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Local Business Professor Takes Students to New Orleans

A Villanova University professor has been helping New Orleans since hurricane Katrina hit five years ago.

KYW's Hadas Kuznits reports Robert Nydick (photo), professor of management and operations at Villanova's business school has been taking his classes to New Orleans for nine consecutive semesters:

"We've been to New Orleans ten times since Katrina hit."

Nydick says each semester, he and his students spend four days at a New Orleans shelter. They work with Habitat for Humanity building houses for Katrina victims and then return home where they fundraise on their own and use a methodology Nydick teaches in class to decide where to allocate those funds:

"I'm in the business school, so obviously I'm teaching business practices but I also want to teach that we have a responsibility."

And as for measuring progress in New Orleans:

"Well, over the first couple trips, I've never seen anything like it, it looked like a war zone and obviously, gradually, things started to get better."

Nydick takes this semester's class to New Orleans the weekend of November 5th.

(Photo:  www.villanova.edu/business)

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