Office of
Academic Affairs
Interim Executive Vice President & Provost Troy Blanchard
Troy Blanchard currently serves as the Interim Executive Vice President & Provost of Louisiana State University. Blanchard, the Chief Operating and Chief Academic Officer of LSU’s flagship campus in Baton Rouge, maintains executive oversight over instruction, student support, and research while simultaneously serving as the chief academic officer for all LSU campuses across the state and chief academic advisor to the President.
Blanchard joined the faculty of the LSU Department of Sociology in 2007 and has since held multiple leadership positions, most notably serving as dean of the LSU College of Humanities & Social Sciences (HSS)—one of LSU’s largest colleges— from 2019 through 2025.
Academic Enterprise
The Office of Academic Affairs supports the Executive Vice President & Provost in ensuring university excellence in learning, discovery, and engagement. The office works closely with the faculty senate and the president to advance LSU using a shared governance model. We also make communication and transparency a hallmark of the office. Lastly, the essence of our academic core--our faculty and staff--are preeminent in everything we do.
LSU ELEMENTS & DISCOVERY
LSU's faculty information system, Elements, allows for robust faculty activity data collection, maintenance and reporting on the teaching, research and service activities while the Discovery Module provides an interface for faculty collaboration and integration which allows collaborators to connect with faculty.
Along the U.S. Pacific Coast lives an odd little fish that is not so much rare as rarely seen. Even Daniel Geldof, a recent master’s graduate from the LSU College of Science who is arguably one of the world’s leading experts on this fish, once searched for it for years without luck.
LSU’s second-longest-serving professor, Max Z. Conrad, is about to retire from teaching. His long career traces the outlines, primarily in pencil, of an ambitious America since the 1940s and World War II as science shaped a victorious nation toward the beautiful and the bold—and the better, mostly.
LSU’s mission has always been rooted in service to Louisiana, and 2025 offered countless examples of that commitment in action. Across the state, researchers and experts worked alongside communities and industries to solve problems that matter.
As 2025 comes to a close, we’re celebrating some of the incredible Tigers who defined this year through their dedication, creativity, and passion. From groundbreaking research to innovation, and lifelong dreams fulfilled, these stories remind us what makes LSU exceptional — its people.
Through an inaugural round of funding in 2024-2025, seven collaborative research teams received $1.6 million in support and sprang into action last January. This is where they are now.
Cases of Vibrio vulnificus bacterial infection are on the rise, especially in Louisiana and Florida. LSU researchers have now published new forecasting models in the journal Water Research that reveal what is driving surging Vibrio vulnificus infections.