Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/59979
From Editors the Reconnecting We often take for granted the circumstantial and technological connections between and among us. We assume the immovability of a physical academic campus and the technological inevitability of land-based phone lines and cell phone, Internet, and e-mail service. One may fail, but all? Unlikely. But as we learned in August, when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the schools and communities along the U.S. Gulf Coast, these connections are not unassailable. They can be frighteningly disrupted. In some cases, they can be destroyed. In an article in this issue's Headlines department, Sharon Shinn asked deans at busi- ness schools at the University of New Orleans, Loyola University New Orleans, Tulane University, and University of SouthernMississippi how they've coped with the unex- pected crash course in disaster management that was presented by Hurricane Katrina. They discussed the Herculean challenges of assessing the damage, resuming opera- tions, and rebuilding their campuses. But the main challenge, they said, wasn't about fixing buildings or restarting classes. It was about contacting faculty, staff, students, and parents, now scattered across the globe, in Katrina's aftermath. It was about reestab- lishing those connections and reuniting their displaced and dispersed communities. Such was the case for Harold Doty, dean of the College of Business at the University of SouthernMississippi. Although the university's Hattiesburg campus and college of business were largely spared, buildings on its Gulfport campus, located just across the street from theMississippi Sound, sustained extensive damage. Some struc- tures were completely demolished or beyond repair. "The entire first floors of some buildings are gone, ripped down to the studs," he says. But those are just buildings, says Doty. For him, the communications blackout was his biggest source of fear and anxiety in the hours and days after Katrina had died away. "It took me a week to find our faculty who live on the coast. I didn't have emergency cell phone numbers for their families," he says. "The big lesson for me was how impor- tant it is, in a catastrophe like this, to make sure you can reach out and just make sure everybody's alive." While effective risk management requires organizations to back up data and create redundant systems, Doty offers this crucial recommendation to business schools: "Think about your emergency communications procedures." It may be hard to con- ceive of a situation where technology fails and traditional connections are cut off, but Katrina proves it can happen. As Doty and other b-school administrators have found, access to satellite phones, lists of emergency contact information, and check-in proto- cols for faculty, staff, and students can prove invaluable in a worst-case scenario. Buildings can be rebuilt, say Doty and his colleagues. What's important is that a school be able to find and help its faculty, staff, and students in a crisis. After all, it's one thing to set up video conferences, hold online class discussions, or send e-mails to colleagues on an ordi- nary day. It's quite another to be able to connect—and recon- nect—when it really, truly counts. s z 6 BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 BILL BASCOM