Newcomb College was founded in 1886 as a separate educational entity for women within Tulane University. The college was closed in 2006 but the university later established The Newcomb College Institute. The goal of the institute is to provide leadership training for women, preserve, document, produce, and disseminate knowledge about women, and to empower women by integrating teaching, research, and community engagement.
The Institute recently announced that is launching a new summer program on women’s literature. A group of high school students will spend five days on the Tulane University campus. The sessions will include a mixture of classroom discussion on assigned readings, group workshops, guest speakers and independent student projects. The goal of the program is to introduce students to classic and contemporary literature written by women while exploring feminist theory and paths to leadership both in and beyond the classroom.
Molly Pulda, an administrative assistant professor at Tulane University, will lead the summer program. She states “we’re reaching out to local students – and, in future years, students across the country – to extend Newcomb’s vision of educating women for leadership in the 21st century. We want to make it both rigorous, in terms of exposing students to what a college classroom feels like, but we also want to make it fun, by building a community around a shared love of reading.”