SUNO to receive $82.4 million in grants

By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer

Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) announced that Southern Univer­sity of New Orleans (SUNO) will receive $82.4 million in disaster recovery grants provided by the Department of Homeland Sec­urity’s Federal Emergency Man­agement Agency (FEMA).

“SUNO is a key part of the educational environment in New Orleans and has provided a quality education to generations of New Orleanians,” Rep. Rich­mond said. “For the last 10 years, they’ve done this despite operating without the resources they need to fully rebuild facilities on a campus that was hit harder than any other college campus in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that followed. The recent FEMA funds are a step towards fixing that.”

SUNO incurred extensive damages from the levee failures that occurred after Hurricane Katrina. Flood waters rising over 10 feet extensively damaged all 11 buildings on SUNO’s main campus along Lake Pontchartrain.

“The money will be used to construct four new buildings — two on the Lake Campus and two on the Park Campus,” SUNO Chancellor Victor Ukpolo said. “The construction of these buildings bodes well for SUNO’s long-term future, and will greatly aid our mission of providing higher education opportunities to students in our region and beyond.”

The Millie M. Charles School of Social Work Building and the Education Building will be located on the Lake Campus. Ukpolo said the groundbreaking for the School of Social Work Building will occur in the next few months.

The two new buildings on the Park Campus will be the Natural Sciences Building and the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Building. They will replace the already-demolished Clark Building and the Multi-Purpose Building, which will be demolished at a later date.

Though Rep. Richmond ex-pres­sed excitement over the grants, he said they serve as a reminder that the damage from the hurricane and subsequent levee failures lingers on for many New Orleanians and the city’s institutions.

“Even a decade later, the recovery is not complete,” Richmond said.

This article originally published in the August 3, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.