From fall 2003 to spring 2004 I served as an intern producing ART JAM, a free, interactive children's arts festival for KID smART. KID smART is a nonprofit 501 c.3. organization created to teach positive life skills to underserved children through hands-on arts activities in New Orleans, LA. ART JAM is an interactive children's arts festival presented by KID smART. The festival serves as a major public relations campaign and serves to advocate that the arts are important in the lives of all children. This report is broken into 5 chapters and details the activity of producing ART JAM 2004. Chapter 1 is an introduction KID smART and ART JAM including its mission, history, organizational structure, funding, and programs. Chapter 2 is a description of my internship including tasks and responsibilities. Chapter 3 is an exploration of organizational issues including strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities. Research and explanation of "Best Practices" along with recommendations will be discussed in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 analyzes the short and long term effects of the internship on KID smART and ART JAM.

Stella Jones Gallery: An Organizational Analysis and Suggested Marketing Plan is based on my internship as Managing Director of Stella Jones Gallery. The internship report will focus on 1. Analyzing the organizational structure and cultures of Stella Jones Gallery as it relates to the internship and 2. Creating a marketing plan to support, expose, and expand the mission of the organization. Because of the report's objectives, the internship report has been segmented into the following sections: Part I: Organizational Analysis Stella Jones Gallery's organizational structure and culture will be analyzed to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of its methods and practices. Through the analysis, a description and evaluation of my internship as Managing Director will be provided to discuss the overall effectiveness of the position. It will also discuss the position's contribution to the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This section will be immediately followed by suggestions in management and staffing as well as ways in which the organization can redefine and strengthen its organizational culture. Part II: Suggested Marketing Plan At the time of the internship, Stella Jones Gallery had been in existence for three and a half years and is emerging as one of the leading African-American galleries in the southeast region of the United States. The gallery has been very fortunate to have reviews in highly regarded magazines such as Art Business News, Art and Antiques, and the International Review of African-American Art. It has not, however, established a strategic marketing plan to propel the gallery to the forefront of the commercial arts industry. The marketing plan created will suggest ways the gallery can capitalize on the medial attention it has received. Secondly, it will illustrate how the gallery can promote and establish its product within the commercial arts industry and non-profit sector of the visual arts. Finally, it offers ways in which the gallery can forge ahead of its competition by offering on-line as well as curatorial and educational services. The issues addressed and suggestions made are to help Stella Jones Gallery reach its potential as a leading art organization. In conclusion, this report will note any changes or improvements made in the gallery's management practices, staff, and marketing strategies as a result of the suggestions offered.

This is an ethnographic study of urban education and community development in the city of New Orleans. In New Orleans, as in all American cities, the public schools are at the center of local politics and the policies that affect community life. Institutions of public education have come under fire for failing to prepare youth to compete in the global economy. This is particularly true in urban communities, where schools serve a higher proportion of students of color facing greater incidences of poverty, underemployment and economic distress. As education policymakers and business leaders look to improve education, many of the solutions put forth to reform schools focus on meeting state standards and instituting high stakes testing. A group of educators, community activists, artists, and young people in New Orleans have taken a different approach. By combining classroom learning with social action, the individual and collective empowerment of students serves as the focus of Students at the Center, a program designed by a writing teacher and his students, that operates within the public school system. Through community-based study on environmental, public health, neighborhood development issues, young people in the Students at the Center program begin to see the learning process, and the product of their education as tools for equitable social change through research, writing, youth media, and social action. This research examines the ways that taking part in community collaborations that emphasize local history, a sense of place, and the struggle for social justice affects students, teachers and residents as they strive to make education accountable to community concerns.

New Orleans failed to solve its water infrastructure problems in the nineteenth century because a shifting locus of power in a variable political and financial environment hampered wise decision making, while technology choices were limited by contemporary knowledge, scientists' ignorance, or by technicians' poor presentation skills for new ideas. And, selection was often governed by prejudice: personal, racial, or against technology. New Orleans was able to deal with its water difficulties only when those with the power to make or influence decisions had an available technology capable of handling the problem and they chose to use it. Power and science had to flow together. New Orleans' situation is excellent: a crossroads of trade, an entrepot for the agricultural heartland, the Mississippi River's premier port. And yet, the city's site is dreadful. New Orleans sits in a bowl of land rimmed by water, with the river and the brackish Lake Pontchartrain on either side, amid swampy environs in a hot and wet climate. This city exists only because of the complex system by which it deals with water. The conundrum of New Orleans lies at the confluence of science and power. Whoever holds the power can choose the science and technology with which New Orleans handles water, its everpresent best friend and worst enemy. From the colonial era to the twentieth century, the power to make those choices shifted from the private sector to the public sector and back, with the press and, eventually, women ultimately having influence. Under the fading Spanish empire, from the age of Jefferson to the era of Jacksonian democracy, during the Civil War and Reconstruction, through the dawn of Progressivism: New Orleans confronted the problems of flood prevention, drainage, the omni-present need for a dependable water source for its citizens, and eventually sewerage disposal. This study investigates how those problems were faced, what technology was used and how the work was financed; and also illuminates the lives of those who dealt with New Orleans and water during that time.

This thesis serves as documentation of my efforts to define accurately my creative process as an actor in creating the role of Masha in The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov. This includes research, character analysis, rehearsal journal and an evaluation of my performance. The Three Sisters was produced by the University of New Orleans Department of Film, Theatre and Communication Arts in New Orleans, Louisiana. The play was performed in the Thrust Theatre of the Performing Arts Center at 8:00 pm on the evenings of April 19 through 21 and April 26 through 28, with one matinee at 2:30 pm on Sunday, April 29, 2007.

This study examines the impact of racial politics on the New Orleans mayoral election of 1982. Ernest "Dutch" Morial, the city's first black mayor, sought re-election against a popular white candidate, Ron Faucheux, and a well-liked black candidate, William Jefferson. Race played an integral role throughout the campaign as Morial continually battled attacks from both the conservative white community and the traditional black politicians, all of whom resented the oftentimes brash mayor and his push for change. Controversy also surrounded his handling of the police strike of 1979 and the Fischer Housing Project shootings of 1980. This study argues that despite these obstacles, Ernest "Dutch" Morial was able to win a second term in 1982 by appealing to a broad racial coalition of voters who approved of his vigorous efforts to apply the ideals of the Civil Rights Movement to municipal reform in New Orleans.

Unlike major cities across the country, New Orleans did not have the power to expropriate property to engage in urban renewal projects after 1954. Yet city officials desperately sought to meet the ends of urban renewal, specifically through public claims of slum clearance and private motivation to speed along neighborhood segregation. Hamstrung in their efforts to move forward with taking residents' homes for private redevelopment, the city worked to reach its urban renewal goals by taking property for public works projects, including public housing. The city's decision to build the Guste and Fischer housing projects represents a case study of how officials, including Mayor deLesseps “Chep” Morrison, the City Planning Commission, and the Housing Authority of New Orleans, worked together to create a more racially separate city in the age of Brown v. Board of Education.

This thesis examines the Louisiana legislature's justifications for supporting inclusionary zoning to address the shortage in affordable housing since hurricane Katrina and compares the model ordinance, passed in 2007, to ordinances in San Francisco, Denver, and San Diego. These large city ordinances offer an assessment of older versus newer ordinances as well as strict versus lenient provisions within a mandatory ordinance. This thesis acknowledges the model ordinance is strong and accepts its recommendation to convene a housing task force to study implementation in New Orleans. In order to maximize the benefits of inclusionary zoning this task force should be convened quickly to undertake local housing market research to determine the right set-aside, threshold, and incentives to create a strong mandatory ordinance. This group must also focus on implementing key model ordinance provisions like setting aside units for very low-, low- and moderate-income households within each development and determining the ideal density bonus.

The decision to close and never reopen four public housing projects in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina was a highly contentious issue for people throughout the city and even the nation. This thesis investigates the tensions between those who supported and opposed public housing demolition by highlighting the work and history of two people on either side of the debate, Richard Baron and Bill Quigley. This study of contemporary housing policy draws on the history of public housing in America, and refers to Stacy Seicshnaydre.s assertion that public housing policy has been a consistent struggle between "Taking the Housing Now" and "Redevelopment as Blight Removal." This research posits that while this tension has been present, the current debate in New Orleans is more nuanced. In the end, the public housing redevelopment in New Orleans reflects a lack of commitment at the federal level to adequately house low-income people.

This thesis serves as documentation of my personal, intellectual, and physical process as an actor in creating the role of Miss Margarida in Miss Margarida's Way by Roberto Athayde. This document includes research, script analysis, character analysis, rehearsal journal, and an assessment of my performance. The University of New Orleans Department of Film, Theatre and Communications Arts in New Orleans, Louisiana produced Miss Margarida's Way during the Fall 2008 season. Miss Margarida's Way was performed in the Lab Theater of the Performing Arts Center at 7:30 pm December 3 at 6 with a matinee at 2:30pm on Sunday December 7th 2008.