THE SCHOLAR
HONORS
2013 A Newsletter of the Tulane Honors Program There are some big changes to report as we head into the 2013-2014 Academic Year. First, we have a change in the position of Honors Associate Director. Scott Pentzer has left his post in Honors to become the new Director of the Center for Global Education, the office that oversees (among other things) Tulane’s Study Abroad Program. We look forward to continuing to work with Scott and CGE to help honors students incorporate international experience into their education and career plans, one of the areas in which Scott was most successful in his time as Associate Director. (See story within on Fulbright Scholarships.) We are delighted that Charlotte Maheu Vail will be joining Honors as our new Associate Director. Charlotte was most recently the founding director of the Newcomb Scholars Program, which under her leadership, has succeeded in providing an intellectual home for ambitious women pursuing a wide range of academic majors. We are very fortunate to be bringing to Honors someone with Charlotte’s experience in advising high-achieving students and overseeing ambitious academic programs—and someone who has already become a key participant in undergraduate education at Tulane. 2013 Fulbright Scholars David Ewens, Aubrey Kraft and Louis Bergsman
The second change involves the rules for Honors at Tulane. At the Spring meeting of the NewcombTulane College Faculty, it was decided to remove the link between the Honors Program and the awarding of Latin Honors at graduation: students will no longer be required to complete the Honors Program—and in particular, the Honors Thesis—in order to graduate Magna and Summa cum laude. The GPA standards for Latin honors were also raised. I don’t have space here to go into the arguments for (or against) this change, except to say that I supported it. It has been clear for some time that the thesis requirement—as a requirement--was not in many cases serving the educational purpose for which it existed. For one thing, it imposed a one-size-fits-all model on student achievement that sometimes was unfair for students and sometimes inhibited academic ambitions we should support. This does not mean at all that we are downplaying the importance of the Honors Thesis, which remains the principle expression of achievement in undergraduate research and scholarship at Tulane. In a way, just the opposite is true. I am looking forward to being able to make the case for the thesis as an intellectual experience and as a mark of scholarly achievement, now that no student will feel obliged to write the thesis merely in order to graduate magna or summa.
Honors Program Staff F. Thomas Luongo, Ph.D. Associate Professor of History Associate Dean for Honors Charlotte Maheu Vail, Ph.D. Associate Director Norah Lovell, MFA Senior Program Coordinator
(cont. from page 1) I think too that this change will help us focus our curricular and other efforts where they are best applied, on helping students who are seeking greater intellectual engagement to find the resources and opportunities that are available to them at Tulane. Towards this end, we are planning the creation of a new “core� within Honors: the Tulane Scholars Program, which will offer freshmen and sophomores a common set of courses designed to introduce them to the intellectual terrain and research opportunities of the University. There will be closer advising by faculty mentors, and emphasis on writing for both faculty and peer review. Expect more details about this program in the next newsletter. Other developments this year in Honors residential life and student research are described within. We continue to look for ways to expand and improve our programs for the sophomores in Weatherhead Sophomore Honors Community and the freshmen in Butler House, with the help of Paul and Lyle Colombo, the faculty in residence at Weatherhead, and an enthusiastic group of Faculty Fellows from across the academic disciplines. Dean Thomas Luongo addresses students at the Senior Reception and Awards Ceremony.
I hope you will enjoy reading about the achievements of our impressive students, and about new initiatives in Honors. And as always, I invite you to get in touch, to discuss the Honors Program or just to let us know where you are and what you are up to! --F. Thomas Luongo, Associate Dean for Honors
Please visit our website at: http://honors.tulane.edu Graduating senior Tanvi Shah receives her honors cord from Scott Pentzer at the Senior Awards Ceremony. Over 200 students graduated with high Latin honors in 2013.
As I unpack my books, find the perfect spot for my pen holder from the Newcomb Art Gallery, and talk with Honors students about their thesis committees and scholarships to support their research internationally, I find myself at home in the Honors Program as the new Associate Director. My Tulane career began in 2006 with the Newcomb College Institute where I developed and oversaw the Newcomb Scholars Program. In 2009, I earned my Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of New Orleans, with a research focus on the history of higher education (early 20th century, specifically the role of undergraduate women and men). Other areas of interest include modern campus cultures, cultural capital, and service-learning and its relationship to students’ intellectual development. In my new role, I am gratified to be surrounded by phrases such as “intellectual biography,” “faculty mentors,” “coherent narratives,” “academic communities,” “asking foundational questions,” and “Honors experience,” and my mind moves from one to the other, connecting the words like pieces of a puzzle. These concepts manifest themselves through Honors courses and colloquia, faculty guidance and advising, and an intellectual life outside of the classroom in Butler and Weatherhead. In addition, these phrases shape the way we advise students for national scholarships and fellowships, bringing me to another word – process. Nationally competitive scholarships, such as the Fulbright, Truman, Udall, Rhodes, and Marshall are wonderful opportunities for students to study, research, and travel. We strongly support the process, both that students undertake when they apply and the high standards of the scholarships. We work with students to write thoughtful essays. We challenge students to build an intellectual identity and demonstrate it in an interview. We encourage them to foster meaningful working relationships with faculty. While these experiences may be impressive when applying for scholarships, they are equally or even more important in developing one’s identity as a student scholar. They challenge students to push themselves intellectually and academically, as well as in leadership roles. These scholarships and the students who apply for them sustain and help to define the academic standards and intellectual life of the university. I encourage and challenge Tulane students to embark upon this process, as they connect their own pieces of the puzzle, for this Fall and beyond. --Charlotte Maheu Vail Associate Director for Honors
HONORS COMMUNIT Y
Our freshman honors community at Butler House had another active year, and the group was especially bonded due to the arrival of Hurricane Issaac at the start of the school year. Most students opted to remain in Butler House for several days without electricity, and as a result developed a very tight-knit community. The Butler Roundtable series of biweekly discussions with faculty was well received. Some of the most enthusiastically attended roundtables related to the 2012 presidential election and were led by political science professors Brian Brox and Melissa Harris-Perry. The series ended again this year with student-to-student sessions, where graduating seniors shared the results of their recently concluded research, along with some sage survival tips for students looking ahead to an honors thesis. The Sophomore Honors (SoHo) Community in Weathered Hall, inaugurated in 2011, enjoyed another year of honors residential programming. Students joined one of eight themed “societies” based on intellectual interests. Each society was matched with a faculty fellow who accompanied the group as they organized monthly dinner meetings, society field trips and special programs for the SoHo community. As with Butler House, there were many activities spurred on by the 2012 election. This year the Faculty Fellows for SoHo were: Brian Brox (Political Science), Elio Brancoforte (Germanic and Slavic Studies), Diane Grams (Sociology), Donata Henry (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology), Michael Kuczynski (English), Geoffrey Parker (Business), Justin Wolfe (History), and Carrie Wyland (Psychology). Some of the more notably named societies were The Superpackers, Occupy SoHo and The DaVincheese and Crackers. The Honors Program thanks the society members, the faculty fellows, resident advisors and especially the faculty members-in -residence Drs. Paul and Lyle Columbo for their contributions to the honors community. Above: Professor Brian Brox leads a Butler Roundtable discussion
Danielson Scholars The Danielson Memorial Scholarship Fund, established in the memory of Dean Jean Danielson in 2011 continues her mission: to help undergraduates figure out what they want to do in the world, and to start them on that path. The two Danielson Scholars selected for 2013 were Daphne Chan and Lauren Kwiatkowski. With the support of the Danielson Scholarship, Daphne joined a 10-week summer biomedical research internship program at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce, FL, where she worked on potential anti-cancer therapeutics. Lauren worked on a project this summer titled “The Tulane Queer History Project”. Her project chronicles the history of Tulane’s LGBTQIA communities, their relationship to the broader campus, and their history within New Orleans. We thank our alumni for giving back to the Honors Program in the name of a beloved teacher who did so much to build it.
Lauren Kwiatkowski I first conceived the idea for the Tulane Queer History Project in January of 2013 because I was eager to synthesize my particular skills as a history major and worker at an archive with my desire to become more involved with activism in the queer community. It was an exciting day when I received word I would be granted a Danielson Scholarship. The experience has been educational and humbling. When it was first explained to me that the underlying philosophy of the Danielson Scholarship was to award students with bold projects that may be over-ambitious and encourage them to carry on their project beyond the summer break, I recall feeling conflicted as I trusted myself to complete the entire project by the end of the summer. However, though I completed as much as I anticipated, I have come to realize that there is so much more to do and this project is so much more than I ever would have believed. I eagerly look forward to continuing this project throughout the academic year and ensuring it is carried on. What began as a small, one-summer project (under the guidance of Dr. Red Tremmel, director of the Office of Gender and Sexual Diversity) has evolved into something so much greater than I ever imagined. Materials that would have been lost and forgotten now have a permanent home. The Tulane Queer History project has not only benefited those who are involved with it, but will positively impact Tulane on the whole by contributing to a culture of respect, understanding, communication, critical thought, and acceptance at our school. Thanks to the Danielson Scholarship, this project will help bring Tulane to what one alumnus described as ‘toward a better future… for all of us’. --Lauren Kwiatkowski
Daphne Chan “After this summer experience, I feel so much more confident in confronting some of the big problems in marine conservation and research. With the amount of first hand experience I acquired, I feel like I will be able to competently lead various Tulane organizations to advocate for some of the causes I care about – cancer research, the outdoors, conservation efforts, and community service. My stay in Florida has been so inspiring that I have no doubt the path I’ve chosen is worth sticking to. It was a life-changing experience”. --Daphne Chan
(above) Archival materials gathered from 1974-75 for theTulane Queer History Project
A Good Year for Scholarships Amanda Snead German Academic Exchange
A Record Year for Fulbrights 2013 was a record year for Tulane success in the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Of the 13 Tulane students offered Fulbright awards this year, eight were current and recent graduates of the Honors Program. 2011 honors program graduate Sean Higgins (now a graduate student in Tulane’s Department of Economics), won a Fulbright research grant to study poverty alleviation policies in Mexico. 2012 honors graduates Tobin Fulton and Katie Tasker also won Fulbright research grants in this year’s competition. Tobin will travel to Brazil to carry out social science research in Rio de Janeiro, while Katie will be involved in ecological field research in the Cerro Azul biological reserve in eastern Peru. In the class of 2013, David Ewens, Aubrey Kraft and Louis Bergsman, (pictured above left to right) will all be spending next year as Fulbright students. Louis, David, and Aubrey won Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship awards to Indonesia, Germany, and Malaysia respectively.
Amanda Snead, a summa cum laude graduate in Neuroscience, has been awarded a prestigious study scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to complete a two-year international graduate program in medical neurosciences at the Charite Universitatsmedizin in Berlin.
Michael Celone Boren Fellow Michael Celone, a 2013 magna cum laude graduate of the undergraduate program in public health, will begin his graduate career as a 2013 Boren Fellow in Tanzania. Michael is interested in neglected tropical diseases, and will be starting his masters degree program in Global Health Systems and Development at Tulane with a year in Zanzibar funded by the Boren Fellowship program. The 11 month program will be split between 3.5 months studying intensive Swahili while living with a host family, followed by several more months working with Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, a project of Imperial College, London.
Gisele Calderon Whitaker International Fellow Biomedical Engineering graduate Gisele Calderon (summa cum laude) was honored to be awarded both a Fulbright research grant and a Whitaker International Program Fellowship. Gisele will spend next year as a Whitaker International Fellow pursuing biomedical engineering research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland.
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Summer Research Program
Many students at Tulane seek opportunities in research as part of their ambitions for graduate school and research careers. Still we understand (and suspect many of our readers will remember) how difficult it can be to get that first chance to work on a faculty-mentored research project. Thanks to the generous support of donors to Newcomb-Tulane College, thirteen honors students spent six weeks this past summer learning about the process of research in close cooperation with faculty mentors. The summer researchers had diverse academic interests, from African Studies to Neoroscience. For each of them, the opportunity to devote six weeks of uninterrupted attention to a single project taught them alot about what research is all about. Junior Emily Cardinas conducted research with Prof. Elizabeth McMahon (History) related to a new book examining the process of colonial development on the Zanzibar Islands. Sophomore Sirophob Chansangavej worked with Prof. Shusheng Weng (Cell and Molecular Biology) in his lab to research pathological angiogenesis and therapeutic solutions to vascular retinopathies. Sophomore Skylar Deckoff Jones worked in the lab of Prof. Diyar Talbayev (Physics and Engineering Physics) designing, constructing and testing a new terahertz time-domain spectrometer. Junior Alec Friedman continued his work on two of his own research projects, involving endogenous opioids and pain, that he initiated in the lab of James Zandina (Neuroscience, Medical School.) Junior Duc Ho worked with Prof. Tai Ha (Mathematics) on a project detecting planar graphs using algebraic algorithm.
This year’s summer researchers share the results of their research with each other, honors program Associate Director Charlotte Maheu Vail and Scott Pentzer. (Top of page) images generated from Eva Pokorny’s research experiment.
Skylar Deckoff-Jones at the optical table in the Talbayev Lab
Junior Craig Kinchen worked with Prof. Noshir Pesika (Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering) on an ongoing project creating hybrid biocompatible particles as ball bearings for lubrication joints. Sophomore Nicole Ann Lim worked in the lab of Prof. Douglas Chrisey (Physics and Engineering Physics) on a project that seeks to elucidate the neural network interactions between groups of patterned cortical neurons. Senior Qinlei Liu worked with Professors Soliman Soliman (Freeman School of Business) and Mark Diana (Public Health) on research that examined various aspects of nursing productivity modeling in hospitals. Senior Patrick Lorio worked as a research assistant for Prof. Nancy Maveety (Political Science) on a documentary project of images of American courthouses archived in the Beverly Blair Cook Papers (Nadine Vorhoff Library.) Visit the website that Patrick worked on at http://www.tulane. edu/~sophielab/Spring2013/rtaylor3/map/map.html Senior Michelle McCarthy’s research in the lab of Prof. Srikanta Dash (Medical School) testing Verapamil’s effect on overcoming Doxorubicin chemoresistance in breast cancer. Senior Eva Pokorny’s summer research with Prof. Nandini Vasudevan (Cell and Molecular Biology) focused on the effects of phosphorylation on cellular localization of estrogen receptor alpha (Era) in neurons. Junior David Silver, mentored by Prof. Patrick Rafail (Sociology), was part of a team of researchers at Children’s Hospital of New Orleans working on a study to determine the ratio of functional gastrointestinal disorder to organic disease diagnosis in outpatients. Sophomore Natasha Topolski assisted in the collection of data and analysis in Prof. Stacy Drury’s Behavioral and Neurodevelopmental Genetics lab on a project that examines the correlation between early life adversity and executive function and memory.
“It is an amazing feeling to have your hard work culminate in such a concrete result (being able to see the electric field strength of thz wave.) Although the wave was small, it was there, which meant that we had succeeded. The waveform can likely be improved, but for now being able to see any wave is a big accomplishment. I was ecstatic.” —Skylar Deckoff Jones
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“The research I have been doing over the summer with the Honors Summer Research Program opened a new chapter of my college experience – I never would have thought that I would spend my next summer in Zanzibar, where I plan to go in preparation for my honors thesis.” --Emily Cardinas
Honors Freshman Seminar
One of the more interesting ways students can satisfy an honors course requirement is by taking one of the colloquium courses offered directly by the honors program in collaboration with faculty across the university. The COLQ course code indicates a course that is interdisciplinary, and often enhanced with Honors Program support of visiting speakers and field trips to deepen students’ engagement with the material. Last year was the fourth time we offered COLQ 1010, a freshman seminar entitled “Community, Polity, and Citizenship.” The seminar introduces students to texts that have shaped present-day discussions of social ethics, political theory, and other human values. From Homer to Nobel-prize winning authors like John Coetzee, the texts are chosen not only for their importance, but for their capacity to get students excited about ideas and to develop their abilities to read and argue more precisely before they begin to specialize in their academic majors. For the last four years the course has been taught by professors in the departments of history (including Tom Luongo, director of the Honors Program) philosophy, and spanish and portuguese. Since faculty bring to the seminar deep experience in careful reading and argumentation—but not necessarily in the texts themselves—they are able to lead students through these classic texts sharing in the same spirit of discovery. The course has been very successful, and even generated some erudite humor (for example, commemorative t-shirts with the Dantean slogan,“Abandon hope, you who enter here.”) The freshman seminar will continue for a fifth year in 2013-2014.
Students from the Honors Freshman Seminar get together for an end of year discussion about the course and its texts.
Honors Colloquia Louisiana has been the third largest economy for film production in the United States, but little has been done to study its history or publicize its impacts. In the honors colloquia “Hollywood South,” honors students and Ph.D. graduate students joined forces to investigate this understudied phenomenon. Their research results have been launched digitally through an interactive map of culture in the city (http://medianola.org) and four mobile phone tours (http://neworleanshistorical.org). Structured as a learning laboratory and a service learning course, students became active participants in designing and creating digital modules based on original archival research and class presentations by some of the most important figures in the local political economy of film production. --Professor Vicki Mayer (Communication) In the Fall of 2012, Professor Andy Stallings (English) offered an honors colloquium on contemporary American poetry and culture. The course was designed (with colleague Zack Savich) to bring students together in an exchange project between campuses and culminated in a special symposium: “We wanted an academically sound curriculum that would allow students across campuses and across disciplines to converse naturally with one another about poetry so as to amplify their encounters with what is seen as a difficult art in ways that can’t be accomplished in even a comfortable classroom. Students at each of our universities would read 4 books of poetry in common, discuss them in pairs online, and later have the chance, in some cases, to meet each other and the authors whose books they’d read. We planned a symposium for the end of the semester, to be held on Tulane’s campus in late November, and featuring some of the poets our students had read: Daniel Khalastchi, Kiki Petrosino, Michelle Taransky, Blueberry Morningsnow, and others, young poets willing to converse with the students comfortably, many of them teachers themselves. The symposium consisted of student presentations, several poetry readings, and panel discussions with the poets. We aim to expand the program in coming years, involving more campuses and exchanges to get a sense of the ways in which poetry is alive and vital in other areas of the country. Once exchange opens up, its possibilities seem infinite. We hope to find out if that’s so”. --Professor Andy Stallings (English)
“Once exchange opens up, its possibilities seem infinite. We hope to find out if that’s so.” —Andy Stallings
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(top of page)As part of the “Hollywood South” colloquium, students traveled to Nichols State University to attend the first history of Louisiana film exhibit. (above) Students attend the Poetry Exchange Project symposium that was an outcome of an honors colloquium.
Senior Scholars 2013 Anthropology: Jane Ball “The Woman Beneath the Collar: Gender Discrimination in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.” Architecture: John Garbutt “Remediating the Federal Presence” Art History: Brady Plunger “Arthur Dove and the Abstractions” Biological Chemistry: Alexander Justen “Rapid Non-Genomic Effects Initiated by Activation of Estrogen Receptors Alpha and Beta in a Mouse Hypothalamic Line” Biomedical Engineering: Aubrey Kraft “Defining VZV Immunogenicity Using SVV Infection of Young Rhesus Macaques” Case Study: Emily Needham “Investor Perceptions of a Growth Company” Madison Stein “A Crisis in Confidence of Management: When Does the Board of Directors Step In” and Cortland Woodruff “CSR: What Do Corporations Owe to Society” Cell and Molecular Biology: Jeanette Gehrig “SHOX2 and TBX3 Interact to Induce the Pacemaker Program and Restrict the Working Myocardium Program in the San During Embryonic Development” and Hailee Rask “Determining the Optimum Conditions for Glucose Fermentation and Exploring the Oxygen Tolerance of Novel Strains of Butanol Producing Bacteria” Chemistry: Scott Kolmar “Investigating the Activities and Mechanisms of Isozymes of B-Glucosidase from Sweet Almond”
Chemical Engineering: Etham Frenkel “Magnetite Functionalized Carbon Black Particles for the Magnetic Remediation and Tracking of Oil Spills” and Steven Williams (also wrote for Chemistry) “Ellucidating the Effect of Macromolecular Crowding on the Helix-Coil Transition” Classical Studies: Rachel Love “Oratory in Sallust: Caesar and Cato in the Cateline” Communication: Lauren Cooper (also wrote for English) “How Fashion Collaborates with Literature and Film: Daisy Buchanan, Holly Golightly and Emma Woodhouse as Fashion” Earth and Environmental Science: Meagan Knowlton “Quantifying Flood Magnitudes on the Little Missouri River” Ecology and Evolutionary Biology: Kyle Coblentz “Relative Influence on Habitat Characteristics on the Composition and Diversity of Soft-Sediment Intertidal Invertebrate Communities” Economics: Jason Edgar “The Irrational Applicant: An Analysis of Campus Visits on Final Enrollment Decisions” Engineering Physics: Tess Williams “Analysis of the Impact of Storms on MississippiAlabama Barrier Island Morphology” English: Engram Wilkinson “A Passing Foreign Landscape” Environmental Studies: Alexandra Yarost (also wrote for Economics) “Influence of Subsidies on Biodiesel Production in OECD Countries” Film Studies: Sarah Gersten (also wrote for Communication) “Sci-Fi Technologies and the Impact of Identification: The case of X-Men and Avatar” French and Italian: Michael Ross “Lire Avec Le Coeur: Aspects Philosophiques Dans L’Oeuvre de Saint-Exupery”
and Tanvi Shah (also wrote for International Development) “En Quete D’Identitie: Politique de L’Aribastion au Maroc” Gender and Sexuality Studies: Jason Ervin (also wrote for English) “Alice in Genderland: An Examination of Gender and Sexual Roles in Fairy Tale Texts” Germanic and Slavic Studies: David Ewens (also wrote for English) “Sister Outsider, Blues in Schwarz Weiss: A Study of the Effects of the Poetry of Audre Lorde and May Ayim on the Contemporary German Discussion of Race, Gender and Sexuality” History: Michael Kahn (also wrote for Architecture) “Reincorporating Redfern:Remediating Colonial Planning and its Effects on Indigenous Populations” and Sarah Sklaw “The Bases and the Binary: The United States and Spain from 1945 to 1955” Jewish Studies: Eli Kamerow “Maimonides on Intellect, Imagination and Knowing God” Latin American Studies: Ailene Orr “Racial Quotas or Racist Quotas? Civil Society Responds to Affirmative Action in Brazil” Linguistics: Zachary Santosuosso “Understanding Foreign Language Acquisition: The Role of Affective Filter in Tulane Foreign Language Classrooms” Mathematics: Melanie Jensen “Combinatorial Interpretation of the Lucanomials Using Symmetric Function Theory” Music: Phillip Larroque “Conducting Stravinsky: A Performance and Analysis” and Michael Pepper (also wrote for Mathematics) “An Algorithmic Method for Vocal Rhythm Dissection and Replacement”
Neuroscience: Rachel Britton “Learning-Induced Changes in Phosphorylated CREB and TRKB Following Training on a Response Task in a Water Maze” and Elizabeth Hargroder “The Effect of Ketamine on Cortical Dendrites and Dendritic Spines” Philosophy: Hunter Smith (also wrote for Religious Studies) “The Ethical Implications and Religious Significance of Organ Transplantation Payment Systems” Physics: John Elliot Ortmann “New Exotic Properties of Doped Sr2RuO4” Political Economy: Hillary Donnell “A Neoliberal Education: Schooling in the Crescent City” Political Science: Alison Perry “From Bystander to Sandanista: Individual Participation in Political Revolution Through the Lens of Decision-Making Under Risk” Psychology: Carolyn Kaufman “Supramarginal Gyrus Asymmetry Predicts Disfluency Rate During Delayed Auditory Feedback” Public Health: Alec Barber Grossi “The Intersection of Childhood Lead Exposure and Nutrition: Effects on Mental Development and Violence in New Orleans, Louisiana” Sociology: Clare Kane “Diagnostic Framing and the Occupy Movement: An Analysis of the Resonance between Movement Leadership and Participants” Spanish and Portuguese: Hannah Stohler “Federico Garcia Lorca: Fantasias de Maternidad en Tres Obras Teatrales (1934-1936)” Theatre: Erin Cessna “Shelby, Lemoyne, Louise and Dick” and Mari Shea Donovan “Realizing Chekhov: Performance Exploration and Analysis Guided by the Stanislavski Method”
NEWCOMB TULANE COLLEGE Honors Program 105 Hebert Hall New Orleans, LA 70118 tel 504.865.5517 honors@tulane.edu
Honors Alumni: Please send us your news at honors@tulane.edu!
Pictured above: Students and faculty attend the annual Honors Senior Reception and Awards Ceremony at Cudd Hall