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| Dr. Roxanne Benoit-Raine. (Foto: Gijs van Ouwerkerk) |
Lafayette is the hub of Cajun Country in south-central Louisiana along the Vermilion River. Benoit-Raine explains Lafayette's population is larger than Enschede, but the population has grown since Hurricane Katrina hit its coastline. When the hurricane struck in 2005, she was attending the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and writing a chapter for a book called `Cognitive Decision-Making: Empirical and Foundational Issues' for editor Benoit Hardy-Vallée. She remembers, Lafayette was not affected like New Orleans, `We didn't have to evacuate. We were really far from New Orleans. The distance from Enschede to Amsterdam is about the same.'
Four months afterwards, Benoit-Raine and her husband visited a friend in New Orleans who forewarned them of the massive devastation, but what they saw still took them by surprise. She described the source of the damage: `It wasn't the hurricane that was the real problem. The levees broke and then New Orleans flooded.' She thought the government did not respond with appropriate actions; the levees were not constructed to withstand the surge of water; and she was disappointed with the media coverage, `I don't like how Louisiana was portrayed in the media.' The media did not explain well enough about why many people were still there, and the Cajuns were cast in a degrading light, which made them appear as ignorant people. Benoit-Raine says, `In movies, Cajuns are always portrayed as ignorant. Actually, Cajuns are culturally rich and have experiential knowledge.' Most of them, according to Benoit-Raine, speak fluent French, are practicing Catholics, regard family life as highly important, and also know how to celebrate. Take for instance, the celebration of Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), which has the same religious meaning as Carnival in the Netherlands. In the region around New Orleans, a week-long celebration with parades, street celebrations, tableau balls and much merrymaking takes place and Lafayette holds the state's second largest celebration.
The impact of the hurricane recently spurred Louisiana Senator Mary L. Landrieu to visit the Netherlands in May, studying the Dutch water management system to improve the levee system in her state. Following the hurricane, the Netherlands was one of the first nations to extend support to Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, including civil engineers and pumps to remove floodwaters. Senator Landrieu said of her recent visit to the Netherlands, `The people of Louisiana need a new model, and I believe we can incorporate some of the state-of-the-art technologies the Dutch have developed to protect their communities.'
In 2002, Roxanne received her bachelor's degree in Psychology from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Afterwards she returned to Lafayette and was interested in taking creative writing courses with Ernest J. Gaines, a novelist and creative writing professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, but his classes were full. One year later, in 2003, she decided to enroll in the course, `What is Cognitive Science?' Roxanne says, `I knew some students who were taking the cognitive science classes and the subject grabbed my attention.'
She came to Enschede in January of 2009 to work as a trainee with Professor Rieks op den Akker on the `Augmented Multimodal Interaction - Distance Access,' or AMIDA collaboration project, in the Human Media Interaction research group, also coordinated by Professor Anton Nijholt, which is part of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science. She recently received her PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
As for her goals, Roxanne explains she probably will not go back to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. `The university policy is strongly against it. The professors who taught me are still there. People in Louisiana actually call it `academic inbreeding', which means when people are employed at the same university where they received their graduate training and degrees.' She would rather continue researching in a postdoctoral position at another university, establishing herself as a researcher for cognitive science, and later apply for an assistant professorship in the United States.
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| Roxanne Benoit-Raine: `Most people now know, the 9th Ward is one of the poorest areas of New Orleans and many people didn't evacuate the `ghost town' before the storm. After the flooding started, those who had remained were forced to take refuge on their rooftops while awaiting rescue by helicopters.' (Photo: Wes Raine) |
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| In the Lakeview area of New Orleans, the hurricane caused the force of the flood waters to move a parked car in a vertical position against a tree. (Photo: Wes Raine) |
