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Points of Pride
LSU is much more than a community of students, staff, faculty, and alumni. From research discoveries and academic honors to athletic championships and community service projects, LSU has formed a reputation for itself—one of pride.

As the flagship university of Louisiana, LSU is one of the premier institutions of higher education in the south. The LSU community is composed of more than 36,000 staff, faculty, and students representing every state and more than 120 countries. Situated on more than 2,000 acres in Baton Rouge, LSU injects more than a half billion dollars into the city’s economy each year.

Designated as both a land-grant and sea-grant institution, LSU is the only public university in the state named as a research-extensive institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The University’s instructional programs include 71 bachelor’s, 72 master’s, and 54 doctoral degrees.

In addition, LSU can point with pride to the following academic items.

•LSU has one of the fastest computers in the world. This supercomputer, named “SuperMike”, has a computing speed of 2.2 TerraFlops and it is more than 1,000 times faster than a contemporary desktop computer.

•LSU has had 14 students named Rhodes Scholars, 14 named Goldwater Scholars, and four named Marshall Scholars. In 2003 LSU had its first Truman Scholar.

•With more than 190,000 alumni, LSU has graduates all across the world.

• For the fourth time, the Department of Theatre won top honors at the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival in Washington, D.C.

•LSU receives approximately $100 million each year for the University’s more than 2,000 sponsored research projects underway at any given time.

•LSU is the only university to offer a minor in Cajun French.

•The graduate program in French has been recognized as a “center d’excellence.”

•The internationally respected Voegelin Institute of the College of Arts & Sciences was established in memory of an LSU professor, Eric Voegelin, who escaped Nazi Germany and taught here from 1942–58. The institute is devoted to the examination of issues in political philosophy.

•The U.S. Department of Education Grant for the Enhancement of Asian Studies is a three-year grant with Southern University that has allowed LSU’s Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures to hire an assistant professor of Chinese, enhance library collections, and will bring a series of speakers on China to campus for the 2003–04 academic year.

•The LSU Museum of Natural Science has the foremost graduate program in museum-based ornithology in the world.

•The Office of Academic Programs Abroad offers international and national exchange programs as well as LSU-organized study programs in China, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Senegal, and Spain.

All of these points of pride and more are available online at www.lsu.edu/didyouknow.

By Jon Fisher