NEW ORLEANS – For all the talk about how much has changed at Loyola University, the scene here on a Tuesday afternoon has all the sights and sounds of any other college campus.

Outside the Danna Student Center, students mill around on a mid-afternoon break from class. Under the sturdy gaze of a statue of St. Ignatius Loyola, they spread out on benches and the library steps to catch the early glimpses of spring weather. Aside from the “Pie a Theta Phi” pie-throwing contest that’s attracting some attention, it’s a regular day at college.

Only it’s different.

“Everything is so fragile,” says Fr. Kevin Wildes, S.J., the university president. From the second floor of Marquette Hall, Wildes’ office provides a sweeping view of the pristine Loyola campus. But Wildes has had a firsthand view of those less picturesque aspects of Loyola that have become part of the school’s reality over the past year: sudden power outages on campus, a concern about whether or not the school can retain all of its staff and reminders every day on local television that the New Orleans recovery effort is far from complete.

Long after cleaning away the last of the debris from campus, uncertainty over the future of this Jesuit school of some 3,000 students has emerged as an enduring consequence of Hurricane Katrina. Although the university closed for the fall 2005 semester, it sustained only minor damage in comparison to harder hit parts of the city – about $5 million in total – and reopened the following semester.

Their semester at Loyola over before it had officially begun, Loyola students made emergency transfers to over 500 colleges and universities nationwide, including Georgetown, which admitted 83 students from Loyola and Tulane University. But since reopening campus, Wildes has faced a challenge larger than just picking up the pieces: he is now at the head of a school that has had to change rapidly to cope with the long-term effects of the storm.

Although more than 90 percent of students returned to New Orleans when Loyola reopened in 2006, applications have steadily fallen over the past two years as lingering concerns over the city’s safety have discouraged would-be applicants. In 2006, the first year after the hurricane, 3,100 students applied – down 1,000 from the year before. That year’s freshman class was composed of 530 students. The previous year’s freshmen numbered 970.

Contending with negative perceptions of the city has been proven difficult, Wildes said, especially as government and bureaucratic inefficiency have hindered slowed the progress of the recovery made by business and the nonprofit sector.

“Every aspect of the city is broken,” he said.

Although enrollment is lower, Wildes sees says Loyola has come a long way from where it was when it reopened. After running a budget deficit last year, Loyola will balance its books this year. But that accomplishment has come at a cost. The university implemented a freeze on new spending last year. More significantly, in March 2006, Wildes proposed a restructuring program called “Pathways,” which cut or suspended 27 programs and dismissed 17 tenured or tenure-track faculty.

The restructuring program eliminated degree programs in computer science and education and scaled back the university’s communications offerings. The elimination of the broadcast journalism program, which has produced a number of local television journalists in the New Orleans area, was met with particularly strong criticism. Several language and music majors and minors were suspended.

Senior Kelly McCarty, who spent her fall 2005 semester living in Springfield, Va. and taking classes at Georgetown, says that as a psychology major, she wasn’t directly affected by Pathways. But as she looks forward to graduation, McCarty says Katrina has nonetheless left an indelible impression on her college experience.

It’s “thrown me for a loop,” she says. As a result of the chaos in her life after the hurricane, McCarty says she isn’t on track to apply to graduate schools on schedule, and will instead take a year off and work in New Orleans

Daniel Straight, another senior, was in his third semester as a computer science major when the university announced the Pathways program. . Though he was initially told he would have to change majors, Straight says the computer science department arranged for him finish.

“I’m still not happy about the decision, but I’m glad I’m going to be able to graduate in CS,” Straight says.

But Wildes says the restructuring was necessary to right Loyola’s financial ship in the wake of lower enrollment numbers. “The programs we dropped were under-enrolled for a number of years and were not central to mission,” he says.

Although the changes stemming from the restructuring contribute to only part of the uncertainty that Loyola faces, Wildes says that his participation in rebuilding the city has energized him. Wildes, who previously worked at Georgetown beginning in 1993 and served as an associate dean in the College before he was appointed president of Loyola in 2004, is working with the city government as part of the recovery. He was recently appointed chairman of a new ethics review board for the city, and says the board plans to hire an inspector general to look into waste and corruption in the recovery.

“It’s an incredible experience to be involved in rebuilding a city like this,” he says.

Around the university, even as Katrina’s lingering effects remain impossible to ignore, other find cause for hope. Although applications are down again this year – the school hopes to get 3,200 altogether – Debbie Stieffel, the dean of admissions and enrollment management, noted that the visitors to campus have increased tenfold over last year, and that 300 families were scheduled to attend an open house last Saturday.

“We need to recognize the good things that are happening and continue to happen,” she says.

Still, as Loyola looks to the future, the total impact of Hurricane Katrina will ultimately exact from the school remains uncertain. The storm has already changed the nature of a Loyola education, the school’s physical size – and even the type of student who attends. Before the storm, around 26 percent of applicants were from Louisiana; since 2006, that figure jumped by 10 percentage points.

McCarty says that Katrina has changed her Loyola experience. She now dedicates much of her time to two relief organizations, https://levee.org and the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund. On campus, as a psychology major, she has taken particular note of a new psychology of disasters course added after the hurricane.

“You’re constantly reminded of it,” she says. “They’re just little things.”

McCarty’s keeps a realistic outlook on the ways in which her school changed after the storm, and is doing her part on the road to recovery. Working in the Psychology Department, she calls prospective students with an interest in psychology, doing her own small part to contribute to the sense of normal university life that has been forever altered.

“I think it’ll survive,” she says. “It’s just going to take some time.”