News & Features
MPP Students Seek Policy Solutions in Post-Katrina New Orleans
By Sidney Cruze
More than a year after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, the region is struggling to repair and rebuild. This fall, 11 Duke MPP students piled into a van and drove 13 hours to New Orleans, where they spent their fall break meeting with local leaders and listening to their concerns. The students believed that their education provided them with analytical skills that could help make a difference. They wanted to seek policy solutions that could contribute to the city’s recovery.
Their trip laid the foundation for the Duke-New Orleans Post-Katrina Partnership, a Sanford Institute-based group that will encourage client work, internships and master’s projects focused on New Orleans.
“We see this visit as only the start of a sustainable partnership between Duke and the Gulf Coast,” said Rob Lalka, MPP ’08. “It’s an opportunity to make a difference unlike any other.”
The idea for the trip took shape when first-year MPP students Amanda Sheldon, a Tulane graduate, and Lalka, a former New Orleans Americorps volunteer, met and discovered they shared a love for the Crescent City.
“We talked about the realities facing New Orleans a year after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and how many people have forgotten the city,” Sheldon says. “We all focus on 9/11, but Katrina is just as important from a policy perspective. This is the first time in America we have the chance to totally rebuild a city. The question is, how do we rebuild it right?”
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