Clarkson Community Supports Katrina Victims

Professor Nobi Ackermann
with a 50-ft. long flume
that students will use to
understand levee breaches
in New Orleans.

Clarkson University, alumni, and local businesses are supporting several students displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The University has also reached out to alumni displaced by the disaster, and a professor is using the New Orleans dike system as a class project this fall.

The Gulf Coast area students enrolled at Clarkson this fall. The University is providing room and board and a waiver for additional out-of-pocket expenses. Financial contributions from alumni are helping the students pay for books, travel and medical insurance. In addition, Potsdam area individuals and businesses have donated clothing and other supplies.

Meanwhile, Nobi Ackermann, professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, is using the problems with the New Orleans dike system in his water resources engineering class this fall. He said the class typically spends the last one-third of the course looking at problems like flooding and how it affects infrastructure like roads.

Students from the University of New Orleans:
(L-R) Brian Wong, Brice Zoh, Stefan Kosasih,
and Tuan Vu.

"The breaks in the levees are a fluid mechanics problem," he said. "So I'm going to pose to my class, 'How would you go about repairing the dikes?'"

Ackermann said students will have access to a 50-foot long flume in a civil engineering lab, which can be filled with water and simulate levee failures.

"You saw the Corps of Engineers dropping these huge sandbags to try to build up the top of the levees," he said. "But we will look for any other quick and temporary stop-gap measures that might have kept Lake Ponchartrain from flooding New Orleans."

One of the working hypotheses calls for filling large cargo transport containers with boulders and floating them in place over the breach in the levee, then sinking them.

Robyn Stone and David Illig from
Tulane University.

Using the flume, he said students could simulate that whole process and see what happens to the container. "It is a complicated flow system, but we can make a model and experiment."

The University also heard from a number of Gulf Coast alumni, after sending word that Clarkson was prepared to help, if needed. One response from Bob Durfee '77 offered help from his firm Hoyle, Tanner & Associates.

"I would very much like to assist Clarkson alumni who will be displaced," he wrote. "We have openings in our Florida office and would not only offer employment but temporary housing and relocation assistance."

"We have witnessed an outpouring of generosity and response within our own local community and our alumni community," said Tony Collins, Clarkson president.