Hello new year!

As we embrace all things in store for 2019, let us not forget the amazing things that happened at Tulane last year. Here are our most-read articles of 2018:

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry selected Tulane child psychiatry professor Dr. Stacy Drury to receive the 2018 Norbert and Charlotte Rieger Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement. The academy singled out Drury’s research into how early childhood trauma can have negative health consequences on children and can seep across generations.

The campus welcomed a new class of Tulanians, who are among the best and brightest students the university has ever admitted. The new students, who arrived on campus for the fall 2018 semester, come from around the United States and overseas and are academically accomplished.

One 2018 graduate of the School of Liberal Arts had a devoted study partner throughout his college career: his father. Dr. Sam Alexander, a physician, supported Ben, his autistic and nonverbal son, on a daily basis inside and outside the classroom.

The 2019 US New and World Report rankings showed Tulane as being among the best national universities, and also recognized the undergraduate business program.

This year construction began on The Commons, a three-story, $55 million, 77,000-square-foot marvel that will house a new dining hall, multipurpose meeting spaces and a permanent home for the Newcomb College Institute. The Commons will open in 2019.

Groundbreaking research by an infectious disease epidemiologist at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine showed that the standard treatment for a common STD isn’t enough to eliminate it. The study was published in Lancet Infectious Diseases.

When the university released the results of the Tulane Climate Survey on Sexual Misconduct, students made their voices heard at a campuswide town hall. Administrators and other Tulane community members listened to students speak about preventing sexual misconduct and violence on campus.

The bacteria that causes Lyme disease can survive in organ tissue after treatment with a full course of antibiotics months after infection, according to a new primate study of the disease by Tulane University researchers. The study results were published in the peer-reviewed journals PLOS ONE and American Journal of Pathology.

In Guatemala, a team of archaeologists co-led by Tulane University professor Marcello A. Canuto discovered a nearly 1,500-year-old carved-limestone altar at the Maya site of La Corona, located in the Petén jungle forest. The major discovery was announced in September.