The NTC Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) Program supports faculty in designing a learning experience in which the purpose of the course is to address a research question or problem with unknown outcomes or solutions. The knowledge generated should be novel to the students, faculty members, and the research community in general. Faculty members from all five NTC schools are encouraged to propose a CURE course. The proposed course may be a reimagining of a current course or a new course altogether, however, the course would be included in the faculty member’s regular teaching load. The CURE Program will award a $4,000 grant per professor for selected CUREs. Faculty members may also apply for an additional $1,000 for materials related to selected CUREs.
The NTC (Newcomb Tulane College) Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) Program represents a brand-new effort by the Office of Undergraduate Research to support faculty who include students in their research process. Each of the courses below addresses a research question or problem with unknown outcomes or solutions. Students in these courses will assist in the creation of knowledge that is novel to themselves, the faculty member, and the research community in general.
Fall 2023 Faculty
Public Opinion & Voting Behavior, POLA
Dr. Brian Brox
Associate Professor of
Political Science
This course focuses on public opinion in the United States from the perspective of a practitioner. While there will be (brief) coverage of theoretical topics of public opinion, the bulk of this course will focus on practical topics on the conduct of public opinion research: how to write a survey, who to draw a sample, how to pick a method of administration, and how to analyze and communicate results. As befits a CURE course, this course will guide students through a public opinion research project. Students will work together and with the professor to write a public opinion survey, decide on a sample and administration method, and test the survey. We will then use course funds to administer the survey to a real sample of Americans, and students will use the resulting data to write both a results memo (akin to what a pollster would write to a candidate) as well as a press release highlighting key findings. Given the political context during the fall 2023 semester, students can expect to cover current political issues as well as the impending 2024 presidential election - our survey will take place during the height of the Republican primary debates, so assessing the Republican field will be a priority as well.
Research Lab: The Dutch Americas
Dr. Stephanie Porras
Chair of Newcomb Art Department and Professor
of Art History
This humanities research lab seeks to identify, research and catalog the visual and material cultures of the ‘Dutch Americas’: the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Dutch-controlled territories in the Caribbean (Curaçao), North America (New York, Delaware), South America (Suriname, Guyana, Brazil), and (largely due to the West India Company’s trade in enslaved peoples) the West Coast of Africa. Co-taught with Aaron Hyman at John Hopkins University, students from both schools will be placed in teams assigned to a specific geography. Students will work together to do groundbreaking foundational research in an emerging field of art historical scholarship, considering everything from archaeological sites like forts and plantations, to printed books, images and maps, beaver hats and gold weights.
Spring 2024 Faculty
The Social Impacts of Climate Change
Dr. Laura McKinney
Associate Professor of Sociology
Director of Environmental Studies
Students will conduct primary data collection on a severely understudied area of inquiry: the social impacts of climate change-related losses. These data are highly significant to the sociological discipline that has developed theories on the social impacts of climate change-related losses among vulnerable populations (Hunter & Simon 2021:416; Elliott 2018; Stone et al. 2022;) but for which limited data exist to explore them (Berry et al. 2018; Charlson et al. 2022). Thus, this project responds to the pressing need for empirical observations on a topic of great importance.
