As we prepare to cast our ballots in November, We’ll ask some of our faculty experts the weigh in on the how’s and whys of the presidential election. For our first installment we asked Celeste Lay, associate professor in the Department of Political Science, to explain the Electoral College.

January is proving to be a particularly rough month on Wall Street with the Dow shedding points at a historic rate. Investors are jittery and wondering if 2016 is setting up to be a rehash of the 2008 crash. To answer these questions and get some perspective on what the market says about the economy, New Wave sat down with Peter Ricchiuti, a professor of practice in the A.B. Freeman School of Business and director of research for the acclaimed Burkenroad Reports program.

On Wed., January 13, 2016, the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University will host a panel on music as an agent in the continuing Civil Rights Movement and advancing cultural equity. The discussion will be led by Gianna Chachere, founder of The New Quorum in New Orleans, with Wall Street Journal jazz critic and writer Larry Blumenfeld, avant-garde jazz pioneer Wadada Leo Smith, and long time civil rights pioneer/activist Roxy Wright. In this episode of The Green Room, we hear from NOGCS director Rebecca Snedeker, Chachere and Blumenfeld about the work and the history of The New Quorum, which is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to bringing professional musicians and writers from across the globe to New Orleans for meaningful cultural exchange with local and regional artists. Blumenfeld and Wadada Leo Smith are both currently artists-in residence at The New Quorum, located at 2435 Esplanade. Learn more about The New Quorum residency programs and upcoming events, at the website new quorum.org. This piece is underscored with music by Wadada Leo Smith. Photo by Scott Groller.

In October China reversed its three-decade-old rule restricting women from having more than one child. There was much talk about the decision and the impact that a possible baby boom in the world’s most populous country would have on the world. To answer these questions, The Green Room producers sat down with Martin Dimitrov, associate professor of Political Science and the director of the Asian Studies program at Tulane.

Tulane University’s Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching (CELT) provides theoretical and applied resources, tools and direction to the university community to realize the goal of engaged learning at Tulane. CELT coalesces and serves as a clearinghouse for the university’s engaged learning experiences. Our structure is based on three core areas: Classroom Engagement, Experiential Engagement, and Research Engagement.

The song Happy Birthday has a long litigious history datingg back to the 1930s. Every year, people spent millions in royalties to use the song, until a class action law suit was brought challengin whether the owner, Warner/Chappell Music, actually owned the copyright it so aggressively enforced. Elizabeth Townsend-Gard, Tulane School of Law professor specializing in copyright law, discusses the case of Happy Birthday.

An 80,000 word thesis would take nine hours to present. Their time limit ... three minutes. That’s the challenge that nine Tulane students face on Wednesday (Nov. 11) from 3 p.m. until 5 p.m. in the Kendall Cram Lecture Hall in the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life, at the first-ever 3-Minute Thesis Competition at Tulane University. Nine graduate students from a wide array of disciplines will compete for a cash prize as well as a People’s Choice Award. The winner of the Tulane event will be sponsored by the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies to compete in the regional 3-Minute Thesis Competition at the Council of Southern Graduate Schools conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, in February 2016. The first 3-Minute Thesis Competition was held in 2008 at the University of Queensland in Australia; today, 3MT competitions are held in over 200 universities across more than 18 countries worldwide. “This event is designed to help our PhD students communicate the value and integrity of their thesis work to a lay audience,” says Ashley Robison, a senior program coordinator in the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. “There’s a great range of gender, internationality and racial diversity, as well as thesis topics.” Students will have exactly three minutes to relay their life’s work — a second more and they are disqualified. “Thirty-eight percent the students at Tulane are graduate students and post-docs,” says Briana Mohan, a career advisor in the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. “The work they do, they are so invested in, and they are so excited about, and it is really the kind of ground-breaking research that is going to shape our future and have an impact on our country and the world. “The fact that they are getting three minutes to share that with the public, when most of the time they’re talking to their faculty members or their classmates, or in their confined worlds of being researchers and writers, is really exciting.”

Tulane University Campus Programming (TUCP) has always gone above and beyond in bringing talent and entertainment to Tulane students, and the concerts committee did not disappointed this time around. For the fall 2015 concert, Trey Lopez and Eunice Lee led the committee in bringing Jeremih to Tulane's campus! Jeremih, most known for his songs "Like It," "Planes" and "Don't Tell Em," has had numerous Billboard Top 10 appearances. We had the pleasure of speaking with Trey Lopez, one of the executives of TUCP's concert committee, about what life in TUCP Concerts is like and got a little preview of the performance this weekend. The show will be Saturday, October 24th, at 7:00pm on the LBC Quad. For more information visit https://www.facebook.com/events/1491335287833626/ Christina Hildner is a senior majoring in Marketing and Management at Tulane's A.B. Freeman School of Business.

Ween Dream is an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization that gives free Halloween costumes to children in need. In this episode of the Green Room, ’Ween Dream founder and CEO Kelsey Meeks, a Tulane University alumna, talks about the spooktacular mission of the New Orleans-based nonprofit that, in just one year, has seen three new chapters form in other states. In 2014 (its first year), the organization gave costumes to 580 kids in need in seven states. The number has doubled this year. “We will give away about 1,000 costumes in the next few weeks,” says Meeks. “We received applications from 24 states.” Meeks, who is a 2010 Tulane Law School graduate, shares how the idea came about. “I noticed kids in my neighborhood were trick or treating without costumes, and I knew my friends’ children had closets overflowing with costumes, and were outgrowing them every year,” Meeks says. “So, I thought, certainly there is a way we can share the wealth, and get some of those formerly loved costumes to some kids who would really treasure them.” Next week, the ABC-TV show “The Chew” will be filming a segment on ’Ween Dream that will air the week of Halloween. “We hope the national publicity will bring in a ton of costumes after Halloween to put us in a great position to help even more kids next year!” Meeks says. If you would like to donate costumes to children in need, visit the ’Ween Dream website for information, including guidelines for donating gently used costumes and more ways to support the organization. http://www.weendream.org/

In this episode of the Green Room, we explore the lessons of the forest offered by A Studio in the Woods, a sanctuary located on eight acres of bottomland hardwood forest in lower coast Algiers. (A program of Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research, A Studio in the Woods is dedicated to preserving the endangered forest and providing within it a peaceful retreat where artists can work uninterrupted.) A Studio in the Woods is celebrating FORESTival, a “festival in the forest” open to the public this Saturday (Oct. 10) from 11 a.m-5 p.m. The podcast features managing director Ama Rogan and environmental curator David Baker, who has been caring for the property for over a decade. He discusses the importance of hurricanes to the health of Louisiana’s natural environment. Baker will be offering tours during FORESTival, an annual celebration featuring artist presentations by current and former residents, musical performances, art activities for kids, a silent auction and a raffle. All sounds in this episode of the Green Room are from Sarah Quintana's album Miss River, inspired by her residency at A Studio in the Woods.(Songs featured include "New Life," "Cut Flower," Miss River" and "Mama Mississippi.") For more information, visit http://astudiointhewoods.org and http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/sarahquintana1