A Note from the Provost

April 27, 2020

Faculty and Staff,

First and foremost, I trust you are healthy and safe at home. Second, thank you for ensuring our core mission of teaching and scholarship persists while we are also are flattening the curve. I have seen hurricanes and floods, fires and recessions in my 30 years at LSU, but this is beyond my wildest imagination. Yet, our university, the Baton Rouge community and the State of Louisiana have been as resilient as ever. I remain inspired by your leadership, your dedication, and your willingness to work together for the greater good during this pandemic.

We have demonstrated the breadth of expertise that a research campus can bring to bear in moments of crisis. To date, we have successfully pivoted 30,137 students and 5,581 courses to remote learning in a two-week period which involved hundreds of hours of faculty and staff time through the help of LSU Online and ITS as well as faculty and staff across the university. As of April 24, 2020, LSU has participated in 17,672,293 zoom minutes, 51,055 meetings, and 23,137 participants and counting. Our scholars have collaboratively developed personal protective equipment (PPE) while converting our PMAC into a COVID-19 PPE production facility. In a week span, LSU produced over 2,800 face shields and over 4,800 gowns to be distributed to the front-line first responders in the local community. We anticipate that number to expand significantly over the next week. In addition, our faculty stood up a testing center, created over 5,000 gallons of hand rub sanitizer, have shared their expertise through webinars and performances and much, much more.

While this transition has consumed our campus, we are also focused on our future. We are preparing to support faculty remote instruction this summer to ensure the quality and rigor our students expect while we continue to recruit new students to our campus. We have achieved the largest, most diverse and most academically accomplished deposited freshman class in LSU history. The collective efforts of our faculty and staff have ensured that high school students still envision LSU as their academic home. In addition, the work of the faculty and staff to support our students’ journey to graduation, even if a virtual one, has been nothing short of amazing.

I am privileged to partner with you, and I look forward to seeing everyone back on campus when it safe for us to do so. Until then, we will continue to further our mandate of education, research and service while staying at home.

Best,
Stacy
Executive Vice President & Provost