TULANE TALK

December 2, 2005

Good Morning:

Tulane students, 86 percent of whom have already registered for the upcoming spring semester (down just slightly from our normal return rate of 90 percent for registration at this time last year), aren’t the only ones who are coming back to New Orleans next month.

World-renowned trumpeter and New Orleans native Wynton Marsalis will appear on Tulaneís campus on Martin Luther King Day, Jan. 16, to help celebrate the reopening of Tulane, Xavier, Dillard and Loyola universities. Another New Orleans native, ABC and NPR political and news analyst Cokie Roberts, will also speak at Tulane in April.

Wynton and Cokie are the first in an ongoing series of high-powered speakers who will appear at Tulane, Xavier, Dillard or Loyola universities in the coming months. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford will join this series on March 16. As additional speakers confirm their appearances, I will let you know. These appearances are made possible through the efforts of the Aspen Institute and its president Walter Isaacson, a member of the Board of Tulane.

This speakerís series is just one of the many indications that New Orleansí universities will be the most exciting places in the country in 2006 as students, faculty, staff and a host of nationally known leaders do their part to help rebuild one of the world’s greatest cities.

Have a great weekend,