LSU'S Biweekly Newsletter for Faculty & Staff
May 19, 2006 |
VOL. 22, NO. 18 |
Before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit Louisiana last year, the state’s citizens thought Louisiana was moving in the right direction, economic confidence was on the rise and public education was considered the state’s most important problem. According to the results of the 2006 Louisiana Survey, released on Wednesday, May 10, residents say they are less confident about the direction of the state and its economy, while rebuilding is considered to be the most important problem.
The survey was conducted by Manship School of Mass Communication’s Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs. The full report is available at www.survey.lsu.edu.
“This year’s survey underscores the value of longitudinal studies for use by policy makers, the media and others providing key services. It is important for a school like ours to be of benefit to the state by conducting this valuable research year after year,” Manship School of Mass Communication Dean John M. Hamilton said.
Not surprisingly, the dramatic events of the past year had a significant impact on public perception in several areas. Only 34 percent of respondents participating in the survey said the state is moving in the right direction – an 18-point drop from last year’s survey. Confidence in Louisiana’s economy has also dropped, with 49 percent of residents saying the state economy has gotten worse – a 24-point increase over last year’s results. Over the past several years, Louisianians’ overall perception of state corruption had been steadily decreasing, with only 28 percent saying the state had become more corrupt in 2005. That trend was reversed this year however, with 37 percent of respondents saying the state was more corrupt, and only 19 percent saying the state was less corrupt.
According to Kirby Goidel, the director of the annual Louisiana Survey, the data reveal an important facet of Louisiana public opinion in a post-Hurricane Katrina and Rita environment.
“The good news is that the public is more willing to make tradeoffs, more responsive to changing political context and more rational than is commonly assumed,” Goidel said. “Louisianians appear to appreciate the challenges of rebuilding and express a desire to do more to help the state rebuild.”
In previous years, education and the economy dominated as the most important problems the state faced. This year, 61 percent of respondents stated that rebuilding was one of the most critical issues for the state, 39 percent selected education and 38 percent selected the economy. When asked to identify their spending preferences in on area, residents continued to express a preference for spending on primary and secondary education and public health, though there were also notable declines in each of these areas. However, when asked about overall spending preferences, there are notable increases in support for spending on coastal restoration. Seventy-four percent of respondents indicated support for spending on coastal restoration – a 10 percent increase from 2005.
When asked whether Louisiana had been allocated enough funds for rebuilding, 54 percent of respondents said the state has not been allocated enough. When it came to allocating reconstruction resources, 66 percent of residents would prefer allocating funds more slowly to avoid waste, as opposed to allocating them more quickly in response to immediate needs. Residents in the areas hit hardest by the hurricanes were most likely to say that the state had not been allocated enough money for rebuilding.
Residents also recognized that both the federal and state governments are responsible for the state’s renewal. Louisianians perceived the federal government as the most responsible for rebuilding levees, restoring coastal wetlands and providing loans to small businesses. In contrast, state government was seen as responsible for rebuilding infrastructure and developing evacuation plans. On the question of housing, res-pondents were the most divided; though a plurality believe the federal government should be responsible, in general.
“The results from the 2006 Louisiana Survey should provide state leaders with an invaluable resource, and, used wisely, should help advance the rebuilding process,” said David Bondy, chief executive officer of LUBA Workers’ Comp and member of the Louisiana Survey Advisory Committee.
As in a similar November Post-Hurricane Survey conducted by the Peilly Center, the public also views a shared responsibility in the rebuilding effort, with most of the respondents volunteering through or giving to religious and/or other non-profit charitable organizations. Louisiana residents also express a strong desire to do even more. Eighty-six percent of respondents stated they strongly agreed or agreed that they would like to do more to help the state recover, but were unsure on how to help.
When questioned about issues of mental health, Louisianians say they feel depressed. In the Post- Hurricane Survey, 53 percent said they felt depressed and 7 percent said either they or someone in their immediate family had sought counseling. Just five months later, 59 percent of the respondents said they felt depressed and 11 percent either said they or someone in their family had sought counseling.
The 2006 Louisiana Survey is an in-state telephone survey of 960 randomly selected Louisiana residents 18 years old or older. The survey was conducted from March 13 through April 17. The approximate margin of error for the overall survey is +/- 3.2 percent. There was a 53 percent cooperation rate, meaning that 53 percent of the calls to households that answered the phone calls resulted in a completed interview. To account for the displacement of residents, the results were weighted based on current population estimates of New Orleans as estimated by the Department of Health & Hospitals and rapid population estimates provided by the City of New Orleans. As of March 2006, these estimates place the population of New Orleans at approximately 181,400.
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| LSU Laboratory School, located on the LSU campus. |
For the second consecutive year, Newsweek magazine ranked the LSU Laboratory School, or U-High, in its listing of “America’s Best High Schools.”At number 201, the University Laboratory School is the only public school in the state of Louisiana to appear on the list.
Newsweek researchers list all schools that achieved a ratio of at least 1.000 on the Challenge Index, a measurement based on an equal ratio of a school’s graduates compared to the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests administered there. This year 1,139 schools made the list.
University Laboratory School Director Wade Smith said, “We commend the U-High faculty for creating a learning environment that excites our students about learning while challenging them to achieve high goals.”
In the current issue of Newsweek, Barbara Kantrowitz and Pat Wingert wrote in their article “What Makes a High School Great,” “With our Best High Schools list, Newsweek recognizes schools that do the best job of preparing average students for college. By dividing the number of AP and IB tests taken at a school by the number of graduating seniors, we can measure how committed the school is to helping kids take college-level courses. We think kids at those schools have an edge, no matter their economic background.”
“ Our students excel because they embrace the challenging AP and IB curriculum,” Smith added.
According to Jay Mathews, an education reporter and online columnist with the Washington Post who developed the Challenge Index rating system utilized by Newsweek, these schools comprise the top 5 percent of American high schools.
Mathews added, “Studies by U. S. Department of Education senior researcher Clifford Adelman in 1999 and 2005 showed that the best predictor of college graduation was not good high-school grades or test scores but whether or not a student had an intense academic experience in high school. Such experiences were produced by taking higher-level math and English courses and struggling with the demands of college-level courses like AP or IB.”
The LSU Lab School was the first International Baccalaureate school in the state of Louisiana. University High School Principal Albert Camburn said he credits the IB program for his students’ success. “Our IB Diploma graduates are superbly prepared for the rigors of college academics,” he said. Camburn also attributes his students’ success to a strong, well-prepared, and knowledgeable faculty.
The nation of Qatar has announced that it will donate $3.3 million to the LSU Hurricane Student Relief Fund.
The donation is part of $60 million in grants from Qatar to benefit the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Other beneficiaries include Tulane University, Children’s Hospital in New Orleans, Habitat for Humanity, Xavier University and the March of Dimes.
“We are extremely pleased and grateful for the generosity from the people of Qatar,” said LSU Chancellor Sean O’Keefe. “It is critical that we continue to support our students who were affected by the storms and this donation will help us achieve that goal.”
The LSU Hurricane Student Relief fund was established by the LSU Foundation in August 2005. The fund was created in response to the far-reaching damage caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. All donations to this fund directly assist students whose lives have been greatly affected by these storms. The fund also aids those students from affected universities who enrolled as visiting students at LSU.
To date, financial awards from the LSU Hurricane Student Relief Fund has been given to 2,440 students totaling $1.3 million. With the new donation, LSU officials estimate that more than 1,200 students will be served during the coming 2006-2007 academic year.
“LSU and all of the grantees were selected based, above all, on need. There are still so many dire situations for residents and displaced families that require immediate help,” said Nasser Bin Hamad M. al-Khalifa, Quatar’s ambassador to the United States. “But an important part of our decision-making also involved achieving the maximum benefit from a single grant. We were especially interested in projects that included multipliers like ancillary job creation and training, and assisting historically underserved people.”
Celebrating the life and work of consummate man of letters Lewis P. Simpson and presenting an array of new poetry, the spring issue of The Southern Review blooms with great reading for everyone.
Simpson, cofounder of the new series along with Donald E. Stanford in 1965, served as the editor until his retirement in 1987. It was under Simpson’s careful editorial eye that early work from such writers as Robert Pinsky, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Gibson, Rosanna Warren and John Gardner found its way into the pages of The Southern Review, thus helping to launch their distinguished careers. Until his death at age 89 in April 2005, Simpson remained an active and brilliant essayist, while enriching the magazine through his role as consulting editor.
Fred Hobson, guest editor of this special section, brings together poignant essays and pieces from Simpson himself to give readers a sense of the man – the scholar, the editor, the colleague and the friend – who interpreted and influenced the course of cultural history in the South and across the nation.
Abstract paintings by Shawn McNulty form a vibrant conduit to the second half of the issue, which is dedicated to new poetry. Readers will find poems that run the emotional gamut, from grief to contentment, from rage to acceptance, all executed with grace and power.
This special issue is available in bookstores, libraries or directly from The Southern Review by calling 578-5108, or visiting www.lsu.edu/thesouthernreview.
The LSU Center for Computation & Technology and LSU Information Technology Services have formed a partnership to optimize research and high performance computing, or HPC, on campus that will significantly improve user support and advance research.
As part of the partnership, the two organizations have launched a Web site, www.hpc.lsu.edu, to give researchers a central gateway to the supercomputing resources of LSU. Large computing machines like Pelican, Santaka, SuperMike, Nemeaux and SuperHelix will be available to researchers at the click of a mouse via an application process through the site.
“ We’re making a fresh start and doing things differently in HPC. Information technology-enabled research is key to both our organizations’ strategic efforts to advance the university’s research mission, which will lead to a better environment for learning, research and discovery,” said LSU Chief Information Officer Brian Voss.
CCT and ITS will focus on different aspects of the role HPC will play in research. CCT will work with faculty to develop new and innovative ways to use computing to advance their individual disciplines as well as interdisciplinary projects. ITS will concentrate on management of LSU’s HPC infrastructure, which includes computers, storage and high speed networking, and provide quality support and training to users.
“ By focusing on what we think each of our organizations is meant to do and by joining forces, we’ve got a very good foundation to build the kinds of computing services and support that people need. Our vision is to create a merged environment where we each focus on customer service, but the services from each organization will be different,” said CCT Director Edward Seidel.
The new HPC organization and Web site will streamline access for LSU faculty to more than 13 million hours of computing time per year and a nearly nine Teraflops capacity on the six computational systems available in the HPC group. In keeping with the university’s Flagship Information Technology Strategy, faculty and both graduate and undergraduate students from all disciplines will be able to focus more effectively on their research and spend less time managing and maintaining the computational resources they need.
The partnership sheds the traditional model that most universities use today to deliver high performance computing. Instead of having separate administrative and research computing groups, CCT and ITS have broken the mold by taking advantage of the logical crossover of skill sets among technology researchers and staff. Using a collaborative approach and combining staff allows the organizations to combine investment strategies and leverage their purchasing power towards the acquisition of future machines and expertise at LSU.
The university will also save roughly $1 million per year in personnel costs. Both CCT and ITS had hiring plans for system administration and user support staff, but as part of the partnership, the two organizations combined their personnel plans and eliminated the need for possible duplicate positions. These savings will allow CCT and ITS to invest more heavily in growing the HPC infrastructure, provide deeper support for its use and increase the resources designed to advance use by researchers in both traditional and non-traditional disciplines.
CCT and ITS are continuing to make plans for further improvements to have the most effective impact on research computing at LSU and fulfill their goal of becoming one of the premier HPC collaborations in the country. Already, the partnership staff is playing a leading role in deploying the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative supercomputers across the state, as well as working with the Southeastern Universities Research Association on initiatives to develop HPC resources throughout the southeast U.S. The collaboration they have created, coupled with statewide projects such as LONI and forthcoming hardware expansions at LSU, keeps Louisiana in a national leadership position, not only in deploying the most advanced high-tech infrastructure, but also in using it for scientific, engineering, arts and business applications.
Two members of the Department of Biological Sciences have been named Education Fellows in the Life Sciences by the National Academies. Two department faculty received this honor last year, making LSU the only institution in the nation with four fellows.
This year, the National Academies bestowed the Education Fellow in the Life Sciences title on 42 educators who successfully completed a summer institute aimed at “fostering innovative approaches to teaching undergraduate biology.” Professor of Biological Sciences Joseph Siebenaller and Instructor Christopher Gregg were the recipients from LSU.
“ Joe Siebenaller and Chris Gregg are among our very best instructors,” said Terry Bricker, chair of the Department of Biological Sciences. “Their commitment to teaching excellence is widely known. This honor is richly deserved.”
The fellows are members of teams from 19 research-intensive colleges and universities who were selected based on their ideas for enhancing undergraduate biology education and a commitment by their universities to support teaching innovations. Teams were also chosen based on their willingness to collaborate on the development of “teachable units” – curriculum packages encompassing up to a week of classes and laboratory activities on specific topics – and their pledge to implement at least one of the units in the courses they teach this year. Admission to the summer institute was highly competitive.
The institute grew out of a recommendation in a 2003 report issued by the National Academies’ National Research Council, which noted that undergraduate biology education was failing to keep pace with revolutionary advances in biomedical research that require those working in the field to have a good understanding of other scientific disciplines -- such as math and computer sciences -- and urged instructors to integrate other subjects into their biology classes.
Siebenaller said he is already making use of “educational innovations” that were presented at the summer institute.
“ These teaching methods encourage students to learn – as scientists do – through active problem solving and discussion. I am implementing the teachable unit, based on these scientific teaching principles, that our group constructed at the summer institute,” said Siebenaller.
Gregg has also been using the teaching strategies from the summer institute.
“ I try to engage my students’ interest by including activities and demonstrations in the classroom that show how scientists think and work,” Gregg said.
Siebenaller and Gregg said that they are working with LSU’s two previous Education Fellows, William Wischusen, associate professor of biological sciences, and Michelle Withers, instructor in biological sciences, to share the lessons they have learned with their colleagues.
Withers was recently named a National Academies Education Mentor in the Life Sciences for 2005-2006.