Freeman, SLA receive $3.5 million gift for finance, writing programs

Tulane University’s A. B. Freeman School of Business and the School of Liberal Arts are the beneficiaries of a new $3.5 million gift from Carole B. and Kenneth J. Boudreaux.

The gift will create a scholarship fund for Freeman School graduate students and establish the Kenneth J. Boudreaux MBA ’67 Professorship in Finance. It will also establish the Carole Barnette Boudreaux NC ’65 Creative Writing Endowed Fund, which will launch two programs that will bring both great and emerging writers to campus.

Kenneth J. Boudreaux received his MBA from the Tulane School of Business in 1967 and served as a professor of finance and economics at Tulane before his retirement in 2010. He received a bachelor of arts degree from Princeton University in 1965 and a PhD from the University of Washington in 1970.

Carole Barnette Boudreaux received a bachelor of arts degree in English from Newcomb College in 1965. She received a master of education degree from the University of New Orleans in 1973.

Their son Beau Boudreaux holds a PhD in English and is a poet and adjunct professor at Tulane.

“Our half century or so at Tulane as students, faculty and alumni has been a wonderfully positive experience,” Ken and Carol Boudreaux said. “The university’s consistent integrity, intellectual rigor, success and generous spirit continually impress us. We are delighted to be able to contribute this way.”

The couple pledged $2 million to the Freeman School to establish the professorship and to create a new fund to help graduate students pay for tuition and other expenses related to their attendance at Tulane.

“University business education is undergoing a period of rapid change, but one thing remains constant — the need for exceptional scholars and educators,” said Ira Solomon, Freeman School dean. “With this generous gift from Ken and Carole Boudreaux, the Freeman School can support the research and teaching activities of an outstanding professor in finance as well as provide financial support to enable the best and brightest students to attend our graduate programs.”

The School of Liberal Arts will receive $1.5 million to endow two complementary literary series — a Great Writers Series and an Emerging Writers Series — that will bring both internationally prominent writers and younger talents to campus for readings, lectures, events and panels.

“The Carole Barnette Boudreaux Creative Writing Fund allows us to bring some of the most exciting writers of our times to the Tulane campus, and to connect students, faculty, and members of the community with literary artists at the height of their art,” said Brian Edwards, dean of the School of Liberal Arts and professor of English. “The brilliance and generosity of the Boudreaux’s gift is that it allows us both to host literary superstars and younger novelists and poets whose work is admired by other writers, but not yet internationally famous.”