This is NOT good. But oh yeah, things are just fine and dandy here. Right.
wwltv.com
Entergy considering at least partial move of headquarters
09:17 AM CST on Friday, December 9, 2005
Associated Press
Entergy Corp. is considering moving at least a portion of the utility holding company's headquarters out of the city to locations that are not so hurricane vulnerable, the company's head says.
"Most of us agree that having 1,500 people in one location in a flood plain isn't a good idea," said Entergy Chief Executive Officer J. Wayne Leonard. "That would be hard to justify, especially to our board given the cost and disruption we have incurred" from Hurricane Katrina."
Entergy is the city's only Fortune 500 company headquarters. Losing even part of the operation could hurt the city's effort to restart business, said Tommy Kurtz, senior vice president of Greater New Orleans Inc., the region's economic development organization.
"I think it would signal to other companies that they should call into question the economic vitality of the city and the region," he said.
A decision on relocating portions of the corporate operations likely will not come until next spring, Leonard said.
Entergy is the parent of five regulated electricity utilities in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas, including Entergy New Orleans, Entergy Louisiana and Entergy Gulf States.
Since Katrina, headquarters employees have been working out of Clinton, Miss., Covington, Baton Rouge and other cities in the company's four-state region.
Entergy remains committed to re-establishing a major presence in New Orleans, Leonard said Thursday. But the slow pace of recovery in the city and the continuing risk posed by hurricanes are forcing executives to consider shifting some crucial operations to other locations, he said.
"We have to maintain business continuity. We are an essential service," he said.
Leonard said one possibility might be to establish a corporate office on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain since about 300 corporate workers lived there and commuted to New Orleans before Katrina. A group of headquarters workers is studying the issue. Leonard said a recommendation is expected during the first half of 2006 so employees can make living arrangements to enroll their children in school for the fall of 2006.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Entergy move/Tulane cutbacks
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Entergy move/Tulane cutbacks
Last edited by sunny on Fri Dec 09, 2005 5:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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cnn.com
Tulane announces cutbacks, faculty layoffs
Friday, December 9, 2005; Posted: 11:29 a.m. EST (16:29 GMT)
Tulane University president Scott Cowen speaks during a news conference in New Orleans Thursday.
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Students at Tulane University will return to a school with a gutted engineering department, eight fewer sports programs and student housing replaced by cruise ships.
The school is also laying off nearly 10 percent of its faculty -- 230 positions -- before students return January 19 for the first classes since the school was swamped by Hurricane Katrina.
"I have thought long and hard to see if I could identify a comparable change at another university in the last century, and I can't," Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, said Thursday.
The campus in the city's Uptown section has been closed since Katrina's floodwaters devastated New Orleans and drove out most of its half-million inhabitants. About two-thirds of Tulane's facilities flooded, including dormitories, and most of the students are now scattered at schools around the country.
Tulane put the cost of recovering from the storm so far at $200 million and said it expects a one-third drop in enrollment. Before Katrina, Tulane had 13,214 students -- 7,976 undergraduate and 5,238 in graduate schools.
Other area schools also have scaled back faculty -- including Dillard University, which laid off two-thirds of its faculty -- but Tulane is the first to announce the elimination of academic programs.
"This is the most significant reinvention of a university in the United States in over a century," Scott Cowen, the university's president, said Thursday.
Academic, athletic programs cut
Five undergraduate programs are being dropped: civil and environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, computer engineering and exercise and sports science.
More than half of its doctoral programs, including English, economics and statistics, are also being cut.
About 180 of the faculty layoffs will be at the medical school, temporarily located at Baylor University. The cuts reflect the lack of patients: clinical faculty jobs make up about three-quarters of the cuts.
Most of the other layoffs are in engineering, where five of seven undergraduate programs are gone.
The school is losing eight athletic programs -- men's track, men and women's tennis, men and women's golf, women's swimming, women's soccer and men's cross-country. NCAA Division 1 sports, such as football, baseball and men and women's basketball, will continue.
Flood damage from Katrina also has made apartments hard to find, so incoming students will be housed on a cruise ship in the Mississippi River.
Students entering next fall and after will also be required to participate in community service work and help to rebuild New Orleans.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Tulane announces cutbacks, faculty layoffs
Friday, December 9, 2005; Posted: 11:29 a.m. EST (16:29 GMT)
Tulane University president Scott Cowen speaks during a news conference in New Orleans Thursday.
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Students at Tulane University will return to a school with a gutted engineering department, eight fewer sports programs and student housing replaced by cruise ships.
The school is also laying off nearly 10 percent of its faculty -- 230 positions -- before students return January 19 for the first classes since the school was swamped by Hurricane Katrina.
"I have thought long and hard to see if I could identify a comparable change at another university in the last century, and I can't," Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, said Thursday.
The campus in the city's Uptown section has been closed since Katrina's floodwaters devastated New Orleans and drove out most of its half-million inhabitants. About two-thirds of Tulane's facilities flooded, including dormitories, and most of the students are now scattered at schools around the country.
Tulane put the cost of recovering from the storm so far at $200 million and said it expects a one-third drop in enrollment. Before Katrina, Tulane had 13,214 students -- 7,976 undergraduate and 5,238 in graduate schools.
Other area schools also have scaled back faculty -- including Dillard University, which laid off two-thirds of its faculty -- but Tulane is the first to announce the elimination of academic programs.
"This is the most significant reinvention of a university in the United States in over a century," Scott Cowen, the university's president, said Thursday.
Academic, athletic programs cut
Five undergraduate programs are being dropped: civil and environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, computer engineering and exercise and sports science.
More than half of its doctoral programs, including English, economics and statistics, are also being cut.
About 180 of the faculty layoffs will be at the medical school, temporarily located at Baylor University. The cuts reflect the lack of patients: clinical faculty jobs make up about three-quarters of the cuts.
Most of the other layoffs are in engineering, where five of seven undergraduate programs are gone.
The school is losing eight athletic programs -- men's track, men and women's tennis, men and women's golf, women's swimming, women's soccer and men's cross-country. NCAA Division 1 sports, such as football, baseball and men and women's basketball, will continue.
Flood damage from Katrina also has made apartments hard to find, so incoming students will be housed on a cruise ship in the Mississippi River.
Students entering next fall and after will also be required to participate in community service work and help to rebuild New Orleans.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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