Lee Skinner is the new dean of Newcomb-Tulane College, effective July 1. She also has joined the faculty of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Skinner is a leading scholar of Latin American literature and was previously associate dean at Claremont McKenna College in California.

“They are, in a very concrete way, doing things and reading things that show them that they’re important, that their lives matter and that other people are paying attention to their lives,” Zachary Lazar said in The Creative Brain, a Netflix documentary, about a service-learning creative writing class he teaches to inmates at the Lafayette Parish Correctional Center.

Through joint efforts of Tulane, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Army, a new vaccine has been developed that provides protection for the first time against equine encephalitic viruses in nonhuman primates. The encephalitic alphaviruses, spread by mosquitoes, are possible bioterrorism agents.

The National Institutes of Health named Mark VanLandingham, professor at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, the 12th Matilda White Riley Honors Distinguished Lecturer. VanLandingham was honored for his pioneering research on how culture and shared history helped the Vietnamese American community in New Orleans recover from Hurricane Katrina more quickly than other communities.

The Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition presented by the Helis Foundation features a sculpture by the late Ida Kohlmeyer (NC ’33, G ’56). The sculpture, Box of Artificial Flowers #6, is the largest sculpture Kohlmeyer created, standing at 17 feet tall and 14 feet wide. The Helis Foundation purchased the sculpture from a private collector in Chicago in 2018 and invested in the restoration of the piece. The sculpture now sits on the neutral ground of Poydras Street and Loyola Avenue.

Tulane baseball third baseman Kody Hoese was selected by the Los Angeles Dodgers with the 25th pick in the first round of the 2019 Major League Baseball draft. Hoese is the 10th player in program history to be selected in the first round. He follows Shooter Hunt, who was selected 31st in the first round in 2008 by the Minnesota Twins. Hoese was the first of seven Tulane players drafted this year. The other players are Brendan Cellucci, Chase Solesky, Trevor Jensen, Kaleb Roper, Grant Mathews and Sal Gozzo.

“By restricting ballet to pure romance, the art form loses its power to make critical commentary on the state of things.” Felicia McCarren, professor of French and dance historian, said in a New York Times article, “Is Ballet Camp?”