Like the resilient residents, city leaders and community boosters battered and displaced by Hurricane Katrina, officials from the Big Easy's colleges and universities vowed early on to come back. For Tulane University, one of the biggest challenges to overcome before resuming classes in January was finding schools for the children of the institution's faculty and staff. There were also questions about whether community businesses would be open in the uptown area of New Orleans where Tulane is located. With the public school system showing few signs of recovery, Tulane donated $1.5 million to make sure a K-8 charter school--the nearby Lusher School, which had a well-established reputation as one of the state's best--would be open in January. This article recounts the stories of Tulane and other universities' efforts to rebuild the New Orleans communities surrounding their campuses in the aftermath of Katrina.