The Green Room

As we prepare to cast our ballots in November, We'll ask some of our faculty experts the weigh in on the how's and whys of the presidential election. For our first installment we asked Celeste Lay, associate professor in the Department of Political Science, to explain the Electoral College.

January is proving to be a particularly rough month on Wall Street with the Dow shedding points at a historic rate. Investors are jittery and wondering if 2016 is setting up to be a rehash of the 2008 crash. To answer these questions and get some perspective on what the market says about the economy, New Wave sat down with Peter Ricchiuti, a professor of practice in the A.B. Freeman School of Business and director of research for the acclaimed Burkenroad Reports program.

On Wed., January 13, 2016, the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University will host a panel on music as an agent in the continuing Civil Rights Movement and advancing cultural equity. The discussion will be led by Gianna Chachere, founder of The New Quorum in New Orleans, with Wall Street Journal jazz critic and writer Larry Blumenfeld, avant-garde jazz pioneer Wadada Leo Smith, and long time civil rights pioneer/activist Roxy Wright. In this episode of The Green Room, we hear from NOGCS director Rebecca Snedeker, Chachere and Blumenfeld about the work and the history of The New Quorum, which is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to bringing professional musicians and writers from across the globe to New Orleans for meaningful cultural exchange with local and regional artists. Blumenfeld and Wadada Leo Smith are both currently artists-in residence at The New Quorum, located at 2435 Esplanade. Learn more about The New Quorum residency programs and upcoming events, at the website new quorum.org. This piece is underscored with music by Wadada Leo Smith. Photo by Scott Groller.

In October China reversed its three-decade-old rule restricting women from having more than one child. There was much talk about the decision and the impact that a possible baby boom in the world's most populous country would have on the world. To answer these questions, The Green Room producers sat down with Martin Dimitrov, associate professor of Political Science and the director of the Asian Studies program at Tulane.

Tulane University's Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching (CELT) provides theoretical and applied resources, tools and direction to the university community to realize the goal of engaged learning at Tulane. CELT coalesces and serves as a clearinghouse for the university's engaged learning experiences. Our structure is based on three core areas: Classroom Engagement, Experiential Engagement, and Research Engagement.

The song Happy Birthday has a long litigious history datingg back to the 1930s. Every year, people spent millions in royalties to use the song, until a class action law suit was brought challengin whether the owner, Warner/Chappell Music, actually owned the copyright it so aggressively enforced. Elizabeth Townsend-Gard, Tulane School of Law professor specializing in copyright law, discusses the case of Happy Birthday.

An 80,000 word thesis would take nine hours to present. Their time limit ... three minutes. That's the challenge that nine Tulane students face on Wednesday (Nov. 11) from 3 p.m. until 5 p.m. in the Kendall Cram Lecture Hall in the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life, at the first-ever 3-Minute Thesis Competition at Tulane University. Nine graduate students from a wide array of disciplines will compete for a cash prize as well as a People's Choice Award. The winner of the Tulane event will be sponsored by the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies to compete in the regional 3-Minute Thesis Competition at the Council of Southern Graduate Schools conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, in February 2016. The first 3-Minute Thesis Competition was held in 2008 at the University of Queensland in Australia; today, 3MT competitions are held in over 200 universities across more than 18 countries worldwide. “This event is designed to help our PhD students communicate the value and integrity of their thesis work to a lay audience,” says Ashley Robison, a senior program coordinator in the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. “There's a great range of gender, internationality and racial diversity, as well as thesis topics.” Students will have exactly three minutes to relay their life's work — a second more and they are disqualified. “Thirty-eight percent the students at Tulane are graduate students and post-docs,” says Briana Mohan, a career advisor in the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. “The work they do, they are so invested in, and they are so excited about, and it is really the kind of ground-breaking research that is going to shape our future and have an impact on our country and the world. “The fact that they are getting three minutes to share that with the public, when most of the time they're talking to their faculty members or their classmates, or in their confined worlds of being researchers and writers, is really exciting.”

Tulane University Campus Programming (TUCP) has always gone above and beyond in bringing talent and entertainment to Tulane students, and the concerts committee did not disappointed this time around. For the fall 2015 concert, Trey Lopez and Eunice Lee led the committee in bringing Jeremih to Tulane's campus! Jeremih, most known for his songs "Like It," "Planes" and "Don't Tell Em," has had numerous Billboard Top 10 appearances. We had the pleasure of speaking with Trey Lopez, one of the executives of TUCP's concert committee, about what life in TUCP Concerts is like and got a little preview of the performance this weekend. The show will be Saturday, October 24th, at 7:00pm on the LBC Quad. For more information visit https://www.facebook.com/events/1491335287833626/ Christina Hildner is a senior majoring in Marketing and Management at Tulane's A.B. Freeman School of Business.

Ween Dream is an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization that gives free Halloween costumes to children in need. In this episode of the Green Room, 'Ween Dream founder and CEO Kelsey Meeks, a Tulane University alumna, talks about the spooktacular mission of the New Orleans-based nonprofit that, in just one year, has seen three new chapters form in other states. In 2014 (its first year), the organization gave costumes to 580 kids in need in seven states. The number has doubled this year. “We will give away about 1,000 costumes in the next few weeks,” says Meeks. “We received applications from 24 states.” Meeks, who is a 2010 Tulane Law School graduate, shares how the idea came about. “I noticed kids in my neighborhood were trick or treating without costumes, and I knew my friends' children had closets overflowing with costumes, and were outgrowing them every year,” Meeks says. “So, I thought, certainly there is a way we can share the wealth, and get some of those formerly loved costumes to some kids who would really treasure them.” Next week, the ABC-TV show “The Chew” will be filming a segment on 'Ween Dream that will air the week of Halloween. “We hope the national publicity will bring in a ton of costumes after Halloween to put us in a great position to help even more kids next year!” Meeks says. If you would like to donate costumes to children in need, visit the 'Ween Dream website for information, including guidelines for donating gently used costumes and more ways to support the organization. http://www.weendream.org/

In this episode of the Green Room, we explore the lessons of the forest offered by A Studio in the Woods, a sanctuary located on eight acres of bottomland hardwood forest in lower coast Algiers. (A program of Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research, A Studio in the Woods is dedicated to preserving the endangered forest and providing within it a peaceful retreat where artists can work uninterrupted.) A Studio in the Woods is celebrating FORESTival, a “festival in the forest” open to the public this Saturday (Oct. 10) from 11 a.m-5 p.m. The podcast features managing director Ama Rogan and environmental curator David Baker, who has been caring for the property for over a decade. He discusses the importance of hurricanes to the health of Louisiana's natural environment. Baker will be offering tours during FORESTival, an annual celebration featuring artist presentations by current and former residents, musical performances, art activities for kids, a silent auction and a raffle. All sounds in this episode of the Green Room are from Sarah Quintana's album Miss River, inspired by her residency at A Studio in the Woods.(Songs featured include "New Life," "Cut Flower," Miss River" and "Mama Mississippi.") For more information, visit http://astudiointhewoods.org and http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/sarahquintana1

For parents, the number one job as it pertains to their children is to keep them safe. From baby-proofing houses to teaching them how to look both ways before crossing the street; it starts before they're born and continues into adulthood. But, for one member of the Tulane faculty, that wasn't enough. Despite his best efforts, a threat snuck into his home and harmed his son without he or his wife even knowing it was happening. A call from his son's doctor alerted Thomas Beller to the issue, and now the assistant professor in the English Department wants to make sure everyone is aware of the risk.

Mike Griffith is the faculty technology coordinator at Tulane University. In this episode of the Green Room, Mike explains the annual Tech Day that is held at Tulane every fall. This year, it will be on September 24-25 on the downtown and uptown campuses, respectively. The keynote speaker this year is Jared Bendis, the Creative New Media Officer for Case Western Reserve University. He will discuss pedagogical strategies to create rich media experiences. Tech Day features academic and technical presentations as well as games and door prizes. Learn about the new trends in technology and education with presentations from Tulane faculty, staff and vendors. Tech Day is free and open to the public. Learn more at techday.tulane.edu

It's a somewhat common notion that entrepreneurism in New Orleans is a byproduct of the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. In the last 10 years, the city has seen unprecedented growth of startups, but how much of that is really the result of Katrina? New Wave went down to the Idea Village and talked to CEO and Co-Founder Tim Williamson about the history of entrepreneurism in the Crescent City, and his answers were not what we expected.

The Green Room: Move-in day 2015 by Tulane University

"More Than Twice, More Than I Can Count" is an original poem by Peter Cooley, a professor of English at Tulane University and poet laureate of Louisiana. He narrates this poem for the New Wave.

With the city deserted after Hurricane Katrina and buildings in varying states of damage, evacuated Tulane scientists returned to the New Orleans area to see whether any of their research could be saved from floodwaters, wind and power outages. In some cases, decades' worth of research was rescued thanks to the individuals who searched through the J. Bennett Johnston Health and Environmental Research Building downtown and manned the Tulane National Primate Research Center in Covington, Louisiana throughout the storm and the difficult days and weeks after it passed. Hear the podcast with John Clements, PhD, and Andrew Lackner, DVM, PhD, below.

In remembrance of the ten-year anniversary of Katrina, the Louisiana Research Collection at Tulane University is acquiring and permanently preserving pamphlets, flyers, scrapbooks, diaries, letters, and the personal accounts of people who experienced the disaster. Katy Hobgood Ray interviews Leon Miller, head of the Louisiana Research Collection, in this episode of the Green Room.

Since the massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, last month, the debate over whether the Confederate flag and monuments to leaders of the Confederacy have any place in the contemporary South has become quite heated. In an effort to separate the signal from the noise in this discussion, New Wave sat down with two members of the history department faculty to discuss the Civil War and alternatives for honoring heroes.

For those paying attention, what's happening in Greece is playing out like an ancient tragedy on a macro economic scale. Banks shut down for weeks and the international community looked on as the Greek people voted against accepting new austerity measures in order to avoid a default on the nation's debt to other members of the European Union. While the problems have been percolating for the better part of a decade, the fact that it hasn't been in the news until recently means many people have questions about what's happening. In the hopes of answering some of those questions, New Wave sat down with Michael Bernstein, who is not only the provost but also the John Cristie Barr professor of history and and a professor of economics.

The concept of a "super region" encompassing Louisiana's two largest metro areas — New Orleans and Baton Rouge — has been percolating for the past five years. New Wave decided to take a look at the idea from both a business perspective and a geographical one.

In this episode of the Green Room, Norris Yarbrough, director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness and Response at Tulane University, discusses hurricane preparedness and the importance of having a plan in advance of a storm.

On May 30, 2015, the Tulane Club of New York held its seventh annual crawfish boil for alumni at the 79th Boat Basin Cafe, an open-air patio and rotunda overlooking the Hudson River. In this edition of the Green Room, Katy Ray interviews some of the attendees, getting their thoughts on the benefits of participating in Tulane alumni events, and revealing a fervent communal affection for Tulane and New Orleans. Music by Pitch Black Brass Band.

In this episode of the Green Room, Katy Ray interviews musician Ben Schenck, who for over twenty years has worked at the Theatre and Dance department at Tulane University as an accompanist. He plays conga for modern dance technique classes—a role he has held since before there was even a dance major at Tulane. For almost as long, Ben has been the recognizable face of the Panorama Jazz Band (and Panorama Brass Band). Tall, lanky, wielding his clarinet like a snake charmer, Ben leads his vivacious troupes through the streets of New Orleans and on stages around the world. Their music is celebratory and joyful, drawing from New Orleans jazz, the tropical rhythms of the Caribbean and the exotic melodies of Eastern Europe. Photo by Greg Miles. Songs featured are "Serpent Maigre" and "Shikerer Tantz." Visit http://PanoramaJazzBand.com and http://PanoramaBrassBand.com for more info.

Despite a catastrophic injury during his sophomore year in college, Woody Morgan is graduating from Tulane medical school and soon he will be heading to residency training at Harvard.