College student persistence has been the central focus of higher education for decades. Specifically, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have directed their attention to increasing the retention and graduation rates of African American college students. Postsecondary institutions face greater challenges with college student persistence after a major crisis. This study explored college student persistence at a historically Black university ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Given the devastation caused by the storm, this study examined college students' decisions for continuing their educational pursuits at the historically Black university which is a temporary trailer campus created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The temporary campus has 45 trailers designated for classrooms, science labs, a library, a dining facility, and office space for faculty and staff. Students enrolled for the 2007 Spring Semester (N= 301) were asked to complete the Decisions to Resume Educational Pursuits (DREP) instrument that was designed specifically for this study. Predictor variables including, sex, residence status, Pell Grant status, campus housing status, college grade point average, attendance before Hurricane Katrina, and having parents or another close relative attend SUNO were used to predict educational aspirations, campus environment, and financial aid eligibility status as the reason college students continued their education after Hurricane Katrina. The ANOVA for the regression of educational aspirations revealed that the model predicted an overall significant F (7,241) = 4.824, p < .01 and 10% of the variance in educational aspirations was explained by the model. No significant relationship was found with campus environment. As was the case with educational aspirations, the ANOVA for the regression of financial aid eligibility status revealed that the model predicted an overall significant F (7,241) = 4.309, p < .01 and 9% of the variance in financial aid eligibility was explained by the model. A multiple regression model resulted in a statistically significant relationship for attending SUNO before Hurricane Katrina and educational aspirations. Also, results from multiple regression resulted in a statistically significant relationship for sex and financial aid eligibility, along with a relationship for Pell Grant status and financial aid eligibility status.

On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and storm surges breached levees flooding much of New Orleans, Louisiana. One month after the storm, sediment was collected and toxicity was tested using Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes) embryos. Sediments with the highest contaminant levels showed the highest embryonic mortality and most delayed development. However, no sediment caused an increased mutant frequency. When the most contaminated site was resampled in February, 2006 contaminant levels and toxicity decreased. During toxicity testing, approximately 20% of embryos incubated with sediment from one of these sites died and turned red. A red bacterium was isolated that is Gram-negative, cocco-baccilus, non-motile, and most similar to Hahella chejuensis based on genetic and metabolic tests. This bacterium caused 100% infection at 108 bacterial cells per ml and variable infection at lower doses. This study was the first to examine biological effects of exposure to post-Hurricane Katrina sediments.

Over the past thirty-five years, anthropogenic disturbances around Bayou Lacombe have altered its fish assemblage. In 2005, the impact of Hurricane Katrina on southeast Louisiana presented me with a unique opportunity to explore the effects of a catastrophic storm on the Bayou. I explored the effects of natural and human disturbances on the Bayou's fish assemblage by electrofishing six historically sampled stations. My research goals were to determine: 1) which Bayou Lacombe fish assemblages were most resilient to the multiple effects of Hurricane Katrina, 2) if there were significant differences in the Bayou's fish assemblages over the past 35 years based on historical fish assemblage data, and 3) what are the drivers of fish assemblage change in Bayou Lacombe. I found significant differences in upstream fish assemblages before and after Hurricane Katrina in the Bayou. I also documented the disappearance of nearly all cyprinid species over the past 35 years.

This thesis examines the Louisiana legislature's justifications for supporting inclusionary zoning to address the shortage in affordable housing since hurricane Katrina and compares the model ordinance, passed in 2007, to ordinances in San Francisco, Denver, and San Diego. These large city ordinances offer an assessment of older versus newer ordinances as well as strict versus lenient provisions within a mandatory ordinance. This thesis acknowledges the model ordinance is strong and accepts its recommendation to convene a housing task force to study implementation in New Orleans. In order to maximize the benefits of inclusionary zoning this task force should be convened quickly to undertake local housing market research to determine the right set-aside, threshold, and incentives to create a strong mandatory ordinance. This group must also focus on implementing key model ordinance provisions like setting aside units for very low-, low- and moderate-income households within each development and determining the ideal density bonus.

Humans have an innate tendency to attach themselves to objects on their cultural landscape. After a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, people seem to hold on to objects left behind by the disaster. This paper examines several of the concepts and reasons as to why attachments may have formed to objects left on New Orleans' landscape after Hurricane Katrina. I explored human reactions after a natural disaster, and discussed how memories, collective and individual, often lead to personal attachment to objects. In an attempt to get a better understanding of this phenomenon, 250 surveys were distributed to residents in the New Orleans metro area. The surveys were used as a tool to discover if attachments were formed and if so, what led to the attachment. The results from the survey revealed that 38% of the people surveyed formed an attachment to an object left by Hurricane Katrina.

The theme of this study is spatial mismatch, a concept that gave rise to an ever-expanding body of research concerned with how and why residential and employment distributions have shifted within cities and across metropolitan areas. The concept grew out of John F. Kain's research on how racial discrimination and segregation affects the spatial patterns of people/subgroups and jobs in the postwar American urban environment. Specifically, "Housing Segregation" posits that housing-market discrimination is at the root of increased unemployment among inner-city, nonwhite workers; concurrently, the pace and volume of decentralization (of residents and employment) from central-cities reinforces low-income, overwhelmingly African-American isolation and immobility. This study contributes to the New Orleans literature by providing a pre- and post-Katrina snapshot of spatial mismatch. The analysis addresses research questions aimed at gauging the extent to which mismatch and job-isolation have changed for poor workers in the New Orleans metro area since Hurricane Katrina.

Les Bon Temps is a collection of nine essays written about New Orleans between 2005 and 2007. Though not specifically about the effects of hurricane Katrina on the city, this collection provides a personal glimpse of post-Katrina New Orleans though the eyes of the author. The essays address subjects such as race relations, public protest, tap water quality, post-traumatic depression, energy monopolies, lifestyle, culture, and evacuation.

In 2006, Steven Oakley, an eighteen-year-old high school senior from Pennsylvania, is bribed by his father to go on a volunteer trip to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, Louisiana. During his time, he meets a broken family whose experiences change Steven’s perspective on his own privileged life.

acase@tulane.edu / 1 / Melissa Schigoda

Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the American Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. Biloxi, Mississippi, a small town on the coast, was one of the towns devastated by the storm. A decade after the storm, recovery remains an ongoing process. My ethnographic research in 2006, 2010, and 2011 and media and historic document analysis throughout these ten years explore this recovery process and what pre-disaster cultural, social, political, and economic issues have shaped Biloxi and Biloxians' recovery. The small coastal city of Biloxi sits on the Mississippi Sound of the Gulf of Mexico. The city's history and residents' identities are intertwined with this waterfront location. Biloxians rely on the Gulf for recreation and job opportunities, particularly in the long-standing seafood and tourism industries. Scattered piers are filled with recreational and shrimping boats. Casinos dot the shoreline where seafood processing plants once stood. Many Biloxians still proudly identify with the city's coastal location, neighborhoods they were raised in or lived in before Katrina, their perceived socioeconomic class status, and their own and their ancestor's racial, ethnic, and national identities. However, Biloxi's waterfront location also makes the city prone to hurricane strikes. Historic storms like Camille in 1969 and Fort Lauderdale in 1947 have affected the city's development and influenced residents' beliefs and behaviors during their preparation for Katrina. Biloxians were aware of Katrina's predicted landfall in the days and hours before the storm, but this history of hurricanes influenced many residents' decisions to remain in the city for the storm. Many residents I spoke to described their belief that survival in previous storms indicated they would survive Katrina. Other pre-Katrina processes influenced Biloxians' preparations for, coping with, and response to the disaster, as expected in vulnerability theory. Poorer and working class residents were less able to prepare for or evacuate before the storm, if they chose to do so. Residents in higher risk neighborhoods like East Biloxi found themselves affected more severely by the storm, often losing much of their homes and lives. Biloxians' with less political and economic power struggled to keep their voice heard as city and other government officials laid the framework for recovery. Pre-Katrina Biloxians' cultural, political, and economic inequalities directly affected the recovery process. To better understand these influences, in this research I use a political economy approach to describe and analyze Biloxi's recovery from Katrina. To strengthen this analysis, I have also drawn on theories regarding vulnerability and resilience, risk and uncertainty, and cultural-historical context. Each of these approaches contributes to a better understanding of how post-disaster recovery processes work - particularly in the case of post-Katrina Biloxi. This work also builds on disaster anthropology and social science research that rejects the concept of disasters as isolated events and instead argues that disasters are influenced by broader and long-standing cultural, political, and economic processes. In this work I also bring this argument for a holistic approach into long-term disaster recovery. The holistic anthropological approach to the post-Katrina Biloxi that I have used here reveals the importance of understanding a range of facts and processes that exist before, during, and after a disaster to explore the recovery process. Post-Katrina Biloxi is as much a product of pre-Katrina Biloxi as it is a product of the effects of the hurricane itself.