Hurricane damage at University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast

Thankfully disasters don’t happen everyday.  But when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, it had widespread impacts. The UW felt the shockwaves and decided to help by providing space for students and faculty who had been displaced. 

UW Biology invited two faculty, one researcher, and five undergraduates into the department this year. Some of the students came to Seattle to seek the safety of family with only the clothes on their back.

Dr. Judy Williams, from the Biological Sciences Department at University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast is now here as visiting assistant professor for the year. Her university was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, and although classes were scheduled to begin in October in temporary classrooms in an old hospital, no laboratory space was available for either teaching or research.  We invited her to teach one course at Friday Harbor in the fall and two courses in Seattle for the winter and spring quarters (BIO350 and BIO356).  Williams arrived at FHL in mid-October with two of her undergraduate students, Shannon Smith and  Shaunna Harris. Smith is currently staying with her mother who lives in Seattle and applied to the UW under the Hurricane Relief Program.  She is helping Dr. Williams with her immunocytochemical studies on a neuropeptide in copepods.  Shaunna Harris, an honors student who has been working on an NSF-funded project this past summer, had most of her data on lipid metabolism in gastropods destroyed by the storm.  She has worked hard to collect more data to finish her honors thesis by the end of fall quarter and hopefully still present at SICB this January.

Another professor, Dr. Kevin Delaney, from Xavier University in New Orleans, is now here teaching BIO356 and BIO409 this year. And Alex Ortiz, an undergraduate from Tulane University in New Orleans is working at the Hutch through a Biology-related research laboratory.