinstr@loyno.edu