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Highlights from the History of LSU

• Louisiana State Agricultural & Mechanical College was established by an act of the legislature, approved April 7, 1874, to carry out the U. S. Morrill Act of 1862, granting lands for this purpose. It temporarily opened in New Orleans, June 1, 1874, where it remained until it merged with Louisiana State University in 1877.
• Three of LSU's Presidents were military generals, General William Tecumseh Sherman (1860-61), General Campbell Hodges (1941-44) and General Troy Middleton (1951-61).
• The land for the current LSU campus was purchased in 1918, construction started in 1922, and the move to the campus began in 1925. It was not, however, until 1932 that the move was finally completed. The campus was dedicated April 30,1926.
• The LSU lakes were developed from swamps in the 1930s as a public works project.
• Fifty-seven of LSU's more than 250 principal buildings are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
• The Daily Reveille (LSU's student newspaper) was first published in 1872.
• Olivia Davis, LSU's first female student, graduated in 1905.
• LSU's "tiger" nickname was drawn from the Civil War fame of two Louisiana brigades who fought so fiercely that they became known as the "Louisiana Tigers."
• LSU injects more than $500 million dollars into the Baton Rouge economy annually.
• LSU’s landscaping was called a “botanical joy” in its listing among the 20 most beautiful campuses in America in Thomas Gaines’ The Campus as a Work of Art.
• LSU is home to the Southern Review, one of the world’s most prestigious literary journals, established in the 1930s by Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks and Charles Pipkin.
• If you look at the rebuilding efforts under way in the metro New Orleans area, you will see numerous examples of projects spearheaded by students and faculty from LSU’s College of Art & Design. They are building new homes in the Lower Ninth Ward, designing schoolyards in Orleans Parish, and drafting a blueprint for the redevelopment of the Jefferson Parish lakefront.
• LSU was one of six universities nationwide to receive the President’s Community Service Honor Roll Award, presented for its exemplary service following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
• LSU Press author, Claudia Emerson, was awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her book, “Late Wife: Poems.” This marks the fourth Pulitzer for an LSU Press book.
• Our Residential Colleges allow you to live and learn with other students who share your interests. Options include business and engineering, honors, information technology, global studies, and freshman residential colleges. Our agriculture residential college is scheduled to open in the fall of 2008.
• LSU’s Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhanced Services Laboratory (FACES) and its director Mary Manhein have been featured numerous times in the national media and have been consulted by Scotland Yard for their efforts in identifying human skeletal remains. By analyzing remains in more than 600 cases, Manhein and her team have helped law enforcement agencies across the nation construct profiles of missing and unidentified victims for more than 20 years.
• LSU’s Louisiana Sea Grant College Program is one of four that have received a $600,000 grant to work with state and federal agencies, non-profits, and private industry along the Gulf Coast to research topics from food safety to wetlands restoration.
• LSU is the one of the few universities in the country to offer a minor in French with an emphasis on Cajun French.
• The geography program at LSU is one of the top 20 in the nation.
• LSU’s landscaping was called “a botanical joy” in its listing among the 20 best campuses in America in Thomas Gaines’ The Campus as a Work of Art.
• LSU is the only university in the United States with a live tiger mascot on campus.
• Mike V was visited by more than 100,000 people annually.