After Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, the medical school at Tulane University lost classrooms, computers, even cadavers. But it promises to reopen next week - in Texas.
It's a logistical feat that Tulane is pulling off with several Texas medical institutions. Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, UT Medical Branch in Galveston and Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine will open their classrooms and teaching hospitals to evacuees.
UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and University of North Texas Health Science Center are taking in some researchers.
"There's just no textbook for this. Nobody's ever been through anything like this," said Ian Taylor, Tulane's medical dean.
Texas campuses have already absorbed more than 5,000 college students displaced by the hurricane. Be it at the University of Houston or Texas Christian University or Dallas County Community Colleges, those students learn alongside others already enrolled.
Not so with the Tulane School of Medicine. Those students will remain Tulane students. They'll be taught and graded by Tulane professors who also were forced out of New Orleans. They'll stick together through clinical rotations. They'll just do all that at several Texas campuses.
Keeping their Tulane identity reflects a culture unique to medical schools: Students in each entering class take all courses together the first and second years. Then they are assigned to small groups for hospital rotations in their third and fourth years. The setup is supposed to build trust and camaraderie among people who will make life-or-death decisions on the job.
Plus, unlike most undergrads or law students, medical students need far more than just classroom space. They need cadavers for anatomy class. They need clinics and hospitals for rotations.
QUICK THINKING
Officials with Tulane and their Texas host schools have had to work fast. Medical education is fast-paced and intense, so it's important that students not lose ground. Tulane had been in session three weeks when Katrina hit, and students will have missed four weeks when they resume in Texas on Sept 26.
For UT-Houston, Tulane's predicament brings back memories of Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. The medical school lost power and flooded, and was closed for several days.
But "it was a walk in the park compared to Tulane because Houston was not destroyed," said Stanley Schultz, medical dean at UT-Houston.
UT-Houston did lose its anatomy lab, so students went to nearby Baylor, where they shared cadavers.
Baylor will now do the same for Tulane students.
Many researchers at Tulane lost tissue samples and other work in the disaster.
At UT-Southwestern, pharmacology professor and researcher David Mangelsdorf is opening his lab to a Tulane researcher who studies breast cancer. The researcher, Steven Hill, lost cell lines and chemicals vital to his work.
The Dallas campus is hosting a few other researchers from Tulane and Louisiana State University.
UNT's Health Science Center has taken in a Tulane researcher who was going there in January anyhow for a new job, heading two departments in public health. Eric Johnson studies viruses that cause cancer in chickens, cows and pigs. He lost samples that were being stored in subfreezing temperatures in his lab at Tulane - part of 20 years of work from a National Institutes of Health grant.
The center has also taken in three researchers from Louisiana State University.
The Internet has helped Tulane pull off the big move quickly.
The university has set up a Web site (www.som.tulane.bcm.edu) to keep students and faculty informed about housing, classes and other necessities. One page invites students, staff and faculty to sign in and tell where they are.
Some students have posted messages: "Currently at Baylor in Houston. Forward any questions to me and I can try to ask the right people here." ... "Safe and sound in Canada; looking forward to seeing everyone in Houston!" ... "I'll still try to bring some bbq ribs with me for orientation."
SETTLING IN
First-year med student Niels Olson was supposed to take his first exam, in biochemistry, the day Katrina pounded New Orleans. Now he and his wife and two children are staying with his mom in College Station. Olson plans to head to Houston once he finds a place to stay, then return to College Station for visits.
He said he was deployed to faraway places in the Navy, but this is a new experience. His family had just moved from Annapolis, Md., and bought a house in Jefferson Parish, La., when the hurricane came.
"I think there's going to be a massive transition period trying to figure out which end is up," he said.
Amid all the commotion, Tulane needs to keep up with the regular activities of a medical school - like handling applications for future students and helping fourth-year students apply for residencies.
The admissions office had reviewed about 1,500 of the 7,000 applications they received for fall 2006, said Marc J. Kahn, associate dean for admissions and student affairs. He and his staff are working out of Baylor's space in Houston.
"This seemed like a really daunting task with no light at the end of the tunnel, but each day things fall into place a little bit more," he said. "It's to the point where this is what we need to do, and we're going to do it."
