Students displaced by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina are seeking the opportunity to continue their education at the UA.

Administrators are working with displaced students to enroll them in classes two weeks after the start of the semester and find them housing, a process President Peter Likins said will not be easy.

"It will take an enormous effort to ease this transition," Likins said. "This has been a traumatic experience for everyone."

The Office of Enrollment Management has been receiving phone calls all week from students from hurricane-ravaged schools, with more expected in the coming weeks, said Lynne Tronsdal, assistant vice president of enrollment management.

"I've had about 40 calls this week from students asking about tuition, housing and enrollment," Tronsdal said. "We have 10 students already enrolled, and I'm seeing five more on Tuesday."

Many of the students seeking to enroll are Arizona residents attending school in the New Orleans area, including students from Tulane, New Orleans University, Xavier University of Louisiana and Loyola University, Tronsdal said.

Some universities, such as the University of Texas at Austin, are offering free tuition to student victims of Katrina, an offer the UA is not making.

"We are doing everything we can to help every student that wants to come," Tronsdal said, "but we are not giving them any financial incentives to come here."

Tronsdal said admissions is working with the students to get them into the classes they need, but emphasized the transition will not be an easy one.

"We are concerned about the timing of their entrance," Tronsdal said. "The UA is always open to good students, but it is two weeks behind schedule."

The situation is further complicated by the fact that records from many of these schools are inaccessible or have been destroyed, said Saundra Taylor, senior vice president of Campus Life.

"In most cases, we are not going to be able to get records from these schools," Taylor said. "So administration is taking the students' word at face value," with regard to what classes they need for this semester.

Housing is also a tricky issue in handling this sudden influx of refugee students.

Most undergraduate residence halls are filled to capacity, Tronsdal said, so the administration is working to find off-campus housing for the displaced students.

"We do have some graduate housing still available," Tronsdal said. "But we still have undergrads in temporary housing. In the case of undergraduate girls, we simply have no available space."

The UA is also offering many of these students temporary loans because many of the students are unable to access their bank accounts or financial aid information, Taylor said.

Students being accommodated under these circumstances are expected to transfer back to their original schools, Taylor said, although when that would be feasible is difficult to say.

"Tulane had said that they wanted their students back in a month or two," Taylor said. "But with everything that is going on in New Orleans right now it's hard to see how that's possible."