Elizabeth English
Associate Professor - Research
LSU Hurricane Center
Associate Professor - Research
LSU Hurricane Center
LSU'S Biweekly Newsletter for Faculty & Staff
October 20, 2006 |
VOL. 23, NO 5 |
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Elizabeth English
Associate Professor - Research LSU Hurricane Center |
What brought you to LSU?
My wind-engineering colleagues Marc Levitan and John Holmes, both of whom I had known for years, asked me to join their research team at the LSU Hurricane Center. For me it was an opportunity to work with excellent people on interesting research projects in a collaborative environment. It
doesn’t get much better than that.
What do you hope to accomplish at LSU?
Conduct research and assist in Katrina recovery efforts, in ways that make a
difference. I’m looking for solutions that address both the technical and
social issues of hurricane recovery.
What do you enjoy most about LSU?
I appreciate the research environment and the opportunity to do research
full time, while working with congenial, supportive colleagues. It is
gratifying to be in a position to make a difference in New Orleans’ recovery
from Hurricane Katrina.
What is your major accomplishment?
When I was an undergraduate at Princeton I started the women’s ice hockey team there – they have since named their MVP trophy after me!
LSU Chancellor Sean O’Keefe has been named the 31st member of Louisiana Campus Compact, one of 31 state offices of the national Campus Compact organization. Campus Compact is a coalition of more than 1,000 college and university presidents nationwide representing approximately 5 million students and committed to fulfilling the public purposes of higher education through service-learning and other forms of civic engagement.
As the only national association dedicated to this mission, Campus Compact is a leader in building civic engagement into campus and academic life. Through its national office and network of 31 state offices, member institutions receive the training, resources and advocacy they need to build strong, surrounding communities and teach students the skills and values of democracy.
“Service is central to LSU’s mission, and service-learning is a vital part of the National Flagship Agenda to strengthen and renew the civic mission of a student-centered research university,” said O’Keefe. “The spirit of volunteerism is strong at LSU, and we are committed to providing students with opportunities to engage, learn and lead through community involvement.”
Campus Compact’s membership includes public, private, two- and four-year institutions, across the spectrum of higher education. These institutions put into practice the ideal of civic engagement by sharing knowledge and resources with their communities, creating economic development initiatives and supporting service and service-learning efforts in key areas such as literacy, health care, hunger, homelessness, the environment and senior services.
The work of Campus Compact encompasses a broad range of activities designed to increase the effectiveness of those working to make higher education institutions vital agents of civic renewal. This includes training for faculty, staff, students, administrators and community partners; research on effective programs and practices; advocacy and policy work on issues relating to higher education at the state and national levels; and partnerships with academic, community, business and government leaders.
Thanks to a recent agreement between IBM and the Southeastern Universities Research Association, or SURA, member universities will soon have access to a vastly improved regional network of high performance computing resources through the SURAgrid Program. LSU will be among the first to use this advanced system. There are currently two high performance IBM computers being installed on campus, both of which will soon be added to the SURAgrid pool.
“The growth of LSU’s focus on grid computing under Ed Seidel at the Center for Computation and Technology, or CCT, is one of the things that has pushed LSU out in front,” said Gary Crane, director of IT initiatives at SURA.
LSU has been involved with SURAgrid since its beginnings. Most recently, Seidel and his team at CCT were responsible for developing connections with IBM that eventually led to a partnership between the corporation and SURA. Aside from enhanced capabilities, this relationship will provide considerable discounts for member institutions purchasing IBM high-performance computer systems.
SURAgrid is on track to provide a distributed computational resource with a capacity of nearly 10 TeraFlops to its 28 participating universities by the end of this year.
“Our competition is not our neighboring states,” said Jerry Draayer, president and CEO of SURA. “For us to really be sufficiently robust to compete toe-to-toe with other regions, we need to join forces with our neighbors to move the Southern agenda collectively forward. The LSU team has been in the forefront in helping us to do that.”
Because of its involvement, LSU will also take part in a team demonstration at the upcoming Supercomputing Conference, held Nov. 11-17 in Tampa. Together with SURA, IBM and the University of North Carolina, LSU will demonstrate coastal ocean modeling and storm prediction capabilities that are being developed in part because of access to SURAgrid’s high-performance grid computing platform.
Stacia L. Haynie, LSU professor of political science, was appointed to the position of associate dean of LSU’s Graduate School.
Haynie was selected from a pool of 27 applicants from across the university. Those 27 were narrowed down, and five were chosen to be interviewed by a search committee chaired by the George C. Kent Endowed Professor of Biological Sciences John Fleeger. The committee then selected Haynie to serve in the position.
Haynie came to LSU as an assistant professor of political science in 1990. She then became an associate professor in 1996 and was later promoted to professor in 2003. She has served as chair of the department of political science from January 2004 to August 2006.
Haynie’s research on the decision-making of the highest courts of appeal across a numer of countries has received funding from the National Science Foundation and from the Board of Regents Support Fund, most recently in the Atlas Program. Her work has appeared in the leading journals in political science, and her recent book focused on the decision-making of the apartheid-era South African Appellate Division.
Haynie serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Politics and Political Research Quarterly. She also serves on the Executive Council of the Midwest Political Science Association.
Haynie was awarded the LSU University Alumni Association Faculty Excellence Award in 2002, the College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Faculty Award in 2003, the LSU Distinguished Faculty Award in 2005 and was appointed as the J. W. Annison, Jr. Family Alumni Professor in 2005. She received her bachelor of arts and master of arts degrees from Midwestern State University. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Texas.
Haynie assumed her new duties on Monday, Oct. 9.
Economists from LSU’s E. J. Ourso College of Business formally released the findings of the annual Louisiana Economic Outlook report, or LEO, for 2007-2008.
The report was prepared by Loren Scott, LSU professor emeritus of economics, and James Richardson, LSU professor of economics and director of the Public Administration Institute at the Ourso College. The economists released the LEO on Oct.11, at the BizTech Expo’s Top 100 Private Companies Luncheon at the Baton Rouge River Center.
Louisiana has been in a recovery mode from the worst natural disasters it has faced in modern history – Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The focus of this year’s LEO attempts to measure the continuing pace of recovery efforts for 2007-08.
The LEO report forecasts economic conditions for Louisiana and the eight large metropolitan areas of New Orleans, Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Houma, Alexandria, Shreveport-Bossier and Monroe.
Despite a long list of proposed construction projects, Scott and Richardson expect the New Orleans Metropolitan Statistical Area’s repopulation growth rate to slow down during the next two years. They are projecting the New Orleans MSA to add 34,300 more jobs in 2007 and 23,000 in 2008. Even with these additions, New Orleans will remain almost 120,000 below its 2004 level and will have about the same number of jobs as in 1978.
Unlike New Orleans, the Lake Charles MSA has virtually returned to its pre-Rita employment level. A dramatic increase in construction spending fueled this recovery, as well as the building of the new Sugar Bay Casino Resort and several LNG import terminals.
Baton Rouge experienced a large influx of evacuees after the storms, and as a result, there was a boom in the region’s housing market and retail sectors. Since then, Baton Rouge has experienced an “evacuees in-evacuees out” phenomenon. Projections for the Baton Rouge MSA indicate this growth rate will decline during the next two years.
The Lafayette MSA also experienced a significant influx of evacuees. This spiked non-farm employment upward by 9,400 jobs. Employment in Lafayette’s MSA will be boosted by continuation of the energy infrastructure rebuilding efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.
Houma, an extraction-dependent MSA, saw an increase in its employment post-storms. Scott and Richardson estimate that the Houma MSA will continue on its recent growth track at a rate of 2.2 percent annually.
Alexandria had the best growth rate with 4.5 percent. The projection for this MSA will include 1,500 new jobs in 2007 and an additional 1,000 in 2008.
The third largest MSA in the state is Shreveport-Bossier. While this MSA had a positive 3.0 percent job growth rate in 2006, projections indicate this region will add only 1,900 jobs a year during 2007-08, indicating a much slower 1.1 percent annual rate.
The weakest performance in the state is projected to be in the Monroe MSA. The experts forecast that employment will remain flat over 2007-08, primarily because of the expected closure of one of the area’s largest employers, Delphi Lighting.
LEO corporate sponsors include gold sponsors ExxonMobil, CLECO and MidSouth Bank Inc., as well as Woman’s Hospital, a silver sponsor.
Electronic and hard copies of the LEO report are available for purchase for $75.
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| Members of the panel from left to right are Chris Odinet, LSU student body president; Gaines Foster, LSU history professor and chair; Collins Phillips, LSU student equality commission president; E. Stuart Ponder, LSU Law Center alumnus; John Devlin, LSU Law professor; Saundra McGuire, LSU professor and University College associate dean; and K.C. White, LSU dean of students. |
No flagship university has ever reached national or international prominence by avoiding difficult issues. With this in mind, on Oct. 3, LSU hosted a dialogue on race, equality and the First Amendment, titled “To Form a More Perfect Union” in honor of Constitution Day celebrations throughout the country.
A few months ago, LSU discussed how best to address topics that many in higher education wish would simply go away. LSU concluded that the most direct method would be an open and honest discussion among students, faculty and staff. The resulting conference brought together local and national speakers to address issues that often confront a multicultural and diverse campus such as LSU’s; issues such as the purple-and-gold Confederate flag, race relations and overall equality.
“To Form a More Perfect Union” was a great success. Mayor-President Kip Holden gave an impassioned address to kick off the dialogue, as did the panel moderator, Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center. The distinguished panel of current and former students, as well as faculty, discussed a range of subjects regarding campus relations and First Amendment issues.
But perhaps the most important aspect of the conference was the breakout session, through which the audience was able to become an active part of the discussion. By frankly talking about what brings LSU together as a university, what keeps it apart and how to lessen the divide between the two through LSU’s Commitment to Community, attendees were able to shed even more light on an already-enlightening afternoon.
And while “To Form a More Perfect Union” was an excellent starting point, Chancellor Sean O’Keefe assured all who were present, especially the students, that it was just that, a starting point. Their thoughts and concerns will be addressed as LSU expands on the innovative ideas presented at the conference in an ongoing effort to embrace the campus’s ever-changing cultural gumbo.