There is no more exciting time to be part of Tulane University than now, at the beginning of a new millennium and at the beginning of a new chapter in the university's development.

The theme of this year's Report of the President, Great Explorations, sums up that excitement and sense of adventure. We are exploring new ways to deliver the best education to our students, new means of conducting research that will make our world a better place in which to live, new avenues for using the rapidly advancing technology that holds such promise for our future, a new sense of responsibility to our communities.

The report you are reading reflects that sense of adventure, as well. For the first time in Tulane's history, the president's report exists only here, in cyberspace. No paper, no ink, no mailing costs went into its production; it is delivered to your own desktop via a technology that even a few short years ago seemed virtually inconceivable.

At Tulane, our plans for the first decade of the new millennium-stressing the importance of people, education and research, community, and resources and leadership-show that the future does, indeed, begin now. And the future is a time for great explorations as Tulane lives up to its billing as "a truly distinctive university in America's most original city."