The furious winds and storm surges of Hurricane Katrina -- the “big one” nobody thought would ever hit – and the catastrophic aftermath of leveebreaks and major flooding have changed life dramatically in New Orleans. The University of New Orleans miraculously continued to educate students starting on October 10 from its Jefferson Center. UNO resumed regular business on the Lakefront campus with the opening of a university spring semester on January 30. Like all institutions of higher learning in the city, it is struggling financially as a result of a dramatic enrollment drop from 17,000 to 12,000 students.

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On February 17, 2006 the Austrian ministerial council approved a 1 Million Dollar grant to The University of New Orleans.

From left: Director Günter Bischof, Vice- Chancellor Rrobert Dupont, Chancellor Tim Ryan, Wolfgang Stoiber (ERP Fonds, Vienna), Eugen Stark (ERP Fonds, Vienna), and Austrian Ambassador to the US, Dr. Eva Nowotny

Univ. of Innsbruck’s Katrina Benefit: Friends in Need are Friends Indeed

From left: Director Günter Bischof, Vice-Chancellor Robert Dupont, Chancellor Tim Ryan, Mrs. Ellen Palli, Dean Anton Pelinka, Ambassador Dr. Eva Nowotny

From left: Marton Erdei, Student from Hungary, Dr. Stephen Gergatz, Hungarian Hon. Consul, Dr. Bobby Eason, Chancellor’s Office, Irene Ziegler, Coordinator Prague Summer Program, Ambassador András Simonyi and his wife, Dr. Eliza Ghil, Chair, Department of Foreign Languages, Director Günter Bischof

After a tour of the storm ravaged city,the Hungarian Ambassador to the US, Dr. András Simonyi, and his wife visited Center Austria to brainstorm about possible ways and projects how to applyHungary’s lessons of history to UNO and New Orleans today.

Roman Deininger, a Ph.D. student of Political Science at the University of Vienna, was Resident Junior Research Fellow at Center Austria from April to June 2006. He is a University of Munich graduate and working on a dissertation on religion and politics in the United States. While in New Orleans he had the chance to meet Jimmy Carter after the former President taught Sunday School in Plains, Georgia. He also received research grants from the Johnson and Bush Presidential Libraries in Texas. Besides his research endeavors he covered the New Orleans mayoral election for German newspapers, among them the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.Center Austria was delighted to have Roman Deininger as part of the team and we wish him well and hope to see him back in New Orleans!

Personal accounts from Inge Korber, Rosa Maria Mulser, the rare Johannes Bohacek, and Stefan Friedrich.

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The following universities have accepted displaced students from the University of Innsbruck after Katrina. We owe them our deepest gratitude for their cooperation, flexibility, and patience.

The University of Miami
The University of Arkansas (Fayetteville)
San Diego State University
The University of Arkansas (Little Rock)
Memphis State University
The University of British Columbia
Cornell University
The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss)
Georgia State University
The University of Florida (Gainesville)
Purdue University
King’s College, PA
University of Texas, Austin
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Texas A&M
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

(as told by his father, Jochen Kranz, UNO M.A., MBA) I remember the days after Katrina hit as if through a haze. The fact that my family and I made it through the storm so well continues to amaze me. My partner, Dawn, was nine months pregnant as Katrinaapproached. She had been put on bed rest, so evacuating via car was out of the question. We made the very difficult decision to ride out the storm, bought plenty of water, canned foods and fruit for a few days, boarded up the house and sandbagged all entry ways.

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Ferrara’s Supermarket on Elysian Fields.  All that is left of the Lakefront landmark that served generations of international students and faculty

Drag lines at theLondon Ave. Canal

Empty FEMA trailers on UNO’s East campus

A group of 30 University of Vienna geography students visited UNO and NewOrleans with their faculty leader, ProfessorHeinz Fassmann, on April 1, 2006. Center Austria organized a two hour seminar for the students with presentations on the state of higher education and UNO, the landscape of New Orleans, New Orleans architecture, and the Louisiana land loss problem -- all pre andpost-Katrina.