LSU'S Biweekly Newsletter for Faculty & Staff
July 29, 2005 |
VOL. 21, NO. 21 |
Michael Ruffner, former associate vice president of university marketing and communications at Case Western Reserve University, has been hired as LSU’s new vice chancellor for communication and university relations.
As vice chancellor for communication and university relations, Ruffner will oversee media relations, marketing, legislative affairs and private fund-raising initiatives at LSU. He will report directly to the chancellor and his appointment is effective immediately.
“Michael Ruffner has worked with the national media, with major marketing firms and with higher education,” Chancellor Sean O’Keefe said. “He has a proven track record and is extremely qualified to lead our strategic communications effort. LSU is on the move, and having someone like Michael Ruffner here to communicate our accomplishments to the public and our stakeholders is invaluable. We want the world to know what we’re accomplishing here.”
Ruffner was selected to fill the newly created position after the university conducted a national search. The search committee received more than 150 applications, and selected five candidates to interview. Jerry Baudin, vice chancellor for finance and administrative services at LSU, chaired the search committee, which also included Vice Provost Chuck Wilson, Vice Provost for Equity and Diversity Katrice Albert, Associate Athletic Director for External Affairs Herb Vincent, LSU Foundation Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations Jeff Hale, Manship School of Mass Communication Associate Dean David Kurpius and former Louisiana Speaker of the House E. L. “Bubba” Henry.
Ruffner holds a doctorate in mass communication and research from the University of Florida, a master’s degree in journalism/public relations from the University of Florida and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Washington & Jefferson College.
“Dr. Ruffner has had a great deal of experience and success in the areas of marketing and communication, and I am confident that he will help move the university forward,” Provost Risa Palm said. “There is strong support for him across campus and we are pleased to welcome him to LSU.”
At Case Western Reserve University, Ruffner was responsible for all marketing, communications, market research, advertising and promotion, news information, publications and public affairs functions. He served as official university spokesperson and was a key player in producing and promoting the 2004 Vice Presidential Debate and related activities at Case Western Reserve University.
Prior to that, Ruffner served as creative director of marketing and creative services at CBS/Viacom in New York City. There, he produced a consistent brand image for four CBS/MTV cable networks; created comprehensive communication and image campaigns; handled advertising, sales and corporate presentations; and designed integrated marketing solutions for top CBS advertisers.
He also worked as a managing partner at Legends Marketing Group, a sports marketing and promotion company based out of New York and San Francisco. His professional career also included broad assignments in news, marketing and development at CBS and NBC Television for 10 years, and he is credited with pioneering the movement to advertise prescription drugs on television.
Ruffner was also an assistant professor of mass communication and research at Rutgers University, a graduate teaching assistant and student advisor at the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida, and served in the U.S. Army for several years, both in South Vietnam and at the Pentagon, earning the Bronze Star and a Presidential Citation.
“Michael Ruffner’s skills, abilities and experience match well with what LSU is looking for in this new position,” Jerry Baudin, search committee chair, said. “Everyone who met Dr. Ruffner felt that he could help advance LSU’s Flagship Agenda by bringing the university into the national spotlight.”
Ruffner has also published a number of journal articles and has been involved in research activities involving prescription drug advertising, educational programs in reading and math and television formats for health-care advertising.
Bert S. Turner, founder and chairman emeritus of Turner Industries LLC, recently donated $600,000 toward the creation of a $1 million endowed chair in the LSU College of Engineering. The remaining $400,000 to fund the Bert S. Turner Chair in Engineering, which is designated to support the position of dean, will come from a match provided by the Louisiana Board of Regents Support Fund.
A native of Elizabeth, La., Turner graduated from LSU in 1943 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and was awarded an honorary doctorate from LSU in 1996. He also earned an MBA with distinction from the Harvard Business School in 1949. He is a member of the LSU College of Engineering Hall of Distinction, as well as the LSU Alumni Association Hall of Distinction, and has received the LSU Foundation President’s Award for Lifetime Support at the Philanthropist level.
“Mr. Turner’s leadership and commitment to excellence is evidenced by his continued generosity. Through the support of our dedicated alumni, the LSU College of Engineering is better prepared to further our mission as a leading flagship institution among the nation’s top engineering schools,” said Zaki Bassiouni, dean of the College of Engineering.
In 1961, Turner founded what would become Turner Industries Group LLC, the largest privately owned industrial construction and maintenance organization in Louisiana. The company has a nearly 12,000-member work force and is consistently ranked in the top 100 contractors in the maintenance, petrochemical and industrial sector by Engineering News Record. Turner Industries’ collective annual sales volume has more than doubled from $310 million in 1993 to more than $800 million today.
In addition to this endowed chair, Turner has also created a distinguished professorship in his name in the College of Engineering valued at over $1 million.
LSU has been chosen by the National Science Foundation to receive $3 million for an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship, or IGERT. This prestigious award to LSU comes after a highly competitive, two-phase selection process, in which some 550 initial proposal applications were presented to the NSF and only 20 recipients were ultimately selected.
According to the NSF, the IGERT program is designed to offer training for doctoral-level graduate students, in order to provide them with “the interdisciplinary background and the technical, professional and personal skills needed to address the global questions of the future.” Each institution designs its own IGERT program for doctoral students and submits it for acceptance by the NSF. These programs are meant to “give graduates the edge needed to become leaders in their chosen fields,” by making use of innovative curricula and internships, and by focusing on multidisciplinary, problem-centered training.
LSU’s IGERT program will be a unique, multidisciplinary program that will require “collaboration between engineers, biological and physical scientists and computational scientists” and will focus on computational fluid dynamics, or CFD, which involves the use of computers and computer simulations to study fluids – liquids and gases – in motion, and the effect of the fluid motion on boundaries, such as solid containers or other fluids. CFD has applications in many different fields, ranging from engineering to medicine.
Much of the current computational fluid dynamics research at LSU involves using LSU’s supercomputer, SuperMike. For example, simulations of ocular fluid dynamics are being performed, which could lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms that lead to glaucoma. This work is being headed up by mechanical engineering Professor Sumanta Acharya, who is the principal investigator for LSU’s IGERT proposal.
LSU’s IGERT program will integrate 12 different disciplines from the Colleges of Engineering, Basic Sciences and Arts & Sciences, as well as the School of the Coast and Environment and the Center for Computation & Technology, or CCT. Key CFD applications that will be emphasized in the IGERT program will include: biological/bio-medical flows, astrophysical flows, oceanic/coastal flows, reservoir flows and fluid transport in engineering systems.
The IGERT program will provide annual stipends of $30,000 per year to the graduate students for two years, to pay for their tuition. The program will also arrange international and industrial internships for the students, in order to broaden their educational and cultural experiences. Some 30 doctoral students are expected to graduate from LSU’s interdisciplinary IGERT over the course of five years. According to Acharya, the program will “train the next generation of computational fluid dynamicists to take advantage of the rapid advances in computer and networking infrastructure” and to “solve ‘grand challenge’ fluid dynamical problems using an integrated approach.”
“The IGERT CFD doctoral students will represent a cross-product of their counterparts in the physical sciences and computational sciences,” said Acharya. “This designation by the NSF recognizes the strength of the computational fluid dynamics and the computational sciences programs at LSU and positions LSU to be a leader in developing the next generation of computational software for multi-scale fluid dynamical problems.”
“It is very exciting to have this multi-disciplinary program recognized by the NSF,” said Harold Silverman, interim vice chancellor for research and graduate studies. “It provides us with the opportunity to recruit some of the best graduate students from around the country to participate in this unique research and training opportunity.”
LSU’s Center for Computation & Technology will play a crucial role in the IGERT program, because CCT researchers are developing software for enabling the kind of large scale parallel computing and visualization that will be required for the CFD research.
“This is exactly the kind of initiative that the CCT wants to support. IGERT makes use of our center, and it’s the right environment to build activities in computational science,” said Edward Seidel, director of the CCT. “CFD is fundamental to many applications that the CCT will develop with the campus, including coastal studies, biological systems, nano science and astrophysics.”
The co-principal investigators of the IGERT program are physics and astronomy Professor Joel Tohline, mechanical engineering Professor Dimitris Nikitopoulos, mathematics Professor Blaise Bourdin and Professor Gabrielle Allen from computer science and the CCT. More than 20 other faculty are expected to participate in this inter-disciplinary program. In addition, the Eye Center in the LSU Health Sciences Center will collaborate in the bio-medical effort, and both Southern University and Louisiana Tech will participate in the data mining and visualization training and research.
LSU and its partner schools will soon be connected by LONI, a 40Gbit optical network on the national LambdaRail. According to Acharya, this will put them in a unique position to address the challenges of “large scale distributed computing of fluid flows.”
“This prestigious award will enhance interdisciplinary research activities in the College of Engineering,” said Zaki Bassiouni, dean of the College of Engineering. “Recruitment and retention of outstanding graduate students that explore boundaries outside their specific disciplines will lead to insightful and worthwhile research.
“The ultimate goal of these IGERT activities is the contribution to the economic development of the state and the nation, and we are pleased that the College of Engineering will play a significant role in this endeavor.”
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| Participants in the groundbreaking ceremony included Tom Holden, architect; Patricia Exner, associate dean of the College of Education; Dorothy Rumfellow, University Laboratory School elementary principal; Wade Smith, University Laboratory School director; Sean O'Keefe, LSU chancellor; James Wharton, former LSU chancellor and chemistry professor; Brett Furr, University Laboratory School parent; and David Cangelosi, contractor. |
On Tuesday, July 19, the LSU Laboratory School held a groundbreaking ceremony for the new elementary school wing, which will open for the 2006-2007 school year.
“This expansion gives us an opportunity to draw children of LSU faculty and staff, University Laboratory School alums and the broader Baton Rouge community,” said Dorothy Rumfellow, elementary school principal. “Many more people will have an opportunity to attend in ‘06-‘07.”
With this expansion, each K-5 grade will increase enrollment by 45-50 students for a total of 100 students in each grade.
Participants in the groundbreaking ceremony included Sean O’Keefe, LSU chancellor; James Wharton, former LSU chancellor and chemistry professor; Patricia Exner, associate dean of the College of Education; Wade Smith, University Laboratory School director; Tom Holden, architect; Brett Furr, University Laboratory School parent; David Cangelosi, contractor; and Rumfellow.
During the ceremony, Smith thanked all those involved, particularly Wharton, who has acted in an advisory and leadership capacity on decisions regarding design, construction approval and stewardship of funds.
The University Laboratory School is the first school in Louisiana authorized to offer the International Baccalaureate program. The elementary school is part of the International Baccalaureate Organization’s Primary Years Programme.
“When the International Baccalaureate authorizing team came for approval, they were so impressed with our instructional program that they asked five of our faculty members to serve as national consultants,” Rumfellow said.
The Primary Years Programme focuses on the development of the whole child – in the classroom but also in the world outside – through other environments where children learn. It offers a framework that meets children’s several needs: academic, social, physical, emotional and cultural.
The International Baccalaureate program is a model curriculum that stresses creativity, inquiry, service and internationalism. It is the finest college-preparatory curriculum in the world, taught in 1,400 schools in 106 countries. For more information, visit http://www.ibo.org/.
The University Laboratory School is located at 45 Dalrymple Dr. on LSU’s campus. The school has an open observation policy, and the public are encouraged to visit. Applications for the ‘06-‘07 school year will be available at the school’s Web site, http://www.uhigh.lsu.edu/, beginning Sept. 19.
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With sweat beading on her brow and a hammer in hand, Erica Royalty takes a look at the house she and her classmates have designed and built. She ponders the impact their class project will have on someone’s life.
“ I haven’t been in a project before that has had an effect on a group of people like this will. When it comes to the day the family moves in, it will be a huge emotional event for everyone” said Royalty, a senior from Lake Charles, LA.
In early 2005, fifth-year LSU architecture students participated in a student design/build competition, sponsored by the Vinyl Institute, the Greater Baton Rouge Habitat for Humanity and the LSU School of Architecture.
Students designed the plans for the Habitat for Humanity home, and the winning design was chosen by a panel of experts. Then, in April, as part of the “Vinyl Partners Spirit Blitz,” six Habitat houses were built over three, three-day periods in Baton Rouge and its surrounding areas.
An expert jury consisting of Ann Ruble, executive director for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Baton Rouge; Roy Decker, Duvall Decker Architects; Steve Dumez, president of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Louisiana; Terry Hill, president of Womack Construction; and Raymond “Skipper” Post, past president of AIA, selected the winning design in February.
“ I was impressed by the students, by their dedication to what they designed, and by their dedication to their client,” said Post. “All of the projects had great thoughts and ideas. There’s not a one that we were not proud to talk about as a judge and extol the good qualities that it had.”
After the semester, Habitat for Humanity began exploring the possibility of using the winning design as a model for future builds in the area.
Along with the student-designed house, the “Vinyl Partners Spirit Blitz” included three houses built in Plaquemine, LA, by Georgia Gulf, The Dow Chemical Company, and Shintech Louisiana LLC. Additionally, Formosa Plastics built a house next to the student-designed house and one sponsored by LSU’s Greek community.
“ This design competition was a great learning opportunity for my class and the LSU School of Architecture,” said David Baird, assistant professor of architecture. “In one semester the students were exposed to the process of producing vinyl, explored the potential uses of vinyl, designed an affordable house, completed a set of house plans, and participated in a major volunteer construction effort that resulted in a local family owning a home.”
Under the guidance of Baird, the class was divided into six teams to design a home that offered minimal maintenance, operating costs and energy consumption; could be built by modestly skilled but highly motivated, homeowners and volunteers; had space-use alternatives that could support home-based activities like co-operative childcare; and fit within the $55,000 construction budget set by Habitat for Humanity. Students also had to consider the needs of Sarah Smith, the future homeowner and a single mother of three.
After deliberating over the six plans, the judges selected two winning designs. Along with Royalty, John Stoker, Taylor Batey and Brian Austin Waits were members of the two winning teams, who received $2,000 each for their work. The remaining four participating teams received $500 each.
All 14 students who participated in the competition worked together, along with Habitat for Humanity and the future homeowner, to blend the two winning designs into one final house plan, which was constructed in April.
The competition was seen as an opportunity to provide the students with a learning experience that could not be replicated in the classroom. Students were faced with the reality of a budget, client wants and needs, project time frames and deadlines, contracts and documentation, and working with outside contractors.
Designing the home, as part of Habitat for Humanity’s goal of providing affordable housing, gave the students an opportunity to explore areas they otherwise would not have been concerned with. Areas such as natural lighting, ventilation, energy use, or other factors that could lower the families’ utility bills all had to be considered by students in the planning process.
“With us designing this house, it does create constraints on the design, and it challenged us on what we could do,” Royalty said. “Hopefully, the design intent works to its fullest advantage, and the family enjoys the house that’s been built. We want them to be excited about their home.”
David Cronrath, dean of the College of Art and Design, said that all architects, in order to be licensed, need experience working on contract documents. This competition provided many of the students with their first opportunity to do such work.
“ Many design graduates don’t have this opportunity until they work for a few years,” said Cronrath. “The challenge was for them to test their ideas in real life, firsthand.”
Students were exposed to the construction industry and had a chance to bridge the gap between academics and the real world.
“ Being able to think up a project and seeing a finished product intrigued me. You get to see all aspects of what you do in the real world,” said Greg Gauthreaux, a senior from Fairfax, VA.
Traditionally in LSU architecture courses, students are taught in three ways: by the traditional T-square and drawings, computer imaging, and building and construction. What better way to teach the third component, than with the actual construction of a house.
“ It’s an invaluable learning experience to see a house built from the ground up. Very few students have this opportunity,” said Hunter Brown, a senior from Baton Rouge.
The students were also able to provide unique architectural elements in the home that the owners otherwise would not have been able to afford.
“ Oftentimes, you talk about a building providing a structure and if there’s extra money, then you can provide architecture,” said Tom Sofranko, interim director for the LSU School of Architecture. “Economic condition should not dictate whether you get to experience architecture or not. From the poorest citizens in Baton Rouge to Donald Trump, all should be able to have architecture (in their homes).”
The project also served as an opportunity for students to be exposed to new construction materials and their production processes. Early in the semester, students toured a local Georgia Gulf facility to learn about vinyl production processes and building material uses. They also attended presentations on the vinyl industry by experts from the Vinyl Institute.
“ The future holds such great opportunity for us,” said Habitat for Humanity’s Ruble. “This year is a learning experience. We’re just hitting the tip of the iceberg of need. Just think how many more families could have a house to call home.”
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Baton Rouge is a Christian-based ministry that builds and renovates houses in partnership with the community. They provide opportunities for families in need to purchase their own homes, build community, and improve their lives.
The Vinyl Institute is an industry trade association, which represents the manufacturers of vinyl resin, additives and stabilizers, vinyl compound, and finished vinyl products.
At least once every hurricane season, the city of New Orleans finds itself in the national spotlight. Each time a major Gulf hurricane edges its way toward the mouth of the Mississippi, media from around the country descend on the city to capture footage of residents boarding up, packing up and preparing to face off against the worst nature has to offer.
Indeed, such scenes have played out on numerous occasions throughout the city’s long history, and coping with nature has become second nature to the citizens of New Orleans. As LSU geography Professor Craig Colten discusses in his new book, “An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature,” the city, which sits well below sea level and is virtually surrounded by water, has been profoundly affected by its precarious location and the wetland environment from which it emerged.
“It basically tells the story of New Orleans as a place that was an ill-suited site to become a major metropolitan area, and how, for centuries, humans have struggled to convert, reshape and manipulate it into a place that could support a major population,” Colten said of the book.
In the book, which is published by LSU Press, Colten covers a period from around 1800 to modern times, tracing the efforts by residents and government to “modify” New Orleans’ natural environment. Perhaps the greatest challenge city leaders faced during this time period, Colten said, was water.
“The primary concern was how to deal with excess water, both in the form of the river and in the wetlands in the back of the city,” he said.
Early in the 19th century, the Mississippi River was a primary source of flooding in the city, and the book describes the engineering efforts that slowly, but largely successfully, dealt with this problem.
“The river presented a hazard in terms of flooding, and I wanted to examine how society dealt with that and organized itself to begin building a barrier – a barrier that needed to be extended far beyond the city of New Orleans,” he said. “How do you orchestrate that?”
Colten said that, in the early years, the construction costs were put off on to the local farmers and those who owned property, as all were responsible for building their own levees. Later, the state took over, creating “levee districts” to supervise and control the process, and, ultimately, the responsibility was passed on to the federal government.
“Exporting the costs of flood protection to the larger social unit provided the means to afford the huge costs of dealing with floods,” Colten said.
Nevertheless, controlling the river didn’t put an end to the city’s flooding problems. After 1865 or so, Colten pointed out, the worst flooding in New Orleans came not from the river, but from Lake Pontchartrain.
“Before they built levees along the lakefront, they would sometimes have cold fronts blow in during the winter months, pushing water up Bayou St. John and flooding the low areas of the city,” he explained. “These happened frequently up through the 1890s.”
Colten’s book also makes note of the social impacts or implications of the city’s flooding problems.
“Oftentimes, the flooding tended to impact the poorest neighborhoods the most – not because floods are selective, but because people with the fewest resources tend to live in the most flood-prone areas where no one else wanted to live,” he said. “Meanwhile, the wealthy would live uptown or up on the natural levee.”
In addition to the various flooding issues, Colten said that the problem of what to do about the city’s wet, swampy land was a key concern among city residents and officials.
“After the city was ringed in levees, people began asking: How do we pump the water out?” Colten said. “Massive amounts of federal money have gone into simply draining the city.”
In the 19th century, Colten explained, public health officials believed that swamp lands were a source of fumes, or “miasmas,” that caused disease. Thus, they believed that they needed to somehow remove excess water from the city, and this task proved to be a difficult one.
“Draining or removing wetlands from the city was a great challenge – one that is still a problem today,” he said.
Early on, Colten said, city leaders attempted to control the excess water by imposing laws to control the dumping of sewage. He said they initially attempted to force individuals and business to find ways to send their sewage out of the city by routing it into the river. These efforts led to the creation of a “metropolitan style” system of drainage and sewage.
Organizations were also created to help tackle drainage and sewage problems. One such organization was the New Orleans Flushing Committee, whose members would go out in the evenings to hook up hoses to hydrants and “flush” the streets to get rid of muck and sewage.
Colten said that state and local public health organizations were also charged with developing plans for city drainage, in an effort to reduce the incidence of outbreaks of environmental diseases such as yellow fever. In the 19th century, he said, experts believed that swarms of mosquitos were a harbinger of yellow fever outbreaks, because, while they recognized a connection between the two, they were unaware that mosquitos actually carried the disease.
Colten also writes about how, through the years, attitudes about New Orleans’ physical environment have changed. He cites efforts in the modern era to accept and even celebrate New Orleans’ unusual natural surroundings.
“Now there are all kinds of efforts to bring the wetlands back into the city,” said Colten, pointing out the example of the Audubon Zoo’s large Louisiana swamp exhibit. “This is, in part, because people realize that wetlands serve functions that weren’t recognized in the 19th century, such as helping to protect the city and coastline and serving as a wildlife habitat. They can also provide an educational experience for kids in the city who can’t get out to see things like the Atchafalaya basin.”
He added that there are now more than 20,000 acres of federally protected wetlands within the city limits.
In addition to the history of the city’s flood control and wetland efforts, the book also addresses the larger topic of how nature and the environment play an important role in how cities function and take shape. Colten said that this is an idea geographers have often overlooked when it comes to their study of cities.
“One of the central tenets of geographers for many years is that cities were simply human environments, devoid of the natural environment,” said Colten. “However, in the case of New Orleans, there was a constant interaction with the environment – every major effort in the city had to do with the environment in some way, shape or form.”