Navigating Success: Managing One’s Value and Relationships in the Academic and Professional Journey | Huaizhong Chen
This interdisciplinary theme is designed to prepare students for their careers by equipping them with knowledge and skills necessary to navigate both academic and professional journey dynamics. Key questions to be addressed include: What is the essential difference between being a good player and being a good team player? How does a leadership role emerge in a leaderless group or in a group consisting of peers? Does being a star performer imply more entitlement, greater opportunities, or increased responsibilities – and what are its implications for individual career success and the advancement of the group as a whole? Additionally, this theme also incorporates classic movie scenes to vividly illustrate how the two behavioral tendencies, opportunity-grasping and responsibility-taking, are embodied in the youth leadership development. Planned to take place on the beautiful Tulane Uptown campus as well as in New Orleans’ scenic locations and cafés, this theme will use a storytelling approach to present insightful research findings and offer evidence-based recommendations for students’ goal attainment, career progression, and success.
Reproductive Justice in Louisiana | Clare Daniel
What is it like to be a person capable of pregnancy in Louisiana? What information, tools, and resources are available to you to prevent a pregnancy? What care can you receive if you want to become a parent? How has this changed over time? This cohort will examine the complex forces governing reproductive life in Louisiana, including religion, economics, racial and gender politics, and more. Students will learn about the history of the state, the current policy and healthcare landscape, and hear from faculty and community leaders working on sexual health and education, contraception and abortion, maternal health equity, and early childhood and family issues. Fieldtrips may include touring healthcare facilities, visiting the state legislature, and attending local events. Students may also have the opportunity to complete a shared service project related to maternal health equity during a disaster.
Haunting the Archive: Speculative Fiction, Social Critique, and the Future of the Past | Jerome Dent
This cohort will explore how speculative genres -- horror, sci-fi, and fantasy -- function as powerful tools for social critique, allowing us to examine enduring issues of race, gender, and power that are often obscured in non-fiction texts. Utilizing the concept of "the archive" as a site of both buried histories and radical futures, we will analyze films, literature, and digital media to ask: What do we risk forgetting about our past, and how can imagining radical futures help us redress current social harms? Our work will be profoundly interdisciplinary, moving between critical theory (Africana Studies), visual analysis (Communication), and public policy.
The Always Changing Brain | Jacob Feiler
Our cohort explores the bounds of the human brain and its seemingly infinite capacity to learn and adapt to change. Neuroplasticity is the concept that cells (neurons) in our brains are constantly making and breaking connections; every time we learn something new, try new foods, listen to different music, travel to new places, and take hard courses, our brains adapt and change on a structural level. How does this happen? What benefits does it have? How can an understanding of neuroplasticity help us persevere and become more resilient in the face of challenges? We will examine and discuss neuroplasticity through a multifaceted lens as we investigate its impacts on learning and memory, on wellness, and on adaptation. These are the questions and topics that our cohort will answer as we progress through the year.
Energy Transitions & Coastal Futures: Louisiana’s Changing Landscape | Keena Kareem
The consensus of the scientific community is that the processing and combustion of fossil fuels has resulted in the output of excessive carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, which is changing our climate. If we do not change our consumption of these traditional energy sources, global warming will continue to have extreme consequences for our world. Living in the Gulf Coast region in Louisiana, we are experiencing and are very susceptible to further consequences of climate change. In our cohort, College Scholars will explore and learn about traditional energy sources and alternative energy technologies. Students will learn how Critical Minerals are vital for renewable energy technologies, which will play a pivotal role in Louisiana’s evolving energy sector. This shift to clean and alternative energy in Louisiana and beyond will have a direct impact on local and global coastal environments. There is growing interest in processing and production of Critical Minerals in Louisiana, a testament to this changing energy sector in our region. Students will explore impacts of fossil fuel processing and consumption such as sea level rise, coastal erosion, extreme weather, pollution, storm surge, and subsidence on our coastal communities, habitats, and ecosystems. In addition, College Scholars will discover and gain hands-on experience with an array of mitigation and restoration efforts being done to make our coast more resilient.
Social Harm and Repair: Restitution, Reparation, & Reconciliation | Elisabeth McMahon
In each generation, new voices of people oppressed by legal and social structures which denied them citizenship and/or human rights call for societal change and some form of repair. This cohort of the College Scholars will explore how groups define social harm, which often has both legal, social or cultural ramifications, and ask how societies engage with ideas of repair. What does restitution, reparation or reconciliation look like for communities trying to navigate societal change? Through a series of case studies, students will investigate how social or political resistance creates change and leads to calls by communities to mend the harm done to individuals and groups of people in the past. Using a range of cases, we will think about this issue globally and locally, how it shapes culture and the law. Each of these cases explores larger questions of social repair, asking students to grapple with how oppressive systems of power work and how societies seek to collectively move forward (even when some citizens do not see social harm) and mitigate past wrongs.
Infectious Disease Emergence: Past, Present, and Future | Sarah R. Michaels
How does disease impact society? What is the current and future threat from emerging infectious diseases? Tulane was founded in 1834 as a medical college to provide training to respond to the health issues affecting the region; malaria, yellow fever, smallpox & cholera. The key objective was "to lead the advancement of science and the rational treatment of disease". In New Orleans, the historical remnants of the sweeping yellow fever epidemics of 1853 and 1878 are carved into the stone of our cemeteries. After a successful public health campaign informed by advancements in science, the final yellow fever outbreak in the U.S. ended in New Orleans in 1905. Today, vector borne infections like Chagas disease continue to emerge, and public health officials utilize data to identify communities at greatest risk of disease. They also bring together physicians, public health officials, and community members to mitigate the impact of these risks. We will explore the past and present in New Orleans by listening to guest speakers, participating in activities, and visiting historic cemeteries and field sites. We will also prepare for the future by engaging with the New Orleans Health Department in preparedness training events.
Place, History, and Representation | Isa Murdock-Hinrichs
This cohort will engage the question of historical relevance for contemporary cultural and artistic representations of New Orleans. Specifically, we will investigate the following questions: what are the historical and cultural precedents that shape how communities and neighborhoods are mapped and function in contemporary Louisiana? How do artistic and documentary portrayals engage with those histories to contextualize contemporary New Orleans? How is New Orleans represented as a distinct microcosm that has come to be imagined as a site of utopian progress and a space of internal contradictions? We will examine historical sources as well as theoretical texts of space and urban organization in conjunction with film (and other forms of visual representation), prose, and social commentaries to consider how these representations present—drawing on or occluding historical signifiers—varying and blurred notions of exclusion and inclusion, experiences of longing and belonging. We will visit historically significant sites, museums, attend performances, and guest lectures that consider which concepts and depictions are associated with the idea of New Orleans as a city and Louisiana as a larger territory.
Cases, Lawyers, and Judges That Changed America | Scott Nolan
Our cohort will focus on courts, and especially lawyers and judges, as superheroes of social change. In our meetings as a group… we will study the processes of courts, and laser-focus on a collection of constitutional cases across American history. Along the way, we’ll learn about how lawyers and judges changed America, and how you can build your career in law and politics. In our private one-on-one meetings… we will discuss your specific career goals, how to make the most of your time at Tulane, where you go after Tulane, and build success – and change the world. Key programming includes Q&A panel events about race, gender, and sexuality-based change in the law over time, with leading scholars and lawyers working in these fields today. Further, we will tour the Louisiana Supreme Court in the French Quarter, meet with law clerks – not much older than you - that help the Supreme Court Justices craft their judicial decisions. There is no part of the human experience the law doesn’t touch, and we’ll explore it together.
Wellbeing: From Individuals to Communities | Carrie Wyland
In recent years, both individuals and institutions have shown an increased recognition of the importance of mental health and wellbeing. Research from multiple areas of psychology has shown that there are many interventions that can promote individual level wellness and wellbeing (for recent meta-analysis, see Carr et al, 2022). However, one factor that may often be overlooked is the role of the broader community and group-level wellbeing. The goal of this cohort is to think about wellbeing in one’s own life, then think about small social groups like friends and the Tulane community, and end with a broadening to consider those in our greater society and the goal of wellbeing for all. We will start with individual-based models of wellbeing, exploring research that addresses the role of different factors on individuals’ happiness and mental health. Then, we will consider the role of mental health in our Tulane community and the greater New Orleans community. We will work together to develop plans for community engagement, service, and/or advocacy in ways that promote mental health and wellbeing at a broader level. We will also address questions like: how can society, institutions, and governments support the wellbeing of all their members? We will have activities that include readings, film viewings, and speakers. We will also have field trips and activities to help promote stress reduction and wellbeing.
