As part of its efforts to aid Hurricane Katrina victims, ASU will host up to 60 Tulane University architecture students.
Julie Russ, the director of communications for ASU's College of Design, said all fifth-year thesis students from the architecture school in New Orleans and five or six members of its faculty would resume their classes at ASU next week.
"They are in their last year of study, which would be a really tough point to have to figure out somewhere else to go," she added.
ASU President Michael Crow said Tulane students lost their transcripts during the disaster.
"Basically all the records of those institutions are destroyed," Crow said. "We're admitting them on their word."
Russ said more than 40 out of the approximately 60 Tulane students have been contacted about the move so far, but it has been difficult to get ahold of them all.
"We are relying on students contacting each other and contacting Tulane," she said.
The architecture school at ASU is still working out the details of where the Tulane students will live and work, Russ said. She added they believe there is studio space for the students, though architecture students need a large workspace for their projects.
"We hope to get this whole group of students back together and working here together," Russ said.
Jared Bowers, a third-year architecture student from Tulane, began classes at ASU Wednesday.
Bowers, a native of Glendale, Ariz., said he is encouraging all of his friends from Tulane to attend ASU.
"Everyone is really welcoming, helpful and receptive," he said. "It's been awesome."
Russ said the ASU dean of architecture, Duke Rider, prompted Tulane's move because he graduated from the private university's undergraduate program and helped design structures near the Mississippi river in New Orleans.
She said that Rider contacted Tulane's dean of architecture, Reed Kroloff, a former ASU faculty member, to elicit the school's move.
"There's a strong connection between ASU and Tulane," Russ said.
Crow said Tulane's fifth-year architecture class would likely work with ASU students to help rebuild New Orleans.
Russ said the students might pick this up as their thesis project.
"I would imagine that, keeping in mind what they've been through and where they spent the last five years of their life, there will probably be some students who will focus their thesis on what happened," she said.
Bowers said he hopes Tulane could be rebuilt before he graduates.
"I love Tulane," he said. "I can't see myself graduating from anywhere else."
Reach the reporter at tara.brite@asu.edu.
