With Hurricane Rita taking aim at the east coast of Texas , colleges and universities there began evacuating students, shutting down research projects and securing buildings. Among the Texas evacuees are thousands of students and faculty from flooded New Orleans universities who had just settled into classes at Houston-area higher education institutions. Tulane University officials, who moved their base of operations to Houston in the aftermath of Katrina, packed up late yesterday and moved to Dallas , some 240 miles farther inland.