| June 1, 2001 | VOL. 17, NO. 38 |
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| Kevin Smith |
Chancellor Mark A. Emmert has named Kevin M. Smith, vice chancellor for research and professor of chemistry at the University of California, Davis, as LSU’s new vice chancellor for research and dean of the graduate school.
Smith’s appointment, subject to approval by the LSU Board of Supervisors, will become effective Aug. 20. He will take over the job from George M. Strain, who has served as the interim vice chancellor and dean since Lynn Jelinski left the position in August 2000. Smith will also hold a tenured professorship in the LSU chemistry department.
Smith has served as vice chancellor for research at UC Davis since August 1997. During his tenure, the UC Davis Office of Research instituted a new technology transfer center, the UC Davis-McClellan Nuclear Radiation Center and the UC Davis Connect program designed to foster the success of new business ventures in the Sacramento, Calif., area. Under Smith’s leadership, UC Davis also saw a 26 percent increase in external research funding during the past year. Smith also led a UC Davis team that persuaded the federal government to increase the university’s research funding formula by 4 percent over five years.
“Kevin Smith is a world-class scientist who has achieved remarkable administrative success, promoting research and creative activities, technology transfer and economic development,” Chancellor Emmert said. “I am excited to work with him in the University and business communities to continue LSU’s march to the forefront, both regionally and nationally.”
Smith was recommended for the appointment by a search committee chaired by LSU Boyd Professor Thomas Klei and co-chaired by LSU Dean Harold Silverman.
The committee was assisted by Heidrick & Struggles Inter-national Inc., an executive search firm. LSU Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Daniel Fogel praised the search committee for outstanding work in having brought to LSU an extraordinary new leader for research, graduate education and economic development.
A native of Birmingham, England, Smith earned B.Sc., Ph.D. and D.Sc. degrees in chemistry from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom in 1964, 1967 and 1977, respectively. He served as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University from 1967-1969 and as a lecturer at the University of Liverpool from 1969-1977.
He joined the faculty at UC Davis in 1977 as a chemistry professor and served as chair of the chemistry department from 1990-1994. He served as associate vice chancellor for research in 1996-1997 before being appointed vice chancellor on Aug. 1, 1997.
His research is in the area of biological chemistry, including aspects of biology, physics and theoretical chemistry.
He has authored more than 600 journal articles and three books, the latest of which won an international publishing award for the best book in chemistry in 1999 from the American Association of Publishers.
Smith is also a co-inventor on seven patents and has held visiting professorships in Portugal, France, Germany and Italy.
“I am truly delighted to join the LSU team, and I am looking forward to working with the faculty and staff at LSU,” Smith said.
Smith’s wife, Graca Vicente, has been appointed an associate professor in the LSU chemistry department.
A native of Portugal, Vicente holds degrees from the University of Aveiro in Portugal and the University of California, Davis, where she earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1990. She has conducted research and taught at both of her alma maters, and also conducted postdoctoral research at the Instituto de Tecnologica Quimica e Biologica in Oeiras, Portugal, and at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. She has also served as an assistant professor at the University of Bourgogne in Dijon, France, and speaks fluent Portuguese, French and English.
Robert Cooper West, a Boyd Professor Emeritus of geography and anthropology at LSU, died May 14 in Baton Rouge. He was 87.
West, who retired from LSU in 1980, joined the faculty in 1948 and in 1970 was given the highest honor any faculty member can receive in being named a Boyd Professor. He also served as chair of the LSU department of geography and anthropology from 1968 to 1969.
According to William V. Davidson, chair of the LSU department of geography and anthropology, West was a “distinguished, dedicated and private scholar who preferred the title of ‘professor’ over all others.”
Davidson said for West, research and teaching at a university was a “no-nonsense proposition.” “He thought education and research to be a very important enterprise,” Davidson said, noting that all of West’s students knew that the pursuit of knowledge was not a matter he took lightly.
For two years before coming to LSU, West was a cultural geographer with the Smithsonian Institution in Mexico City. He conducted extensive field investigations in Latin America on more than 50 occasions and read extensively in the archives of Mexico, Guatemala and Spain. He also served for four years during World War II as a cartographer in the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C., North Africa, Italy, France and England.
West was an expert on many subjects in geography and anthropology, including aboriginal agriculture, land use and mining in Latin America. Other interests of his included plant geography, ethnogeography, rural housing and the history of geography. West was also a proficient linguist who was fluent in Spanish, German, French and Portuguese.
After his retirement from LSU, he continued to conduct research and publish. During this time, he completed eight books, the last of which was finished in 1998. The translation of another of his books was completed earlier this year by Colombian anthropologists.
Also during retirement, West became a major benefactor of the geography and anthropology department, anonymously providing a large endowment within the LSU Foundation for graduate student field research in geography and anthropology and for faculty professorships. His endowment has supported more than 250 graduate students to date.
Born in Enid, Okla., June 30, 1913, West was the son of Elva Cooper West and George W. West Jr. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of California at Los Angeles. He received a doctorate in geography from the University of California at Berkeley, working under the famous geographer Carl O. Sauer.
West was well-known academically for his textbook on the regional geography of Mexico and Central America. The many recognitions he received in his field also show how well respected he was among his colleagues. He was named a Guggenheim fellow in 1955 and given the Eminent Latin Americanist Lifetime Career Award at the Conference of Latinamericanists in 1980. In 1998, he received the Vouras Medal from the American Geographical Society. West was one of only three geographers to receive awards twice from the Association of American Geographers, in 1964 and 1973.
He had more than 90 published works to his credit, including 20 books and edited volumes, and was a member of various professional organizations and honor societies, including the American Association for the Advance-ment of Science and the Latin American Studies Association.
He was also recognized by LSU in 1998 by having a live oak tree outside the Howe-Russell Geoscience complex named in his honor. Former students and alumni provided the funding to endow the oak.
West is survived by a brother, Jack C. West of Buena Park, Calif., who was visiting at the time of West’s death. He was preceded in death by his wife, Phyllis Devereaux, an LSU librarian, one sister and two brothers.
He donated his remains to the LSU School of Medicine. Arrangements for a memorial service are pending.
LSU’s College of Music and Dramatic Arts will usher in the summer season with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I, June 14-24 in the Reilly Theatre on the LSU Campus.
The King and I is a time-honored classic featuring an unforgettable score. This story of love and joy is told through some of the world’s best-loved songs, including “Getting to Know You,” “I Whistle a Happy Tune,” and “Shall We Dance?”
The production brings together the talents from LSU’s School of Music and the LSU Department of Theatre as well as 20 young people from the local community.
Leading roles will be played by Gino Chelakis as the King, Alison McCubbin as Anna, Andre Chapoy as Lun Tha, MiSung Bevett as Lady Thiang, Mayumi Yatsumoto as Tuptim and Robert James as Louis Leonowens.
Mark Frawley will serve as guest director for the production. Frawley has performed on Broadway in Cats, Starlight Express and Forty-Second Street and has served as director and choreographer for numerous professional musical productions at theaters across the United States.
He will be assisted by a production team composed of Lynn Jemison-Keisker, musical director; Sharon Mathews, choreographer; Nels Anderson, set designer; Louis Gagliano, lighting designer; Leslie Wickham, costume designer; Patrick Acampora, technical director; and Robert Davis, vocal coach.
This production of The King and I marks the first time the college has produced its summer musical in the newly renovated Reilly Theatre, which is located on Tower Drive on the LSU campus.
Evening performances are June 14-16 and 20-23 at 7:30 p.m. Matinées will be held June 17 and 24 at 3 p.m.
Ticket prices are $10 for students, $16 for LSU faculty and staff and senior citizens and $20 for the general public. Tickets may be purchased at the LSU Union Box Office, 578-5128, or at Ticketmaster outlets, 761-8400.
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| From left, astronomy professor Joel Tohline, Chancellor Mark Emmert, French professor Alexandre Leupin and acting Vice Chancellor of Research and Graduate Studies George Strain visit at the reception held to celebrate Tohline’s and Leupin’s designation as this year’s Distinguished Research Masters. The reception was held May 15 at the Faculty Club. |
Two LSU faculty members received the 2000-2001 Distinguished Research Master Award at a reception at the Faculty Club May 15. The award is the University’s highest recognition for research, given to those who have a sustained record of outstanding work.
French professor Alexandre Leupin received the award of Distinguished Research Master in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and physics and astronomy professor Joel Tohline was given the award of Distinguished Research Master in Engineer-ing, Science and Technology.
Leupin is considered by contemporaries in his field as one of the world’s foremost scholars of medieval European literature, particularly French literature.
R. Howard Bloch, the Augustus R. Street Professor of French at Yale University, wrote that Leupin is “to my mind and without reservation the most talented medievalist in North America, and arguably the most talented of his generation anywhere in the world.”
Leupin has written several highly regarded books in the field, beginning with his first, Le Graal et la littérature. In them he has not only bridged the gap between medieval literature and modern criticism, but he has also shown that there is a direct line of continuity between medieval “liberal arts” and modern analytical science, particularly psychoanalysis.
According to Jeff Humphries, LSU Foundation Professor and chair of the department of French and Italian, Leupin has developed the idea that “absence,” or “lack,” a controlling concept in modern psychoanalytic theories of sexuality and in philosophies of language, is anticipated in the work of medieval writers and that the inadequacy of literature to represent “truth” is paralleled by the inadequacy of medieval theology to explain the divine essence.
Leupin’s research does not overshadow his teaching ability. He believes that the aim of teaching is to teach students to think by and for themselves. Leupin says his efforts have been rewarded when a student gives back to him something he has not given the student.
Leupin received his license ès Lettres in 1971 with the highest grades of the session; his diplôme ès Lettres in 1973 and his doctorat ès lettres, “summa cum laude,” in 1981, all from the University of Geneva in Switzerland.
In 1982 he became assistant professor of French and Italian at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and in 1983 he joined the faculty of the department of French and Italian studies at LSU. He served as acting director of LSU’s Center for French and Francophone studies from 1986 to 1988.
Leupin has written six books and published approximately 55 articles.
Tohline is being honored for the body of his work – the development of high-performance computational tools, understanding galactic fluid dynamics, working out the formation, stability and evolution of rapidly rotating protostars and protostellar disks and for his work on one of the long-standing problems in astrophysics, the formation of binary stars.
As impressive as his work is, the mathematical and computational tools he has developed to produce it are just as impressive.
Kip Thorne, Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology, wrote that Tohline’s computer codes “are rapidly becoming a major tool for the simulation of gravitational-wave sources that will be studied by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory.
“Such source simulations will be crucial tools in extracting the information the waves carry, and correspondingly I expect Tohline and his students to be major players in getting science out of LIGO.”
Douglas Lin, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, wrote that Tohline “was a pioneer in the development of fully three-dimensional numerical hydrodynamic schemes. Utilizing this powerful tool, Joel was among the first to demonstrate the possibility of fragmentation during the collapse of isothermal clouds.
“This process is particularly important for the stellar initial mass function as well as the formation of binary and multiple stellar systems.”
Another activity Tohline is known for is his development of an online graduate textbook titled The Structure, Stability and Dynamics of Self-Gravitating Systems. This project was featured in the “Internet Goldmine” section of the journal Computers in Physics.
Tohline graduated magna cum laude in 1974 from Centenary College in Shreveport with a degree in physics. He received his doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1978.
His first position after graduating was as the J. Willard Gibbs Instructor of Astronomy at Yale University. From 1980 to 1982 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Group T-6 at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
He joined the LSU faculty in 1982 and from 1994 to 1997 served as chair of the physics and astronomy department, a position he gave up to devote more time to his research. He has also been instrumental in increasing the number of graduate students in astronomy.
Tohline has published 64 articles in refereed journals and presented 47 conference papers, 22 of which were invited. He is a member of the American Astronomical Society, the American Institute of Physics and the Internet2 Applications Strategy Council.
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| Read My Lips—Former President George H. Bush delivered an entertaining and inspiring address at LSU’s 244th commencement exercises, held May 18 at the Maravich Assembly Center. In addition to encouraging graduates to become involved in the community as well as in their respective fields, he also reminded them to listen to their parents. |
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| Medalists—A record-setting 50 students received the University Medal at the 244th commencement exercises. The University Medal is presented only to students who have maintained 4.0 grade-point averages throughout their undergraduate careers. The medalists are shown with LSU System President William L. Jenkins and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Daniel Fogel. |
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| Dedicated—In addition to delivering the commencement address, former President George Bush, left, dedicated the new Lod and Carole Cook Conference Center. The facility, which is located directly behind the Lod Cook Alumni Center, features 128 rooms and more than 11,000 square feet of meeting space. The conference center will be open to the public in August. The former president is shown here with LSU alumnus and supporter Lodwrick Cook. |
