Health in college is so much more than avoiding pizza every night and occasionally going to the gym. Health is multifaceted and is pivotal to your ability to thrive during the next four years. This course will examine the most relevant health topics for college students from a public health perspective, integrating theories and practices relevant to your life. In addition, this course seeks to cultivate leadership skills as an element of being healthy and successful in college.

Cultivate your Inner Changemaker is devoted to exploring the skills, strategies, and ideas of effective social change advocates in the 21st century. Students will be learning about some of the essential skills of effective changemakers, including leadership, optimism, resilience, risk-taking, luck, relationship building, conflict resolution, creativity, and innovation. Throughout the course, students will practice these skills, both in class and through assignments.

In this course we will delve into the rich tapestry of New Orleans' cultural geography and its profound multicultural existence. Students will explore the historical roots and global influences that have shaped the city's unique identity. Through engaging lectures, seminar discussions, and experiential learning, students will develop a nuanced understanding of the city's multicultural history and its ongoing impact on contemporary society. Students will gain an appreciation for the global influences in New Orleans' music, cuisine, environment, and traditions while addressing social justice issues rooted in the city's unique history. The course aims to foster cultural competence, inclusivity, global awareness, civic engagement, and leadership skills, providing students with the tools to navigate an increasingly interconnected world.

This 1-credit course will utilize a variety of cases which highlight a real-life example of a challenge in leadership. Fields covered will include business, politics, non-profit work, and social movements - all highlighting decision making in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. In most class periods, you will be asked to “inhabit” the case and take up the dilemma of its protagonist. I may assign class members roles to prepare and play in the class discussion spontaneously or in advance. None of the cases have right answers, although we may have an epilogue that tells what actually happened (the historical outcome). You are asked to wrestle with the problem as if it were your own and bring your experience and classroom learning from Tulane University and elsewhere to bear on the questions. The Harvard Business School originated and developed the phenomenon of the teaching case to simulate business experience in novices, to create a concrete vehicle for applying abstract theories to real-world situations, and to engender engaged classroom discussion while fostering critical thinking skills as students were forced to wrestle with actual business dilemmas that had no easy answer. It is no accident that professional schools were drawn to case teaching—Law, for obvious reasons—but also schools of public affairs and public health whose missions are to utilize the best thinking of the disciplines to prepare students for careers as practitioners. Cases marry learning about real world policy and organizational problems with critical thinking, abstract reasoning, and theorizing valued in all academic disciplines. In particular, this course will offer you a chance to get to know New Orleans as a resilient city with monumental challenges left to tackle.

Founded in 1718, the city of New Orleans has a long and rich history with sports. From the rise of social class-driven sports such as rowing and billiards to the New Orleans Saints’ heroic revival of the city post-Hurricane Katrina, sports has been as integral to the area as food, music, and Mardi Gras. Sports have made an enduring impact on the social world in which we all live. It is a taken for granted aspect of our everyday lives – whether that entails watching “Sportscenter” or noticing that every single major newspaper contains a “Sports” section that is as long if not longer than any other section. Yet there is more to sport than just what we see on a daily basis. In this course, we will explore general sports-related topics and examine actual case studies related to New Orleans’ sports scene. More than simply ‘talking sports,’ students will study issues from political, economic and social viewpoints and also gain an understanding of the rich sports heritage found here in New Orleans. Readings and discussions, field trips, and guest speakers will aid students to understand both historical accounts and modern-day subjects associated with sports such as governmental involvement, public financing, and community development. Students will participate in a mandatory service learning component with TBD. Their after-school programs promote development in boys and girls through activities that build character, cultivate new skills, and create a sense of belonging – in this case a place where kids can express themselves, play together and get fit. By participating in activities with NFL Youth Education Town students will deepen their understanding of the political, economic, and social ramifications of sports on a local level by making correlations to sports and its impacts on the city’s youth, infrastructure, civic pride, crime reduction efforts, poverty eradication, and other areas, and gain an awareness of their role as a citizen in the city of New Orleans.

There will be two primary goals in this course. The first will involve introducing students to New Orleans’s history, culture, and literature. The second will entail an interdisciplinary introduction to a wide array of influences with the effort of showing how New Orleans’s turbulent history of changing possession, immigration, and migration have contributed to a “performance” of various versions of “New Orleansness.” The course will focus specifically on the presence of French, Spanish, African, and a brief overview of the various immigrant communities in the city’s history and the various ways in which these groups have performed their own version of New Orleans for the city itself, the United States, and the world. In addition, the students will use the maps found in Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas to look at how maps are constructions of authenticity.

This course will introduce students to the modern approaches chemical engineers employ to solve real world problems. Topics will emphasize engineering design and innovation. Students will learn through relevant readings, discussions, and guest lectures from leaders in the field. We will also take two field trips to introduce students to the roles of engineering in New Orleans.

This course covers the challenges facing women pursuing degrees and careers in STEM. Many of these challenges are institutionalized barriers that still exist, creating a system in which it is harder for women to thrive in comparison with their male peers. Other minority groups in STEM face many of the same challenges as women, and the additional and different barriers for other underrepresented groups will also be discussed. The course will cover strategies for success in STEM and becoming an ally and advocate for other traditionally marginalized groups in STEM.

Want to explore the wilds of Louisiana outside of New Orleans? Try some alligator meat, shrimp caught fresh from the sea or, in general, explore another side of Louisiana's rich cultural heritage- then this class is for you! The far-reaching impact of Native American Tribes of the lower Mississippi Valley on shaping Louisiana history is among the least explored subjects among the otherwise well-documented rich history of Louisiana. Recent and ongoing research shows that without the “Petit Nations’”, as some of the Tribes were called, the history of this region would have been quite different. This course offers students the rare opportunity to participate in on-going, important research that entails working directly with Tribal members. In addition, students will have the opportunity to take a trip conducted by Tribal members down the bayous as they give a tour of their ancestral lands as well as explore other areas of Louisiana outside of New Orleans while also tasting some of the food native to Louisiana. An experience not to be missed!

This course uses a sports lens to introduce Tulane students to what character traits have made sports figures, coaches, teams, and organizations successful as well as aided in turning sports from recreational fun to a multi-billion-dollar global industry juggernaut. This class will introduce students to several different valuable life skills and lessons to aid them in them in their academic endeavors and professional journey. The goal of this class is to see what transferable skills those in the world of sports use in their respective venues to help them become success stories and pass those qualities along to you to aid you in achieving success in life during and after Tulane.

Since the industrial era, analog, digital, and medical products have been produced with the claim that certain technologies make women’s lives easier. This course examines the role that FEMtech plays in women’s lives and the role that product design plays in shaping discourse around women’s relationship with technology. Students will also explore the recent rise of the FEMtech app technology, a projected $120 billion-dollar industry. Students will have the opportunity to learn about the technology and start-up industries from technology leaders in New Orleans. Students will use feminist technology design strategies to design and pitch a FEMtech product.

In this course, students will be given a behind the scenes look at the entrepreneurial ecosystem in New Orleans –the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts and what needs to happen to have a vibrant startup community that is equitable, accessible, and collaborative.From local entrepreneurs to community partners to support organizations to investors and more, this course will bring together some of the most important stakeholders in the New Orleans entrepreneurial ecosystem. We will also leverage our data from the Greater New Orleans Startup Report, hearing from our very own Lepage Center to present an in-depth overview of the current state of the early stage business economy in New Orleans.

This one-credit course complements the experience of students living in the 1963 Collective Residential Learning Community (RLC) by providing them with an equity oriented interpretative framework grounded in Black thought, experience, and history. The modular survey course was designed for first-year students interested in exploring Black history, culture, and knowledge across the African diaspora. Through this first year seminar, students will develop an appreciation and understanding of the contributions of Black people in a globalized context.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

This course examines the origin and evolution of Louisiana’s ecosystems. Students will learn about living and prehistoric plants and animals and their physical surroundings while exploring Louisiana’s coastal marshes, bottomland hardwood forests, longleaf pine savannahs, and tallgrass prairies. Course includes multiple field trips.

This course is a critical survey of cinematic works by and about women, with examples drawn from different modes of cinematic expression (mainstream fiction films as well as alternative film and video [including documentaries, experimental, & narrative]) and from different historical periods (from the 1930s to the present). The course deploys feminist approaches to film criticism and applies these approaches to cinematic representations of women. Films illustrating particular genres, as well as feminist and ''women's'' films, are discussed and critiqued. We will consider the role of film in our understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality, as well as race, class, and disability. Through discussions and writing, we will work to discern relevant social, political, ideological, and aesthetic concepts in the media we examine. We will look at contemporary Hollywood and independent cinema, US and some international films by both established and emerging filmmakers.

Black vs. White. Citizen vs. Immigrant. Transgender vs. Cisgender. Christian vs. Muslim. Gay vs. Straight. The list goes on. In recent years, the United States has become increasingly polarized. The most interesting and exciting aspects of human diversity are set against one another, in rigid opposing binaries. Through interactive workshops, cultural trips, discussions of texts and films, writing reflections, and guest speakers, this seminar will serve as an incubator for students from diverse backgrounds to develop their understanding of the complexities of cultures, identities, and power dynamics. We will simultaneously explore everyday practices for world building beyond "Us. Vs. Them."

From non-profit organizations to government, from social movements to Mardi Gras, from restaurants to boardrooms, women have led New Orleans. Using an intersectional feminist lens, this course will explore how the personal, the organizational, and the institutional intersect to shape how women practice leadership. Students will be introduced to theories and research that address gender and leadership while focusing on historical and contemporary examples of women practicing leadership in New Orleans. The course will begin with a brief introduction to a sociological perspective on gender and intersectionality - foundational concepts of the course - and move into discussions of how and why women lead, as well as barriers they encounter to leadership. Guest speakers, field trips, and writing assignments will ask students to think broadly, but also analytically, about what leadership means, as well as about how identities and institutions shape the experience of leadership.