Web services’ Ganier finds temporary home after Katrina

Web services’ Ganier finds temporary home after Katrina

BY LINDSEY FIELDER
Rice News staff

When Andrea Ganier and her mother left New Orleans Sunday, Aug. 28, they thought this evacuation would be a false alarm like all the others. They had evacuated before and been back home within a few days.

Photo by Jeff Fitlow

Andrea Ganier, customer support assistant in Web services, loads boxes at the Houston Food Bank to help with Hurricane Katrina relief. The Web services department of Rice’s Division of Information Technology took Rice Volunteer Time as a group to help out at the food bank. “To be able to help meet other people’s needs was really important to me,” she said. “I know how it feels to not know if your basic needs will be met.”

With only a few t-shirts, one pair of jeans and one pair of tennis shoes packed in a small bag, Ganier and her mother decided to head for Houston.
Ganier had just moved her things into the dormitory where she was supposed to live out her senior year at Loyola University. Almost two months after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, her things are still nice and neat in that dorm room — and she hasn’t been back.

Though the campus sustained little damage from Hurricane Katrina, Loyola decided to close its doors for the fall semester and reopen in January 2006. With only 21 hours left to get her degree in public relations and graphic design, Ganier was not sure what to do when it became clear that she would not be returning to New Orleans.

Ganier’s brother attended Rice, graduating in 2003. He has since moved to Washington, but some of his friends still live in the Houston area. Chris Pound, developer and systems administrator in enterprise applications in the Division of Information Technology (IT) at Rice, and his wife, Andrea, had been friends with Ganier’s brother during his years at Rice. They took in Ganier and her mother during the storm.

Pound suggested Ganier stay in Houston for the semester and work at Rice in IT. The Web services department was short a student worker and could really use another graphic designer as well.

“It wasn’t really feasible for me to take classes at any of the [Houston-area] universities,” Ganier said. “Since I’m a senior, the classes I need are so specific. So it seemed like a good idea to get a job here and work until I could go back home.”

For the past two months, she’s been working full time as a customer support assistant in Web services. She’s been designing some Web templates and training new faculty how to use Rice’s content management system for departmental Web sites. The combination of graphic design and customer service fits in perfectly with Ganier’s career path. “I could not have planned a better internship,” she said.

Ganier has continued to live with Pound and his wife, Andrea. Her mother has gone back to New Orleans to try to repair or rebuild what is left of her house on the edge of Jefferson Parish. “Chris and Andrea have been so generous,” Ganier said. “They’ve taken me in, planned my social life and kept me busy. I call them ‘my little cruise directors.’”

Ganier said she’s never been in a position to let other people be benevolent toward her. “It’s been a real learning experience,” she said. “I’m not used to people taking care of me in this way, so it’s been very humbling to receive such great help.

“I didn’t expect to start a new life in Houston — to be so functional. After I realized I wouldn’t be going back [to New Orleans], I didn’t know what I’d do. But everyone at Rice has been so wonderful and accepting of me. Being a part of a school community has helped me re-establish a sense of normalcy I wouldn’t have otherwise.”