LSU'S Biweekly Newsletter for Faculty & Staff
December 16, 2005 |
VOL. 22, NO. 8 |
The LSU Community-University Partnership, or CUP, has received a grant of close to $200,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of University Partnerships.
The grant is part of the Community Outreach Partnership Centers New Directions program. This program provides grants to help colleges and universities establish and operate centers that develop outreach and applied research activities aimed at addressing the problems of urban areas. The program also seeks to encourage structural changes, both within an institution and in the way the institution relates to its neighborhood.
The HUD COPC New Directions grant will enable LSU CUP to continue its work with the Old South Baton Rouge neighborhood, addressing the expressed concerns of the community and expanding the partnership in new directions. The LSU CUP New Directions outreach agenda will focus on residential enhancement and advancing opportunities for young adults and youth in the Old South Baton Rouge community.
“The New Directions Grant will allow CUP and the multidisciplinary team established at LSU to continue great community outreach in the Old South Baton Rouge neighborhood,” said LSU Vice Provost for Equity & Diversity Katrice Albert.
The activities proposed include providing educational workshops on financial planning and home ownership; developing an employer-assisted, home-ownership pilot program for LSU employees interested in owning homes in the Old South Baton Rouge area; developing a community-specific home-ownership guide that addresses repairs, energy efficiency, site improvements and property management that can serve as a model for other communities; and coordinating volunteer efforts to enhance housing stock through repair and fix-up programs. Other proposed activities include increasing job training for community residents aged 16-24, through a partnership with the Carville Job Corps Academy; coordinating opportunities for the development of artistic expression among middle-school-aged community children in the form of a summer theater program and support of the Louisiana Boys Choir and the Mid City Dance Project; and providing opportunities for area adults to complete their high school diplomas and/or attain their GEDs.
This initiative has institutional commitment from LSU and crosses multiple academic disciplines and administrative units. The management team is led by the Office of Academic Affairs, with representation from several other campus departments committed to civic engagement. With an office in the heart of the Old South Baton Rouge community, LSU CUP will work to maximize the resources of the university, as well as those of the multiple agencies and community partners invested in the area’s return to prominence.
Old South Baton Rouge is a historic urban community that encompasses a three-square-mile area bordered by the Mississippi River to the west, LSU to the south, the city lakes to the east and the downtown Central Business District to the north. The Old South Baton Rouge community is described in the City of Baton Rouge Office of Community Development Consolidated Plan for 2002-2004, as a “severely distressed neighborhood.” This classification is based upon the number of persons living in poverty, the number of persons on public assistance, the number of adult males not working, the number of single women with children and the number of high school dropouts.
LSU CUP aims to bring LSU and Old South Baton Rouge together for mutual benefit. CUP was formed several years ago thanks in large part to a $400,000 Community Outreach Partnership Centers grant from HUD. The grant, awarded to LSU and various community partners, marked the first Community Outreach Partnership Centers grant to any institution in Louisiana.
Students arrived at LSU on Aug. 18, and Hurricane Katrina made landfall after classes had been in session for only five days. In contrast to New Orleans just 70 miles away, Baton Rouge missed a direct hit from Katrina. Downed tree limbs and power outages were the only blemishes to the campus, ranked as one of the 10 most beautiful in the country. But the population of Baton Rouge, normally about 300,000, suddenly doubled with evacuees from New Orleans and surrounding Gulf Coast areas. And LSU has had to deal with cascading effects, including stressed students and faculty and potential cuts to university funding.
Not long after the hurricane, the population of Baton Rouge was up 50 percent from the pre-Katrina level, reports Saundra Y. McGuire, associate dean of the University College, adjunct professor of chemistry, and director of the university’s Center for Academic Success. The center helps students learn study skills and tutors them in challenging subjects, such as chemistry. Since Katrina hit, it has been overwhelmed.
The center tends to see 5,000 to 6,000 students per semester, but this fall that number is up about 30 percent because of Katrina, McGuire says. Time management and stress management skills have been in high demand among students who have been displaced or affected in some other way by Katrina. After the hurricane struck, LSU’s students were living in unsettled circumstances, to say the least.
“ I was talking to a student last week who was having some difficulty in one of her analytical chemistry courses because she had to give up her study at home where she normally did most of her work,” McGuire says. “The student had been very organized. Suddenly, everything was very chaotic at home.”
Overall, McGuire has found her work more challenging than usual this semester because “it’s much more difficult for the students to remain focused.” Faculty members also are having trouble concentrating on their work. “I went to a workshop for faculty, and everybody was saying it was really hard, not just to get the students back on track, but they found they were not able to focus,” McGuire says.
Faculty members Isiah M. Warner and Luigi G. Marzilli have known hurricanes since youth. Warner, a Louisiana native, is a professor of analytical and environmental chemistry. In the house next door to him lives Marzilli, an inorganic medicinal chemist who grew up in Rhode Island and chairs LSU’s chemistry department.
The day Marzilli and his wife moved to Louisiana four years ago, Hurricane “Lili started out as a Category 4, and it really had very little effect by the time it hit Baton Rouge,” he recalls. Many other storms faded out that way, too. With Katrina, Warner says, “I think the basic problem was no one expected anything of this magnitude, even though there were predictions.”
When Katrina’s wrath unfurled on New Orleans, both professors were attending the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington, D.C., with their wives. As they headed to D.C., the storm was predicted to pummel Florida. Although their homes lost power for five days, neither suffered major structural damage.
“ Very few people in the department didn’t have at least some people that they housed temporarily who had escaped New Orleans,” Marzilli says. The chemistry department is hosting faculty members from Tulane Medical School and the University of New Orleans. Linda Lewis, a computer scientist from Xavier University of Louisiana, will do a sabbatical on education methods with Warner. In addition, seminar speakers from out of town stayed with faculty because hotels had to cancel confirmed reservations.
McGuire’s LSU students are now experiencing another kind of disruption. Some students’ families are living in Baton Rouge but driving more than an hour to New Orleans on weekends. “The students go back on weekends to clean up homes that have been devastated,” McGuire explains.
“ The folks at LSU’s counseling services are really inundated,” she says. “As the holidays approach, it is not going to get any better because many students who would normally go home now have no place to go home to.”
Katrina’s landfall also put McGuire’s own family under stress. McGuire has a number of relatives who were all living in New Orleans. “Some of them evacuated to our house on that Sunday before the hurricane struck, but there were others who didn’t leave immediately. For about five days, we didn’t know where two of them were,” she says.
“ Eventually, one of the missing relatives turned up in Alabama, and the other one showed up in Texas,” McGuire says. But before one of them could get out of New Orleans, he spent a couple of days at the New Orleans airport, which was “pretty horrific,” she says.
LSU’s problems are dwarfed by those of New Orleans and western Louisiana, Marzilli notes, but because LSU is a state university, there are some funding concerns. “Because both Rita and Katrina caused considerable damage in the state and hurt the tax base,” he explains, “the state budget is severely impacted, which of course is going to have a big impact on us.” In addition, evacuee students already paid tuition at their home institutions, and it’s not clear if LSU will get any funds for these displaced students. With increased student load and decreased income, hiring is reduced, and the chemistry department suffered a small budget cut already.
McGuire is grateful for the help that the learning center and the students received after the storm. “The people at LSU and I, in particular, were very gratified by the quick response of many of our friends and relatives and professional colleagues around the nation who sent aid packages down in the form of donations, supplies and goods. Our center actually got a donation from some of the other learning associations around the country.”
To bring things back to a more normal situation in southern Louisiana, priority should be given to restoring the levees and to cleaning up the neighborhoods in New Orleans, McGuire says. “The longer residents can’t get back, the more likely they are to stay away for good.
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| Lance Porter Assistant Professor Manship School of Mass Communication/Center for Computation and Technology (Joint Appointment) |
Lance Porter
Previous Position: Executive Director of Internet Marketing at Buena Vista Pictures Marketing, Walt Disney Studios
Accomplishments: Helped set up Internet Marketing Department at Disney Studios, and worked on more than 80 interactive campaigns. Won Clio Award for Advertising Excellence, and helped start the New Media Institute at the University of Georgia.
In Their Own Words: I’ve always wanted to teach. My joint appointment at the CCT and in the Manship School allows me to work with two exceptional groups. The Manship School offers the best mass communication facilities in the country and a dean with a national reputation as the best in his field. The talented faculty here is a very close-knit, collegial group that really wants their young professors to succeed. Dean Hamilton has set up a system of success here, and I wanted to be part of that.
Since CCT is so new, I get a chance to be on the ground floor of something great. Working with both groups, I have a unique opportunity to think and write about how technology affects content and share that knowledge with the remarkable students here.
The LSU Board of Supervisors approved the following measures during its December meeting.
Carrol L. Herring, director of LSU’s Fire and Emergency Training Institute, has announced that he will retire from the position at the end of the year.
Former LSU Chancellor Mark Emmert appointed Herring to the position in 1999. Under Herring’s leadership, the Fire and Emergency Training Institute’s budget grew from around $1 million a year to more than $4 million a year.
“Carrol has done a wonderful job for LSU and the national fire community,” said Jim Fernandez, LSU Vice Provost and Executive Director of the National Center for Security Research & Training. “Carol’s retirement is a big loss to us and I will miss him, but I’m happy for him and his family and I know he will enjoy his time in retirement.”
Herring’s retirement comes after more than 50 years in the fire-service industry. From 1948 to 1963, Herring worked in the Baton Rouge Fire Department, serving as firefighter, investigator, captain and district chief. In 1963, the LSU Firemen Training Program was created by an act of the state legislature and Herring served as associate with the program from 1963 to 1969. He served as its director from 1969 until 1981, when he was appointed by Gov. David Treen to be the State Fire Marshal.
Herring also served as State Fire Marshal under Governors Edwin Edwards and Buddy Roemer. He retired in 1990, but returned to work in 1999 when LSU called on him to take over the Fire and Emergency Training Institute.
He chaired the Joint Council of National Fire Service Organizations and, in the 1970s, testified before Congress in favor of the establishment of the U.S. Fire Administration and the National Fire Academy. He participated on committees of the National Fire Protection Association and helped write training manuals for the International Fire Service Training Association, or IFSTA. In 1980, the IFSTA presented Herring with the Everett E. Hudiburg Memorial Award, which is given to “an individual who has made significant contributions to the training of firefighters” and is considered the highest honor that the organization can bestow.
Herring also served as a member and chair of the International Society of Fire Service Instructors and has been active in the Louisiana State Firemen’s Association.
The mission of the LSU Fire and Emergency Training Institute is to provide training and education to fire and emergency response providers “in order to protect life, property and the environment.” FETI is situated on 80 acres of land on Nicholson Drive, south of the LSU campus, and features training grounds designed to offer a large variety of fire, rescue and emergency response training. FETI has 10 classrooms, a fire extinguisher building, a burn building and several burn props.
Jim Fernandez, LSU Vice Provost and Executive Director of the National Center for Security Research & Training, has announced the appointment of D. Jeffrey Gleason to the position of director of the LSU Fire and Emergency Training Institute, one of the nation’s top state fire training programs. Gleason will assume the role effective Jan. 1.
The appointment comes on the heels of Carrol L. Herring’s announcement that he will retire as director at the end of December.
“Jeff has some very large shoes to fill, but I’m confident in his ability to lead FETI,” said Fernandez. “Jeff and I have worked together for a number of years, and I look forward to continuing to work with him to provide the best services possible to the Louisiana fire community.”
Gleason has served as associate director of the institute since October of 1999. His previous experience includes serving as Chief Administrative Fire Marshal for three Louisiana State Fire Marshals, from 1981 to 1992. He was also a state fire instructor at LSU from 1978 to 1981 and has served as a volunteer fire fighter with municipal fire departments in Ohio, Oklahoma and Louisiana.
Gleason holds a master’s degree from LSU in public administration. He received a bachelor’s degree in education from the Ohio State University and an associate degree in fire protection and safety engineering from Oklahoma State University.
“I’m glad to see someone well-qualified from within our program step up for the job,” said Herring. “I believe that someone from within the organization is the best choice to lead FETI into the future.”
The mission of the LSU Fire and Emergency Training Institute is to provide training and education to fire and emergency response providers “in order to protect life, property and the environment.” FETI is situated on 80 acres of land on Nicholson Drive, south of the LSU campus, and features training grounds designed to offer a large variety of fire, rescue and emergency response training. FETI has 10 classrooms, a fire extinguisher building, a burn building and several burn props.