article

Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College at Baton Rouge, or simply Louisiana State University (LSU) is a public, coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and the main campus of the Louisiana State University System. LSU includes 9 senior colleges and 3 schools, in addition to specialized centers, divisions, institutes, and offices. Enrollment, which temporarily increased approximately 5% to host students from New Orleans displaced by Hurricane Katrina, stands at more than 30,000 students, and there are 1,300 full-time faculty members. LSU is one of only thirteen American universities designated as a land-grant, sea-grant and space-grant research center. In order to reverse decades of underfunding, the University recently launched the "Forever LSU" campaign, the most ambitious fundraising drive in its history.

Campus

The LSU main campus occupies a 650-acre (2.6 km²) plateau on the banks of the Mississippi River; overall, LSU is located on 2,000 acres (8.1 km²) of land just south of downtown Baton Rouge. The campus boasts more than 250 principal buildings. Many of the buildings are built in the style of Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, and are marked by red pantile roofs, overhanging eaves, rolling arches, and honey-colored stucco. Thomas Gaines's The Campus as a Work of Art praises LSU's landscaping as "a botanical joy" in its listing among the 20 best campuses in America . The live oak trees on campus have been valued at $36 million. Through the LSU Foundation's "Endow an Oak" program, individuals or groups are able to endow live oaks across campus.

Other campuses in the LSU system include the LSU Agricultural Center, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center, University of New Orleans, LSU Shreveport, LSU at Eunice, LSU Alexandria, and the LSU Health Sciences Centers: LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, Health Care Services Division (Public Hospital System), and LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport.*

History

Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College had its origin in certain land grants made by the United States government in 1806, 1811, and 1827 for use as a seminary of learning. In 1853, the Louisiana General Assembly established the Seminary of Learning of the State of Louisiana near Pineville, Louisiana. The institution opened January 2, 1860, with Col. William Tecumseh Sherman as superintendent. The school closed June 30, 1861, because of the Civil War. It reopened on April 1, but was again closed on April 23, 1863, due to the invasion of the Red River Valley by the federal army. The losses sustained by the institution during the war were heavy.

The seminary reopened October 2, 1865, only to be burned October 15, 1869. On November 1, 1869, the institution resumed its exercises in Baton Rouge, where it has since remained. In 1870, the name of the institution was changed to Louisiana State University.

Louisiana State Agricultural & Mechanical College was established by an act of the legislature, approved April 7, 1874, to carry out the United States 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.

The first Baton Rouge home of LSU was in the quarters of the Institute for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind. In 1886, the federal garrison grounds (now the site of the state capitol) were formally declared the domicile of the University. Land for the present campus was purchased in 1918, construction started in 1922, and the move began in 1925; it was not, however, until 1932 that the move was finally completed. Formal dedication of the present campus took place on April 30, 1926.

After some years of enrollment fluctuation, student numbers began a steady increase, new programs were added, curricula and faculty expanded, and a true state university emerged.

In 1978, LSU was named a sea-grant college, the 13th university in the nation to be so designated and the highest classification attainable in the program.

In 1992, the LSU Board of Supervisors approved the creation of the LSU Honors College.

Visit About LSU for more information

Recent Academic Achievements

ASCAP Award - The LSU Symphony Orchestra received the ASCAP Award in 2002 for Adventurous Programming. (5/03/05)

MTNA Young Artist - Carlo Vincetti Frizzo, a graduate composition student in the School of Music, won first place in the 2004 MTNA National Student Composition Competition. In recent years, LSU students have also taken first place honors in piano, flute, violin, and string quartet at MTNA competitions. (5/03/05)

Composer of the Year Award - Liduino Pitomberia, a doctoral composition student in the School of Music, was declared winner of the Composer of the Year competition by MTNA for 2004. Pitomberia won over faculty, as well as students, from across the nation. (05/03/05)

LSU Opera - LSU Opera is having its 75th season in 2005. For decades, LSU Opera has been respected as being among the best university opera programs in the United States. (5/03/05)

Thomas Lynch wins Laverne Burchfield Award- Thomas Lynch, professor of public administration, received the 2004 Laverne Burchfield Award for his book review essay, "Corruption, Reform, and Virtue Ethics," at the American Society for Public Administration National Conference. (5/03/05)

Leslie Irene Coger Award for Distinguished Performance - Ruth Laurion Bowman, associate professor of communication studies, received the 2003 Leslie Irene Coger Award for Distinguished Performance. This award for scholarship, given by the National Communication Association, recognizes individuals who have contributed an outstanding body of live performances. (05/03/05)

Boyd Professor Dinos Constantinides - Boyd Professor Dinos Constantinides is well known as one of the country's best teachers of composition at the university level. His teaching achievements include the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars’ Distinguished Teacher (1994) and the National Foundation for Advancements in the Arts award. He has also received several teaching awards from Music Teachers National Association in both composition and violin. (5/03/05)

2004 World Mariculture Society Awards - Two LSU faculty received prestigious awards at the 2004 World Mariculture Society Meeting. Ron Malone, Chevron Professor from the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, received the Lifetime Achievement Award and John Hargreaves, from the School of Renewable Natural Resources, received the Young Investigator Achievement Award. (5/03/05)

CCT partners with Albert Einstein Institute - The LSU Center for Computation & Technology, formerly known as LSU CAPITAL, is an official partner with the Albert Einstein Institute, a leading center for gravitational physics, in Berlin. A high bandwidth connection, or “grid”, between the two sites will allow scientists to use the computational resources of either site. (5/03/05)

2003 Doris Graber Award - Kevin P. Reilly, Sr., Chair in political communication, Timothy Cook, and his co-authors of the 1996 book Crosstalk: Citizens, Candidates and Media in a Presidential Campaign received the 2003 Doris Graber Award from the political communication section of the American Political Science Association. The award recognizes the best book in political communication published within the last 10 years. (5/03/05)

First Place Award from the National Federation of Press Women - Judith Sylvester, Scripps Howard Professor in Media and Politics, and Suzanne Huffman’s book, Women Journalists at Ground Zero: Covering Crisis, won first place in the research category at the 2003 National Federation of Press Women Communications Contest. (05/03/05)

"Most Unwired College Campuses" - In 2004, Intel Corporation's first "Most Unwired College Campuses" survey ranked LSU 29th among the Top-100 schools for wireless computing access. Findings were based on the number of hotspots, or areas on campus with wireless access to the Internet, as well as the number of undergraduates, the number of computers, the student-to-computer ratio, and the percentage of each college campus covered by wireless technology. (5/03/05)

LSU Chemistry Professor Receives Award - Gudrun Schmidt, an assistant professor in Chemistry, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for her research. The NSF CAREER Award is part of the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program that recognizes and supports the early career-development activities of those teachers-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century. (05/03/05)

U.S. News and World Report Ranks LSU’s MBA Program - The Flores MBA program at LSU's Ourso College of Business Administration is ranked 78th for 2006 by U.S. News and World Report, and is 43rd among public universities. This is up 38 spots from the 2004 ranking. Out of the approximately 1,000 AACSB member business schools, 495 are accredited. The U.S. News and World Report ranking is open to this select group. (5/03/05)

“Lifetime Achievement” Honor - In 2004, Ronald F. Malone, Chevron Endowed Professor of Engineering, received the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award from the U.S. Chapter of the World Aquaculture Society. This award recognizes an individual who has made contributions and broad impacts to aquaculture throughout his or her career. Professor Malone has received five patents for his work. (5/03/05)

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing - The LSU Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is one of the most successful programs of its kind in the south. Sixty works have been published by its graduates since the program's inception in 1987. The books have won numerous national awards, and have been on the lists of nearly every major publishing group in New York, including Penguin/Putnam, Norton, Macmillan, Harper & Row, Harper Collins, Workman, and Little Brown. (5/03/05)

Academic Success - Fifty-four percent of LSU student-athletes posted a 3.0 grade-point average or better during the spring semester. Of the 410 athletes, 30 posted perfect 4.0 averages. The men’s tennis team’s 3.5 average was the highest among sports. The women’s golf team led all women’s sports with a 3.4 average.

The Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Honors Faculty - The Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) honored Josephe F. Hair, Jr., marketing professor and director of the Institute for Entrepreneurial Education ial Education and Family Business Studies at LSU's E. J. Ourso College of Business Administration, with the Outstanding Teacher in Marketing Award for 2004. He was named an AMS Distinguished Fellow in 2000. (5/03/05)

Marketing Doctoral Graduates Among Nation’s Best - Doctoral graduates of LSU's marketing program are among the nation's best in terms of their research's impact on the profession, according to a recent study by Academic Assessment Services, the largest organization in the country assessing the impact of business research and professors. LSU's graduates ranked in the top-40 on four of five separate measures of influence: number of graduates (34th), total citations (34th), average citations (39th), and adjusted median citations (38th). LSU's graduates also ranked 55th in median citations. (5/3/05)

LSU Dairy Science - The LSU Dairy Store provides student workers with unique and extraordinary real-world experiences for every phase of milk processing, including making ice cream and cheese, as well as scooping and selling ice cream to customers. (5/03/05)

College of Engineering - Four programs in LSU's College of Engineering have been ranked in the top 100 for the 2006 edition of U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Graduate Schools. The chemical engineering program ranked 57th, the civil engineering program ranked 62nd, the mechanical engineering program ranked 85th, and the petroleum engineering program ranked eighth. (5/03/05)

NCLCA Learning Center Award - The Center for Academic Success at LSU was selected by the National College Learning Center Association Board to receive the 2004 Frank L. Christ Outstanding Learning Center Award for the four-year category. (5/03/05)

Most Entrepreneurial Campuses - LSU has been named one of the "Most Entrepreneurial Campuses" by Forbes.com and the Princeton Review for 2004. The E. J. Ourso College of Business Administration's programs are ranked third behind those of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Notre Dame. (5/3/2005)

LSU's Landscape Architecture programs ranked in the top five - LSU's Landscape Architecture programs are ranked in the top five nationally by Design Intelligence's 2005 edition with the graduate program ranked fourth and the undergraduate program ranked fifth. LSU's Landscape Architecture program also received the top ranking among schools in the South. (05/03/05)

Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Professors Program - LSU is one of only 19 schools in the United States to offer the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Professors Program to students. Unlike many of the other schools with the HHMI Professors Program, LSU’s program relies heavily on mentoring and teaching the dynamics of peer mentoring. (05/03/05)

Accounting Competition - In 2005, five undergraduate accounting students from LSU's E. J. Ourso College of Business, were named the first place winners of xAct, a national "extreme accounting"competition sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Approximately 200 teams competed in xAct. (5/03/05)

Colleges and Schools

Libraries

The LSU campus has two main academic libraries. The first, Troy H. Middleton Library, is home to collections for the general academic interests and recreational reading of the student body.

The second is Hill Memorial Library. It is home to a major repository of documents from the State Legislature and has served in a major capacity for archival services following the problems of Hurricane Katrina.

Hill Memorial Library is regarded as a fine example of Italian Renaissance architecture. It has two basements, one for archival services (it was previously used to store microfilm, which was since moved to nearby Middleton Library) and one which houses "the crypt", which extends out under the courtyard and connects to the basement of Middleton.

Publications

  • The Daily Reveille, the University's student-run newspaper, is published Monday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters. In 2003 the Reveille received the Pacemaker award, the highest award in collegiate journalism, from the Associated College Press.
  • The Southern Review is a venerable quarterly journal that Robert Penn Warren first published in 1935. It publishes fiction, poetry, and essays, with an emphasis on southern culture and history.
  • The Legacy is a student-run magazine that publishes a variety of feature-length stories. In 2005 it was named the best student magazine in the nation by the Society of Professional Journalists.
  • The LSU RESEARCH magazine informs readers about University research programs.
  • "Apollo's Lyre" is a poetry and fiction magazine published each semester by the Honors College.
  • The Gumbo is the University's yearbook, given free to returning students.
  • The LSU Today magazine keeps faculty and staff updated with university news.
  • LSU Press is a nonprofit book publisher dedicated to the publication of scholarly, general interest, and regional books. It publishes approximately 80 titles per year. John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces is its most well-known publication.

The Flagship Agenda

In 2003 Chancellor Mark Emmert spearheaded the creation of the Flagship Agenda, a plan to reverse the low morale, lack of competitiveness, and lack of available resources that had plagued LSU during the 1990s. Its focus is to have LSU better serve Louisiana and the world by increasing student quality and research productivity, thereby vaulting LSU into placement as one of the finest public universities in the country. Because the improvements put a higher financial strain on students, the Agenda has had some controversy. However, many people involved with the university agree that the Agenda's implementation has been successful. Sean O' Keefe, who in 2005 left his post as head of NASA to become LSU's new chancellor, pledged to continue the Agenda until its conclusion in 2010.

Flagship Agenda Action Plan

  1. Increase research productivity by hiring a significant number of new, high-quality faculty and improving technology infrastructure.
  2. Increase number and quality of graduate students and programs through targeted investments and program review.
  3. Increase quality of undergraduate students and programs by raising admissions standards, improving recruitment, and reviewing courses of study.
  4. Increase quality of campus life by increasing diversity, inclusiveness, and facilities investments.
  5. Increase funding to support the previous actions through more state and private support.

Athletics

See main article: LSU Tigers

LSU is a member of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) and the Southeastern Conference. It fields teams in 14 varsity sports (5 men's, 7 women's, 2 coed). Its official team nickname is the Tigers and Lady Tigers (the term "Bayou Bengals" is also heard at times), and its school colors are purple and gold. Based on winning percentage, the University's athletics program is consistently one of the best in the nation.

LSU Athletics is represented by its mascot, Mike V, a live bengal tiger.

Its arenas include Tiger Stadium (football, also known as "Death Valley"), Pete Maravich Assembly Center (basketball, volleyball, gymnastics), Carl Maddox Fieldhouse (indoor track), Bernie Moore Stadium (outdoor track), Tiger Park (softball), and Alex Box Stadium (baseball).

Important rivals in football include the Auburn University Tigers (War Eagle), University of Alabama Crimson Tide, and University of Arkansas Razorbacks.

National Team Championships (44)

Men's Basketball (1) 1935

Boxing (1) 1949

Football (3) 1908, 1958, 2003

Men's Golf (4) 1940, 1942

Men's Indoor Track (2) 2001, 2004

Women's Indoor Track (11) 1987, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2002, 2003, 2004

Men's Outdoor Track (4) 1933, 1989, 1990, 2002

Women's Outdoor Track (13) 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996,1997, 2000, 2003

Baseball (5) 1991, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000

SEC Team Championships (108)

Baseball (13) 1939, 1943, 1946, 1961, 1975, 1986, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2003

Men's Basketball (9) 1935, 1953, 1954, 1979, 1981, 1985, 1991, 2000, 2006

Women's Basketball (2) 2005, 2006

Football (9) 1935, 1936, 1958, 1961, 1970, 1986, 1988, 2001, 2003

Men's Golf (15) 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1942, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1953, 1954, 1960, 1966, 1967, 1986, 1987

Women's Golf (1) 1992

Gymnastics (1) 1981

Men's Swimming (1) 1988

Men's Tennis (4) 1976, 1985, 1998, 1999

Men's Indoor Track (4) 1957, 1963, 1989, 1990

Women's Indoor Track (10) 1985, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999

Men's Outdoor Track (22) 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1951, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1963, 1988, 1989, 1990

Women's Outdoor Track (8) 1985, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1996

Softball (5) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004

Volleyball (4) 1986, 1989, 1990, 1991

Notable Alumni

Academia

  • Jimmy Andrews, M.D., founder of the American Sports Medicine Institute
  • Dolores Spikes, president of the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore

Arts, Entertainment, and Humanities

Business and Economics

Government, Politics, and Activism

Military

Sports

  • As of the 2005-2006 seasons, there are:
    • 33 former LSU football players in the NFL
    • 4 former LSU basketball players in the NBA
    • 10 former LSU baseball players in MLB (24 in the Minors)
    • 7 former LSU women's basketball players in the WNBA

See also

External links

Research

Louisiana State University | East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana | Southern Association of Colleges and Schools | Universities and colleges in Louisiana

Louisiana State University

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Louisiana State University".

Home Page • arts • business • computers • games • health • hospitals • home • kids & teens • news • physicians • recreation• reference • regional • science • shopping • society • sports • world