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THE SCHOLARA Newsletter of the Tulane Honors ProgramI’m delighted to introduce our new Tulane Honors Program Newsletter. This isn’t the first Honors Newsletter: we recently discovered in our files a mimeographed newsletter published by Honors Director Dale Edmonds in 1985. Many things have changed since then, and it’s about time we tried to reconnect with the Honors community, and especially with our graduates. We hope you find it interesting to learn about our programs and the activities and accomplishments of our current students. But we also hope the newsletter will give you an excuse to get in touch with us. In future issues of the Scholar, we hope to publish

notes about the activities of our graduates. So please drop us a line, let us know where you are and what you are up to! You will notice some changes to the Honors Program. For instance, in the last couple of years we added a position of Associate Director to lead Honors advising, and especially advising for major scholarships and fellowships like the Marshall, Rhodes, Truman, Goldwater, etc. Our participation in residential life has been enlarged with

the creation of a Sophomore Honors Community in the just-opened Weatherhead Residential College. We now can offer Honors students and others who are interested and qualified a two-year residential experience in Butler House and Weatherhead. While the Honors Program has changed in certain ways, I think our core mission remains what it has always been. The aim is to give students opportunities to cultivate a spirit of intellectual inquiry, increase awareness of the aims and measures of scholarship in the arts and sciences, and demonstrate depth of learning through independent research. We feel strongly that one of the Tulane’s great strengths in undergraduate education is the access our students have to leaders in research in their academic majors and other fields of interest. Central to our mission is the cultivation of closer contact between students and faculty, through informal encounters and mentored research projects.

F. Thomas Luongo Associate Dean for Honors

photo credit: Brian Gauvin, 2007

TULANE2011

We anticipate an even greater number of honors graduates next year as our numbers continue to grow. This fall, over 1,500 students are enrolled in the honors program with an incoming class of 382 students. Our enrollment also reflects the 100 plus sophomores and juniors that joined the program over the summer.

This past May when the Honors Program hosted its annual senior awards ceremony at Cudd Hall, we recognized over 100 students graduating from Tulane with high Latin honors. Dean Luongo and Associate Director Scott Pentzer distributed honors cords to 52 summa cum laude graduates and 50 magna cum laude graduates. Students and faculty gathered afterwards on the patio to reflect on honors theses representing a broad range of disciplines from Political Science to Neuroscience and to share their post-graduate plans.

Pictured above (top left): Honors Program Dean Thomas Luongo addresses graduating seniors while Associate Director Scott Pentzer hands out honors cords during the awards ceremony. Pictured above (bottom): honors seniors gather at the awards ceremony

HONORS HIGHLIGHTS

Honors programming this year has better aquainted students withTulane faculty through lecture series and discussion roundtables, hon-ors coloquia (often team taught and supplemented by faculty guest lectures), on-campus summer research projects and departmental thesis luncheons. We look forward to expanding these initiatives with pro-grams that foster student-faculty interaction in our honors residential communities, Butler and Soho at Weatherhead Hall.

Please visit our website at:http://honors.tulane.edu

Honors Program Staff

F. Thomas Luongo, Ph.D.Associate Professor of HistoryAssociate Dean for Honors

Scott W. Pentzer, Ph.D.Associate Director

Norah Lovell, MFASenior Program Coordinator

Helen Jaksch, MFAStudent Affairs Associate

Under the leadership of Micah Bluming, the Student Affairs Associate (and 2010 summa cum laude graduate), the RAs and residents of Butler Hall took the initiative last year in organizing a fascinating and well-attended series of roundtable discussions. A few of the invited guests were marine biologist Dr. John Caruso who shared his experience and photos of working in the deepest parts of the world’s oceans, Professor Michael Plante who joined students in a discussion of the question of “what is art,” and Dr. Jana Lipman who opened up an interesting historical perspective and spiriteddiscussion on U.S. military intervention. Dr. Carrie Wyland’s comparison of the implicit messages about life and love in men’s and women’s magazines with what psychologists know about relationships presented ample opportunities for both laughter and reflection. The second annual Butler Banquet was a nice conclusion to a busy year in the freshman dorm.

The inauguration of the new sophomore honors residential community (SoHo) at Weatherhead Hall in August opened up a second year of honors residential programming to interested students. Designed to maximize energy efficiency and named for Albert J. and Celia Weatherhead to honor their personal and financial commitment to Tulane students, the new building is smart, spacious, and attractive.

In their applications to join SoHo, students wrote about their most inspiring intellectual experience at Tulane, and about why they wanted to live in a residential community defined by the richness of its intellectual life. Residents have now joined one of nine themed “societies” defined by academic and co-curricular interest. Each society is advised by a faculty fellow who will accompany the group as it plans and enjoys a year of meals, speakers, films, discussions and other activities that we hope will make Weatherhead Hall not just aglow with new paint and fixtures, but abuzz with ideas and conversation. We are delighted Drs. Paul and Lyle Colombo (and their daughter Audrey Paige) will bring their experience as professors-in-residence in Wall Residential College to SoHo. Paul’s training in psychology and Lyle’s in philosophy is a perfect combination for the sort of wide-ranging conversation students are looking for in SoHo. Alumni are always welcome to join the conversation. If you would like to share your experience with a group of students or join a Butler roundtable or SoHo society meeting, please get in touch with us.

F r o m B u t l e r t o S o H o a t W e a t h e r h e a d H a l l

Butler residents participate in a welcome tie-dye event under the tutelage of Student Affairs Associate Helen Jaksch.

Pictured above (middle): Audrey Paige Columbo at a SoHo cook-out.Pictured above (bottom): Paul and Lyle Columbo introduce the faculty fellows.

We were extremely gratified by the prompt and generous response of the friends and former students of Dean Jean Danielson to the scholarship fund established in her memory. Dean Jean’s generosity was matched by the clarity of her priorities: to help undergraduates figure out what they wanted to do in the world, and to start them on that path in any way she could.

The Danielson Memorial Scholarship Fund continues her work, and the selection committee for the first group of scholars enjoyed bringing their memories of their friend and colleague to the task of selecting a scholar in her name. Most appropriately, when it became clear that there were three students with ambitious projects that

could be made possible within the means of the scholarship fund, the committee did not hesitate to help all three. Dean Jean would have done as much.

The three winners were Michelle Fauber, Angela Czesak, and Victoria (Tory) Kane. Michelle became interested in refugee resettlement while studying abroad in Egypt. She worked

as a resettlement intern in Washington, DC last summer with Lutheran Social Services. Angela, a rising junior in the biomedical engineering program, spent the summer at the Engineering World Health Institute in Tanzania, where she studied Swahili and worked with other engineers to repair medical equipment. Tory majors in philosophy and English, and is particularly interested in education. She saw basic education from a new perspective this past summer as a volunteer with the Shanti Bhavan Children’s Project in Tamil Nadu state, India.

We look forward to further developing the Danielson Scholars program in the years to come, and thank our alumni for giving back to the Honors Program in the name of a beloved teacher who did so much to build it.

Reflections on Tanzania

One of the best things I learned while work-ing at the hospital was to never be scared of a problem. Screwdriver in hand, cracking into machines became the norm and I found it to be a fun challenge to figure out what was wrong or how things worked. From wall sockets and tea kettles to oxygen concentra-tors and operating tables, the problems my partner and I encountered were never ending. My favorite service to the hospital, however, was not a repair. The program I was with, Engineering World Health, allowed us a $100 budget for a second-ary project. With these funds we could do some-thing we thought might help the community in any way. Within the two months, I spent a large portion of my extra time at local orphanages and the neonatal intensive care unit at Mt. Meru hospital. I found that one of their greatest needs was another set of phototherapy lights used for babies born with jaundice. We made a set that could fit at least three babies underneath and was able to be moved from crib to crib. We filmed the making of our design and anyone can see the process on youtube-“Building bili lights in Tan-zania.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkskPuT9Drc

My time spent in Tanzania this summer was unforgettable and I am determined to continue doing work in developing countries because of it. I am excited to bring all of my observations and experience into the classroom this semester in hopes to come up with projects, designs and solutions to some of the many problems I wit-nessed working there. Again, I am so thankful for this opportunity and hopefully, through writ-ing my blog and sharing my experiences, I can inspire others to do the same.

—Angela Czesak, Jean Danielson Scolar

For more on Angela’ s Tanzania Blog go to:http://angelaczesak.weebly.com/

Inaugural Danielson Scholars

Dean Jean Danielson

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While we saw increased participation in scholarship competitions across the board this year, Tulane’s most notable success was with the Fulbright scholarship program. Funded cooperatively through Congressional appropriation and overseas governments and foundations, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program is the signature exchange program of the U.S. government. Tulane graduate students have had steady success in the Fulbright competition, but undergraduate participation peaked sharply last year. Of the 11 Tulane candidates who applied for Fulbright research grants or English Teaching Assistantships at the bachelors’ degree level, five were finalists and four won awards. 43 Tulane students have applied this year, so we hope to see continued success in the spring.

One of the winners, Christopher Clark, was a magna cum laude graduate in political science. He will be working in Santiago and Concepcion, Chile next year on a research project exploring the potential of microfinance institutions to aid in immediate recovery after natural disasters such as the earthquake that hit southern Chile in 2010. We congratulate Chris and the other winners who have shown how Tulane’s strong foreign language and international programs can lead to success in such a prestigious scholarship competition.

Fullbright recipients Paul Burgess, Christopher Clark and Matthew Kelley at the 2011 Newcomb Tulane Senior Awards Ceremony.

A Good Year for FulbrightsReflections on Shanti Bavan

Looking out into the crowd of faces of the children that I had gotten to know over the past four weeks at Shanti Bhavan in rural India, I began to realize how difficult it was going to be to leave the place that had become my home so quickly. I had seen other volunteers at their last assembly, but nothing had prepared me for having to say goodbye to the students I had taught and come to love and care for. I had gone to Shanti Bhavan to teach some of the poorest children from the “untouchable” caste, but as I left and reflected on everything I had done there, what I had really done during my time was learn.

I would like to deeply thank the donors of the Danielson Memorial Scholarship along with the Honors Department. My teaching and living experiences at Shanti Bhavan have been invaluable to developing my own perspective on education and on children, and I would

not have been able to have this experience without the financial support that the Danielson Memorial Scholarship has provided. I will fondly remember my time at Shanti Bhavan for the rest of my life and will also remember the Scholarship Fund that made it possible. I know my time in a fifth grade Indian classroom will greatly help me

as I continue to volunteer and work to improve education here in New Orleans, and wherever else my work may take me. Thank you so much for this invaluable opportunity and all it has done to teach me about education, the world and also about myself.

—Tory Kane, Jean Danielson Scholar

Pictured above: Tory Kane with her students at Shanti Bavan

An honors degree at Tulane requires completion of a research thesis, and many students are interested in graduate school and research careers. Still we understand (and suspect many of our readers will remember) how difficult it can be to get that first chance to work on a faculty-mentored research project. For a second consecutive year, a donor’s generosity made that first research job a reality for a select group of Tulane honors students.

Newcomb Tulane College inaugurated its Honors Summer Research Program in 2010, when we supported ten students (including several juniors) for six weeks of summer research. This year we limited the competition to freshmen and sophomores, who tend to have (or at least perceive) the most difficulty in getting involved in faculty research. To ease the way—and as an incentive to get out there and ask their professors to mentor them over the summer—the Honors Programs offers students university housing and a living stipend. Applicants to the program are required to present a detailed statement about their proposed research and how it fits into their longer term plans at Tulane. They also must secure a letter of invitation from a faculty member to work together over the summer.

The program awarded grants to students and their faculty mentors in Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Mathematics, English, Political Science, History, Spanish and Portuguese, Anthropology, Philosophy, Public Health, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Midway through her research experience one student reflected that, “Since this marks my first time working and researching

Newcomb Tulane College Dean James MacLaren and honors summer research grant recipients (from left to right) Aimee Arceneaux, Yelena Johnson, Amand Foy, Kara Ramsey, Tanya Chen, Peter Bull, Tyler Schlichenmyer and Engram Wilkinson at the Summer Research Reception.

Summer Research Program

“I was able to achieve what I set out to achieve this summer – I not only gained valuable hands on laboratory experience to handle equipment and run successful experiments, but more importantly, I became acquainted with the scientific research procedure and the writing process for scientific publication.” —Tanya Chen

(cont’d.) in a lab, the initial transition was somewhat challenging. Lab work was somewhat intimidating at first, but I had expected this nervousness… However, this issue gradually diminishes every day as I devote more time to lab and build familiarity with procedural protocol and become exposed to experimental investigation. I am very grateful that I had this opportunity to begin the research process early on in my undergraduate career. “

This student has already arranged to continue volunteering in the lab during the school year, where we expect she will continue to gain in sophistication and responsibility. This is exactly the program’s modest, but we think very valuable objective, and we hope to continue it in years to come.

Another student worked in the Chemistry Department on a project aimed at improving a method of targeted chemotherapy. At the close of his research he conveyed that, “In the future, I do plan to continue this research, and I would like to work in this lab until I graduate. I find the problem solving aspect of biochemistry research to be very intriguing, and my time in lab has made me consider possibly applying to an MD/PhD program after I graduate from Tulane. Lastly, I wanted to thank everyone who had a part in making this possible: the Tulane Honor’s Program, all of the donors, the professor and his research group. It was truly a great learning experience and a highlight of my academic career. It has exposed me to things that I never would have seen, and has allowed me to commit myself to this research in a way that would not be possible during the academic school year. I believe that this research was not only valuable to me, but I also hope it is valuable to science and society as a potential drug delivery system in cancer therapy. Thank you again for allowing me this opportunity.”

“My time this summer, both in adjusting and becoming acclimated to the more organic process of conducting research and in actually drafting my paper, has only galvanized me in my pursuit of a doctorate in literature.”

—Engram Wilkinson

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experience has been monumental to my progress as a Psychology student. I will surely be producing my honors thesis in this very lab, as well as continuing to seek further involvement in graduate projects beyond what is asked of me as an undergraduate research assistant. I feel far more knowlegeable and prepared for more advanced work in my major .”

—Yelena Johnson

The Honors Program put on a “Colloquium Without Walls” in 2010-2011. The lecture series was designed to give honors students from across the uni-versity the opportunity to talk with interesting speakers, and each other, about a theme of common concern. Happiness seemed a good one to start with. When the series began on a warm September day, we weren’t sure how many students would attend, and neatly arranged a group of chairs in the Cudd Hall lobby for our first speaker, Dr. Darrin McMahon of Florida State Uni-versity. McMahon is an intellectual historian whose Happiness: a History (Grove Press, 2006), was a New York Times notable book. As students filled the seats, the floor, and the doorways, we knew we had found an interesting topic. Over the course of the six-lecture series, we moved into larger (and cooler) venues as we looked at happiness from different perspectives.Three Tulane professors Dr. Carrie Wyland, Dr. Matt Sakakeeny, and Dr. Cris

Surprenant tackled the theme from their own disciplinary points of view.

We were also excited to welcome two other very interesting authors to New Orleans and Tulane as part of the Collo-quium. Ethan Watters shared the argument of his book, Crazy Like Us: the Globalization of the American Psyche (Free Press, 2010), that ideas

about mental illness are just as culturally and historically constructed as ideas about happiness, and as contagious. Matthew Crawford, the bestselling au-thor of Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (Penguin, 2009), shared with a rapt audience his experience of finding fulfillment in the manual trades, and his critique of our unexamined assumptions about what makes for intellectually challenging, and even economically rewarding work.

Happiness: The Colloquium“The Happiness lecture series was a perfect addition to my academic experience this year because it helped me to draw connections between my various courses and personal interests.”

“The most obvious question to ask a person that attended the Happiness lecture series is: Did it make you happier? I’m inclined to say yes, indeed it did, although not in a straightforward manner. What has made me happier is the very process of inquiring into the nature of that most illusive of all emotions.”

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One of the more interesting ways students can satisfy the honors course requirement is by taking one of the colloquium courses offered directly by the honors program in collaboration with faculty across the university. The COLQ course code indicates a course that is interdisciplinary, and often enhanced with Honors Program support of visiting speakers andeld field trips to deepen students’ engagement with the material. Last year was the second time we

Pictured above: Mathew Crawford talks with students after his lecture

Honors Colloquium

( Honors Coloquium continued) offered COLQ 1010, a freshman seminar entitled “Community, Polity, and Citizenship.” The seminar introduces students to texts that have shaped present-day discussions of social ethics, political theory, and other human values. From Homer to Nobel-prize winning authors like John Coetzee, the texts are chosen not only for their importance, but for their capacity to get students excited about ideas and to develop their abilities to read and argue more precisely before they begin to specialize in their academic majors. For the last two years the course has been taught by professors in the departments of history (including Tom Luongo, director of the Honors Program) and Spanish and Portuguese. Since faculty bring to the seminar deep experience in careful reading and argumentation—but not necessarily in the texts themselves—they are able to lead students through these classic texts sharing in the same spirit of discovery. The course has been very successful, and even generated some erudite humor (commemorative t-shirts with slogans like “abandon hope, you who enter here.”) The freshman seminar will continue for a third year in 2011-2012.

As a complement to the freshman seminar, we also offered a new colloquium last year aimed at introducing freshmen to research opportunities at Tulane. “Inquiring Minds: Introduction to Research at Tulane,” was taught by Dr. Gary Talarchek, now the assistant director of Tulane’s Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching (CELT). Dr. Talarcheck’s course introduced students to the basic principles of research and scholarship—asking interesting questions, and answering them with the methods developed by the academic disciplines. And then it introduced them to the researchers themselves in a series of invited lectures and visits to research sites across campus. The course dispelled much of the mystery students perceive around what their professors are up to when they aren’t teaching or grading assignments, and suggested ways students could involve themselves in the process of discovery. This course, too, will be offered again in the Fall of 2011.

Oxbridge-style Tutorials:

The experience of the freshman seminar led to another experiment this past year. For the first time, the Honors Program offered two Oxbridge-style tutorial courses. Tom Luongo was interested in finding ways for honors students to better develop their skills at verbal and written argument in close collaboration with faculty. Discussions with his colleague in the history department, Dr. Richard Teichgraeber, revealed the possibility of breaking down a traditional seminar course that met twice a week into a week-long series of meetings with groups of two or three students. Students took turns preparing short essays on the week’s reading which formed the basis for discussion and lively debate in the weekly meeting with the professor. Dr. Teichgraeber’s fall tutorial, “What Does it Mean to be an American?” was followed in the spring by Dr. Luongo’s tutorial on medieval religious culture and Dean James Maclaren’s physics tutorial. These tutorials, in addition to an intense “journal club” style sophomore biology course taught by Dr. Fiona Inglis, were a great success. Dr. Teichgraeber will be offering his tutorial again this fall, and Dr. Luongo hopes to interest more faculty in trying the tutorial format.

NEWCOMB TULANE COLLEGE Honors Program 105 Hebert Hall New Orleans, LA 70118 tel 504.865.5517 fax 504.862.8709 honors.tulane.edu

Honors Alumns: Please send us your news at honors.tulane.edu!

Pictured above: Students join Dr. Rich Campanella on a field trip through New Orleans