LSU and the Baton Rouge community celebrated innovative Louisianans and ideas on March 9 as the TEDxLSU took place in the Reilly Theatre at LSU.

If there's a sport that Louisianans enjoy more than football, it might be politics. And now, the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication's Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs offers a chance for LSU students and the general public to learn the business side of politics on a day-to-day, nuts-and-bolts basis through its Academy of Applied Politics.

In the spring of 2013, women comprise 51.6 percent of the student population at LSU, the highest percentage since the spring of 2008. As the female population continues to increase at LSU and at universities across the country, the need for women's advocacy and programming is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.

When Carlissa Wells entered LSU as a freshman, she didn't have a definite answer to that dreaded age-old question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Wells did know, however, that she had a love for science, and she was determined to see where that passion would take her.

Sergei Rachminoff. Ludwig van Beethoven. Frédéric Chopin. Kurt Cobain.

For the past 80 years, students have come to know LSU's University College under many names: Lower Division, General College, Freshman College, Junior Division and now University College.

LSU and Baton Rouge Community College announced at a press conference on March 6 the creation of a joint program that will benefit incoming students and help both institutions achieve the educational collaboration encouraged by the LA GRAD Act.

After receiving a standing ovation when the curtains lifted for "A Night with Maya Angelou," the living legend thrilled the packed house at the LSU Student Union Theater with stories of her life and her poetry.

"Beasts of the Southern Wild," a 2012 film directed by Benh Zeitlin and based on a play written by Lucy Alibar, is a film about loss, courage, climate changes and human perseverance in southern Louisiana. The fictional island in the film, the "Isle de Charles Doucet," was inspired by real communities in Louisiana's Terrebonne Parish such the rapidly eroding Isle de Jean Charles, threatened by erosion, hurricanes and rising sea levels.

The LSU Student Incubator, a program of the Louisiana Business & Technology Center, or LBTC, will host its 2nd Annual Venture Challenge this spring. The program will award $25,000 to four student businesses.

Going from grits to crawfish, said former football player Lora Hinton, was the biggest adjustment when he moved to Baton Rouge from Virginia in 1971.

Those looking not only for something to eat on the LSU campus but also looking to eat healthy now have new technology available in the palm of their hand to do both.

Our Lady of Prompt Succor is the southern-most church on Bayou Lafourche, the closest house of worship to the Gulf of Mexico on this thin stretch of land in South Louisiana. The church's name refers to the Virgin Mary as a source of aid in times of great distress and it is no accident that it sits just inside the South Louisiana levee protection system, a spiritual bulwark that joins a structural one in guarding against the area's regular hurricanes.

It has been more than 25 years since tragedy struck the United States space program when seven crew members were killed in the space shuttle Challenger explosion January 28, 1986. One of those aboard the Challenger was physicist Ronald Erwin McNair, America's second African-American astronaut.

College is hard. It's a significant investment of time, money and resources, even for the average student. Never mind somebody with the responsibilities that come later in life – children, a full-time job, a mortgage, etc.

It's ready, set, go for Innovation Park, LSU's dedicated complex for research commercialization. On Jan. 25, the Baton Rouge Speech and Hearing Foundation, or BRSHF, is breaking ground at the Park for its new facility that will be called The Emerge Center for Communication, Behavior and Development.

"I have a dream." From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered those four powerful words to a crowd of more than 200,000 people who had gathered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963. Nearly 50 years after that famous speech was given and almost 35 years after his assassination, King's words continue to inspire the generations that followed.

Local news coverage of Anthony Ryan's victory.

Among LSU's many accomplished and highly respected faculty, the pinnacle of recognition is the Boyd Professorship. Established in 1953 and named for two brothers, David and Thomas Boyd, who were instrumental in setting LSU on a path toward acclaim, this professorship is unique in that it is conferred on the recipients for life. As of today, nearly 60 years since it was created, only 70 individuals have been named Boyd Professors.

A large room at the University United Methodist Church fills with gentle music as Tai Chi instructor Zhujun Pan leads a group of older adults in exercises.