School of Liberal Arts anthropology graduates Jayur Mehta and Ted Marks engaged students from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts in a summer project focused on preserving the past and restoring Louisiana’s coastal landscape. Funded by the National Geographic Society, they studied an 800-year-old site in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, which was once home to the ancestors of tribes like the Chitimacha and the Atakapa.

For the fourth consecutive year, Tulane University is ranked first among graduate schools for the number of volunteers who join the Peace Corps. There are 27 alumni currently serving, 22 from the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. In addition to leading the graduate school pack, Tulane also ranks No. 5 among medium undergraduate schools with the most Peace Corps volunteers. This ranking is up from No. 10 in 2017 and is based on the 33 alumni volunteering worldwide.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Science has awarded a five-year, $10 million grant to Tulane to launch a national school choice research center to study and find ways to improve the way school choice policies work for disadvantaged students.

A new study from the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine shows that, depending on the interpretation criteria, blood tests can distinguish recent Zika infections in areas where dengue is endemic. Dengue and Zika fevers are both mosquito-borne tropical diseases.

Katherine Johnson, an assistant professor in sociology, is exploring how working mothers find a balance between breastfeeding their infant children 
and their daily career commitments.

Patrick Bordnick, dean of the School of Social Work and a pioneer in the use of virtual reality for substance abuse assessment and intervention, was recognized for his work at the Association of Recovery for Higher Education Conference in July.