insideTrack | newsNotes Green light for Dinwiddie Dinwiddie Hall, situated on Gibson Circle and visible from St. Charles Avenue, is undergoing massive renovations to transform it into the greenest building on the uptown campus. The goal is for the home of science departments and the Middle American Research Institute to receive a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the Green Building Certification Institute, which is not an easy thing to do. “This is exciting for Tulane because green is truly the way the country and the world is going,” says Clarence Odom, facilities services project manager. To achieve the LEED certification, the renovated building must meet strict guidelines for water and energy efficiency and indoor air quality. Also, green space must be incorporated into the new design. By this summer, all offices and classrooms were gutted and everything moved out, including the Middle American Research Institute’s valuable collection of artifacts. Materials from the old structure, including windows, doors and floors, have been salvaged and are being reused in the renovation of the 86-year-old building. Construction is scheduled to take more than a year. When the work is complete, the museum will return to a new space on the third floor. And plans call for the anthropology department to move its offices into the building. New classrooms also will be built and elevator access added. David Curtis, grandson of the building’s original architect, Nathaniel C. Curtis, is the architect for the $9 million project. Dinwiddie Hall, built in 1923, is named for Albert Bledsoe Dinwiddie, professor of mathematics and president of Tulane from 1918 to 1935. (See “Photo Riff” on pages 10–11 for an early morning view of Dinwiddie.) —Alicia Duplessis Jasmin Alicia Duplessis Jasmin is a staff writer in the Office of University Publications.
Help is on the way for crumbling cemeteries. With guidance from master craftspeople, students are acquiring skill in setting stone and applying plaster to preserve the aboveground tombs.
Art and craft A 19th-century tomb within New Orleans’ Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 underwent significant restoration this summer when students enrolled in the Preservation Studies Summer Field School at Tulane used traditional techniques for applying plaster, mortar and masonry. “People have written songs about the beauty of this work,” says Heather Knight, director of the summer field school and an adjunct professor in the School of Architecture. “When master craftspeople work, there’s an art to it—a poetic rhythm you can hear.” Working under the tutelage of master craftspeople, conservationists and architects, the students learned historically appropriate treatments for restoring the decrepit aboveground tomb. In addition to their work in the cemetery,
Public health in Malaysia The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Malaysia is no longer a faraway concern for about a dozen Tulane undergraduates. These students spent four weeks this summer in the Southeast Asian country as part of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine’s first international undergraduate service-learning course. They learned on the ground about the stigma associated with AIDS and refugee issues
the students also applied a lime washing at the historic Pitot House. “We’re lucky that we’re working with a second-generation master plasterer, Tevis Vandergriff,” says Knight. The architecture school is a partner with the Preservation Trades Network on the project. In the afternoons, students set aside their trowels to conduct archival research and attend seminars on architectural history, landscape architecture, funerary iconography and the history of New Orleans cemeteries. Four of the students who were enrolled in the field school were accepted into Tulane for the fall semester. —Kathryn Hobgood Kathryn Hobgood is assistant director for web communication and public relations at Tulane.
that hamper disease-control efforts. Among the student projects was the design of an educational manual about reproductive health to distribute in schools. The students also surveyed clients at drop-in health centers and at a hospice for AIDS patients. Malaysian organizations will use the data to improve services and in grant applications. The course was offered in partnership with the University of Malaya and the Malaysian AIDS Council. —Fran Simon Fran Simon is “Classes” editor of Tulanian.
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