Overview:
Dr. Scott Cowen, is Tulane University’s President Emeritus and Distinguished University Professor at the Freeman School of Business. He was named by Time magazine as one of the nation’s Top 10 Best College Presidents.

It was during his time at Tulane, in 2005, that Hurricane Katrina as a Category 5 storm devasted the Gulf of Mexico region, the city of New Orleans and Cowen’s Tulane University campus. As a tropical cyclone, there was up to 175 mph winds and $125 billion dollar damage in the region[ Blake, Eric S; Landsea, Christopher W; Gibney, Ethan J. (August 2011). The Deadliest, Costliest and Most Intense United States Tropical Cyclones from 1851 to 2010. National Hurricane Center.]. Over 1,245 people died making it one of the deadliest US hurricanes. Katrina flooded 70 percent of Tulane’s uptown campus and all the buildings in its downtown health science campus.

While the university was required to shut down due to safety considerations, a record 87 percent of its undergraduates returned after temporarily being dispersed to other schools across the country that ‘adopted’ the Tulane students, during the campus shutdown.

His humble yet confident insights and wisdom about living in the midst of a physical and metaphorical storm are timely today as it was in the days of Katrina. Cowen begins with his early days of growing up, challenges then and later, and shares perspectives of best ways to position oneself for success going forward.

Blake, Eric S; Landsea, Christopher W; Gibney, Ethan J. (August 2011). The Deadliest, Costliest and Most Intense United States Tropical Cyclones from 1851 to 2010. National Hurricane Center.

Scott Cowen Story:
Scott Cowen was president of Tulane University in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck. He became a national champion for rebuilding the city following the death and dislocation caused by the storm.

Cowen, a New Jersey native, is an accomplished academic even though he struggled as a student early on. Neither of his parents graduated from college which was typical living in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite growing up in a traditional family, he said, “I wasn’t able to read or write when I went to school. It turned out, at the age of 21, I was diagnosed with dyslexia. I mentioned this because it turns out it explains a lot of what happened to me over time.”

Dyslexia left an impression on him. “I grew up with lack of confidence, feeling inadequate–I wasn’t very smart. I was lazy. Most people interpret it that way, because of my poor performance at school. During that time period, as a little background, I developed some coping mechanisms, which overtime proved to be very important.”

Cowen continued, “I struggled, but I was elected president of the class. That give me the confidence I didn’t have before. So, by the time I graduated from a good high school, I had a good record. At that time, I was still immature; still wouldn’t stay on my feet. I will tell you because some of this shaped what happens later on in my life.”

After graduating from high school, Cowen was recruited to play football for the University of Connecticut. When he had finished college, he said, was accepted to the graduate school in the University of Hawaii to get an MBA. But in 1968 he was drafted and spent three years in the military rather than going to graduate school. He served with the army, part of the time in the Middle East and also worked security. When he left the service his first wife was living in Washington, D.C. so he attended George Washington University, earning a MBA and doctorate.

He did not know what to do after school and ended up teaching finance and accounting Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. Then he went to Case Western Reserve where he worked for 23 years, starting as an assistant professor and rising to become dean of the management school. He was in the running to become president of the university but eventually chose not to pursue the job.

Eventually Cowen’s career took him to Tulane University in New Orleans, where as president he was instrumental in rebuilding the university and the city after Hurricane Katrina. “The most defining moments in my career are from Katrina. Together, they are the forces that shape my life. I will tell you a little bit about Katrina. Eighty percent of the land was massively damaged. It had been flooding for 57 days. The university had to be closed for the entire semester. It was the first time since the Civil War that a university had to be closed. We had $650 million of damage.”

Cowen explained how the hurricane affected him. “Days and years after Katrina, without a gap, were the most difficult in my entire life. The first three years after we needed to get out of the woods. First, we needed to physically rebuild the university. It takes 10 years to do that. Around 2014, there were still challenges that were brought up.”

He was quick to acknowledge the peers he worked with. “I get a lot of kudos for what we’ve accomplished, but I would tell you we had a terrific and unbelievable team. Without them, that couldn’t have happened. Whatever skills I have, it all came together when the moment is hard. Fortunately, we worked it out.” Cowen also said he wasn’t afraid to ask for help. “I always tell myself, I’m not the smartest person in the room. I will be with the brilliant and find the talent and say, ‘Could you help me with this?’”

Cowen leveraged his communication skills and relationships to ensure that all Tulane students were able to attend other universities while Tulane was closed for a semester. Despite sending students away, more than 85 percent returned the next semester. “You want to bring hope to people, but also be realistic. You don’t want to be naïve that everything’s going to be fine. I used to quote it all the time: Hope is not a plan. Hope is not a strategy. Hope is something we have. Hope is something based on fact, is something we thought through about what place could we go.”

He spoke about importance of finding the root cause of any problem. “It’s hard to get the truth. It’s really understanding the reality, the situation,” explained Cowen. “I find a lot of people don’t really understand what they are confronting, what the situation is. If you never diagnose the situation, there’s no way you can put a plan in short-term and long-term to grab it. I always try to figure out what’s really going on here. What we need to do?”

“I believe very strongly in evidence in making decisions, seeking the truth about the situation,” said Cowen. “To seek truth, I talk to a lot of people. I think it’s being knowledgeable. Find people who are constantly asking questions. And see if you could get the answers consistently. I think the secret is being curious. Always trying to seek what’s considered to be the truth.”

With so much at risk, Cowen said, there was no room to fail. “We knew the survival of our institution was at stake. It wasn’t the physical survival, it was a reputational survival. We couldn’t come back, just the way it was before. We knew it was going to take a lot of work.”

Cowen knew that he couldn’t manage this crisis alone. “I realized I wasn’t capable of doing that. So I gathered two groups together. One was five senior people in the country, the ones that helped me to plan the future of the institution. This group was amazing and helpful. There were people like Malcolm Gillis, the president of Rice School of Business. James Duderstadt, who was the former president of University of Michigan. I gathered these four or five and said, ‘Here’s what I am faced with.’ I knew I was not going to come back in the same way, so I had to find a way to rebuild the academics very quickly.”

His team crafted the strategy that restructured Tulane. “At the same time, I had to save a lot of money, because we’d lost a lot of money. They were basically helping me craft the plan. They closed departments and schools. It turned out, on the bright side, it worked. I give them total credit for that. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to do that.”

Cowen argued that whatever the challenge, it is important to believe in yourself. “Consciously or unconsciously, give yourself some confidence that you will do well,” he said. “Start developing the things you are good at, that give you confidence and make you try different things. I was not the guy most likely to conquer in academia, right? Let’s face it. But part of it was I got over confident. I got out the army and set myself apart.

He also acknowledged his support system. “Have somebody believe in you. They believe in you and then you work a little harder,” he said. “If one thinks he is the smartest he will be in trouble. Always think about what’s right and you will always do what’s right. Be with those smartest.”

Relationships, and humor, were critical to Cowen after Katrina when he and key members of his team relocated to Texas for six months. “We became very close,” he said. “I always use humor and fun. It’s part of my social type. I started to do something stupid. People will relax. We did several kinds of things.”

Looking back, Cowen had no idea how much he would be changed by Katrina. “When this happened, I was 59. I wouldn’t have thought at 59-years-old, that somehow this would have changed me as much as it did. It does give you confidence and a sense of pride, that you live with. That you say to yourself, ‘Whatever demons I have in the past, I think I can deal with those demons.’ So you will always have the kind of background, the burden of gifts or whatever, you always have this kind of notion, ‘Could I do this?’ I really was standing. I went through that. I feel pretty good about myself. Nobody is perfect. But there’s no question that it does change you.”

Even now, he questions his success. “You always wonder if you are a fraud. You just had a lot of good luck. You’ve been at the place the right time, the people. And it’s all not right, but you really have to test it. One of the lessons I learned in Case Western University was I had a wonderful career there, and I was told I was going to be the top candidate to be the president. And I kept thinking to myself, could I survive outside of Case Western? Maybe I was only good here, because I started as a young kid, everybody knows me, and I know them. I wondered if I left, will I be any good? And that was part of the reason why I left to go to Tulane. It was to say, ‘If I am ever going to test this hypothesis, I need to start doing this now.’”

Cowen said he knows that the challenges Katrina presented led him to reach his full potential as president of Tulane. “I was working well before Katrina. I’d been president for seven years. But I will tell you this, if Katrina hadn’t happened, I don’t think I would have accomplished what was accomplished. The crisis there transformed me in a way mentally about my own capabilities, that otherwise without it, I would not have.”

“I say this to students: ‘We are byproducts of the defining moments in our life. And how we respond in those defining moments ultimately shapes who we are. My view is making mistakes can be defining moments. You learn from them,” he said.

Cowen who is now president emeritus said he has no plans to slow down. “If you are still having a curious mind, you are constantly adding new things to your storehouse, wisdom and knowledge, which keeps you professionally learning and feeling good about it. I can’t imagine if I retired for a long time. I just can’t imagine. I don’t know how people do it. People say, ‘Why don’t you retire? Getting the phone calls you get.’ I said, ‘Each one is different, is a new challenge, and the ones that keep you alive.’”