Anita Raj is the new executive director of the Newcomb Institute. Prior to joining Tulane, Raj was at the University of California–San Diego, where she was the inaugural Tata Chancellor Professor of Society and Health, founding director of the Center on Gender, Equity and Health, and holder of faculty appointments in the schools of Medicine and Social Sciences.

The A. B. Freeman School of Business will begin a new full-time MBA curriculum in fall 2023. The curriculum is built on three key pillars: data-driven decision making, cross-functional experiential learning, and broad-based preparation for the business world of the future. In addition to Finance and Business Analytics, the curriculum offers new concentrations in Sustainability and Strategy & Marketing.

The School of Professional Advancement (SoPA) public administration program has been named in honor of the late U.S. Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis. The program reached a milestone in May when its first cohort of graduates was awarded the Master of Public Administration degree. The online program also offers graduate certificates.

The School of Professional Advancement has received funding from the U.S. Department of Education to expand and enhance teacher recruitment efforts in New Orleans. Funding will support the launch of a Master of Teaching degree and fund mentor stipends and an induction program for graduates of the school’s teacher preparation programs.

About 1,875 new undergraduate students entered Tulane in fall 2022. These students are the highest achieving and most diverse in university history. They were selected from an applicant pool of 43,028, which made Tulane’s acceptance rate 8.4%. Twenty-eight were valedictorians of their high schools, and 178 had perfect GPAs. Thirty-two are Louisiana Promise students who are enrolled with their full financial need met without loans.

Laura McKinney, associate professor of sociology, and Michelle Foa, associate professor of art history, have received a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to develop a minor in environmental humanities. The interdisciplinary curriculum will give students more opportunities for deep examination of people’s relationship to the environment and draw on the expertise of humanities, social and natural sciences, and architecture faculty.