EDI Initiative Funded Submissions

The Building a Black Studies Community initiative will allow the Africana Studies Program to cultivate a dynamic and thriving intergenerational Black Studies scholarly community at Tulane through high school partnerships and cross-university collaboration with local HBCUs. This three-year pilot program will be comprised of a Black Studies Book Club, Africana Studies Abroad, and Africana Studies Undergraduate Fellowships to reach students at every stage of their academic experience and establish Tulane’s Africana Studies program as the hub for Black Studies in the area.

The Asian Studies Program will launch a three-pronged initiative to incorporate Asian and Asian American histories, experiences, and stories into Tulane’s effort to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion. Hiring two postdoctoral associates will serve as a starting point to position Tulane as a hub for intersectional research on transnational Asian experiences. A monthly events series, “Global Asia and Asian Experiences,” will center around programming, teaching, and mentoring to bring together Asian and Asian-American students on campus. Lastly, the Asian Studies program will engage in community outreach to help create a pipeline for incoming students through public scholarship.

In collaboration with the Tulane School of Medicine, Newcomb-Tulane College’s Office of Academic Enrichment has developed the ASPIRE Summer Research Buddy Program to address the underrepresentation of students of color in the medical field. Through this initiative, medical students will be paired with undergraduates as research partners in a mentor-mentee relationship and commit to eight weeks of intensive full-time clinical research. The ASPIRE Research Buddy Program will effectively create a formal uptown-downtown pipeline for students and help to increase the number of students of color who seek to attend Tulane School of Medicine.

Co-sponsored by the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Tulane BIPOC Graduate and Professional Student Mentoring Program will create pathways of mentorship and sponsorship for awards, fellowships, and promotion of BIPOC students’ academic careers. This new approach to racial equity, diversity, and inclusion at Tulane will have strong connections to local, national, and international networks to develop a BIPOC Graduate Mentoring Program that is “of New Orleans and for the world.”

The Carolyn Barber-Pierre Center for Intercultural Life is comprised of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Office of Gender and Sexual Diversity, and the Office of Religious Life.

The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) will increase its programming, services, and engagement for BIPOC Men and Masculine Success, BIPOC Graduate Students, and Diversity within Spiritual Life across Tulane’s uptown and downtown campuses. Addressing these strategic goals will allow OMA to help additional student populations while continuing to provide advocacy and support for BIPOC undergraduates.

The Office of Gender and Sexual Diversity (OGSD) will offer annual Queer and Trans (QT) Community Engagement Trips for six students to attend and present at the National Creating Change Conference. These trips will expose students to the diversity of the QT community and provide possibility models to marginalized students. Additionally, OGSD will expand its support for QTBIPOC and Graduate and Professional student success by hiring additional staff.

The Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching’s Equitable and Inclusive Course Redesign Institute will help Tulane faculty critically re-examine their course curriculum, structure, assessment practices, content delivery, and other necessary changes so that BIPOC students can thrive. The five-day institute will include 20 full-time faculty from across all schools representing Professors of Practice, Assistant, Associate, and Full Professors as they work to redesign their syllabi to cultivate inclusive and equitable experiences in the classroom.

Originated in the 1920s at Howard University, National Pan-Hellenic Council plots were established to symbolically and physically represent Divine Nine organizations. The plots, which will be situated near the Carolyn Barber-Pierre Center for Intercultural Life, will serve as a public space for students, alumni, and community members to gather, reflect, and celebrate the rich history and continued work of organizations within the National Pan-Hellenic Council. Plots are expected to be completed in the spring of 2023.

Since 2017, the NTC Black Atlantic Study Abroad Program has highlighted the diasporic connections between Louisiana and other locations in the Black Atlantic World in Senegal, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil. Through the program, these students will explore issues of intercultural communication, diversity, power, and privilege in a global context.

The ConnecTU Summer Experience is a bridge program that invites 15-30 talented scholars to participate in courses, programming, and community building intended to support academic excellence and retention among a small cohort of incoming first-year students. These students often identify as students of color, first-generation college students, low-income students, LGBTQ+ identifying students, and College Track scholarship recipients. ConnecTU is a six-week on-campus experience that takes place over the summer before an incoming freshman’s first year of college.

In support of Tulane’s National Pan-Hellenic Council and its member organizations, the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Programs will hire a graduate assistant to provide direct support to BIPOC-serving fraternities and sororities in addition to hosting a monthly community-building program to create a welcoming environment for BIPOC students. These initiatives will support the creation of environments tailored to the Black Greek experience at Tulane.

The Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (OGPS) will match the Board of Regents/Southern Regional Educational Board’s (BOR/SREB) Graduate Fellowships to support two additional underrepresented Ph.D. students at Tulane. Increasing the number of BOR/SREB fellowships from two to four will enhance Tulane’s record of successfully recruiting, retaining, and graduating underrepresented minority graduate students. With support for these fellowships as well as institutional investments in doctoral education, OGPS can continue to increase the percentage of underrepresented students enrolled at Tulane year over year.

The Racial Equity Summer Research Institute is a collaboration between the Center for Academic Equity and the Office of Academic Enrichment. This three-year initiative is designed to increase BIPOC student participation in research, cultivate greater awareness of and preparation for graduate school applications, and develop 24 (eight each year) scholars interested in working on topics of racial equity through an interdisciplinary lens. Each year, the program will focus on a different theme related to racial equity and allow students to build meaningful relationships with faculty mentors across campus.

This initiative, co-sponsored by the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Office of Institutional Equity, Office of Student Conduct, and Office of Title IX, will strengthen Tulane’s response to racial bias and other interlocking experiences of bias on our campus. Through the strong partnership of four offices, Tulane will be able to help faculty, staff, students, and administrative leaders be trained in a conflict mediation and relational model that will help strengthen the academic learning and professional environment for all our community members.

The Teacher Preparation & Certification Program combines industry-relevant coursework and focused field experience to educate beginning teachers and support experienced teachers. The program will create a curriculum centered around equity, diversity, and inclusion, and partner with community members and parents to help prepare students for the field of teaching and positively impact the students with whom these future teachers will be working.

The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) program will provide intercultural training for six faculty, staff, and students that will prepare them to offer training on-site at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. The program will aid in addressing the intersectionality of those whose marginalized identities exist within interlocking systems of oppression. IDI addresses areas of race, class, sexual identity, gender identity, and how these interlocking oppressions impact and influence our lived experiences.

As part of the Future Leaders in Public Health (FLPH) program, this peer mentorship component will increase retention, reduce delayed graduation rates among BIPOC students, and create a more inclusive campus climate. The initiative will serve as a system of support, coaching, and advising for FLPH participants. It is an intentional “planned” mentoring community formed by incoming BIPOC students and returning students who will serve as mentors.

Newcomb-Tulane College’s Center for Global Education will offer scholarships to students who demonstrate scholarly interests in questions of race, identity, and international development in Africa and its diaspora. This initiative will foster higher rates of participation of BIPOC and underrepresented students in Tulane’s study abroad programs and will allow more students to engage in experiential learning in nontraditional, non-white study abroad locations.

The Tulane Ecuador Scholars Program will empower BIPOC students with cross-disciplinary, hands-on training for socio-environmental leadership. The program removes financial and socio-cultural barriers that often limit BIPOC engagement and retention in environmental fields of study. This three-year, cohort-based certificate program immerses students in an award-winning, community-engaged program at a safe, modern “learning laboratory” in Ecuador.