Lisa Lundy
Assistant Professor, Manship School of Mass Communication
Assistant Professor, Manship School of Mass Communication
LSU'S Biweekly Newsletter for Faculty & Staff
October 6, 2006 |
VOL. 23, NO. 4 |
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Lisa Lundy
Assistant Professor, Manship School of Mass Communication |
School and Career: Most recently, I completed my doctoral work at the University of Florida in August 2004. Prior to that, I worked for the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Florida in student and alumni relations. I came to LSU in 2004 as an assistant professor. I am also the public relations area head for the Manship School of Mass Communication.
Research Interest: I am interested in how individuals use the media to learn about issues related to agriculture, the environment and personal health. I am also interested in how the media influences individuals’ attitudes and behaviors related to such issues.
What do you enjoy most about LSU? LSU is a beautiful campus (especially when the azaleas are in bloom). I love meeting students as sophomores and watching them as they grow and mature and then graduate. I love taking public relations students to national conferences and seeing how much pride they have in being from Louisiana and LSU.
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| Pictured from left to right are LSU Foundation President and CEO Maj. Gen. William Bowdon, President of Schlumberger Oilfield Services William Coates and LSU Chancellor Sean O'Keefe at Schlumberger Technology Days at LSU on Sept. 13. |
Representatives from Schlumberger visited the LSU campus on Sept. 13 and 14 to meet with students seeking internships and employment from across several academic disciplines and to announce a $250,000 donation, to establish 25 scholarships for students adversely affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The company also named LSU to its “Ambassador Schools” program, an elite designation that places the university among the top 12 schools in the nation in terms of overall quality and value to Schlumberger.
The first-of-its-kind, two-day “Schlumberger Technology Days” event in LSU’s CEBA Building, timed to coincide with LSU’s “Career Fair,” featured a dozen Schlumberger employees and researchers demonstrating the latest technologies and approaches to serving the needs of the global energy industry. Several hundred LSU students visited the Schlumberger exhibits and met with company recruiters during the course of the exhibit.
“We hope that the showcase at CEBA provided a closer look at the incredible technologies Schlumberger offers and the exciting career opportunities we have in the company,” said Stephanie Cox, Schlumberger vice president for Gulf Coast Operations, based in New Orleans.
In a separate presentation on the afternoon of Sept. 13, Cox gave an overview of Schlumberger’s operations to a diverse group of LSU students, faculty and administrators. The event also featured a check presentation for $250,000, delivered by Schlumberger’s President of Oilfield Services for North America Bill Coates, as well as Global University Relations Manager Larry Schwartz. “Schlumberger’s business in the Gulf Coast deploys the most sophisticated technology in the oil and gas exploration industry. We greatly value our relationship with LSU – we need to take full advantage of the technology being developed at LSU and we need to recruit effectively for our operations in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Schwartz.
In addition to its highly qualified students, LSU’s academic research prowess in engineering, geoscience and related disciplines was recognized at the Sept. 13 presentation, via a letter and plaque naming LSU as one of 12 universities in the United States to be recognized as an “Ambassador School.” Chancellor Sean O’Keefe, as well as Vice Chancellors Harold Silverman, Michael Ruffner and Brooks Keel were present to receive the award.
The significance of the Ambassador School designation was summarized by Jeff Hale, LSU Foundation’s senior director of corporate and foundation relations.
“Today is a landmark in the Schlumberger/LSU relationship, in that the company now recognizes both our outstanding students and our leading-edge research. All told, this is a testimony to the rising academic standards and nationally competitive faculty hires mandated in LSU’s 2010 Flagship Agenda,” said Hale.
LSU Foundation President & CEO, retired U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. William Bowdon, also recognized the importance of the occasion.
“We are happy to see that LSU students are in demand by one of the top companies in the energy business. This partnership is sure to grow over the years,” said Bowdon.
Employing 66,000 people and operating in 80 countries, Schlumberger is one of the world’s first and largest oilfield services corporations. Through well-site operations and research and engineering facilities, Schlumberger works to develop products, services and solutions that optimize performance and remain environmentally sound.
The LSU Board of Supervisors wrapped its September meeting by approving Chair Rod West’s recommendations for a search committee to appoint the LSU System’s next president.
West submitted 17 names for the committee, including board members Jerry E. Shea Jr., Connie R. Cooper, James P. Roy, Charles S.Weems III and Laura A. Leach, who was asked to serve as committee chair. West has previously said that he would like to have the System’s next president named by early 2007. Current president William Jenkins announced earlier this year that he plans to retire.
Other members of the search committee are as follows:
LSU Chancellor Sean O’Keefe also presented the board with the university’s enrollment statistics following the first two weeks of the fall semester. As projected, enrollment has dipped from 30,564 in fall 2005 to 29,317 in fall 2006, a decrease of 4.1 percent.
“We think this is due to a combination of an increase in standards, and the consequences of our state’s image right now,” said O’Keefe.
Overall, out-of-state enrollment decreased 16.2 percent with applications down 21.6 percent, while in-state enrollment increased 1.5 percent with an application increase of 8.3 percent.
Once again, the chancellor pointed to an increase in quality for the 2006 freshman class, with an average ACT score of 25.3 and an average grade-point average of 3.42, up from 25.2 and 3.40 in 2005.
Other figures presented by O’Keefe included: a decline in enrollment among black-non Hispanic, American Indian and Asian/Pacific Islander students by 2.5, 4.7 and 0.9 percent respectively, while Hispanic enrollment increased 0.4 percent. International student enrollment also dropped 8.9 percent. The chancellor also cited biological sciences, general studies, psychology, mass communication and kinesiology as the university’s five most popular majors this year.
O’Keefe also noted that 82.6 percent of last year’s freshman class returned for its second year, a decrease from the previous year’s 83.1 percent.
“We’d like that figure to be in the 90s range,” said O’Keefe, adding that while the effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita certainly played a roll in retention, it shouldn’t be considered an excuse.
“I don’t want to just attribute it to (the hurricanes),” he said. “We should be aspiring to be in the low-90s for our retention rates.”
O’Keefe presented the board with five observations on the enrollment report, stating that LSU would like to: maintain freshman quality, enhance retention activities, increase out-of-state recruitment activities, continue to enhance diversity and continue to review scholarship and financial aid policies and procedures.
Also presented was a report by LSU psychology professor George Noell on an ongoing Board of Regents-funded project called “Value Added Assessment of Teacher Preparation.” Noell’s study evaluates how teachers trained at several academic institutions within the state affect the performance of their students. Though he declined to reveal which universities were involved in the blind study, Noell explained that the research will eventually help institutions better prepare education students to become teachers.
“We have the potential to know things we’ve never known before,” he said.
Other actions approved by the board included: the establishment of the Burlington Resources Endowed Professorship in Environmental Law at LSU’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center, and license agreements between the LSU Ag Center and Plantation Seed Conditioners Inc. and Ragan & Massey Inc. for royalties on an oat and a wheat variety created at LSU.
The Staff Senate recently awarded two Staff Senate Scholarship awards, or S3, and one Staff Senate Education Fund, or SSEF.
The S3 was created to offer direct assistance to undergraduate dependents of any staff member, active or retired, of LSU. The $550 scholarship, awarded as $275 per semester for two semesters, is used as the recipient deems necessary and is funded by donations from staff members.
Recipients must have earned 24 hours of credit with at least a 2.5 GPA. The recipients must maintain their average to receive the award for both semesters.
The SSEF was created to offer direct assistance to any active staff member who is pursuing a degree at LSU. The $500 scholarship, awarded as $250 per semester for two semesters, is designed to help with non-exempt fees that an employee would be responsible for paying each semester and is funded by donations from staff members.
Recipients must be active staff employees at LSU’s main campus. Eligible employees must have completed a minimum of 12 hours as a graduate student or 30 hours as an undergraduate and are currently enrolled in six semester hours. Employees will then be ranked by their GPAs.
A committee made up of the Office of Student Aid & Scholarships selects the recipient in the fall of each year.
Vice Chancellor for Research & Economic Development Brooks Keel recently called two faculty and staff forums to discuss changes in LSU’s research and intellectual property operations and a new faculty hiring initiative that supports the National Flagship Agenda.
To further advance LSU’s economic development agenda, the Office of Research & Graduate Studies became the Office of Research & Economic Development when Keel joined the campus community in July 2006 and took a renewed focused on intellectual property development and commercialization. Keel prefers that term to the traditional “technology transfer.”
“When you say ‘technology transfer,’ many researchers tend to think about widgets or devices. But, when you say ‘intellectual property,’ we think beyond widgets and consider the true sense of the phrase: technologies, music, plays, software programs and new materials for everyday items,” said Keel.
The office is also in the process of recruiting a new vice chancellor for intellectual property development and commercialization to lead the university’s invention licensing and marketing efforts. The position will be a joint hire between LSU and the LSU Agricultural Center. The Office of Intellectual Property Development and Commercialization will also move its operations to the Louisiana Emerging Technologies Center on campus, as well as increase its licensing and marketing staff.
In direct support of the National Flagship Agenda, Keel announced the university’s Cluster Hire Initiative, which seeks to hire groups of five to eight faculty around a particular programmatic theme or strategic initiative. The goal is to create large groups of faculty working in a common area who are positioned to significantly move LSU forward.
“This is not intended to fill small gaps or deficiencies in units,” said Keel. “The cluster hires will be interdisciplinary in nature and preferably span at least two units and several colleges.”
Chancellor Sean O’Keefe and Keel anticipate the clusters will significantly advance scholarly activity within affected disciplines through increases in research productivity, publications, creative activity, grant funding and faculty awards. The Office of Research & Economic Development has issued a request for proposals for the LSU Flagship Cluster Hiring Initiative, which can be viewed at www.research.lsu.edu/cluster.htm.
The Louisiana Business & Technology Center, or LBTC, at LSU’s E. J. Ourso College of Business announced that one of its graduate companies, Mezzo Technologies, won the 2006 Tibbetts Award.
The Small Business Innovative Research Program, or SBIR, awarded Mezzo the annual national award, the agency’s highest national recognition for innovative technology. Tibbetts Award winners were recognized at a ceremony on Sept. 26 in Washington, D.C.
The award recognizes small firms, projects, organizations and individuals for their accomplishments within communities where the stimulus of SBIR funding has made a significant difference. This is measured through the economic impact of technological innovation, demonstrated state and regional impact, business achievement and effective collaborations.
Mezzo Technologies was nominated for the award by the LBTC, which was itself a Tibbetts Award-winner in 2001 for the role it has played in stimulating and promoting the SBIR program in Louisiana.
To date, Mezzo Technologies has received more than $5.2 million in research and development grants from the SBIR Program.
LSU faculty member Kevin Kelly founded Mezzo Technologies in 2000.
Mezzo Technologies manufactures molding tools with high-precision micro geometrics. The molding tools are used to mass produce polymer components that are essential in the development of high-tech devices, such as micro heat exchangers, industrial engine oil coolers, aircraft fuel oil coolers and aircraft air to air heat exchangers.
“Mezzo Technologies is the textbook example of taking intellectual property and nurturing it to produce economic development,” said Brooks Keel, vice chancellor for research and economic development.
Kelly said his company has grown because of key components: the LBTC, state programs, LSU’s infrastructure and private investors. As his company grows, it brings economic development to Louisiana, Kelly said.
“I look at this award as the starting point,” Kelly said. “My commitment is to pay back the taxpayers for their gift.”
Through LBTC’s work with the SBIR program, Louisiana has moved to a spot in the top 30 from ranking 47th for awards won by companies since 1999.
The SBIR’s dual objectives are to increase participation of small businesses in federal high-technology research and development activities, and to stimulate conversion of government-funded research into commercial applications.
Created in 1988, the LBTC assists entrepreneurs and small businesses with access to the resources they need to grow and attain long-term success. In its history, LBTC has worked with more than 1,850 businesses and entrepreneurs, developing more than 2,000 business plans, starting several businesses and creating more than 9,000 jobs for Louisiana.