When the Tulane Board of Administrators announced the end of the coordinate college system as part of the Renewal Plan, a task force was put in place to decide how the legacies of Newcomb and Tulane colleges would be preserved.

The panel is now seeking your ideas.

The Newcomb/Tulane Task Force will hold an open forum at 2 p.m. on Friday (Jan. 27) in Dixon Hall to hear suggestions on how to best use the names and endowments of Newcomb and Tulane colleges to enhance and improve the undergraduate experience at the university. The task force also is monitoring a Web log where more than 300 students, alumni, parents and friends have submitted messages, including dozens of suggestions.

The task force will present recommendations to the full board in mid-March.

Led by co-chairs Darryl Berger, a 1972 graduate of Tulane Law School, and Linda Wilson, a 1957 Newcomb alumna, the task force is composed of the following alumni (colleges and class years in parentheses): Carol Cudd (Newcomb, 1959); Sybil Favrot (Newcomb, 1956); Matthew Gorson (College of Arts & Sciences, 1970); Jay Lapeyre (Business School, 1978, Law, 1978); Jeanne Olivier (Newcomb, 1975); and Richard Schmidt (Engineering, 1966, Graduate School, 1967).

The decisions about Newcomb and Tulane colleges are part of the larger Renewal Plan (see http://renewal.tulane.edu). An overarching goal of the plan is to provide excellence in all aspects of undergraduate life, a holistic undergraduate experience, and a greater sense of community.

"All the pieces of the Renewal Plan strategically work together to build a world-class academic and research institution with an outstanding undergraduate experience," says Yvette Jones, chief operating officer and senior vice president of external affairs of Tulane.

Audio of Friday's open forum will be streamed live on the Internet via the Task Force website. An audio recording and transcript of the forum will be posted on the site the following week.