LSU'S Biweekly Newsletter for Faculty & Staff

Flagship Faculty

Stephen Sears Chair Department of Engineering

What was your previous position and where?
My last position was with Shell Oil Company in New Orleans. I was the Production Surveillance Manager for North and South America, which meant I was responsible for managing the engineering support for producing operations in North and South America.

What are your major accomplishments?
My major accomplishments include a Ph.D. in Geochemistry from Penn State, research on reservoirs around the world while at Shell’s Bellaire Research Center and managing the development of Shell’s first deepwater fields in the Gulf of Mexico.

What is your research interest?
My research interest is in the understanding and prediction of rock properties.

What brought you to LSU?
I came to LSU because of my association with the department faculty as an adjunct professor and a member of the department’s industry advisory group. This led me to realize the dedication to the department and the commitment to education and research that this group has. As a resident of Louisiana for the last 13 years, I am also a firm believer in the rationale behind the Flagship Agenda.

Board of Supervisors’ December Meeting’s News and Notes

The LSU Board of Supervisors’ final meeting of 2006 featured several actions and reports from Chancellor Sean O’Keefe.

O’Keefe began by updating the board on the status of LSU’s South Campus property on GSRI Avenue. The property has been used as a temporary home for the displaced LSU dental school, but has been targeted as a potential site for the new Armed Forces Reserve Training Center.

“They’re quite jazzed about it,” O’Keefe said of the U.S. Armed Forces, who have been looking to build a new training center in the Baton Rouge area.

The chancellor also gave a report on trends in college applications for the coming academic year. According to O’Keefe, new applications for LSU have increased 10 percent from last year among in-state high school seniors, and 11.6 percent among out-of-state students.

The board took the following actions at the meeting:

* Approval of degrees to be conferred on graduation candidates for the fall commencement ceremonies.

* Approval of a modification to the university’s mission statement, acknowledging LSU’s status as a land-, sea- and space-grant institution.

* Approval of a limited right of exclusive negotiation agreement between the university and the Rellis Group for technology transfer.

Also approved at the meeting was the establishment of 14 endowed chairs and professorships at LSU:

* The Shell Endowed Chair in Oceanography/Wetlands Studies, and the George William Barineau III Professorship at the School of the Coast and Environment.

* The Ourso Distinguished Chair of Management and the Ourso Professorship of Entrepreneurial Studies No. 2 at the E. J. Ourso College of Business.

* The Dr. Charles M. Smith Chair of Medical Physics in the Department of Physics and the Dr. Mary Lou Applewhite Distinguished Professorship in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Basic Sciences.

* The Malcom C. and Gene Perdue Loew, Jr. Professorship No. 3, the Murray F. and Julia W. Hawkins Professorship in Petroleum Engineering, the Roy O. Martin Lumber Company Professorship in Mechanical Engineering and the Clarence M. Eidt Jr. Professorship No. 3 in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the College of Engineering.

* The Shirley Blue Barton Professorship II in the Department of Mathematics at the College of Arts and Sciences.

* The L.M. “Pat” and Mildred Harrison Professorship in the College of Education.

* The Neil S. and Boyd H. McMullan Distinguished Professorship in the College of Music and Dramatic Arts.

* The Ralph and Lela Boulware Professorship in the Department of Animal Sciences at the College of Agriculture.

The board also approved the athletic department’s 2006-07 Bowl Budget.

LSU Faculty Member Appointed to Professorship in History

Benjamin F. Martin has been appointed to the Kathryn, Lewis and Benjamin Price Professorship in History at LSU. The Price Professorship was established through a generous gift from the late Lewis Price of Baton Rouge, a 1936 graduate of LSU who worked as an engineer for Exxon for more than 50 years.

A popular undergraduate teacher, Martin has taught at LSU since 1983. During those years, he has also established a distinguished record of publication that includes five books and a host of articles. A specialist in French history, two of these books are important studies of crime and punishment in France – “The Hypocrisy of Justice in the Belle Epogue” and “Crime and Criminal Justice Under the Third Republic.”

More recently his work has explored the cultural and political history of 20th-century France. “France and the Apres Guerre” analyzes the goals and failures of domestic and foreign policies pursued by a series of French leaders in the five years after World War I, and “France in 1938” explores the moral failings that caused France to do nothing in face of the German aggression that led to World War II.

Martin writes for a popular, as well as a scholarly, audience and seeks to encourage the study of history among a wider public in other ways as well. He has been a script consultant and appeared as an expert on several historical documentaries that have aired on the Arts & Entertainment Television Network, the History Chanel and the Learning Channel. He also served as advisor to Encyclopedia Britannica and on a book prize committee for the national Phi Beta Kappa Society. He frequently reviews books for The Advocate.

By Gaines Foster

Southern Review Receives Donation

Pictured with the portrait of Lewis P. Simpson clockwise from left to right are Tony Bernard, the artist, Bret Lott, editor and director of The Southern Review, Mary Roane and Wilder Breckenridge Selman. Roan and Selman hosted the reception at which the portrait was presetned to Lott.

The Southern Review, an international quarterly literary journal published at LSU, received a portrait of the late professor Lewis P. Simpson this summer at an event held at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, or ULL. The donation was given to the LSU by the Flora Plonski Levy Endowment in the Humanities Foundation at ULL.

The foundation, established in 1982, holds the standards given to it by Flora Plonski that each year the foundation should honor “any artist, poet, novelist, philosopher or scientist in whose work we find the perennial values of the humanities and of Western tradition,” said Maurice duQuesnay, administrator and chairman of the Flora Levy Endowment. This year’s recipient, Simpson, was an intellectual historian of Southern and American literary culture. A native of Jacksboro, Texas, Simpson earned his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin and came to LSU in 1948. In 1963, he helped revive The Southern Review, carrying on the spirit and tradition of the Robert Penn Warren-Cleanth Brooks era of the preceding two decades.

Simpson, a William A. Read Professor of English and a Boyd Professor Emeritus, went on to become the coeditor of The Southern Review from 1965 until his retirement in 1987. Even after his retirement Simpson continued to have an active role in the journal’s compilation and publication until his death in April 2005.

Some of Simpson’s essays have appeared in numerous scholarly journals, and he has delivered more than 100 lectures. His most well-known works include “Mind and the Civil War: A Meditation on Lost Causes,” which received the Avery O. Craven award of the Organization of American Historians, and “The Fable of the Southern Writer,” which received the Jules and Francis Landry Award from the LSU Press.

Simpson also served as series editor of the Library of Southern Civilization for LSU Press and received a number of awards, including Humanist of the Year, Distinguished Research Master and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was a founding member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

The portrait of Simpson that was donated to LSU is based on a well-known photograph of Simpson, which appeared on the cover of his book, “The Fable of the Southern Writer,” published by LSU Press in 1994. The portrait now hangs in the Old President’s House at LSU.

In January, LSU Press will be publishing a posthumous book by Simpson entitled “Imagining Our Time: Recollections and Reflections on American Writing.”

By Shelly Brizzard Ortiz

Endowed Chair Supports Cancer Research Through LSU and Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center Partnership

Charles M. Smith

A new endowed chair in medical physics at LSU is one of just a few in the nation and the only one in Louisiana. The Dr. Charles M. Smith Chair of Medical Physics will provide support for important cancer research initiatives within the medical physics program.

“Endowed chairs are one of the greatest assets a university has,” said Kenneth Hogstrom, director of LSU’s medical physics program and chief of physics at Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center. “In addition to providing long-term stability for our program, it will provide funding for research and help to recruit outstanding, talented faculty and graduate students to the medical physics program in the future.”

The chair is one element of an innovative education and research partnership formed in 2004 between LSU and Mary Bird Perkins that was initiated as part of an effort to bring Dr. Hogstrom to Baton Rouge. Hogstrom, who serves at both LSU and Mary Bird Perkins, is one of the world’s foremost scholars in the area of medical physics and is the former department chair of radiation physics and director of the graduate medical physics program for The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The new medical physics chair was funded by donations from both LSU and Mary Bird Perkins. LSU donor Dr. Charles M. Smith contributed $300,000 of the $600,000 required to establish an endowed chair at LSU. Contributors to a recent capital fund drive conducted by Mary Bird Perkins made it possible for the center to match Dr. Smith’s donation. Together, these donations qualify for $400,000 in matching dollars from the Louisiana Board of Regents Support Fund to provide a $1 million endowment. Endowed chairs provide vital, ongoing funding for research and academic study rather than a one-time gift.

The funding for this chair is unique because an individual and an organization joined forces to make it happen. “This is an outstanding example of how a flagship university and the community can come together in a dynamic way to benefit and advance cancer research,” said Louis D. Curet, co-chairman of the Mary Bird Perkins 2004 Capital Campaign that raised more than $2 million from hundreds of community donors. The campaign’s goals included helping fund the partnership between LSU and MBPCC and raising the $300,000 for its portion of the match to the LSU Foundation.

“The community really stepped up to support the establishment of this chair, a critical building block for the education, research and development that LSU and Mary Bird Perkins will provide to patients and their families,” said Todd D. Stevens, president and CEO of Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center.

Smith, the LSU donor, saw the significance of his donation from both a medical and academic perspective. “Making this gift is important to me both as a physician and graduate of LSU,” said Smith, who is from Sulphur, LA.

He was motivated to make his gift to LSU by his passion for patient care and his desire to make an impact on cancer treatment in Louisiana and beyond. “The more I learn about the LSU - MBPCC partnership, the more excited I get about the medical physics program. This chair is key to ensuring the long-term success of the partnership, and I know what a difference it will make. The partnership will drive significant cancer research and help train clinical medical physicists – both leading to improved care for cancer patients.”

The LSU-Mary Bird Perkins medical physics partnership and endowed chair will assist LSU in recruiting new scholars and researchers. The program, a combination of academia with clinical medicine, will ultimately benefit cancer patients by facilitating research that offers potential for increasing cure and reducing side effects. In addition to research in radiation therapy and medical imaging, the partnership is focused on enhancing LSU’s medical physics program. The program’s goal is to become one of fewer than a dozen accredited medical physics graduate programs in the country, helping to fill a nationwide shortage of critically-needed medical physicists. Nationally there is a need for approximately 300 new medical physicists per year. The academic and research partnership is part of Mary Bird Perkins’ standing as a Center of Excellence and fits within LSU’s Flagship Agenda.

By Amy L. Benton

ITS Holds Forum

Chief Information Officer Brian Voss opened the LSU Fall IT Forum on Nov. 15 with a presentation on the current state of IT at the university and progress under way toward the Flagship IT Strategy.

One hundred forty Information Technology, or IT, professionals from across campus gathered on Nov. 15 to participate in the LSU Fall IT Forum. Sponsored by LSU Information Technology Services, or ITS, and the Microsoft Corp., the event featured a preview of Microsoft Vista, as well as panel discussions and presentations about current IT projects and services available campus-wide.

The LSU IT Forum is an opportunity for LSU’s talented IT professionals to share knowledge and effectively network with other IT professionals on campus. The IT community at LSU is made up of IT specialists who maintain the array of departmental computers, servers, networks and technologies through the Distributed Computing Support group, or DCS.

Chief Information Officer Brian Voss opened the morning with a presentation on the current state of IT at the university and progress under way toward the Flagship IT Strategy. Boyd Bourque, ITS, outlined the Network 2010 project. Gary Mumphrey, ITS; Jeff Deveer, athletics; and Lebraix Ledoux, LSU System; shared their knowledge of the numerous wireless devices available for communication and calendaring. The ITS User Support staff, Karen Sirman, Mike Smith, Stacey Morales, Scott Delaney, Greg Brignac and Dee Childs, answered questions regarding campus software licensing, GROK – the LSU knowledge base, departmental support and the new Information Commons opening in Middleton Library. The Security and Policy staff, Brian Nichols, Frank O’Quinn and Hunter Ely, discussed policies and services available for a more secure IT environment. Bruce Messick, ITS, provided an overview of virtual machine technology using VMWARE.

Dave Woerner, LSU Ag Center, discussed his experiences with podcasting. Andy Waggenspack, ITS, and his staff discussed best practices when using Microsoft’s Active Directory to manage user access to computing resources. Other sessions included Working Smarter with Outlook and the Microsoft IT Academy Overview.

Sirman, senior manager of DCS, leads each of the forums, which are held in the fall and spring. She and her staff work toward providing resources and numerous technical workshops for the campus, to keep them up to date on the latest technologies and initiatives.

By Karen Sirman