Newcomb Institute

Newcomb College, the first degree-granting coordinate womens college in the United States, was established in New Orleans in 1886. The schools founder, Josephine Louise Newcomb, gave $100,000 (nearly $3 million in todays currency) to the Tulane University Board of Administrators to establish a womens college in memory of her daughter, Harriott Sophie Newcomb, who died of diphtheria at age fifteen. When the Title IX Education Amendment was signed into law in 1972, undergraduate women and men at Newcomb College and Tulane University began taking courses together, and single-sex classes ended. In 1987 the faculties of the two schools merged, and in 2005, following Hurrican Katrina, Newcomb and Tulane merged to form Newcomb-Tulane College, now the home for all undergraduate students. Today, the Newcomb Institute carries on the legacy of Newcomb College and continues Josephine Louises mission by educating undergraduates for gender equity. As an interdisciplinary academic center of ...