Incoming students wrestled with one of the year’s toughest public policy problems— rebuilding New Orleans and other areas affected by Hurricane Katrina—for the 2005 Dean’s Challenge.

The Challenge aims to get students thinking about real-world public policy while prepping them for their time at Harris, said Dorian Warren, a postdoctoral fellow and one of the 2005 Dean’s Challenge judges. In previous years, students have divided into groups to tackle various policy concerns, such as corruption in the Cook County Forest Preserve or Wal-Mart’s move into Chicago, but this fall every student addressed the same issue: post- Katrina recovery. “This is probably one of the most pressing public policy problems of our time and why not put 122 incoming student brains to focus on that?” Warren said.

Students worked together in four teams comprised of representatives from the business, environmental, and civil rights advocacy communities, as well as local and federal government. The teams had to determine the scope and scale of the devastation and establish priorities for reconstruction.

Each team drafted a strategic plan that was presented to the Dean and several faculty members. Students were asked to consider rebuilding or relocating New Orleans, while accounting for sources and allocation of funds for private property owners and businesses. In addition, they were tasked with prioritizing infrastructure projects and identifying the authorities responsible for decision making.

“It serves its purpose if it gets everyone's analytical juices flowing before they start classes that Monday,” said Associate Professor Lloyd Gruber, the Challenge’s faculty organizer. “But it can also be an exercise in frustration. All of the stakeholder groups have their own distinctive agendas and their own set of ideas about how the reconstruction effort should proceed. Pretty soon, though, they discover that the only way to make progress as a team is to compromise, which then raises the question of how much and with whom. As in the real world, abstract political principles and objective analysis often gave way to hard-nosed bargaining, which is itself an important lesson.”

Each student team made a final presentation that considered all of the different constituencies, Warren said. “They did a good job of pleasing everybody under a difficult constraint.”

The incoming students were pleased to have the opportunity to analyze and discuss such a timely topic. “How could real-life tragedy and impending policy conundrums not be a perfect scenario?” said Aimee Dawson, MPP’07.

For Felicity A. Vabulas, MPP’07 “it was wonderful to know that we were addressing an extremely heated, recent event that in some shape or fashion, has already touched each of our lives.”

Jenn Q. Goddu