May 9, 2003 |
VOL. 19, NO. 30 |
| Calendar |
| Exhibits |
| FYItems |
| Job Ops |
| People at LSU |
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| Risa I. Palm, who will be the next executive vice chancellor and provost at LSU, spoke recently at the Board of Supervisors meeting. |
The LSU Board of Supervisors at its May 2 meeting approved a recent increase in the student self-assessed Union fee and approved a recommendation to establish the Life Course and Aging Center at LSU. LSU Chancellor Mark Emmert also introduced Risa Palm, the newly hired LSU executive vice chancellor and provost, to board members at the meeting.
In April, a two-thirds vote of the Student Senate and a majority of students voting in a campus referendum approved an increase in the student self-assessed Union fee to fund improvements to the building, the grounds and the programs. The board approved the increase, which raises the fall and spring fee from $47 per semester to $107 per semester, to be phased in over six semesters by adding a $10 increase each semester. The vote also increases the summer session Union fee from $8.75 to $35.75, to be phased in over three summer sessions by adding a $9 increase each semester.
Some of the planned improvements to the Union include renovating about two-thirds of the building, constructing a 50,000-square-foot addition to the facility, adding a new principal entrance on the southeast corner of the building, creating a new center for student organizations, providing a safe late-night activities center in the Tiger Pause games area, expanding the Tiger Lair eating area, improving the Union Theater and creating additional lounging and retail space, as well as new outdoor plazas.
In a related matter, the board also voted to amend the 2003-2004 capital outlay budget request to include the Union renovations and additions, as well as some renovations and additions to the Student Recreational Sports Complex, which will also be paid for by student fees.
The Life Course and Aging Center will bring together faculty members from a number of different departments and programs that work to advance the study of aging. The center will promote research in aging and will also provide unique training opportunities for social-science and allied-health students pursuing careers in gerontology. The center’s research will be directed toward understanding the relationship between aging and functional ability in an effort to reduce the incidence of disability and maximize quality of life. This social-science focus will complement the nutritional and medical research conducted at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and the Center on Aging, which is part of the LSU Health Science Center. Researchers believe this area of study is vital because the elderly are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, representing 12.8 percent of the population today and an expected 20 percent by 2030.
In other business, the board approved a recommendation to allow professional sports teams to use LSU System athletic facilities in specific instances and with the approval of the appropriate chancellor and the system president. This action required the board to amend the LSU System Policy on the use of university facilities and premises relative to athletic facilities. The policy was created in 1970 and updated in 1998, and, in keeping with NCAA rules at the time, prohibited the use of university athletic facilities by professional sports teams. In recent years, however, the NCAA has begun to allow professional sports teams to play at university facilities under specific conditions.
Board members approved a resolution commending Amber Moreau-Salas, the student member of the board, for her service during the past year. It was the final board meeting for Moreau-Salas, a medical student at the LSU Health Science Center in Shreveport.
The board also approved degrees to be conferred at spring commencement ceremonies
at all the campuses of the LSU System.
An exhibition of contemporary Inuit sculpture is now open at the LSU Museum of Art. The exhibit, titled “Latitude Sixty Degrees North,” is made up of 58 pieces of sculpture donated by Arnold Aubert Vernon. Vernon is a 1952 graduate of LSU who resides in California.
The free exhibit will be open through June 30.
“The exhibit is intended to give LSU students and the public the opportunity to learn about the creative energies of indigenous people from north of the 60th parallel,” said Kelly Lastrapes, the museum’s development officer.
Regarding these people who live to our far north, Vernon comments, “The Inuit people are survivors, and it is the land itself that provides the means to overcome the harsh environment of the Arctic. Therefore, the intimacy between man and his land is a predominant characteristic of their art. Storytelling is also a characteristic of the art, because the Inuit had no written language until the 19th century. The storytellers’ tales of mysterious mythical creatures, fantasies, transformations and humor are often incorporated into (the sculpture).”
The LSU Museum of Art is located in the historic Memorial Tower at the heart of the LSU campus. Parking is available in the metered spaces in front of the Memorial Tower on Tower Drive.
The LSU Museum of Art is free and open to the public and handicap accessible.
Hours are Monday-Friday, 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. For more information or to schedule
a tour, contact the museum at 225-578-4003.
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| Gregory J. Vincent |
Gregory J. Vincent, vice provost for academic affairs and campus diversity at LSU, will be leaving his post to become the Richard C. Cadwallader Professor at the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center, effective July 1.
Vincent will continue his involvement with LSU’s Community-University Partnership, or CUP, which is spearheading a revitalization effort of the Old South Baton Rouge area. CUP is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development’s Community Outreach Partnership Center. In 2001, Vincent became principal investigator for the grant and he will continue to serve as co-principal investigator and as director of CUP’s Legal Clinic, which focuses on housing issues such as title searches and identifying owners of vacant property in Old South Baton Rouge.
For the past two years, Vincent has been splitting his time between the Law Center and LSU’s main campus, serving on the Law Center faculty while also working as an LSU administrator.
“Working on two campuses has been both rewarding and challenging, and I am excited about being with the Law Center full time while continuing to work with the main campus on this important partnership with Old South Baton Rouge,” Vincent said. “I am truly honored to be selected for this prestigious professorship.”
“While I am pleased that Greg has been afforded this exciting opportunity with the Law Center, I am also very sorry to lose his service,” LSU Chancellor Mark Emmert said. “He has had a significant impact on the campus, advancing our multicultural agenda as well as leading initiatives across a number of units of the university. He will be hard to replace, to say the least.”
“We are appreciative of the good work Greg Vincent has done for LSU and look forward to working with him in his new role at the Law Center,” LSU Interim Provost Laura Lindsay said. “The university places a top priority on the diversity initiatives that were developed by Greg, and, under the guidance of Dr. Risa Palm, LSU's new executive vice chancellor and provost, will take immediate steps to fill his position.”
Paul M. Hebert Law Center Chancellor John Costonis said Vincent’s experience and knowledge will be an asset to the Law Center. “We are pleased to have Greg Vincent fully involved with the Law Center, and look forward not only to his excellent teaching and scholarship, but to his assistance with student affairs and enrollment studies at the Law Center,” Costonis said.
Since his arrival at LSU in 1999, Vincent has been responsible for intensifying the university’s efforts to recruit and retain outstanding minority faculty, staff and students. As part of this effort, Vincent was given responsibility for reorganizing the Academic Center for Student Athletes, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Office of International Programs and the Women’s Center. Vincent was also instrumental in making several important strategic faculty hires. For the past eight months, Vincent has also had responsibility for the oversight of the Division of Continuing Education. In this capacity, he has piloted a program-review process that will provide recommendations for the future growth and development of the division.
Jim Fernandez, associate dean of Continuing Education and executive director of the National Center for Security Research and Training, has been appointed interim dean of Continuing Education, effective May 1. Former dean, Daniel Walsh, has recently retired.
“Jim Fernandez has tremendous knowledge of the operation of the division
because of his experience in the Office of Academic Affairs and his current
role as executive director of the National Center for Security Research and
Training and associate dean of the division,” Lindsay said. “Plans
are under way to begin a search for a permanent dean.”
If a gravitational wave should ripple through the Livingston Parish Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, speakers rigged up in the facility could echo the sound.
Gravitational waves, at least those expected from a pair of inspiraling neutron stars, are actually at the wavelength of audible sound, said Joseph Giaime, an LSU astrophysicist who works at LIGO. Both the ear and LIGO can ‘hear’ between tens and thousands of hertz, the former sensitive to common sound waves and the latter to exotic waves in the shape of spacetime.
Gravitational waves are just like sound waves or waves in a pond, except the medium they move through is spacetime. The theory is that a gravitational wave will slightly foreshorten at least one of the two-and-a-half mile long arms of the LIGO facility, and that foreshortening will be registered by the laser beams that are bouncing back and forth between the mirrors at the ends of the arms.
One source that LIGO may hear is from the inspiraling and coalescence of binary neutron stars. “LIGO people think it will sound something like a tweet,” Giaime said.
Giaime (pronounced Gee-ah-me) is part of one of the largest gravitational wave study groups in the country. He and Gabriela González are among nine LSU faculty and postdoctoral researchers working directly with the LIGO Collaboration, not counting a number of graduate and undergraduate students.
Two LSU physicists, Jorge Pullin and Luis Lehner, are working in the closely related field of numerical relativity, attempting to solve some of the very difficult equations posed by the theory of relativity. Lehner was just recently named a Sloan Fellow and Pullin named a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Another two, Warren Johnson and William Hamilton, are also part of LSU’s gravitational wave team. Their efforts, and those of Chancellor Emeritus James Wharton, were pivotal in securing the Livingston Parish site for LIGO. Hamilton has been looking for gravity waves since the early 1970s, well before LIGO was conceived. In 1991, they went online with a two-ton, cylindrical gravity-wave bar antenna called ALLEGRO.
ALLEGRO is the only resonant mass gravitational wave detector in the United States and one of only five in the world. ALLEGRO works very much like LIGO – a gravitational wave passing through the bar would distort it slightly, and the distortion would be picked up by superconducting sensors. Although LIGO is more sensitive overall than ALLEGRO, ALLEGRO and LIGO Livingston are close enough to one another that they can be used to look for a certain type of gravitational wave noise-like background, a measurement uniquely possible in Louisiana.
On April 5-8, scientists from all over the country and around the world converged on Philadelphia to present findings to the American Physical Society. Among those findings were the results of LIGO’s first science run and discussions on ways of improving the instrument’s sensitivity. LSU postdoctoral researcher Ed Daw was among those giving a talk on LIGO.
The instrument’s first science run took place during a 17-day period in September, 2002. It is now on its second science run, searching for the gravitational waves Einstein predicted in 1916.
“Right now the sensitivity of the instrument is not up to its operational specs, so we’re not seeing anything,” said Giaime. “Because these (gravitational events) are random events, there’s no reason to imagine they’re not distributed evenly though space. If we increase the sensitivity 10 times, to the instrument’s operational limits, we will see a thousand times more volume than we’re seeing now.
“S1 (the first science run) was sensitive to the limits of our galaxy. The current run may be sensitive out to Andromeda, the next big galaxy.”
The sensitivity Giaime is talking about is for gravity waves produced by two neutron stars spiraling into each other. “These are the ones we know best how to calculate, and to listen for,” he said.
The instrument is looking for three other types of gravitational events: waves made by rapidly spinning pulsars; “stochastic” events, which sound like random noise; and what he calls “unmodelled burst sources,” which are surprise events.
Much of Giaime’s work on LIGO right now consists of working out ways to isolate the instrument from background noise. Natural ground motion from waves and weather, and human activity such as highway traffic and logging all introduce random vibrations into the system that can mask the signals they are looking for.
Working with Giaime on LIGO is experimental physicist González. She is setting up a lab on the LSU campus to understand and measure the sources of this background noise, which causes unwanted movements in LIGO’s suspended crystal mirrors. It is laser beams bouncing back and forth between these mirrors along the instrument's two long arms that will show, eventually, if a gravitational wave has rippled past the Earth. Finding ways to keep these mirrors perfectly still is critical to the sensitivity of the instrument.
She also co-chairs one of the LIGO Collaboration’s data-analysis working groups, examining the data for waves arriving from binary neutron star systems in the Universe. At the LIGO Livingston Observatory, she focuses on measuring and controlling the twisting motions of the delicate suspended mirrors.
“It’s very intense work, and very interdisciplinary, with a need for a lot of collaboration,” she said. “It (the instrument) is working, but it’s not where we want it yet.” González, who got her Ph.D. at Syracuse University, worked with LIGO at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also worked at Penn State before coming to LSU two years ago.
The LIGO Lab, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and international partners are proposing an advanced LIGO that will increase sensitivity by more than a factor of 10 beyond the capabilities of the present instrument.
LIGO is supported by the National Science Foundation and was built through
a collaboration between Caltech and MIT. The NSF also directly supports González
and Giaime’s research at LSU, and the ALLEGRO detector. A community of
more than 400 scientists from around the world are now involved in research
at LIGO.
A new study by regional climatologist Barry Keim and others calls into question the reliability of data used to make long-term climate forecasts in the United States.
The study, “Are There Spurious Temperature Trends in the United States Climate Division Database?” was published in the April 11, 2003, edition of Geophyiscal Research Letters. It focuses on the United States Climate Division database, which is one of the most commonly used climate data sets in the country.
A climate division is simply a region where terrain, elevation, bodies of water and other features produce a consistent climate throughout the region. The United States is divided into 344 climate divisions, with Louisiana divided into nine and New England, from where the study data were taken, divided into 15.
Keim, who is in the Southern Regional Climate Center at LSU, along with Adam Wilson and Cameron Wake at the University of New Hampshire and Thomas Huntington with the U.S. Geological Survey, noted in the paper that the data used to generate these trends are inconsistent. These data come from whatever receiving stations are in operation at a given time within a climate division. Over time, however, stations go offline, come on-line or are moved.
The paper looked at the impact on trend lines caused by the changing distribution of stations from 1931 to 2000. The change in distribution altered the mean latitude, longitude and elevation of the stations, which ultimately affected temperature trends.
“The study focused on the 15 climate divisions of New England because of the diversity of climate types and range in elevation, from sea level to more than 6,000 feet,” Keim said.
Although the study documented problems in just one part of the country, it is more than sufficient to cast doubt on the use of U.S. Climate Division data for the purpose of analyzing long-term trends throughout the country, he added.
A control database was generated from stations within the United States Historical Climate Network, which included only stations that did not move over time, and that had only the highest quality data available.
Of the 15 climate divisions analyzed, none had the exact amount of warming and cooling as shown by the control group. Six had a general trend that was opposite that of the control group – cooling over time, rather than warming – and a division in central Massachusetts even had highly significant trends but in opposing directions.
“When you use the data from the Climate Division database you get a cooling trend, but when you use data from the U.S. Historical Climate Network, which includes a constant number of stations over time that haven’t moved around, you get a warming trend,” Keim said.
The study concluded that changing the mean latitude and longitude, and perhaps more important, changing the mean elevation of stations through time, can and will have significant effects when analyzing long-term trends. It also raises questions of whether our global depiction of climate change over the past century is correct, Keim said.
“The United States has the best network of climate stations of any country in the world, and we are struggling to get our instrumental climate record in order as we can analyze whether our climate is really changing,” Keim said.
The USCD database is the most comprehensive database in the world. It extends
back to 1895 and includes monthly statistics for temperature, precipitation
and measures of drought for the 344 climate divisions in the United States.
These data are used to monitor climate and make assessments of how the climate
is changing.
Each year, LSU recognizes and rewards the outstanding work of its faculty and this year is no different. More awards will be presented than at any past reception, Tuesday, May 13, from 4 p.m. - 6 p.m. in the Lod Cook Alumni Center.
Three new Alumni Professorship awards will be presented – the Richard F. and Betty S. Fenton, the Gerald Cire and Lena Grand Williams, and the J. Franklin Bayhi Alumni Professorships. Three teaching faculty at the rank of full-tenured professor will be awarded a $5,000 salary stipend and a $2,500 academic support fund for being named to this distinguished honor.
Ten faculty members will be recognized for their records of excellence in teaching, research and/or service with the LSU Distinguished Faculty Award, which carries with it a $1,000 salary increase.
The LSU Alumni Association Faculty Excellence Award will also recognize four faculty members from the eligible Colleges/Schools of Agriculture, Art and Design, Arts and Sciences, Basic Sciences, Business Administration, Education, Engineering, Honors, University College, Mass Communication, and Music and Dramatic Arts. The award carries with it a one-time $1,000 cash award.
In addition, the LSU Foundation will recognize a faculty member who has displayed superior graduate-level teaching with its Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award, which carries with it a one-time award of $1,500. The BP Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching will also be presented and carries with it an award of $1,750.
Other awards will be presented with monetary supplements:
• The $1,000 one-time cash award for the H.M. “Hub” Cotton Award for Faculty Excellence, which is presented to a faculty member with a distinguished record of teaching, research, administration, public service or other outstanding contributions to the University.
•The Tiger Athletic Foundation’s President Award, which recognizes a faculty member for outstanding contributions to undergraduate education. This award consists of a $1,500 award.
Other awards being presented are: the LSU Alumni Association Teaching Assistant Award, George H. Deer Distinguished Teaching Award, Advisor of the Year Award, LSU Service-Learning Faculty Award, TAF Undergraduate Teaching Award, Phi Kappa Phi Non-Tenured Faculty Award, and the Brij Mohan Distinguished Professor Award.
Chancellor Mark Emmert, Interim Provost Laura Lindsay and other distinguished
guests, as well as deans, directors and department heads, will be on hand for
the awards reception.
Photo Gallery |
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| Members of the LSU community gather around the new sculptures, which were unveiled Sunday, May 4, at the opening of the LSU Sculpture Park. |
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| For the second year, LSU Theatre conducted its Playwright Festival in conjuction with St. Aloysisous Middle School. LSU students and faculty produced scripts written by the middle school students. |
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| During April’s Francophone film festival there was a roundtable discussion with filmmakers, actors and others. Attendees included (left to right): Alexie Tcheuyap, University of Calgary; Eric Dayre, University of Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle; Djoloff Mbengue, actor; Mille et Une Productions, and Sada Niang, University of Victoria. |