Dear Colleagues,

The year 2023 has gotten off to a great start with the announcement of the first round of seed funding for faculty scholarship from the Provost’s Fund for Innovation in Research. In total, a record-breaking $1.1 million dollars, the largest investment in seed funding for faculty research in LSU history, was awarded to faculty in eight colleges and schools to fund 33 different projects. The awards are intended to better position LSU faculty for competitive external funding and recognition in areas that benefit LSU and Louisiana. The funded projects range in topics from body-tracking wearable technology that will monitor infant health, to improving delta and hurricane resiliency, to subsurface hydrogen storage, to planning and proposing a NASA mission to Mars, to supporting LSU faculty in the humanities and arts through a Second Book Institute that facilitates the advancement and promotion of associate professors in book-centered disciplines.  My experience with support for scholarship and creative activity convinces me that this investment will result in a tremendous return to LSU, its students, and Louisiana.

Additional support for scholarship will come in paying all of our doctoral and Master of Fine Arts students at least $2,556 per month, the highest minimum stipend in the SEC. With this commitment, we will be able to recruit more of the world’s best graduate students.

We have much more to do to advance LSU’s research, scholarship and creative activity and I will continue to update you on our efforts. My top priorities also include a focus on improvement in faculty and staff pay, and improvements to our infrastructure. University leadership is working hard on these, and I am optimistic that we will be able to take important steps in the coming months.

Thank you for all you do to advance LSU for Louisiana.

Roy Haggerty
Executive Vice President & Provost

On Jan. 18, LSU announced the awards for the Provost's Fund for Innovation in Research. In total, $1.1 million dollars was awarded to 77 faculty across 8 colleges and schools for 33 different research projects. The Provost's Fund supports interdisciplinary research in five priority areas, known as the LSU Pentagon, for the Scholarship First agenda.

Faculty from the following colleges received support in the first round of funding for Emerging Research and Big Idea Research grants:

• Colleges of Agriculture
• College of Art + Design
• College of the Coast & Environment
• College of Engineering
• College of Human Sciences & Education
• College of Humanities & Social Sciences
• College of Science
• School of Veterinary Medicine

While some of the newly funded projects fall within a single priority area, several span multiple priority areas. The strength of the Scholarship First Agenda lies not only in how LSU can drive research and innovation in agriculture, biomedicine, coast, defense and energy, but combine these areas in interesting ways to solve pressing problems in Louisiana and around the globe. In total:

• Five faculty identified their projects as agricultural;
• 19 faculty identified their projects as biomedical;
• 13 faculty identified their projects as coastal;
• Eight faculty identified their projects as defense-related;
• 10 faculty identified their projects as energy-related.

In addition to seed-funding for research, the Provost’s Fund also supports dissemination of research, such as through travel, talks and conferences and research infrastructure improvements, including equipment repair.

Last semester, LSU’s Senior Internationalization Officer (SIO) and Executive Director of International Programs, Samba Dieng, led a group of SIOs from 8 SEC institutions on a recruitment initiative to West Africa. The 9-day program took place in late October and focused its recruitment efforts in Ghana and Senegal. Given its groundbreaking mission, a writer from The Chronicle of Higher Education joined the group and documented the experience in a featured article. LSU is planning to continue this SEC initiative in the next academic year with a focus on recruitment in East Africa

Sales & Marketing Executives of Greater Baton Rouge (SME-GBR) will honor Thomas Karam and Elizabeth McInnis at the Excellence in Sales & Marketing Luncheon on February 16. SME-GBR is an active professional association dedicated to career development of sales and marketing managers and executives.

Thomas Karam, Distinguished Instructor in the Department of Marketing, will be presented with the Nell Mitchell Doughty Lifetime Achievement Award.

Elizabeth McKinnis, Marketing Director for the LSU Rural Life Museum, will be given an Excellence in Sales & Marketing Award. 

The LSU Gulf Scholars Program is a new program that will prepare undergraduate students from any major to address challenges and issues facing the Gulf south region.  Faculty project submissions are now being accepted for the Gulf Scholars Summer Impact Project program. 

Discover Day is an annual multi-discipline undergraduate research conference held at LSU each spring. Students from any college/university and from any major are welcome to submit an application to present their research or creative work. The 10th annual LSU Discover Day will be held in person on Friday, April 21 in the LSU Student Union. 

Please encourage your students to present their poster, oral presentation, visual display, art piece(s), performance, or poetry reading. Applications are due Sunday, March 5.

Please save the date for the upcoming 2023 Spring Innovation Series event, Keeping Students First: Building Equitable Bridges to the Future. The event will be held on March 27th from 9:30am-3:00pm at the Lod Cook Alumni Center. The event will feature an experiential learning technology showcase, a student panel, and sessions presented by the following speakers: 

• Dr. Thomas Cavanagh, University of Central Florida 
• Jim Fong, UPCEA
• Dr. Amber Garrison Duncan, Competency-Based Education Network 

If you have questions, please contact Hala Esmail.