Editor's note: After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, reporter Brad Bauer traveled with a group of Marietta College students to the area to help cleanup and rebuilding efforts at a local community college.
Five years ago, Keegan Haid was a Marietta College student who had visited New Orleans with his family just prior to the landing of Hurricane Katrina.
"It was a city I instantly fell in love with," said Haid, now 25, of Marietta.
After watching on television and reading about the destruction to New Orleans and the Gulf region, Haid was anxious to offer a helping hand.
In December 2005 - about 100 days after the storm ravaged the region - Haid and 34 other Marietta College students were bound for New Orleans for the first of five college-sponsored hurricane relief efforts.
"I feel like we definitely made an impact," he said. "That was 68 more hands picking up things, tying up trash bags and scrubbing away dirt and mold."
The students were involved in a variety of activities, including cleaning out a community college, gutting a nursing home, planting trees in a New Orleans park, insulating a man's home, serving food and cleaning up the work site on the set of the television program "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."
The first college hurricane relief trip was focused on helping Delgado Community College, located near downtown New Orleans.
Tom Perry, director of college relations at Marietta, said trips back to the New Orleans area since have always included at least a stop at Delgado, but the bulk of the relief effort was focused on other affected areas of the city.
Immediately after the storm, Marietta College offered displaced Delgado students an opportunity to continue their education.
"We did have one student take us up on that offer," Perry said. "His father was living here in town."
Perry said students who went on the relief trips always came back changed.
"I remember after even three years students came back and were shocked there is still so much to do," he said.
Officials at Delgado could not be reached for comment on Thursday.
The college's website indicates the storm has changed the makeup of the school.
Since Hurricane Katrina, the number of Delgado students taking online courses has grown from 3.8 percent to almost 30 percent of the student population. Delgado now offers more than 400 online courses.
The college has the largest enrollment in the New Orleans metropolitan area with more than 13,000 degree-seeking students, according to the website.
