LSU'S Biweekly Newsletter for Faculty & Staff
March 11, 2005 |
VOL. 21, NO. 12 |
At a recent meeting of LSU’s ODK circle, I was asked how best to let students know more about the National Flagship Agenda. It was an excellent question, posed by an active, involved student leader familiar with and supportive of Flagship Agenda initiatives and goals. I was able to share with that group some of the high points of the second year of our journey to pre-eminence, particularly those aimed at improving the quality of our undergraduates’ education.
For example, we are almost halfway to our goal of boosting faculty ranks by 150 by 2007, to teach, advise and involve students in meaningful research. To date, we have added 65 faculty, mostly in biology, English and mathematics, and we anticipate adding 15 more, primarily in Arts and Sciences and Basic Sciences, next fall.
Our efforts to improve the student experience will, I am convinced, eventually result in higher graduation rates. We set 57 percent as our target, and, indeed, we are already there. My personal goal is 70-plus percent, and, to that end, we have taken on several long-term projects, among them, the Summer Reading Program, promoting Honors College enrollment, improving advising, strengthening general education requirements and providing innovative classroom experiences.
But just how do we communicate this good news? How do we convey the importance of understanding and embracing the Flagship Agenda to create a “new LSU” that allows students to see themselves as competitive nationally?
My colleagues and I constantly and consistently “communicate the Agenda” in presentations to numerous groups on and off campus. Indeed, Chancellor Sean O’Keefe’s first order of business was to visit alumni, supporters, media, legislators and community leaders in cities across the state, to listen, learn and reiterate the importance of LSU and the National Flagship Agenda to Louisiana.
We promote the Flagship Agenda in our recruiting publications, on our Web site and in magazines, newsletters and other materials produced for a variety of audiences. This column targets faculty and staff, though I’m sure there are occasional student readers. From time to time, I am offered the opportunity to share my thoughts in the pages of student newspapers and magazines. This year, Flagship Agenda-focused columns are appearing in more than a dozen newspapers in the state. And, our newly established TigerTREK tour for new faculty “puts a face” on the Agenda and helps create support statewide.
To ensure that we stay on target, we are currently taking a close look at University-wide communications strategies to ensure a structured, unified effort that will multiply and strengthen the impact of the LSU message. We hope these efforts resonate with LSU’s students and convey the strength of our commitment to creating for them the kind of university that prepares them exceptionally well for their futures.
I asked the young lady at ODK to share with me her thoughts and suggestions -- and those of her fellow students --about “getting the message out” to the student body. I invite readers to do the same regarding any audience or aspect of “communicating the Agenda.”
LSU Press author Jay Wright has been awarded the 2005 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, sponsored by the Bollingen Foundation at Yale University Library. The $75,000 prize is awarded biennially to an American poet either for the best book published during the previous two years or for lifetime achievement in poetry.
Wright received the award for his lifetime achievement in poetry and is the first African American to win the Bollingen Prize. In 2000, LSU Press published his “Transfigurations: Collected Poems.”
Wright was selected for the award by a three-judge panel that included Elizabeth Alexander, James Longenbach and Carl Phillips. In their judges’ citation, they declared, “Wright’s work has for more than 40 years been nothing less than a sustained meditation on the various aspects – historical, spiritual, mythical – of which humanity is woven. The great ambition of his work has not only been to weave these strands into rich, complex, allusive poems but also, in his own words, ‘to uncover the weave.’”
A poet and playwright, Wright was born in Albuquerque, N.M., in 1935 and earned degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and Rutgers University. In addition to “Transfigurations,” he is the author of eight other books.
Wright, a MacArthur Fellow and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has received numerous awards for his works, including the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Lifetime Achievement, the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 62nd Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets. He resides in Vermont.
Among the most distinguished prizes available to American writers, the Bollingen Prize was established in 1948 by Paul Mellon and was named after Carl Jung’s home in Switzerland. Throughout its history, the Bollingen Prize has recognized and celebrated the very best in American poetry.
From its controversial beginnings in 1948, when the Fellows in American Letters of the Library of Congress awarded the prize to Ezra Pound for “The Pisan Cantos,” the Bollingen Prize has honored the literary accomplishments of poets whose work continues to define modern American literature. For more information, visit http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/bollingen/winner/.
LSU Press was founded in 1935 and is a member of the Association of American University Presses and the Association of American Publishers. LSU Press publishes approximately 80 titles per year and currently has some 1,000 titles in print. The LSU Press editorial program focuses primarily on the humanities and social sciences, with a special emphasis on Southern history and literature. The Press is also noted for its work in the fields of politics, Latin American studies, poetry and music, as well as for books about Louisiana and the Gulf region.
Since 1987, March has been recognized nationally as Women’s History Month, and LSU has a number of activities planned to celebrate the month on campus, which began Feb. 28 and will continuing through April 6. All events are free and open to the public.
The Women in the Arts Gallery, the 12th annual celebration of women in the arts at LSU, will run throughout March at the LSU Women’s Center. Women in the Arts, sponsored by the Women’s Center and Women Organizing Women, was founded in order to “promote the fellowship and work of women artists at LSU.” The gallery will be hosted in the Women’s Center’s main room.
On Tuesday, March 15, the Union Program Council Ideas and Issues Perspectives Speaker Series will present National Geographic Explorer’s Lisa Ling at 7 p.m in the LSU Union Theatre. With a dose of attitude and modern age philosophy, Lisa Ling brought her view of the world to millions of Americans as a co-host of ABC Daytime’s popular morning talk and entertainment program, “The View.” Currently, Ling serves as the host for National Geographic Explorer’s “Ultimate Explorer,” where she has, among other adventures, explored China’s largest prison and experienced a drug raid in Columbia.
On Wednesday, March 16, LSU’s 12th Annual Women in the Arts Performance Night will be held at 7 p.m. at the Reilly Theatre. The event, sponsored by the Women’s Center and Women Organizing Women, will include singers, dancers, musicians, comedians and poets. Performers will include students, faculty, staff and alumnae, showcasing the many talents of LSU women.
On Friday, April 1, at 3 p.m. in the Hill Memorial Library Lecture Hall, Jennifer Abraham, interim director of the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History, will present “A Lady in the South Could Only Do Certain Things,” where she will share the oral histories of women who attended LSU during the Great Depression and World War II. The presentation, sponsored by the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History, will explore women’s education and the home management program during these years.
To conclude the events celebrating Women’s History Month, LSU has invited noted activist and author Rebecca Walker to present as the Women’s History Month Featured Speaker on Wednesday, April 6, at 7 p.m., in Campbell Auditorium at the Cox Communications Academic Center for Student Athletes.
Considered one of the most audible voices of the young women’s movement, Walker was named by Time magazine as one of the 50 future leaders of America. She co-founded the Third Wave Direct Action Corporation, the only national activist-philanthropic organization for young women between the ages of 15 and 30.
Walker’s writing, which engages such issues as race and skin color, reproductive freedom, domestic violence and female sexuality, has been published in SPIN, Vibe, and various women’s and black studies anthologies. She has been a contributing editor to Ms. magazine since 1989 and has been featured in numerous national media outlets including The New York Times, CNN, MTV and U.S. News and World Report.
Sponsors for the Women’s History Month Featured Speaker at LSU include Office of Academic Affairs, Commission on the Status of Women, Department of English, Office of Multicultural Affairs, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Spectrum Alliance, Student Government, UPC Black Culture Committee, Women’s & Gender Studies Program and the Women’s Center.
Women’s History Month at LSU is being coordinated by the Women’s Center, located in the Helen M. Carter House on Raphael Semmes Road, near Highland Road and the LSU Union. The Women’s Center provides support, referral and information to students, faculty and staff on issues and concerns related to women. The center also promotes the advancement of women’s issues and well-being through its services, advocacy efforts and educational programs.
For more information on the center or Women’s History Month, contact Amber Vlasnik, Women’s Center manager, at 225-578-1714 or avlasnik@lsu.edu.
Like the boards of other universities in Louisiana, the LSU Board of Supervisors voted at their March meeting in Eunice to send a 3 percent tuition and mandatory fee increase proposal to the state legislature.
If passed by the Joint Legislative Committee on Budget, the fee increase will become effective in the fall of 2005 for all campuses except LSU–Alexandria, which will implement it in the spring of 2006.
System leaders said the increases are necessary to continue to boost the Flagship Agenda and help narrow gaps in state funding. They also pointed out that even with the proposed increases, LSU still has tuition and fees below the average of comparable institutions in the Southern Regional Education Board states.
Bill Silvia, executive vice president of the LSU System, said the increase will bring in a total of $5.3 million for LSU System campuses, which could be used to finance annual faculty promotions and modest salary increases, assist in meeting new accreditation requirements, enhance instruction and lib-rary acquisitions, benefit research and operating budgets and enhance existing programs.
If passed, full-time LSU students will see an additional $63 per semester added to their fee bills. Part-time students will see prorated increases dependent on the number of credit hours they take. First –, second – and third – year LSU Veterinary Medicine students will face a $168 increase, while fourth – year students will pay $144. Students in the Executive MBA program will see an increase of $255 per semester, while Lab School students could see an annual increase of $106.
The proposal also includes a section that grants a waiver in the amount of the increase for students who qualify for the maximum federal Pell Grant award and meet all other eligibility requirements for receiving federal student aid.
Student Government President Brad Golson, who is the student board member and the only board member to oppose the vote, said while he understands the need for the increase, he does not think raising tuition should always be the answer.
“ I think it is time for our System to think creatively knowing that our state appropriations may not be increased,” Golson said. “So we need to find alternative funding sources.”
In other news, Stewart Slack, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, announced that Gov. Kathleen Blanco has appointed Dorothy “Dottie” Reese, a healthcare consultant from New Orleans, to fill the 2nd Congressional District board member seat in April, a position formerly held by Roger Ogden. The board also approved the following:
*The architectural plans for the University Laboratory School Elementary Building addition. The 22,300 square-foot addition will cost an estimated $3 million and provide 12 classrooms, a library, office space and support areas. The addition will be built on half of the existing school playground and is expected to be ready for occupancy in the fall of 2006.
*Plans to grant a right-of-way servitude to the city of Baton Rouge/Parish of East Baton Rouge to realign East Parker and South Stadium Drives on the campus.
*The naming of a classroom in LSU’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center the “Thelma Bougere and John Busenlener Classroom,” and a courtroom the “David W. Robinson Courtroom.”
If one is going to reach the barrier islands off Louisiana’s coast, it helps to have a boat.
If one is going to study the land and water processes that build up or tear down these islands, it also helps to have the right equipment.
Now, thanks to a grant of almost $180,000 from the Louisiana Board of Regents, LSU’s Department of Geography and Anthropology has the boat and the necessary equipment for studying geological formations like the barrier islands, which serve as protection for the state’s endangered coast. The equipment is housed in the new H.J. Walker Geomorphology Laboratory, located in the Howe-Russell Geoscience Complex.
The lab is named for LSU Boyd Professor Emeritus H. Jesse Walker, who has been on the faculty of LSU’s Department of Geography and Anthropology for almost 35 years.
The facility does not fit the typical image conjured by the word “lab.” While the lab does hold equipment and computers for analyzing sediments and other materials, it is largely a “home base” for supplies necessary for conducting important field work. Purchased with money from the Board of Regents grant, these supplies include water and sediment sampling devices, survey gear, sonic anemometers and electromagnetic and acoustic doppler current meters. The grant also helped to fund the purchase of an ATV and a research boat, which are housed elsewhere on campus.
The lab is under the direction of Professor Patrick Hesp and Assistant Professor Steven Namikas, both experts in coastal geomorphology. Geomorphology is the branch of physical geography that deals with Earth’s land and submarine relief features and the processes that created them.
According to Hesp, with the grant funding for the creation of the new lab, the department went from having “very little” to having “most of the equipment necessary for monitoring the terrestrial and marine environment.” Hesp said that the new lab will be a boon for the department’s program in coastal geomorphology.
Currently, Hesp said, the new lab equipment is being used to analyze sediments gathered from research expeditions to barrier islands off the coasts of Texas, Brazil, Mexico and Prince Edward Island, Canada. Also, the transportation and collection equipment has been put to use in an ongoing research project relating to wind flow and vegetation on Louisiana’s barrier islands. Specifically, Hesp said, the project examines planting as a method of restoration for coastal dunes that protect the crucial barrier islands.
LSU’s E. J. Ourso College of Business will induct three new members into its Hall of Distinction on March 11, during a ceremony to be held at the Lod Cook Alumni Center. The three new inductees are Joseph L. Herring, Patricia C. Hewlett and Bartholomew F. Palmisano Sr.
Herring earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from LSU in 1978. He is currently CEO of Covance, a $1 billion provider of drug development services to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. He was president and chief operating officer of Covance for three years before becoming CEO.
Under Herring’s leadership, Covance enjoyed unprecedented growth and profitability, which helped drive the company stock up threefold since 2002. Herring previously served as corporate senior vice president and president of Early Development Services and was responsible for the company’s worldwide preclinical testing and Phase I services. In this position, he was instrumental in driving a business turnaround that made Early Development Covance’s top performing business unit. Before joining Covance in 1996, Herring worked in the American Hospital Supply/Baxter/ Caremark organization for 18 years.
Hewlett earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from LSU in 1972. She is currently vice president of ExxonMobil’s Global Information Services organization. In her 32-year career, she has held numerous leadership and management positions in ExxonMobil’s Controllers and Information Systems organizations. She is now responsible for information systems activities for ExxonMobil worldwide.
Palmisano earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from LSU in 1969. He went on to receive a Juris Doctorate from Loyola University in 1975 and a master’s degree in accounting and taxation from the University of New Orleans in 1986. He is the co-founder, chairman, president and CEO of Orthodontic Centers of America. He is also a licensed attorney in Louisiana and a Certified Public Accountant licensed in Louisiana. Palmisano founded OCA in 1989. He has served as chairman of the board since June 2001, as CEO since 2000, as president since 1999 and as a director since 1994. He also served as a co-CEO from 1998 to 2000 and as chief financial officer from 1989 to 1998.
Established in 1996, the Hall of Distinction recognizes individuals who make significant contributions to business, academia, or government, as well as to the community. The Hall of Distinction is not strictly limited to alumni, but nominees are expected to have a strong connection with the E. J. Ourso College.