Programs
Undergraduate Program in Political Economy
Among Newcomb-Tulane College undergraduates, the Murphy Institute is best known for its highly successful program in political economy. What began as a modest venture with three declared majors in Fall, 1984, now stands as Tulane’s most popular and acclaimed interdisciplinary major.
Testimony to the success of the program has been abundant. Since Spring, 1986, more than 700 students have graduated with B.A.s in political economy, and gone on to purse graduate and professional degrees at leading universities such as Chicago, Columbia, Duke, Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Washington University (St. Louis), and Stanford. Many now are pursuing lucrative and rewarding careers in law, finance, business, medicine, politics, and education.
The building blocks of the program’s success have been numerous. Every semester the Murphy Institute’s “core” faculty teach courses designed specifically for the major. Faculty affiliates in Economics, History, Philosophy, and Political Science also teach cross-listed, departmentally based courses. The previous Director of the Murphy Institute has received the University’s Sheldon Hackney Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Student Senate Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 1989, he was named Louisiana Professor of the Year by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education in Washington, D.C.. The Associate Director received the 2007 Mortar Board Award for Excellence in Non-Tenured Teaching from the Newcomb Memorial College Institute and the Newcomb Alumnae Association.
The basic contours of the undergraduate program’s curriculum were put in place in the late 1980s with grant support from the National Endowment for Humanities. In the early 1990s, a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided generous support for faculty positions in international political economy.
Since 1989, the Murphy Institute’s affiliation with the Institute of Economic and Political Studies (INSTEP) has provided Newcomb-Tulane undergraduates both academic semester and summer study abroad programs in London and Cambridge, England. While the Murphy Institute still serves as the academic partner of INSTEP, the administration of Tulane’s INSTEP program is now handled by the Office of Study Abroad.
The Center for Ethics and Public Affairs
Established in 2001, The Center for Ethics and Public Affairs coordinates and supports research, teaching, and scholarly discussion of ethics and the ethical issues in public and professional life across academic disciplines and professional schools.
To provide part of the advanced research infrastructure that attracts and rewards outstanding faculty and graduate students, the Center funds both a Visiting Faculty Fellowship program and a Graduate Fellowship program. The Center also hosts an annual Faculty Seminar, where the Center’s visiting Faculty Fellows, Tulane faculty, and invited guests present papers and discuss research-in-progress. During its three-year start-up phase, the Center was funded partly with grant support from the bequest Tulane University received from the estate of Lallage Feazel Wall. It is now fully funded by the Tulane Murphy Foundation.