Summer 2018, Volume 94, Number 2
2018 HALL OF DISTINCTION
From the
PRESIDENT
Devoted Alumni Play a Critical Role in LSU’s Achievements As we celebrate our recent record-breaking graduating class, I want to take this opportunity to remind you of the critical role you as LSU alumni play in helping each and every student make it to the finish line. Your generous donations provide scholarships ensuring our most talented students have the financial support necessary to complete their studies without strain. Your engagement allows our Tigers to gain great experiences in their respective fields so that they can enter the job market competitively poised. And finally, your success spurs their belief in themselves – they know that they are members of an exceptional network of leaders, thinkers, creators, teachers, entrepreneurs, and so much more. Thank you for remaining so engaged with your alma mater, and for helping us to educate the next generation of LSU Tigers. You might be proud to note that LSU was recently rated as a Top 50 best value among public universities and eighty-eighth overall in Forbes 2018 America’s Best Value Colleges rankings. While that is impressive, we’ve always prided ourselves more on outcomes – the kind of things that change lives. For instance, take the fact that two out of three LSU students graduate with zero debt. Or the fact that we provide a return of $13.25 for every dollar the state invests in LSU and generate $5.1 billion in economic impact for the state. All this combined with our tireless commitment to Louisiana and our drive for excellence means that great things are just around the corner for LSU. This year, our researchers contributed to a Nobel Prize and we cut the ribbon on Patrick F. Taylor Hall – one of the largest free-standing engineering education buildings in the nation. We can’t wait to see what the future holds, but we know one thing for sure – everything we achieve is in large part due to our passionate and devoted alumni like you.
Sincerely,
F. King Alexander LSU President @lsuprez
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Publisher LSU Alumni Association
Contents
Editor Jackie Bartkiewicz Advertising Mignon Kastanos Art Director Chuck Sanchez STUN Design & Interactive
Feature
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18 Hall of Distinction
Alumnus of the Year Art Favre, owner and president of Baton Rouge-based Performance Contractors, Inc., and Young Alumnus of the Year Walt Leger, speaker pro tempore of the Louisiana House of Representatives, highlighted the roster of outstanding alumni inducted into to the 2018 LSU Alumni Association Hall of Distinction. Also inducted were the late Mel Didier, longtime high school and college baseball coach and major league baseball executive and scout; Jim Engster, owner and president of Louisiana Radio Network and Tiger Rag; Kelly Spears, a speech language pathologist and board-certified behavior analyst; and Jerry Stovall, longtime president of – and now a consultant with – the Baton Rouge Area Sports Foundation, now SportsBR.
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In Each Issue 1 4 6 32 50 52 58
From the President President/CEO Message LSU Alumni Association News Around Campus Focus on Faculty Locker Room Tiger Nation On the cover: 2018 Hall of Distinction inductees, from left, Jerry Stovall, Kelly Spears, Art Favre, Walt Leger, Elena Didier, representing her late husband, Mel Didier, and Jim Engster. Photo by Eddy Perez
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Contributors Barry Cowan, Ed Cullen, Kevin Hebert, Bud Johnson, Lana Venable Photography Arlene Aguillard, Alex Barowicz/Stony Brook University, Pam Bordelon/The Advocate, Jason Brown, Mark Claesgens, Ray Dry, Johnny Gordon, Ginger Guttner/School of Veterinary Medicine, Tim Hart/University of Oxford, Mignon Kastanos, William Boyd Lee, II, LSU Athletics, LSU Law Center, Bret Levetro/Eye Wander, Casey Muller, Michael Pasquier, Eddy Perez/LSU Strategic Communications, Michael Polito, Kate Roy, University College, Tyler Walker, Cody Willhite/LSU Strategic Communications Printing Baton Rouge Printing NATIONAL BOARD OF DIRECTORS
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Susan Whitelaw Chair, Shreveport, La. Oliver G. “Rick” Richard, III, Chair-Elect, Lake Charles, La. Leo C. Hamilton Immediate Past Chair, Baton Rouge, La.
28 Professors by Day, Artists by Night
To many people, a professor’s life revolves around school. Most of their time is spent either grading papers, lecturing in classrooms, meeting with students or conducting research. To a certain extent this is true. Most professors do, in fact, dedicate a large amount of their time on our education. Studies have shown that college professors may work upwards of sixty hours per week, which is 50 percent more than the national standard. This doesn’t mean our teachers are always focused academics though. Far from it. Despite their huge academic workload, some professors still make time to explore the artistic world.
Editorial Assistant Brenda Macon
Jack A. Andonie Director Emeritus, Metairie, La.
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Lodwrick M. Cook Director Emeritus, Sherman Oaks, Calif. Mark Kent Anderson, Monroe, La. Brandon Landry, Baton Rouge, La. Karen G. Brack, San Diego, Calif. Jeffrey M. “Jeff” Mohr, Baton Rouge, La. David B. Braddock, Dallas, Texas A.J.M. “Butch” Oustalet, III, Gulfport, Miss. Stephen T. “Steve” Brown, Sherman Oaks, Calif. Fred G. “Gil” Rew, Mansfield, La. Kathryn “Kathy” Fives, New Orleans, La. Bart B. Schmolke, Alexandria, La. Mario J. Garner, Pearland, Texas Beverly G. Shea, New Iberia, La. Matthew K. “Matt” Juneau, Baton Rouge, La. Van P. Whitfield, Houston, Texas Kevin F. Knobloch, Baton Rouge, La. Stanley L. “Stan” Williams, Fort Worth, Texas LSU ALUMNI MAGAZINE is published quarterly in March, June, September, and December by the LSU Alumni Association. Annual donations are $50, of which $6 is allocated for a subscription to LSU Alumni Magazine. The LSU Alumni Association is not liable for any loss that might be incurred by a purchaser responding to an advertisement in this magazine. Editorial and Advertising Office LSU Alumni Association 3838 West Lakeshore Drive Baton Rouge, LA 70808-4686 225-578-3838 • 888-RINGLSU www.lsualumni.org / e-mail: jackie@lsualumni.org © 2018 by LSU ALUMNI MAGAZINE. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to LSU ALUMNI MAGAZINE, 3838 West Lakeshore Drive, Baton Rouge, LA 70808-4686 Letters to the editor are encouraged. LSU ALUMNI MAGAZINE reserves the right to edit all materials accepted for publication. Publication of material does not indicate endorsement of the author’s viewpoint by the magazine, the Association, or LSU.
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President and CEO
MESSAGE
Enriching the Awesome Alumni Experience Congratulations to the newest members of the LSU Alumni Association Hall of Distinction – Alumnus of the Year Art Favre, Young Alumnus of the Year Walt Leger, the late Mel Didier, Jim Engster, Kelly Spears, and Jerry Stovall.
Photo by William Lee Boyd II
“Network • Inform Engage • Inspire”
Through their personal and professional achievements and their loyalty to LSU, they have distinguished themselves and the University, and we know you share with us a heartfelt Thank You for their generous support. They are truly an inspiration for future and young alumni. We recognized and celebrated their successes at an extraordinary gala in April. Read about these outstanding Tigers beginning on page __ and share the excitement of the event on YouTube (search LSU Alumni Association Hall of Distinction). After exploring the pages of this issue of the magazine, visit us at www.lsualumni.org for stories, photos, and information on other spring events – Chapter Summit, Grad Fair, Senior Ring Ceremony, spring commencement, coast- to-coast crawfish boils, and more. Enjoy our blog, find an upcoming chapter event, sign up for the monthly E-Letter, and get social with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Did you know the LSU Alumni Gift Shop is now on Instagram and Facebook? Check in often for specials and discounts. Many thanks to Tigers around the world who responded to our request for updated contact information. The LSU Alumni Directory program is part of a regularly scheduled (roughly every five years) effort to maintain current contact information on our alumni – providing them the ability to reconnect with former classmates and friends. The information also helps LSU establish benchmarks for the career placement office and in applying for government grants and determining our rankings in national evaluations. In addition, the Association wants to empower and enrich the alumni experience as we plan professional networking opportunities for our graduates. So, if you haven’t responded to the “yellow postcard” or an email asking you for updates, please do so now. All information must be collected by August, and the book will be available in early 2019. It’s time to plan your trips to cheer on the Fighting Tigers on the road – and there is no better way to do that than with our Traveling Tigers. We take care of it all – transportation, tickets, hotel accommodations, game-day transportation, pregame events, and more! Our first excursion is a three-day trip to Dallas – Sept. 1-3 – to see Tigers meet the Miami Hurricanes in the Advocare Classic at AT&T Stadium. Auburn, Arkansas, and Texas A&M are also on the itinerary. See the ad on page _ or visit www.lsualumni.org/traveling-tigers. You have played major roles in creating today’s successful Association and continue with us as we network, inform, engage, and inspire future generations in the Global LSU Tiger Nation. You are our ambassadors, and we need you to win over the hearts and minds of every graduate, former students, and friends to support our programs of excellence – faculty awards, alumni events, legislative advocacy, worldwide professional networking, and scholarships for the most outstanding future alumni. In grateful appreciation,
Cliff Vannoy President/CEO @LSUAlumniPrez
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LSU Alumni Association
AlumniLSU
Advacement Campaign Hester #18 Jersey
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LSU Alumni Association
NEWS
Chapter Events
LSU Student Body President Jason Badeaux, left, and Jordan Hefler share their thoughts on the recruitment, engagement, and retention of young alumni.
Among those at the summit were several “Chapter Pros” who have played active roles in their respective chapters, some for more than thirty years. Seated, Rick Richard, Southwest Louisiana, and Karen Brack, San Diego; standing, from left, Dr. Gil Rew, DeSoto Parish; Steve Helmke, LSU Alumni Association COO; Susan Whitelaw, Caddo Parish; Bob Hoy, San Diego; Steve Brown, SoCal; Bart Schmolke, Cenla; Pat Unangst, SoCal; Cliff Vannoy, Association president; and Amy Parrino, association senior vice president.
Chapter Summit participants take time for a photograph with Coach D-D Breaux at the Gymnastics Training Facility.
Cheering for the Tigers as they took on the Sacred Heart Pioneers at Alex Box Stadium.
John Spurny, center, presents a check for the Panhandle Bayou Bengals’ scholarship endowment to Association officers Steve Helmke and Sally Stiel.
Austin Chapter members Susie Rupert, Kathleen Gilbert, and Kathy Nugent-Arnold present a check for the chapter’s scholarship fund to Association officers Steve Helmke and Sally Stiel.
Chapter Summit 2018 – Nearly fifty chapter officers from across the country
gathered at Lod Cook Alumni Center in March for the annual Chapter Summit. The workshop included sessions with campus experts on numerous topics, among them, scholarships, athletic compliance, future alumni and young alumni recruitment, and marketing/social media. The group was treated to tours of the LSU UREC and the gymnastics facility and wound up the three-day events with a tailgate party and the LSU-Sacred Heart baseball game at Alex Box Stadium.
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LSU alum Chef Jay Ducote, back row center, hosted members of Greater Baton Rouge Chapter at Cane Land Distillery in April.
Greater Baton Rouge – More than forty members of the Greater Baton Rouge Chapter toured the Water Campus in March. Joseph McClatchy, of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, and Clint Willson, director of the LSU Center for River Studies, shared and discussed LSU’s Center for River Studies, including the one of the world’s largest models of the Mississippi River. In April, members joined Chef Ducote of Government Street Tacos at Cane Land Distilling Company on St. Philip Street for a taste of Cane Land Specialties.
From left, Jean Pierre Chaze, Beth Tope, LSU Alumni Association COO Steve Helmke, Joseph McClatchy, Association President Cliff Vannoy, Clint Willson, and Jim Parr.
Chapter officers, from left, Jean Pierre Chaze, vice president; Sarah Clayton, secretary; Lois Stuckey, communications director; Jim Parr, president; and Beth Tope, event coordinator.
LSU alumni and friends sample Geaux wines.
Southwest Louisiana – The Southwest Louisiana Chapter hosted a Geaux
Vineyards Wine Tasting in March. More than seventy-five alumni and friends gathered at Historic Calcasieu Marine National Bank to pass a good time and raise dollars for the chapter's scholarship fund. Geaux Vineyards wines are produced by Lake Charles, La.’s own master of wine DC Flynt. The Flynts donate 100 percent of sales profit to the LSU Alumni Association in honor of his children, Miller, Adair, Campbell, and Harrison – all LSU alums!
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LSU Alumni Association News
Chapter Events
President F. King Alexander visits with Texas Tigers parents and future alumni. Photo by Eddy Perez/LSU Strategic Communications Lance Rayne, North Houston; Ron Young, Dallas; Vice President for Student Affairs Kurt Keppler; Cheryl Fasullo, Houston; Linda Young, Dallas; and President F. King Alexander.
Texas Tigers – University officials joined Texas Tigers to welcome future alumni and their parents to LSU and Tiger Nation during Spring Invitational. The annual Texas Tigers Breakfast offers students and their families a chance to meet fellow Texans and visit with LSU representatives and currently enrolled students. The event is sponsored by the Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Tarrant (Fort Worth) Tigers, Greater Houston, and North Houston alumni chapters.
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Christina Talbert and Carl Broussard. Ted Mansfield and Klein Miler.
Larry Maltby.
Panhandle Bayou Bengals – Some 120 Panhandle Bayou Bengals braved the
elements on April 14 to gather for the chapter’s annual crawfish boil at Shoreline Park in Gulf Breeze, Fla. “Despite the threat of stormy weather headed our way, an enjoyable time was had by all,” writes John Spurney, chapter president. A half ton of select Louisiana crawfish, along with corn, potatoes, and pineapple (yes, boiled) dessert were cooked to perfection by sponsors Ted and Karen Mansfield and their crew, and Marc Welhaven and the Lagniappe Grill Crew grilled andouille, boudin, hot dogs, and pork loins. Boudreaux and Son played Cajun/Zydeco tunes on the accordion and wash board while Gus Ramirez (aka DJ Gus) played old favorites. Raffles, silent and live auctions, corn hole, horse shoes, and volleyball rounded out the day’s activities.
John Adams and Ray Orlando with future Tiger Gemma Orlando.
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LSU Alumni Association News
Chapter Events
LSU President F. King Alexander, right, with chapter board members, from left, Jill Wilbert, treasurer; April Anderson, president; Tucker Tremblay, vice president; and Alexis Garner, secretary.
LSU alumni at the DC Mardi Gras Celebration.
Hatcher Tynes, Natalie Campbell, and April Anderson at the Wreaths Across America event in Arlington Cemetery.
Hatcher Tynes places a wreath on fallen LSU alumnus Alexander Jacob Stanton's grave at Arlington Cemetery in observance of the Wreaths Across America event. Stanton was a member of the chapter before he was deployed.
DC Alums – Tigers in the nation’s capital share photos of recent events, among
them “An Evening with the President,” Mardi Gras revelry, and taking part in the Wreaths Across America observance.
To become active with a local chapter or affiliate group, visit www.lsualumni.org/chapters.
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LSU Alumni Association News
Coast to Coast Crawfish Boils LSU alumni, friends, and fans pass a good time by getting a taste of the spicy Louisiana culture they left behind when graduating from LSU. "Parties with a Purpose” is the phrase used by the LSU Alumni Association to describe the vibe for the crawfish boils hosted by alumni chapters across the country. While attendees are engrossed with "sucking heads and pinching tails," the events have a greater purpose – dollars raised through ticket sales and auction proceeds help fund scholarships for local students attending LSU. Visit www.lsualumni.org/coast-to-coast
Alexandra Haney, Jeannie McFarlane, and Alexius Roberts enjoy the first mudbugs of the season.
Angelle St. Germain, Gloria Drash, Pete Sanchez, Sr., Justin Naquin, Kim Naquin, Wil Drash, Brian Frilot, Don Haney, and Pete Sanchez.
San Antonio – Gloria and Wil Drash
Angelle St. Germain and tiny Tiger James Haney at the raffle table.
Peggy Shaw and Gloria Drash.
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hosted the annual crawfish boil for members of the San Antonio Chapter at their property in North San Antonio in April. Seventy alumni and LSU fans were treated to 300 pounds of crawfish with all the trimmings, and along with other raffle items, the chapter offered a Mardi Gras-inspired Fiesta San Antonio medal to raise money for the scholarship fund. “Attendance is reaching new highs and we raised enough money for one San Antonio resident scholarship for 2018,” writes chapter President Don Haney.
LSU Houston officers Brooke Graham, secretary; Lisa Bunch, president; and Lacey Brooks, vice president. Billy Hicks, Wiley Graham, Kevin Madden, Lacey Brooks, John Robert, Bryan Wesley, Brooke Graham, Will Hennegan, Lisa Bunch, Angel Ardoin, Cheryl Davis, Don Mcginty, Cynthia Cannizzaro, Paul Dominique, Steve Stewart, Patty Stewart, LSU Alumni Association President Cliff Vannoy, Kristin Palmer.
LSU Houston – LSU Houston kicked off chapter coast-to-coast crawfish boils
in April at Little Woodrow’s on Shepherd with nearly 400 mudbug-craving Tigers feasting on 2,500 pounds of crawfish prepared by the Boil House.
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LSU Alumni Association News
Snapshots
Major General Glenn Curtis prepares to throw the first pitch.
LSU Alumni Association President Cliff Vannoy presents Major General Curtis with a full-size, personalized Marucci bat
First Pitch – Major General Glenn Curtis, adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard and LSU’s 2017 Alumnus of the Year, threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Tigers-Fighting Irish baseball game on Feb. 17 at Alex Box Stadium. The game was part of LSU Athletics Military Appreciation Weekend, highlighting the accomplishments of the U.S. Armed Forces. Ring Donation – Louis Lambert, of Ruston, La. donated his greatgrandfather’s 1917 class ring to the LSU Alumni Association’s permanent ring collection in March. The ring belonged to Louis J. Jumonville, of Crowley, La., who earned a bachelor’s degree from the Aubudon Sugar School.
Louis Lambert and LSU Alumni Association Vice President Tracy Jones.
In the Community – Danielle Gueho, senior sales manager for The Cook Hotel, joined colleagues Mike Walker, Crimson Gulf; BJ Militello, Better Business Bureau; and Karen Zito, Capital Region Builders Association, at the West Baton Rouge Chamber’s annual banquet in March. Mike Walker, BJ Militello, Karen Zito, and Danielle Gueho.
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First Barton Scholarship Awarded
Scholarship recipient Cassandra Skaggs, front, with, from left, Wildlife and Fisheries Foundation Executive Director Kell McInnis, LSU Alumni Association President Cliff Vannoy, John Barton, Jr., Association Vice President Tracy Jones, and School of Renewable Resources Instructor Luke Laborde.
Cassandra Skaggs, a graduate research assistant in the School of Renewable Resources, was awarded the first John W. Barton, Sr. College of Agriculture Wildlife Scholarship in March. “I am honored to be selected as the first recipient of the John W. Barton, Sr. College of Agriculture Wildlife Scholarship,” said Skaggs. “While the monetary award will help me personally as I finish my thesis, I am further humbled to be associated with the legacy of Mr. Barton. In particular, his conservation and civic leadership are an inspiration, and I am thankful to be recognized as I start my career in wildlife conservation.” The scholarship was established by the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Foundation to honor Barton, who received a bachelor’s degree in sugar-chemical engineering from LSU in 1939. He was a founding member of the National Turkey Federation and active in the Quality Deer Management Association. During his career, he played key roles in numerous business, civic, and professional organizations. The $2,500 award will be made annually to a full-time School of Renewable Resources graduate student studying in the fields of wildlife management or wildlife ecology. Photo by Mignon Kastanos
For more about John Barton’s legacy, visit www.lsualumni.org/hall-of-distinction-1980s. To donate to the endowment fund in his memory visit www.lsualumni.org/giving.
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LSU Alumni Association News
Snapshots
Beverly and Jerry Shea, Jr., standing center, and Jerry Shea, Sr., and wife Harriet, seated center, welcome alumni and hotel staff to dinner at Beau Soleil.
Passing a Good Time – The LSU Alumni Association and The Cook Hotel staff look forward to the “kick off the new year” appreciation dinner hosted each winter by Beverly and Jerry Shea, Jr., in New Iberia, La. January’s freezing weather pushed this year’s event to early March – and a good time was had by all at Beau Soleil Restaurant. Beverly Shea is a member of the Association’s Global Board of Directors.
Award Winner – Consuela “Connie” Gowan, director of operations at The Cook Hotel, received the 2017 Minsky Award for the LSU Alumni Association Outstanding Employee of the Year. The announcement was made at a staff luncheon in March. The award, established by Dr. Louis R. Minsky, former longtime member and officer of the Association’s Global Board of Directors, recognizes the employee who regularly goes above and beyond the call of duty, demonstrates excellence on the job, and foster’s admiration among colleagues, among other criteria. Gowan joined the staff in February 2017. Minsky Award winner Consuela Gowan, center, with Claire McVea, director of human resources and President Cliff Vannoy.
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Mark Kent Anderson Named to LSUAA Board
Mark Kent Anderson.
Mark Kent Anderson, Jr. (2015 BACH H&SS), of Monroe, La., was elected to the LSU Alumni Association Global Board of Directors in May, representing District 6. He replaces Randy Ewing, who resigned earlier this year when he was appointed to the Louisiana Board of Regents.
Anderson is a corporate sales representative for Mid-South Extrusion , a plastic manufacturing company located in Monroe, as well as a licensed commercial real estate agent with the Beau Box Real Estate Company. He is actively involved in the United Way of Northeast Louisiana and is a member of the Plastics Industry Association Future Leaders in Plastics (FLiP) group. While at LSU, he was a member of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity.
Remembering Millicent Merritt “Mimi” Hennigan, librarian emerita and longtime docent at the Lod Cook Alumni Center, passed away on April 2, just a few weeks shy of her 100th birthday. Known fondly to alumni staff and guests as “Miss Millicent Merritt “Mimi” Hennigan. Millicent,” she greeted visitors on Friday mornings until 2010, when she said, “at ninety-three, it’s time to hang up the car keys.” But, she never missed an LSU Alumni Association July 4th or Christmas celebration for LSU retirees in the years following. We’ll miss you, Miss Millicent.
Investing in Tigers, Transforming Lives As a Baton Rouge native, I was hesitant to attend a university so close to home after graduating from a high school just down the road. However, in my first year at
LSU I have enjoyed – almost more than I thought possible – the new friendships, opportunities, and resources available to me, thanks to the President’s Alumni Scholarship. I’m majoring in chemical engineering with a minor in French. I also spend my time researching nanosphere lithography with Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering Kevin McPeak under the President’s Future Leaders in Research Program and play cymbals in the Golden Band from Tigerland. Overall, I am so thankful to the generosity that enables me to devote myself to such diverse, time-consuming activities on a daily basis and look forward to sharing my experiences with others facing similar decisions as I did a year ago. Because of your contributions to the LSU Alumni Association, LSU is able to attract more students like Henry every year. This doesn’t just make a difference now; it makes a difference for the future, for students like Henry will be tomorrow’s top scientists, educators, and business leaders. And you make that possible. HENRY KANTROW President’s Alumni Scholar
To contribute to or endow a scholarship, visit www.lsualumni.org/giving or call 225.578.3838.
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2018
HALL OF DISTINCTION ART FAVRE, WALT LEGER Highlight Inductions
rt Favre, owner and president of Baton Rouge-based Performance Contractors, Inc., and Walt Leger, speaker pro tempore of the Louisiana House of Representatives, highlighted the roster of outstanding alumni inducted to the 2018 LSU Alumni Association Hall of Distinction. Favre, Alumnus of the Year, and Leger, Young Alumnus of the Year, along with four other LSU graduates, were inducted on April 13 at the Lod Cook Alumni Center. Also inducted were the late Mel Didier, longtime high school and college baseball coach and major league baseball executive and scout; Jim Engster, owner and president of Louisiana Radio Network and Tiger Rag; Kelly Spears, a speech language pathologist and board-certified behavior analyst; and Jerry Stovall, longtime president and chief executive officer of – and now a consultant with – the Baton Rouge Area Sports Foundation, now SportsBR. LSU alumna Rori Smith, a corporate instructor with Delta Air Lines, served as master of ceremonies for the awards ceremony. Association President and CEO Cliff Vannoy and Global Board of Directors Chair Susan Whitelaw greeted guests, and special guests Gov. John Bel Edwards and LSU President F. King Alexander were on hand to extend congratulations to the honorees. And, Shaquille O’Neal shared a “selfie” video congratulating Leger on being the youngest Young Alumnus of the Year ever. Music for the ceremony was provided by pianist Doug Pacas and members of Tiger Band. The JGray Jazz Trio entertained at the reception.
ON THE WEB https://youtu.be/bC0tjBI3P5A
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The LSU Alumni Association annually recognizes alumni who have distinguished themselves and the University through their careers, their personal and civic accomplishments, their volunteer activities, and their loyalty to their alma mater.
HONOREES’ PHOTOS BY EDDY PEREZ ADDITIONAL PHOTOS BY JOHNNY GORDON AND JASON BROWN
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Alumnus of the Year ART E.
FAVRE rt E. Favre, owner and president of Baton Rouge-based Performance Contractors, Inc., a billion dollar plus, 9,000-employee general industrial services company, graduated from LSU in 1972 with a bachelor’s degree in construction, a member of the school’s first graduating class. Prior to founding Performance Contractors in 1973, Favre worked for LurgiKnost Engineers and Contractors, Fluor Corporation, and Universal Corporation. Under his leadership, Performance has received four National Construction Safety awards and numerous National Excellence in Construction awards. Louisiana Contractor Magazine has recognized Performance Contractors four times for having the Best Industrial/ Manufacturing project in Louisiana. An ardent supporter of LSU and the College of Engineering, Favre is heavily involved in the expansion and realignment of Patrick Taylor Hall. He is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council, the Board of Directors of the Construction Industry Advisory Council for the Bert S. Turner Department of Construction Management, and a past president of the LSU Construction Industry Advisory Council. He is a member of the LSU Alumni Association, the LSU Foundation, and Tiger Athletic Foundation. Favre is active and holds leadership positions in numerous professional and civic organizations, among them the American Association of Cost Engineers, Associated Builders and Contractors, Louisiana Chemical Industry Alliance, Louisiana Right To Work Committee, Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, Blue Print Louisiana, Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, ABC ICC, New Orleans Branch of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, and Pennington Biomedical Research Foundation. His many honors include induction into the LSU College of Engineering Hall of Distinction, the LSU Construction Management Hall of Fame, and the LSU Alumni Association Hall of Distinction. He received the LSU Greek Excellence Award, the ABC Pelican Chapter Merit Shop Man of the Year Award, the Sales and Marketing Executives of Greater Baton Rouge Marketer of the Year Award, and the Delta Tau Delta Fraternity Alumni Achievement Award, and was named a Distinguished Patron of the LSU Department of Construction Management. Favre has two children, Scott and Shelley, and five grandchildren and is married to Yilena Favre.
When reflecting upon my adult life, I quickly realize the important decisions I have made along the path of life, all had basis in the foundations of life instilled within me during my educational years at LSU, not just academics, but core values, communication skills, relationship building, and lifelong friendships.
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Young Alumnus of the Year WALTER JOHN
LEGER, III alt Leger is Speaker Pro Tempore of the Louisiana House of Representatives and a graduate of LSU, having earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 2000. He received a Juris Doctor from Tulane University in 2003. Leger, an attorney with Leger & Shaw in New Orleans, was elected Speaker Pro Tempore by acclamation in 2012 and again in 2016, and is the youngest member ever to serve in the second highest-ranking position in the Louisiana House. He was first elected state representative for District 91 with sixty-five percent of the vote in 2007 and re-elected without opposition in 2011 and 2015. Leger is a senior member of the Appropriations Committee and the House Education Committee and serves ex-officio on all other House committees. He has led many important state initiatives, including the Criminal Justice Reform and Reinvestment and Tax and Budget Reform. Among other leadership roles, he serves nationally on the Executive Committee of the Southern Legislative Conference and the Council of State Governments Governing Board. Known in Louisiana as a strategic thinker, fierce advocate, problem solver, and consensus builder, Leger has received numerous honors recognizing his commitment to the citizens of Louisiana. His most recent awards include the Louisiana Family Forum 2017 Life and Liberty Award for Achievement in Criminal Justice Reform and the Childcare Association of Louisiana 2017 Champion for Children Award. In 2016 he received nationwide recognition when he was awarded the Tax Foundation’s Outstanding Achievement in State Tax Reform Award, and in 2015 he was named Outstanding Legislator by the LSU Health Sciences Center Foundation and was awarded a Rodel Fellowship of Public Leadership at the Aspen Institute. Leger is a founding board member and vice-president of the Louisiana Institute for Children in Families and serves on the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Judicial College. He is an adjunct professor of law at Loyola University College of Law in New Orleans. He has lectured at Tulane University School of Law and LSU Law School and speaks regularly at educational programs through the Louisiana State Bar Association and New Orleans Bar Association and at conferences such as the National Conference of State Legislators, Southern Legislative Conference, and Council of State Governments. Leger is married to the former Danielle Doiron, a 2005 graduate of LSU. They have one daughter, Cate, and are expecting a second daughter in May.
I am proud that everyone in my immediate family is an LSU graduate – my wife, Danielle; my mother, Catherine Buras Vidos; my father, Walter J. Leger, Jr.; my brother, Rhett Leger, and his wife, Dana Lampard Leger; and my sister, Elizabeth Leger Fick, and her husband, Jeffrey Fick.
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MELVIN J. “MEL”
DIDIER, SR. Elena Didier accepted the award on behalf of her late husband.
he late Mel Didier, Sr., longtime high school and college baseball coach and major league baseball executive and scout, played football and baseball at LSU in the mid-1940s before earning a bachelor’s degree from Mississippi Southern in 1949. He received a master’s degree in education from LSU in 1967. Didier was a winner. He excelled at every level – in college football and baseball, as a high school football and baseball coach, as a college football and baseball coach, and as a scout and administrator in major league baseball for more than sixty years. He lettered in football for two years, was an LSU football AllAmerican in 1945, lettered in baseball for three years, and was a star pitcher for LSU’s 1946 SEC championship baseball team. He signed with the Detroit Tigers in 1948, retiring at the end of the 1949 season with an injured pitching shoulder and taking on coaching responsibilities at Catholic High and Glen Oaks High in Baton Rouge and at Opelousas High. During this time, he remained a full-time scout with the major leagues. Didier coached freshman football at LSU under Charlie McClendon in the late 1960s and was head baseball coach at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette (then USL) from 1980 to 1982. Over the years, he was affiliated with the Detroit Tigers, Milwaukee Brewers, Atlanta Braves, Montreal Expos, Los Angeles Dodgers, Seattle Mariners, Cleveland Indians, Arizona Diamondbacks, Texas Rangers, and Toronto Blue Jays. Didier was the only person in professional baseball to spearhead three major league expansion teams – the Montreal Expos, Seattle Mariners, and Arizona Diamondbacks. He was an immediate hit in scouting and player development. He was the first farm and scouting director of the Expos, the team for which he created the School of Thieves, which focused on base running and base stealing. The Expos farm system stole more bases than anyone in baseball. He was recognized for his achievements by scores of baseball executives – some of the giants of the game – John McHale, Walter O’Malley, Fred Claire, Tommy Lasorda, Jerry Colangelo, Buck Showalter, Mike Scioscia, Joe Garigiola, Jr., and John Hart. Highlighting the many honors accorded Didier during his career were induction into the Louisiana High School Coaches Hall of Fame, being named the LSU Baseball Alumnus of the Year, and induction into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. Mel Didier and his wife, Elena Arcaro Didier, celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary in 2017. He went to “baseball heaven” on September 10, 2017, at the age of ninety-one.
Mel always carried with him the spirit of LSU and was a positive voice at all times for the University. – Fred Claire, former general manager, Los Angeles Dodgers
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JAMES RAYMOND “JIM”
ENGSTER im Engster, president of Kingfish Communications, earned a degree in broadcast journalism from LSU in 1981. He has been the owner and president of Louisiana Radio Network and Tiger Rag, “The Bible of LSU Sports,” for the past eight years. His career as journalist, broadcaster, and business executive spans more than three decades. Engster has hosted daily radio programs since 1998, sharing the microphone with luminaries from politics, sports, business, entertainment and the arts. He has interviewed ten Louisiana governors, reported on every gubernatorial election since 1979, and currently hosts Gov. John Bel Edwards call-in show, “Ask the Governor.” Engster has had memorable conversations with the likes of President Bill Clinton, Vice President Dick Cheney, California Gov. Jerry Brown, and celebrated journalists Carl Bernstein, Dan Rather, and Ted Koppel. So far, Ann Coulter is the only guest to walk out on Engster in more than ten thousand interviews. Every LSU Chancellor since Jim Wharton and the last seven Tiger athletic directors have been Engster guests. Engster has also been the political analyst for WAFB-TV in Baton Rouge since 2002. His weekday program on Public Radio started in 2004 and continues today as “Talk Louisiana” on WRKF-FM in Baton Rouge. Engster was a correspondent for National Public Radio from 1989 to 2004 and served as Louisiana Radio Network news and sports director from 1983 to 1998. He was general manager of WRKF from 2003 to 2006 and of LRN from 2006 to 2010. Active in civic affairs, Engster is a member of the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge, is a five-time president of the Press Club of Baton Rouge, and is a board member and former president of the National Association of State Radio Networks. At his alma mater, he serves on the LSU Media Board and moderates interviews for the LSU Alumni Association’s “Talking Sports” series. He is the Voice of the LSU Foundation and the emcee of Manship School Hall of Fame ceremonies. He is a member of the Tiger Athletic Foundation. Engster was named Communicator of the Year in 2008 by the Public Relations Association of Louisiana. He received the YWCA Racial Justice Award in 2011, was inducted into the Manship School Hall of Fame in 2012, received the Louisiana Federation of Teachers School Bell Award in 2015 for education journalism, and was honored in 2017 by the Sales and Marketing Executives of Greater Baton Rouge as Marketer of the Year.
LSU is the foundation for all successful endeavors in my career. The four most productive, vivid, and memorable years of my life were those as an undergraduate at the Ole War Skule. Notably, my print and broadcast debuts were at Tiger Stadium—former home of both KLSU and The Daily Reveille.
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KELLY
SPEARS elly Spears, a speech language pathologist and board certified behavior analyst, earned a bachelor’s degree in communication sciences and disorders from LSU in 1994 and a master’s degree in speech, language, and hearing from Southeastern Louisiana University in 1997. She completed her year-long clinical fellowship in Yakima, Washington. Spears practiced professionally and held leadership and management positions in a variety of settings including hospitals, schools, homes, and long-term care facilities in New York, Canada, North Carolina, and California before establishing Spears Learning Center, a pediatric speech and language therapy and ABA therapy clinic with locations in Metairie and Covington, Louisiana. With a staff of seventy, the clinic services clients in the office and in school settings in St. Tammany, Orleans, and Jefferson Parish school districts. Her professional memberships include the American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA), Corporate Speech Pathology Network (CORSPAN), Louisiana Speech Language Hearing Association, Autism Society of America, and Association of Behavior Analysts, and she is a Louisiana Applied Behavior Analyst. Spears and her family support LSU student-athletes through donations to the Tiger Athletic Foundation, and the Jones-Spears Family Scholarship represents the fifth endowment committed to the gymnastics program. She generously funds academic programs through the LSU Alumni Association and LSU Foundation and sponsors several fundraising events, among them, Our Lady of the Lake School Taste of Tammany Gala, Families Helping Families, Touch a Truck, Autism Society of Greater New Orleans Walk, and, with the Association, LSU Alumni Night at the Baby Cakes Game. She is a cofounder and board member of Gain Behavior, a telehealth and ABA software program business, and serves on the boards of the Tiger Athletic Foundation, Louisiana Coalition for Access to Autism Services, Take Paws Rescue, and the Greater New Orleans Autism Group. She is a member of the Krewe of Orpheus and a member of the First Baptist Church of New Orleans. Spears and her daughter, Harper, adopted from Siberia, Russia, in 2012, reside in New Orleans. Harper attends first grade at Hynes Charter School in New Orleans and loves gymnastics and dance.
LSU means home to me. Some of my first memories are of my parents and their friends taking us to LSU football games. We had the spot under the big oak tree in front of the bell tower. I have loved LSU since.
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JERRY L.
STOVALL erry Stovall, longtime president and chief executive officer of the Baton Rouge Area Sports Foundation – now SportsBR – is a consultant with the organization. He attended LSU from 1959 to 1962 and during his Tiger football career was named an All-SEC and All-American running back and was runner-up for the 1962 Heisman Trophy. In 1963, Stovall was the No. 1 draft choice of the St. Louis Cardinals and during his nine-year career in the NFL was named All-Pro twice and earned three All-Pro berths. He continued his education while playing professional football, earning an undergraduate degree from Missouri Baptist College in 1972. After retiring from pro ball, Stovall joined Paul Dietzel at the University of South Carolina. He returned to LSU in 1974 as assistant coach to Charles McClendon and was promoted to head coach of the Tigers in 1980. He was named SEC Coach of the Year and Walter Camp National Coach of the Year in 1983, the same year he led the Tigers to the Orange Bowl. During a six-year hiatus from football, Stovall served as senior vice president of business development at Premier Bank. In 1990 he was named athletic director at Louisiana Tech University, leading the program to a Top 25 national ranking in graduation rate during his three-year stint. He returned to Baton Rouge in 1993 and with the assistance of then-Mayor-President Tom Ed McHugh started the Baton Rouge Area Sports Foundation to promote state, regional, national, and international sporting events in the area. Stovall was a member of and held leadership roles in numerous civic organizations over the years, among them Capital Area United Way (Chair), Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank, Association of Retarded Citizens, General Health System, and Hospice Foundation of Greater Baton Rouge. He is a popular public speaker and mediator, a member of BREC’s public relations committee, and is active in First Presbyterian Church. Stovall was named to the LSU Athletics Hall of Fame and the Louisiana Sportswriters Hall of Fame and was inducted into the National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame in 2010 and enshrined in 2011. He was named a Louisiana Legend in 2011, honored in 2007 with the Brotherhood/Sisterhood Award for his work in the community, named to the LSU Modern Day Team of the Century in 1993, and received the 1990 Volunteer Activist of the Year award. Stovall and his wife of fifty-six years, Judy, have two children, Jay Stovall and Jodi Stovall, and five grandchildren.
LSU came to me at a point in life when I had no Plan A and gave me hope and opportunity with an athletic scholarship that allowed me to go to college. Without that, I’m not sure what direction my life would have taken.
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P R O F E S S O R S B Y DAY,
B Y
K E V I N
H E B E R T
O MANY PEOPLE, A PROFESSOR’S
life revolves around school. Most of their time is spent either grading papers, lecturing in classrooms, meeting with students or conducting research. To a certain extent this is true. Most professors do, in fact, dedicate a large amount of their time on our educations. Studies have shown that college professors may work upwards of sixty hours per week, which is 50 percent more than the national standard. This doesn’t mean our teachers are always focused academics though. Far from it. Despite their huge academic workload, some professors still make time to explore the artistic world. Eric Schmitt, an instructor in the Department of English, is one of these people, moonlighting as a musician when he isn’t in the classroom. From early on, Schmitt showed signs of musical talent. He picked up the trumpet at a young age and proceeded to teach himself the guitar in college. His professional career, however, seemed to be headed in an entirely different direction. At the University of Texas-Austin, Schmitt decided to major in business. Eventually, though, the tide started to change. “It just wasn’t a good match for me,” he said. “And so about halfway through, I started taking some philosophy and literature classes." In the end, Schmitt graduated with a degree in business. However, his artistic dreams were not crushed. In fact, they had just begun. Influenced by his humanities courses, Schmitt decided to enroll at McNeese State in an M.F.A program for creative writing. His love for literature and writing blossomed there. In 2000, Schmitt made a career move that would finally bring together his two passions: writing and music – he took a job in the English department at LSU and met Randolph Thomas, the chair of creative writing. The two of them quickly became friends, and the rest is history. “Randolph and I would get together pretty often and trade tunes and songs, stuff like that,” Schmitt explained.
English professor Eric Schmitt has released two solo albums under his own name – “Piña Coladas and a Polynesian Girl” and “Unraveling.” He continues in the folk/Americana genre but has added his own accents of rock and pop-rock throughout his work. Photos by Kate Roy
Reprinted with permission of Legacy magazine.
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DESPITE THEIR HUGE ACADEMIC WORKLOAD, SOME PROFESSORS STILL MAKE TIME TO EXPLORE THE ARTISTIC WORLD.
Left page: In the 1960s, Ph.D. adviser Rudy Hirschheim bought the same bass, an original 1964 Hoffner violin-bass, as Paul McCartney. He and his bandmates played at parties and dances all around Buffalo, N.Y., covering songs from the likes of the Rolling Stones, Three Dog Night, and, of course, the Beatles. Right page: Edward Richards’ photograph of St. Joseph Cemetery, in Grosse Tete, La., was taken just before a huge, fast-moving thunderstorm broke.
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Slowly but surely they recruited a few more musicians to join them. Before long, the folk/Americana band Flatbed Honeymoon was born. The group recorded and released two albums before disbanding. By that point, Schmitt had become enamored with the craft. With or without a band, he was ready to start his musical career. Today, Schmitt has released two solo albums under his own name – “Piña Coladas and a Polynesian Girl” and “Unraveling.” He continues in the folk/Americana genre, but has added his own accents of rock and pop-rock throughout his work. Many of his students probably wouldn’t expect this. According to Schmitt, he maintains a “very different persona” in class. He even has a special hat resembling Indiana Jones’ that he wears exclusively for his performances. “I keep a good bit of separation,” he said. “It’s not like I go out of my way to hide it from students … I just don’t bring it in.”
THE IDEAL ENVIRONMENT Some students know Rudy Hirschheim, the Ourso Family Distinguished Professor of Information Systems, as the Ph.D. adviser for the department. Others might know of his work with the executive M.B.A. program. Very few, however, probably know of his musical career and how it came to be. Hirschheim grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., and he started playing music at six years old. “My grandfather was the concert pianist for the Berlin Philharmonic,” Hirschheim explained. “My dad wasn’t musically inclined, but he said his son would have to be." So, his father let him pick whatever instrument he wanted to play, and he gravitated toward the drums. Soon after, he moved onto the saxophone, playing in big bands like that of Glenn Miller. Everything changed in 1964 – almost every musician, including Hirschheim, wanted to be the Beatles. “There was a group of us all playing guitar trying to be like the Beatles,” he said. “One day, we all looked at each other and
said ‘somebody has to play bass.’ I thought about it and said, ‘if it’s good enough for Paul McCartney, it’s good enough for me.’" Hirschheim went out and bought the same bass, an original 1964 Hoffner violin-bass, as Paul McCartney. He and his bandmates went on to play at parties and dances all around Buffalo, covering songs from the likes of Rolling Stones, Three Dog Night, and, of course, the Beatles. After earning his undergraduate degree at SUNY-Buffalo, Hirschheim found it hard to make time for music. He went to Toronto for his master’s, to England for his Ph.D., and, finally, to Houston to teach. In all those years, he rarely picked up an instrument. Coming to LSU in 2003 changed all of this. Like Schmitt, Rudy Hirschheim met a colleague in his department, a finance professor by the name of Don Chance. “He kept saying we should start a college band, but I was hesitant. Eventually we met some marketing professors who were singers and I decided to give it a shot,” he explained. They came together and formed Capital Gains, an obvious finance joke among them. After their first show, Rudy said the feelings all came rushing back to him. Now, Rudy plays in a local band, Rockin’ Rouge, and couldn’t be happier. “Professor by day, artist by night; that really is the ideal environment for me,” he said. So, more than fifty years later, Hirschheim is back doing what he loves, almost as if he never left the music scene at all.
REINVIGORATING INTERESTS Edward Richards was born in Baton Rouge but has lived all over the United States, moving nearly twenty times in his life. During his travels, he acquired a bachelor’s degree from Rice University, a J.D. from the University of Houston, and a Master’s of Public Health degree from the University of Texas. He’s held
an assortment of positions, too, from litigation consulting to working with the CDC in the 1980s on the AIDS epidemic. Richards finally got a call back to his hometown. In 2002, LSU offered him a teaching position at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center, and he has been there ever since. Originally, his research was on public policy. However, when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Richards turned his attention toward a subject that interested him as an undergrad – environmental science. He began studying Louisiana’s coastline and how climate change is impacting it, or, as Richards bluntly put it, “the whole problem of Louisiana washing away.” The storm did more than reinvigorate an old academic interest. It also reinvigorated an old pastime – photography. “It really got me thinking about how southern Louisiana is going to be gone one day,” he said. So, a couple of months after the storm, Richards went around Louisiana, Mississippi, and even Florida, photographing and documenting the storm’s destruction. His goal was twofold – to archive the architectural damage while also seeing it for himself. “Photography is an enhanced way of seeing,” Richards said. “By taking the pictures, taking the time … you see a lot more than you would just walking through the place.” It has been more than ten years since Hurricane Katrina, but Richards is still invested in photography. His focus has become broader, though, as he now captures pretty much anything and everything South Louisiana. Unlike other professors, Edward Richards’ artistic hobby overlaps with his academic profession. He gets a chance to see the problems he researches and teaches about firsthand. At the end of the day, though, Edwards is still bound by the conundrum all teachers and artists face. “The clash is just always time,” he said. Kevin Hebert is a junior majoring in creative writing.
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Noteworthy
Around
CAMPUS
Jonathan P. Dowling
Tammy Dugas
Katie Gagliano
Jonathan P. Dowling, co-chair of LSU’s Hearne Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Hearne Chair Professor of Theoretical Physics and professor of physics and astronomy, and his collaborators were awarded more than $7 million from the U.S. Army Research Office to develop quantum technologies related to sensing. The grant,“Quantum control based on real-time environment analysis by spectator qubits,” is funded for three years, with the possibility of a two-year extension for a total of $7.05 million. The purpose of the grant is to develop feedback and control techniques on quantum systems that will be used to improve the performance of quantum computers and sensors. Dowling’s team is one of 24 academic research teams to receive this competitive funding. LSU will receive nearly $1 million over the next five years as part of the DoD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program, or MURI grant. Tammy Dugas, a professor in the Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences at the School of Veterinary Medicine, is harnessing antioxidant compounds found in red wine to advance the treatment of heart disease. She is developing a new stent that releases red wine antioxidants slowly over time, promotes healing, and prevents blood clotting and inflammation. A co-founder of ReQuisite Biomedical, Dugas joined the vet school faculty in 2014. Katie Gagliano, a senior in the Manship School of Mass Communication, is one of thirty-eight students chosen from nineteen universities around the world to participate in the Carnegie-Knight News21 multimedia reporting initiative, which will investigate U.S.-based hate crimes. The Covington, La., native will travel to Tempe, Ariz., this summer to research and report for the program. News21 was established by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to demonstrate that college journalism students can produce innovative, in-depth multimedia projects on a national scale.
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Gabriela González
Stacia Haynie
Nancy Isenberg
Michael Khonsari
Gabriela González, professor of physics and astronomy and former spokesperson of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, received the 2018 SURA (Southeastern Universities Research Association) Distinguished Scientist Award. The annual honor goes to a research scientist whose extraordinary work fulfills the SURA mission to “advance collaborative research and education.” The award and its $5,000 honorarium were presented to González in April at the SURA Board of Trustees meeting at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va. Stacia Haynie, dean of the College of Humanities & Social Sciences and the J.W. Annison, Jr. Family Alumni Professor, was appointed acting executive vice president and provost, effective May 1. She replaces Rick Koubek, who was selected as president of Michigan Tech. Haynie joined the political science faculty in 1990 and in 2005 was named the J.W. Annison, Jr. Family Alumni Professor. Since 2006 she served as associate dean and then interim dean of the Graduate School and vice provost for Academic Affairs before being named dean. Nancy Isenberg, the T. Harry Williams Professor of American History, and Michael Khonsari, the Dow Chemical Endowed Chair and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, received Distinguished Research Master awards from the Office of Research & Economic Development in April. Isenberg received the award for the arts, humanities, social, and behavioral sciences, and Khonsari was presented the award for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
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Noteworthy
Around Campus
Martin Johnson
Daniel G. Kuroda
Martin Johnson, associate dean for graduate studies and research in the Manship School of Mass Communication and holder of the Kevin P. Reilly, Sr. Chair in Political Communication, was named dean of the Manship School effective July 1. He replaces Jerry Ceppos, who announced his retirement last year. Before joining the faculty at LSU, Johnson served as department chair and professor of political science at University of California, Riverside. A Manship School graduate, he was active in Student Media, serving as editor of The Daily Reveille, an announcer on KLSU, and editor of the student magazine. He worked in journalism and politics and subsequently earned master’s and doctoral degrees in political science from Rice University. Daniel G. Kuroda, assistant professor of chemistry, received a 2018 NSF CAREER Award for his research project, “Molecular Characterization of Motions, Interactions and Structure of the Lithium Salts in Organic Solvents via Non-Linear Infrared Spectroscopy.” The early career awards are given to “faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.”
Corey Matyas
Corey Matyas, of Dahlonega, Ga., a sophomore in the College of Science and Roger Hadfield Ogden Honors College, was named a 2018 Goldwater Scholar. Goldwater Scholars are awarded one- and two-year $7,500 stipends to pursue undergraduate research in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, or engineering. Matyas intends to pursue a Ph.D. in atomic, molecular, and optical physics through the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona and plans to conduct academic research in quantum optics and quantum information and teach at the university level. He is LSU’s thirty-second Goldwater Scholar. LSU has earned the 2017 2018 Military Friendly® School designation. Institutions earning the Military Friendly ® School designation were evaluated using both public data sources and responses from a proprietary survey. For the first time, student survey data was taken into consideration for the designation. More than 1,400 schools participated in the 2018-2019 survey with 941 earning the designation. Visit www. militaryfriendly.com for a list of military friendly schools and www.lsu.edu/students/ veterans/ for information about LSU’s student veteran programs. LSU is rated as a Top 50 best value among public universities and eighty-eighth overall in Forbes 2018 America’s Best Value Colleges rankings. LSU is the highest rated university in Louisiana on the list and the forty-fourth best value among public universities in the nation. Among SEC peers, LSU is the fifth best value ahead of Auburn University, University of Alabama, University of Kentucky, University of Mississippi, and University of Missouri, among others. For the ranking of 300 schools, universities were scored on net price, net debt, alumni earnings, timely graduation, school quality, and access for low-income students. The list evaluates institutions offering four-year degrees and does not include private for-profit schools.
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Around Campus
In Focus
From left, front row, President F. King Alexander, Associate Vice President for Research & Economic Development Stephen Beck, Campus Federal Credit Union President Dawn Harris, Karen Maruska, Chris Barrett, Morgan Kelly, Associate Vice President for Research & Economic Development Gus Kousoulas, Vice President for Research & Economic Development Kalliat Valsaraj; back, Anne Grove, Barry Keim, and Brannon Costello.
Research Awards – Six faculty members who are leaders in their fields received the Rainmaker Award for Research and Creative Activity from the LSU Office of Research & Economic Development (ORED). They were honored in March at a reception sponsored by ORED and Campus Federal Credit Union. The new Rainmakers are: Chris Barrett, Department of English, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Emerging Scholar Award - Arts, Humanities, Social & Behavioral Sciences; Morgan Kelly, Department of Biological Sciences, College of Science, Emerging Scholar Award - Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics; Brannon Costello, Department of English, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Mid-Career Scholar Award - Arts, Humanities, Social & Behavioral Sciences; Karen Maruska, Department of Biological Sciences, College of Science, Mid-Career Scholar Award - Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics; Barry Keim, Department of Geography & Anthropology, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Senior Scholar Award - Arts, Humanities, Social & Behavioral Sciences; and Anne Grove, Department of Biological Sciences, College of Science, Senior Scholar Award Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics. Photo by Cody Willhite/LSU Strategic Communications
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Judy Lithgoe, Roger Hinson, E.J. Ourso College of Business Dean Richard D. White, Jr., Ken Koonce, and Ed Zganjar.
Mary Adcock, Karl Roider, speaker Mark Benfield, Jerry Exner, and Marsha Arrighi.
Gail Cramer, Doreen Maxcy, speaker George Morris, Marilyn Cramer, and Don Franke.
LSU Retirees – Richard D. White, Jr., dean of the E.J. Ourso College of Business and a political biographer, spoke to the LSU Faculty & Staff Retirees Club in February about his book Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long. In March, the group heard from Mark Benfield, professor of oceanography and coastal sciences, who spoke about the current and future threats of plastic residue in the state’s waterways. On April 9, the seventy-sixth anniversary of the Bataan Death March, George Morris, feature writer at The Advocate, shared information about World War II veterans he has interviewed during his career. Photos by Mark Claesgens
From left, Provost Richard J. Koubek; President F. King Alexander; Vice President for Student Affairs Kurt J. Keppler; then-Gov. John Bel Edwards; Mark Frank, president of Student Veterans of LSU; Lori Garrison and Crissy Brookshire, daughters of William A. Brookshire; grandson Connor Garrison; Sachiko Cleveland, program director, Brookshire Military & Veterans Student Center; and son-in-law John Garrison,
Official Opening – Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards joined LSU President F. King Alexander and others from the University and military communities for a ribbon-cutting and grand-opening ceremony at the William A. Brookshire Military & Veterans Student Center in January. The center, located on Veterans Drive, adjacent to Barnes & Noble at LSU, will support student veterans, active military, reservists, guardsmen, and their dependents thanks, to a donation from Brookshire (1961 PHD ENGR) and will transform how LSU supports, recruits, and retains veterans. Advocating for veteran and military students, the center is dedicated to helping veterans, service members, dependents, and survivors succeed in higher education and in seeking employment. LSU is currently home to nearly 500 veteran students and 1,630 undergraduate dependents. Photo by Cody Willhite/LSU Strategic Communications
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Around Campus
In Focus
Mike the Tiger welcomes sixth-grade youngsters to campus for Sixth Grade Day in January.
President F. King Alexanders talks to sixth graders at Free Speech Plaza before campus tours begin.
Sixth Grade Day – LSU welcomed East Baton Rouge Parish middle school students to campus in January for the third year of Sixth Grade Day, one of several elements of the “Capital Area Promise,” an initiative designed to provide college and career pathways to students in Greater Baton Rouge. Students took part in a day-long discovery tour that highlighted the humanities, science, engineering, the arts, and agriculture. Photo by Eddy Perez/LSU Strategic Communications
College of Human Sciences & Education Dean Damon Andrew, School of Kinesiology Alumna of Distinction Amelia Lee, and Melinda Solmon, the Roy Paul Daniels Professor of Kinesiology.
Dean Damon Andrew and School of Library & Information Science Alumna of Distinction Barbara Biggs.
College of Human Sciences & Education Dean Damon Andrew and School of Education Alumna of Distinction Jeanne Burns.
CHSE Hall of Distinction – Three outstanding alumnae were recognized by the College of Human Sciences & Education in March. Named Alumna of Distinction for their respective areas were Barbara Biggs (1981 MLS), retired librarian at Exxon Research and Development Laboratories, School of Library & Information Science; Jeanne M. Burns (1979 MAST HS&E, 1986 PHD HS&E), associate commissioner for teacher and leadership initiatives for the Louisiana Board of Regents, School of Education; and Amelia Lee (1969 MAST HS&E), retired chair and professor of kinesiology, School of Kinesiology. Matt McKay received the college’s Philanthropy Award, and Community Partners recognized were Kevin Bankston, Baton Rouge Printing, University Laboratory School; Cheryl Ford, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center, School of Leadership & Human Resource Development; and The Society of St. Vincent de Paul Baton Rouge, School of Social Work.
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TIGER TRIVIA 1. When was the first issue of The Reveille published? 1860 1897 1926 1935 2. Why was LSU closed during part of the fall semester of 1918? Because of the influenza epidemic Because of an outbreak of yellow fever Because of an outbreak of cholera Because it was fall break 3. Where was Mike II born? The Little Rock Zoo The Audubon Zoo
A look at digital imaging.
The Baton Rouge Zoo The Global Wildlife Center
4. Why did female students walk out of their dormitories after closing hour in March of 1970? To protest poor conditions of the To protest against the cafeteria dorm rooms food To protest against the dress code To protest against dorm closing hour rules 5. When was LSU’s Carrol L. Herring Fire and Emergency Training Institute created? 1963 1970 1980 2012 6. What was Coates Hall’s original purpose? A classroom building A chemistry laboratory A library A dormitory
Scrub up like a surgeon.
7. How many trees were planted in the Memorial Oak Grove to honor LSU’s World War I dead? 10 18 20 31 8. Which men’s basketball players were nicknamed “The Astronaut” and “Hi-C?” Shaquille O’Neal and Chris Jackson and Pete Maravich Stanley Roberts DeWayne Scales and Bob Petit and Joe Dean Howard Carter 9. What expenses did tuition and fees cover in the 1871-1872 session? Washing Fuel and lights Use of furniture All of the above
SVM Open House – Nearly 4,700 folks attended the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine’s 36th Annual Open House in January, visiting more than fifty booths that celebrated veterinary medicine, the LSU SVM, and animal welfare. Some 200 veterinary students, as well as a large group of our graduate students, volunteered their time at the event. Photos by Ginger Guttner
10. Where is LSU’s Charles Barney Geology Camp located? In the Ozarks near Little Rock In the Rockies near Colorado Springs In the Sierra Nevada near Reno In the Adirondacks near Albany 11. When was LSU of Alexandria established? 1960 1966 1972 1980 12. What were the Golden Girls called when they were first established? The Dancing Tigerettes The Purple Jackets The Ballet Corps The Darlings of LSU Tiger Trivia is compiled by Barry Cowan, assistant archivist, Hill Memorial Library. Answers: 1:b, 2:a, 3:c, 4:d, 5:a, 6:b, 7:d, 8:c, 9:d, 10:b, 11:a, 12:c
Doing research.
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Around Campus
In Focus
On hand for the Chevron check presentation in Capstone Gallery located in the newly renovated Patrick F. Taylor Hall, were, from left, Cody Fontenot, Birlie Bourgeois, Michael Carney, Mary Schaub, Bill Hunter, College of Science Dean Cynthia Peterson, LSU Foundation President Bryan Benchoff, College of Engineering Dean Judy Wornat, E.J. Ourso College of Business Dean Richard White, Kevin Jensen, Executive Vice President & Provost Rick Koubek, and Vice President for Student Affairs Kurt Keppler.
Chevron Center – Chevron celebrated its longstanding partnership with LSU in February with a check presentation and ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Chevron Center for Engineering Education housed in Patrick F. Taylor Hall. Through its University Partnership Program, Chevron donated $850,000 in support of thirtyseven units across campus including the E.J. Ourso College of Business, College of Engineering, College of Science, Campus Life, and fifteen student organizations. With this donation, Chevron has donated more than $17 million to advance academic excellence at LSU. Providing a lead gift for the $110 million campaign to renovate Patrick F. Taylor Hall, Chevron has four named spaces within the 410,000-square-foot building – Chevron Center for Engineering Education, Chevron Reservoir Mechanics Laboratory, Chevron Rock and Fluids Property Laboratory, and Chevron Reservoir Characterization Laboratory. Photo by Darlene Aguillard
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From left, Meagan Morvant, Josie Bonnette, nurse Erma, and Chloe Kingston at Children’s Hospital of New Orleans.
Tigers With Purpose – Members of Tigers With Purpose visited the Children’s Hospital of New Orleans in February to create an art piece that educates the public about the Fight for Five movement to raise awareness of With Purpose, a nonprofit organization that advocates for and helps fund pediatric cancer research and treatments. Staff and patients in the hospital’s Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders took part by adding their handprints to canvases, and the LSU group donated a banner displaying the handprints of LSU students who have pledged to “fight for five.” Tigers With Purpose is composed of five public relations seniors taking part in the Bateman Competition, an annual national public relations competition hosted by the Public Relations Student Society of America.
Teaching Assistant Award winner Sonul Baral, left, and University College Advisory Board Member Robert Bond.
Teaching Assistant Award winner Matthew Barnes, left, and University College Advisory Board Member Robert Bond.
Teaching Assistant Awards – Doctoral students Matthew Barnes and Sonu Baral received LSU Alumni Association Graduate Teaching Assistant awards at University College’s “Celebration of Excellence” Spring Awards program in March. The award recognizes teaching assistants who demonstrate an environment of learning and inspiration in the classroom. Barnes (2014 MAST SCI) is pursuing a Ph.D. in mathematics. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of West Florida in 2012. Baral is working toward a Ph.D. in biochemistry. She received a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from the University of New Orleans. Photos provided by University College
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Around Campus
In Focus
From left, Harry “Skip” Philips, Thomas Hayes, Chief Justice Bernette Joshua Johnson, LSU Law Dean Tom Galligan, John deGravelles, Jane Brandt, and James Brown.
Distinguished Law Alumni – Alumna of the Year Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Bernette Joshua Johnson (1969 JD) and Alumnus of the Year U.S. District Court Judge John W. DeGravelles (1974 JD), Middle District of Louisiana, highlighted the roster of notable alumni honored at the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center Distinguished Alumni Celebration in March. The 2018 Distinguished Achievement honorees were Jane Politz Brandt (1986 JD), of counsel at Thompson & Knight in Dallas; James A. Brown (1981 BACH H&SS, 1984 JD), partner at Liskow & Lewis in New Orleans; Thomas M. Hayes, III (1977 JD), partner at Hayes, Harkey, Smith & Cascio, in Monroe, La.; and Harry J. “Skip” Philips, Jr. (1972 BACH H&SS, 1983 JD), managing partner at Taylor, Porter, Brooks, & Phillips in Baton Rouge. Photo provided by the LSU Law Center
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Claire L. Cagnolatti, Ourso College of Business Dean Richard White, Jr., and Maurice J. “Skip” Robichaux, III.
Outstanding Business Alums – Claire L. Cagnolatti and Maurice J. “Skip” Robichaux, III, were inducted into the E.J. Ourso College of Business Hall of Distinction in March. Cagnolatti (1978 BACH ENGR, 1982 MBA) is vice president of chemicals for HSB Solomon Associations in Dallas. As a female engineer who launched her career in the late 1970s, she broke gender barriers and was the first female in nearly every position she held. Robichaux (1983 BACH BUS), a partner with KPMG, serves as state and local tax leader for the firm’s west region. A CPA, Robichaux has been with KPMG for more than thirty years. Photo by Bret Levetro, Eye Wander
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Around Campus
In Focus
Governor John Bel Edwards is tapped by Randy Gurie. Photo by Tyler Walker
Claire Parsiola, Paige Davis, D-D Breaux, Lance D'Armond, Cliff Vannoy, Signe Parsiola, Otey White, and Nichole Kaufman. Photo by Ray Dry
ODK Induction – Inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa National Leadership Honor Society (ODK) in March were Governor John Bel Edwards (1999 JD), LSU Gymnastics Coach D-D Breaux (1975 BACH HS&E, 1978 MAST HS&E), Kappa Sigma Alumni President Lance D'Armond (1964 BACH BUS), LSU Alumni Association President Cliff Vannoy, and Adjunct Professor of Mass Communication Otey White (1983 BACH MCOM). Taking part in the ceremony at St. Alban’s Chapel at LSU were ODK officers Claire Parsiola, vice president of membership; Paige Davis, circle coordinator; Signe Parsiola, president; and Nichole Kaufman, treasurer. Edwards, tapped for membership earlier in the month at the state capitol by alumni liaison Randy Gurie, was unable to attend the induction ceremony.
CCK Conference – “Sustainable
Elizabeth “Boo” Thomas, president and CEO of the Center for Planning Excellence, speaks during a panel on “Technology and Urban Design” at the inaugural conference of the LSU Center for Collaborative Knowledge. She was joined by, from left, SeungJong Jay Park, Fred H. Fenn Memorial Professor of Computer Science at LSU; Charles Catlett, senior computer scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory; Andrew Schwarz, Francis M. “Dud” Coates Professor of Humanities in the E.J. Ourso College of Business; and Christopher Tyson, Newman Trowbridge Distinguished Professor of Law at LSU.
Cities and Communities,” a conference sponsored by the Center for Collaborative Knowledge in April, explored the environmental, sociological, and political challenges of life in urban and rural communities, focusing on opportunities for future growth and sustainability. More than a hundred students, faculty, and friends of LSU attended the two-day event, which included keynote lectures, roundtable Kaitlin Schuette, a junior in the Robert Reich School discussions, and student posters on of Landscape Architecture, stands in the Rotunda of topics ranging from artificial intelligence the Energy, Coast, and Environment Building as she describes the work she did in Marwan Ghandour’s and environmental conservation to architecture studio. Her project – “Densifying within urban policing and ecological poetry. the Divide: A Framework for Development for Kigali, The mission of the LSU Center for Rawanda” – earned second place in the student poster contest at the inaugural conference of the LSU Collaborative Knowledge is to bring the Center for Collaborative Knowledge. LSU community together to address major questions facing society and to solve problems through creativity and cooperation across academic disciplines. Photos provided by Michael Pasquier
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From left, Michael Barton, Dalgis Mesa, and Z. George Xue. Not pictured, Karen Maruska.
Phi Kappa Phi Awards – Four faculty members were honored by the LSU Chapter of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and the LSU Alumni Association at the PKP 2018 Awards and Induction Ceremony in March. Receiving Non-Tenured Faculty Awards of $1,000 each were Michael Barton, assistant professor of sociology; Z. George Xue, assistant professor of oceanography and coastal sciences; and Karen Maruska, assistant professor of biological sciences. Dalgis Mesa, instructor of physics and astronomy, received the $1,000 Outstanding Instructor award. The chapter inducted 114 new members, and chapter President Richard Vlosky presented a PKP medallion to LSU Alumni Association President Cliff Vannoy, recognizing the Association’s support of the honor society. The Association and PKP co-fund the faculty awards.
Phi Kappa Phi Chapter President Richard Vlosky, left, recognizes LSU Alumni Association President Cliff Vannoy.
Photos by William Boyd Lee, II
Congratulations WALTER JOHN LEGER III YOUNG ALUMNUS OF THE YEAR
on your induction to the LSU ALUMNI HALL OF DISTINCTION
F R O M Y O U R L S U F A M I LY: M O M C AT H Y, D A D W A LT E R L E G E R , J R , W I F E D A N I E L L E , BROTHER RHETT AND WIFE DANA, SISTER LIZ AND HUSBAND JEFF
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Around Campus
Final Report LSU President’s Task Force on Greek Life
“Greek students have had a long history of leadership at LSU, including higher grade point averages, higher graduation rates, and enhanced alumni philanthropy . . . these recommendations will provide the framework for the needed cultural change to allow those important traditions to continue.”
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President F. King Alexander in February officially accepted the recommendations of the President’s Task Force on Greek Life, adding three new policies to “impact the safety of Greek life on campus.” The twenty-eight changes meant to curb hazing and binge drinking fall into three major categories – University policies, transparency related to chapter behavior, and Greek culture on campus. Key items include banning common-source alcohol and “hard” liquor at Greek functions and an amnesty policy to encourage students to report dangerous behavior. The president’s additional policies call for “no more gray areas – hazing means expulsion or removal from campus.” The University also will have the right to spotcheck parties, and a national firm will be hired to evaluate existing policies and develop an educational program for Greek organizations. King established the task force in September 2017 following the death of Max Gruver, a freshman who died from alcohol poisoning following an initiation event at the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house. Rob Stuart (1978 BACH BUS, 1979 MAST BUS), of Baton Rouge, chaired the panel. “Greek students have had a long history of leadership at LSU including higher grade point averages, higher graduation rates, and enhanced alumni philanthropy to the University,” Stuart said. “I believe these recommendations will provide the framework for the needed cultural change to allow those important traditions to continue at LSU.” The plan was implemented upon acceptance of the report and extends into Fall 2018. (All task force reports are available at http://www.lsu.edu/greek-life-taskforce/.) “I want to be clear about two issues,” King said. “There will be full and thorough follow-up and checkpoints along the way, and there will never be a stopping point. This is not the end, but rather a starting point for the long-term, a comprehensive shift in culture that will ultimately make the University community flourish even more.” In March, LSU rescinded Phi Delta Theta’s registration through Dec. 31, 2032, and no request for reinstatement will be considered prior to Jan. 1, 2033. Bills were introduced in the 2018 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature to make hazing a felony with harsher penalties and to protect the identity of any person who reports dangers such as hazing. For information, visit https://www.legis.la.gov/.
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LSU Prof Part of Antarctic Penguin ‘Super Colony’ Study
Around Campus
By Ed Cullen
Danger Islands Expedition team members on Heroina Island, Danger Islands, Antarctica Photo by Alex Borowicz, Stony Brook University
Michael Polito , assistant professor of oceanography and coastal sciences, has an almost twenty-year association with Antarctica. Photo by Tom Hart, University of Oxford
“That there were a lot of penguins down there wasn’t news. Counting the birds and coming up with a figure of 1.5 million, that got the attention of the penguin press.”
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Growing up in northeastern Ohio, Michael Polito thought he might want a career in marine biology. He knew he wanted to go to school some place where it was warm. He ended up going to college in sunny coastal North Carolina at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW). Then, he went to Antarctica. Polito, an assistant professor of oceanography and coastal sciences at LSU, was an old Antarctica hand when the discovery by Polito and colleagues at Oxford University and Stony Brook of 1.5 million previously unknown penguins made the scientists the toasts of the internet, television, and newspapers this spring. That there were a lot of penguins down there wasn’t news. Counting the birds and coming up with a figure of 1.5 million —that got the attention of the penguin press. A team of researchers from LSU, Oxford, Stony Brook, Northeastern University, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution launched an expedition to the Danger Islands in 2015. Ground counts, a drone survey, and satellite images found 751,527 pairs of Adélie penguins on the eastern side of
the Antarctic Peninsula. The discovery means there are more Adélies on the eastern side of the peninsula than the rest of the peninsula combined. One of Polito’s professors at UNCW, Steven Emslie, got Polito interested in sea birds. In 2000, Polito’s senior year, Emslie, who’d been to Antarctica, had grant money for an undergraduate to go to the bottom of the world. “I jumped at it,” Polito said. Polito began what has become an almost twenty-year association with Antarctica, starting at McMurdo Station near McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea region of Antarctica. The Antarctic Peninsula is across the continent to the northwest, just below South America. “We were down there a couple of months,” Polito said of his first trip. “We’d take helicopters to islands. We’d tent camp on the islands and along the coast. They’d drop us off and we’d camp two or three days.” “It was an eye opener,” Polito said. “I fell in love with the Antarctic.” As an undergraduate, he published a paper on the diets of penguins based on findings in ancient nesting grounds. In old and new guano deposits, researchers found tiny fish ear bones that told scientists what kind of fish Adélie
penguins ate over the last 1,000 years. The penguins also eat krill and squid. The penguins take their name from Adèle Dumont d’Urville, wife of French explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville, who first recorded their existence in 1840. Adélies grow to a height of 28 inches, weighing 10 pounds. Emperor penguins grow as tall as four feet and weigh as much as 100 pounds. As a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration field camp manager, Polito spent three years researching and analyzing data from penguins on the Antarctic Peninsula. He split the year between the Antarctic and NOAA’s La Jolla, Calif., labs. “I reached back to Steve Emslie about going back to grad school at UNCW,” Polito said. He used his NOAA data to blend a master’s degree into a Ph.D., hence his bachelor’s and doctorate from UNCW. Polito has spent seventeen seasons in Antarctica, often coming and going more than once in a season. As many as forty commercial tour ships visit Antarctica from South America. As a Ph.D. student at UNCW and now as an LSU faculty member, Polito rides along as a guest scientist to conduct his research. “In two hours, we can collect lots of feathers, egg shells, and other penguin tissue,” he said. As a post-doc at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, Polito and colleagues conducted high resolution forensic analyses of the chemical composition of penguin feathers using “compound-specific stable isotope analysis of amino acids.” Analysis of the penguins’ tail feathers told scientists what the birds ate and where they migrated in the winter. Polito first had the chance to visit one of the Danger Islands on the east side of the peninsula in 2006. The water around the island “boiled with Adélie penguins,” Polito reported. With only two hours on land, “it was impossible to estimate the size of the population before sea ice conditions forced us to leave,” he said. In 2014, satellite images studied by colleague Heather Lynch, associate
professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University, and others suggested there might be large colonies of penguins on all of the Danger Islands. “I thought, holy cow,” Lynch said, “there are not only colonies but huge colonies of some sort of penguin. How did we miss this really obvious thing?” The penguin team went back to the eastern Antarctic Peninsula on a dedicated expedition to the Danger Islands in 2015. “It was a crap shoot,” Polito said. “We were lucky to even reach the islands. There were tons of sea ice in the area. We could have spent a lot of money and not gotten there.” Once on the Danger Islands, the team used satellite images and flying drones to collect thousands of aerial images. The images were stitched together and counted using a computer program to estimate 1.5 million penguins (751,527 pairs of Adélie) nesting across nine islands. “The results of our study indicate that, not only do the Danger Islands hold the largest population of Adélie penguins on the Antarctic Peninsula but more than the rest of the entire Antarctic Peninsula region combined,” Polito said. “The discovery means these islands include the third and fourth largest Adélie penguin colonies in the world.” The two largest are Cape Adare and Cape Crozier in the Ross Sea region of Antarctica. Adélie penguins on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula appear to have not suffered the population declines of penguins along the peninsula’s western side, Polito said. The decline on the western side is associated with increased temperature and decreased ice conditions induced by human inhabitants of the planet.
Adélie penguins on sea ice next to Comb Island, Danger Islands, Antarctica. Photo by Michael Polito
The Danger Islands hold the largest population of Adélie penguins on the Antarctic Peninsula – more than the rest of the entire Antarctic Peninsula region combined.
Ed Cullen, an LSU journalism graduate, is author of Letter in a Woodpile, a collection of his essays for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” He is retired from the Baton Rouge Advocate where he wrote the Sunday column “Attic Salt.”
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Preparing Students for Success; Inspiring Them to Pay It Forward
Focus on
FACULTY By Kaylee Poche
Alumni Professor Todd Monroe was one of LSU’s first biological engineering graduates. Photo by Casey Muller
“When I think of my greatest successes, they’re those students I surround myself with.”
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When Todd Monroe earned his degree in biological engineering in 1996, he was among six students in the first biological engineering class to graduate from LSU. Originally focused on agricultural engineering, the program shifted to include biomedical and bioprocessing components, prompting the Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering to create a bachelor’s degree program in Biological Engineering in which Monroe – the Donald and Norma Nash McClure Alumni Professor – now teaches. “It’s been fun to see the department grow and change,” Monroe said. “Since I graduated, we’ve had an explosion of an increase in students.” After graduating from LSU, Monroe moved to Nashville to pursue master’s, Ph.D., and postdoctoral degrees in biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University. Afterward, he and his wife, Jessica (1996 BACH H&SS, 1999 MPA), returned to Monroe’s hometown of Baton Rouge and her job at Johnson & Johnson. The move prompted Monroe to call his former professor and mentor in the department, Dick Bengtson, asking if he knew of any Ph.D.-level jobs around town in the field. Before hanging up, Monroe had agreed to apply for an assistant professor position that would require research and teaching at his alma mater. Once the call ended, however, he began to feel nervous. He was no stranger to research but had never taught a class before. “It was a scary moment, but looking back on it, making that leap was probably the best decision I’ve ever made,” Monroe said. “When I look back and think of my greatest successes, they’re those students I surround myself with.” Monroe currently teaches a freshman Introduction to Engineering Methods course and two biological engineering electives for upperclassmen, Biomechanics and Molecular Methods – the latter a course he created. He
enjoys teaching the introductory course because the students are new to engineering, he said, but also enjoys the flexibility of the electives. “It’s fun because freshmen come in wide-eyed,” Monroe said. “They don’t really know what they’re getting into yet, in terms of engineering calculations and design. You’ve got to be pretty dialed in, or you’re not getting any credit.” In his classes and research labs, Monroe loves seeing the new ideas and perspectives students bring to the table, he said. “The problem is, when you get old like me you tend to do things the same way every time,” he said “One of the most fun aspects of my job is that there are new ideas that are constantly percolating up, and a lot of these ideas come from my undergrad team. It’s neat to see some of those hit and make it to get published or patented.” Todd follows his father, Bill Monroe, and his maternal grandfather, Buddy Switzer, as a third generation LSU College of Engineering graduate. As such, when it came time to choose a major at LSU, some discipline of engineering was in the cards for him. The mixture of engineering’s precision and the “wonder of biology” originally drew Monroe to the field. “I was the kid who was always in the backyard in the ditch collecting snakes, turtles, frogs, and fish,” he said. “I’ve always liked the blood, guts, and goop of the life sciences so, for me, the biological engineering field was the best of both worlds.” Working as an EKG technician during college reaffirmed for Monroe that he had chosen the right field. Through the job, he able to witness how an engineermade machine helps doctors accurately diagnose cardiac pathologies in a patient. “It was amazing for me to see the direct impact technology could have to help someone,” Monroe said. “That’s when I said, ‘this is what I have to do.’” Monroe’s earlier medical research included cellular and tissue engineering, genetically altering cells to achieve desired outcomes, like producing new cartilage to “essentially heal someone from the inside out.” His research now
focuses on microdevices for cellular analysis that could replace standard medical equipment and assays to generate test results more quickly and efficiently. However, Monroe explained, it often takes fifteen to twenty years before lab findings can be implemented in a clinic. Todd holds the distinctions of being a National Science Foundation CAREER Award winner for integrated research and teaching, the Tiger Athletic Foundation President’s Award, the LSU Rainmaker Award for Top-Producing Research and Creative Faculty, and a LSU Howard Hughes Medical Institute Distinguished Mentor Award.
Monroe said his goal as a teacher is to help students succeed professionally and inspire them to pass on the favor. “If you look at the people aspect of the job and see the impact that hopefully you’re making on a student who will then pay it forward and do great things to help other people,” Monroe said, “that’s a fun spot to be at, to watch what happens years down the line.” Kaylee Poche is a senior in the Manship School of Mass Communication and, as a member of the Manship Statehouse News Bureau, reports on the Louisiana Legislature.
LSU Alumni Association’s Alumni Professorship Program recognizes excellence in instruction, especially in undergraduate teaching. There are currently forty-six alumni professorships. To make a gift to the endowment or to leave a legacy, visit www.lsualumni.org/giving.
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Locker
Understanding Baseball’s Hitting Science
ROOM By Bud Johnson
Director of Player Development Micah Gibbs, left, and Hitting Coach Sean Ochinko review videos of Tiger hitters throughout the baseball season. A video will show flaws in a hitter’s swing. Players and coaches consider the hitter’s video history a valuable tool in tracking a player’s development. Photo by Ray Dry
Could the giants of baseball history understand the sport’s current terminology? Did Casey Stengel explain “exit velocity” to Mickey Mantle? If you still believe that “batting average” is one of the most important statistics in evaluating hitters, join the club. However, baseball’s hitting gurus have moved past that basic statistic. They discuss hitting with terms like exit velocity and launch angle. To learn about the science of hitting, I called on Micah Gibbs, director of player development for the Tigers. He speaks the language of high-tech hitting and has the latest tools to measure exit velocity and launch angle. Exit velocity represents the speed at which a ball leaves the bat. Launch angle measures the vertical direction of the ball coming off the bat. These metrics are essential measurements in the science of hitting. It is Gibbs’ objective to help improve a hitter’s performance. He discusses his findings with the hitter and passes the information along to Coach Paul Mainieri and Sean Ochinko, the Tigers’ hitting coach. Just as there is a radar gun to measure a pitcher’s velocity, Gibbs has similar equipment to clock batted ball exit speed and to track launch angle. His technical tools are known as Trackman and HitTrax. “Trackman measures exit speed,” Gibbs said. “HitTrax and Trackman both measure launch angle. Our Trackman system is setup above the press box at Alex Box Stadium. When the site is powered up on one of our computers we can track anything done on the field.” Gibbs taught me that balls hit with a high launch angle are more likely to result in extra base hits, whereas balls hit with a lower launch angle produce more base hits. We posed a series of questions to Coach Gibbs about how this scientific approach affects the LSU hitter.
Have you seen a hitter progress using this technology? “Absolutely,” Gibbs says. “In the fall, we preach more exit speed and quality at bats than batting average. We want to instill aggressiveness in the hitters and by the end of the fall they are challenging each other with who hits the ball the hardest and who does it the most.”
How are the LSU hitting coaches using this technology and information to improve performance? “We track a player’s progress by collecting all of their data when they arrive on campus,” Gibbs said, “and routinely check their exit speeds, swing and miss rate, and the percentage of balls in play over 95 MPH.” He has been an enthusiast of this technical approach and data collection since he was exposed to these methods as a player in the Kansas City Royals system at the AA level. “I realized that this would be the future of baseball,” Gibbs said. “Our pitching coach and manager were big into this evolving technology. They are both coaching in the major leagues now, and their knowledge of this technology was definitely instrumental in them moving up.”
How do you use videos to assist the hitter?
Zach Watson’s solo home run against Mississippi State on March 29 is on file in Micah Gibbs’ office in Alex Box Stadium. The exit speed and launch angle give LSU coaches a running record of Watson’s home runs this season. Gibbs shares this data with Watson, Tiger Hitting Coach Sean Ochinko, and Coach Paul Mainieri. Courtesy LSU Athletics
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“Antoine Duplantis started the 2017 season 0 for 12 (opening weekend),” Gibbs said. “After the weekend, I brought him in and showed him that his hands were starting from a completely different place. It was making his swing long. The next game, he gets three hits and goes on to lead our team in hits for the second year in a row.”
How have you used this new technology to increase performance? “Nick Webre is a guy that came in hitting the ball really hard, but he was grounding out a lot,” Gibbs said. “Using HitTrax in the fall and winter, we had him try to start hitting the ball through the gaps and over the outfielder’s heads since he has so much bat speed and power.”
“Baseball is like church. Many attend; few understand.” –Leo Durocher Who develops the information on opposing pitchers and gives it to the hitters? “I put the information together on all of their pitchers in an excel document, print it out, and go over it with Sean Ochinko, our hitting coach,” Gibbs said. “During the game, we’ll go over each relief pitcher once they start warming up and decide the plan of attack based on previous discussion and how the game is going and the situation at that time.”
How is this information disseminated? “Every Thursday morning, we have an academic meeting to go over the progress of each student-athlete,” Gibbs said. “Once that meeting is over, Jamie Tutko and I will go over the opponent that weekend, their starting pitchers, their bullpen arms, and their team as a whole. After practice that Thursday, Sean will give them a Cliff ’s Notes version of the starter on Friday, and then each day before BP [batting practice] we will go over the starter in a more in depth fashion.” Gibbs and Ochinko, two of Mainieri’s bright young staff members, are up to speed on the latest technology and coaching methods for hitters. They both have College World Series championship rings from 2009 – and they helped LSU get back to Omaha where the Tigers finished second to pitching-rich Florida last season. Gibbs was an All-America catcher for Mainieri. His .388 average in 2010 is one of the top ten batting averages in LSU baseball history. His professional baseball career topped out at the AAA level, but it introduced him to the technology that utilizes the latest methods and mechanics to track a hitter’s progress. When Gibbs suffered a serious knee injury in January and was assigned the role of director of player development, Ochinko became the volunteer coach/hitting coach. He spent the years 2009-2015 in the Toronto Blue Jays minor league system. He now brings his enthusiasm to Alex Box Stadium every day to help LSU players improve their hitting skills. LSU baseball hired a strength coach just a few years ago. Could a team physicist be next?
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Locker Room
How Jacob Hester Became a Tiger Stadium Hero
Jacob Hester scores the winning touchdown against Florida. Photo courtesy LSU Athletics
“. . . the sideline had decided to go for the touchdown. With Hester running like that, why not?”
Tiger Stadium’s history of fourthquarter fireworks made it a dreaded address for ambitious opponents. Big games, big plays, special athletes, and more than a few “Hollywood endings” built this legend. Here are some of the most memorable of LSU’s fourth-quarter finishes in Tiger Stadium: Cannon’s Run Billy Cannon ran through one of America’s best football teams – Ole Miss – to score on an 89-yard punt return in the fourth quarter of 1959’s game of the year. LSU 7, Ole Miss 3.
Bert Jones’ One Mississippi TD Pass Bert Jones’ touchdown pass and Brad Davis’ one-handed grab in the game’s final second enabled LSU to catch Ole Miss. Rusty Jackson’s extra point after time had expired made it 17-16 Tigers in this 1972 thriller. The most dramatic drive in Tiger Stadium history was a 13play, 80-yard beauty in the final three minutes. Jones converted two fourthdown plays, and he needed only one timeout for assistance.
The Earthquake Game Tommy Hodson’s touchdown strike to Eddie Fuller beat Auburn, and Death Valley shook! The roar of the crowd
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registered on a seismograph meter in the Department of Geology across campus. Jacob Hester’s gritty runs against Florida in 2007 rank right up there, but his performance differs from the celebrated highlights listed above. This fourth-quarter comeback was not quick. It was tense and torturous. It required almost ten minutes of the final quarter, covering 60 yards. In a nail-biting windup, Hester got the call eight times, grinding his way for 39 precious yards, more than half of the real estate essential to winning the game, and successfully converting two “fourth-and-ones.” Hester wasn't a “run to daylight” runner. He was a blue-collar bruiser noted for getting the toughest yards when the opponents knew he was coming. He was LSU’s leading rusher in that 2007 game with 106 yards. His longest run was for 19 yards. A good night’s work against a stout defense, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. His longest run came in that fourth quarter drive when LSU needed it most. On this October night – CBS televised it in prime time – unbeaten LSU came in as the nation’s No. 1 team. Florida was No. 9 but looked like No. 1. Tim Tebow passed for 158 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 67 more and another TD, while the Florida defense dominated the Tigers. The Gators led
17-7 at halftime, and 24-14 at the end of three quarters. LSU’s undefeated season and national championship hopes seemed doomed. Kirston Pittman’s pass interception at the Florida 27 suddenly changed things. There was 12:05 left in the fourth quarter. Trindon Holliday darted 16 yards to the Gator 11. Keiland Williams ran for nine. On fourth down at the Florida 4, Matt Flynn hit Demetrius Byrd for a touchdown with 10:15 left. Colt David’s extra point narrowed the margin to 24-21. LSU had a chance, but the Tigers had to stop Tebow. Florida gained six yards and used just 54 seconds of the time remaining before punting to the LSU 40. With 9:40 remaining, the Tigers were 60 yards away. A field goal would tie it. But that could give the ball back to Tebow with too much time. On the first play of what would be a 15-play drive, Hester gained seven to the LSU 47. Encouraged by the shift in momentum, the home crowd was warming to the task. They were ready to do their part. A penalty briefly spoiled the party. Jared Mitchell was flagged for offensive pass interference, moving the ball back to the Tiger 32. On third down, Flynn scrambled for 15 yards to the LSU 49, a yard shy of a first down. The crowd was on its feet with one thought: “Don’t give the ball back to Tebow now.” Les Miles obliged. Hester ran onto the field. He powered into the line for a gain of two yards — a first down in Florida territory. “When everything is on the line,” Hester said later, “and the coach calls your number, you don’t want to let him down.” Flynn passed to Richard Dickson for 14 yards to the Florida 35.
Hester made his longest run of the night – 19 yards – breaking through a crease on the left side and into the secondary. Hester made no effort to avoid the safety; he lowered his shoulder and knocked the Gator backward but was caught from behind by defenders. Jacob’s run to the Gator 16 made a statement. LSU was winning the battle up front, and Hester was a man possessed. The Tigers were burning up clock and the sideline had decided to go for the touchdown. With Hester running like that, why not? Hester got four and Ryan Perrilloux gained five to the Florida 7. Two plays later, on another fourth-and-one, LSU called on Hester again. He bulled his way for two yards and a first down at the five. After Flynn’s incompletion, Hester, on his seventh carry of the drive, stormed ahead for three yards to the Gator 2. Florida called timeout with 1:14 left. The crowd was in a wild and crazy mode. They knew the Tigers were going to win this game. On third down, LSU called on Hester again. He drove across the goal and onto the end zone turf, giving the Tigers the lead for the first time that night. David’s extra point made the score 28-24. Only 1:09 showed on the scoreboard clock. Tebow completed one pass, gained 21 yards on a running play, and was sacked once as the clock wound down. The Sporting News named Hester National Player of the Week for his play against Florida. He is a permanent team captain of the 2007 Tigers, a team that defeated Ohio State in the BCS version of the national championship. Jacob Hester’s role in a stirring fourth quarter comeback will long be a favorite memory of Tiger fans.
2018 LSU Alumni Association Honorary National Fund Chair LSU Football Legend and Alumnus www.lsualumni.org/blog/jacob-hester
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Indoor Softball Facility Will Be SEC’s Largest
Locker Room
Photos courtesy LSU Athletics
The proposed LSU Softball Performance Center will be one of the top indoor facilities in college softball with a space of 14,500 square feet.
“The development of this facility was a priority for LSU softball.”
LSU softball has announced plans for a new indoor practice facility at Tiger Park. The LSU Softball Performance Center will be one of the top indoor facilities in college softball, and the largest facility of its kind in the SEC with a space of 14,500 square feet. “Our administration ensured that the development of this facility was a priority for LSU softball,” Coach Beth Torina said. ”We are taking another step in the process of creating excellence daily at LSU by providing our athletes with an indoor training facility that is second to none.” “This facility truly sets the table for us in terms of developing our current athletes while also providing the next generation of LSU softball players with the opportunity to excel at the highest level,” Torina continued. “LSU prides itself in providing a firstrate experience for our student-athletes.” The LSU Softball Performance Center will feature: • A full-sized indoor infield with custom, motorized netting surrounding the entire surface, allowing the team to practice in all weather conditions. • A 1,279-square-foot weight room. • A 770-square-foot room on the second floor dedicated to cardio equipment. • Multiple batting machines throughout the facility. • A custom multi-camera system, providing the student-athletes and staff with an opportunity to immediately review practice film. • Locker room and storage space. “Our staff had a vision for this facility,” Torina explained, “and we were able to make this vision a reality largely in part to the diligent work by the individuals at the Tiger Athletic Foundation. We are thankful to everyone in the LSU family, past and current, who assisted us in seeing this project to its completion.” “Our coaching staff does not want to miss an opportunity to express our gratitude to the donors who have assisted specifically with this project and to all of our dedicated fans who have supported this program so strongly,” Torina said. Ground breaking and naming rights information will be announced at a later date. Locker Room is compiled and edited by Bud Johnson, retired director of the Andonie Sports Museum and a former LSU Sports Information director. He is the author of The Perfect Season: LSU's Magic Year – 1958.
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Geaux With The Pros TAKE THE HASSLE OUT OF TRAVEL DALLAS · AUBURN · GAINESVILLE · COLLEGE STATION
Packages available including tickets, accommodations, transportation, and tailgate party. For more information, contact Sally Stiel at Sally@lsualumni.org or 225-578-4248. Register online at www.lsualumni.org/traveling-tigers
Tiger
NATION
1940s
Betty Hughes (1947 BACH SCI), of Bogalusa, La., endowed a Louisiana Forestry Foundation scholarship in memory of her late husband, Jefferson Davis Hughes, Jr. (1949 BACH AGR). The Jeff Hughes Memorial Scholarship will provide annual scholarships and grants for forestry education research and public awareness. Hughes, acknowledged as “an icon in the industry,” worked for Gaylord Container Corporation and its successors – Crown Zellerbach, Caveham, Hanson, and Weyhaeuser, for fifty-one years and served as president of the Louisiana Forestry Association in 1979. He retired in 1986, worked as a consultant until 2000, and passed away in 2017. Degrees BACH Bachelor’s Degree MAST Master’s Degree PHD Doctorate SPEC Specialist DVM Doctor of Veterinary Medicine JD Juris Doctorate (LSU Law School) LLM Master of Laws MD Medical Doctor (LSU School of Medicine) DDS Doctor of Dental Science (LSU School of Dentistry) Colleges/Schools AGR Agriculture A&D Art & Design C&E Coast & Environment H&SS Humanities & Social Sciences SCI Science BUS Business HS&E Human Sciences & Education ENGR Engineering M&DA Music & Dramatic Arts MCOM Mass Communication SCE School of the Coast & Environment SVM School of Veterinary Medicine SW Social Work
1950s
Robert L. Atkinson (1952 JD), an attorney in the Baton Rouge office of Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson, was named to the 2018 edition of Louisiana Super Lawyers in the area of Health Care.
1960s
Walter J. McDonald (1966 BACH H&SS) is president of The McDonald Group, Inc., near Chicago. For the past forty years, McDonald has focused on industrial equipment dealer development, and is author of a five-book series, The Master’s Program in Dealer Management. Since 1975, he has conducted more than 2,650 dealer management seminars and workshops worldwide for construction equipment, forklift, and heavy duty truck dealers and distributors. Visit www.mcdonaldgroupinc.com or contact McDonald at walt@mcdonaldgroupinc.com.
1970s
David Cassidy (1972 BACH H&SS, 1975 JD), an attorney in the Baton Rouge office of Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson, was named to the 2018 edition of Louisiana Super Lawyers in the area of Tax. James L. Decker (1972 BACH H&SS 1975 MAST H&SS), president and CEO of MEDIC Regional Blood Center in Knoxville, Tenn., was
recognized by the Greater Knoxville Business Journal as the 2017 Healthcare Hero for Administrative Excellence. He has served in various senior executive positions for several Tennessee hospitals and health systems for more than fortyone years. After earning two degrees in microbiology at LSU, Decker earned master’s degrees in hospital and health administration from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and in business administration from the University of Tennessee, as well as a doctoral degree in health administration from the Medical University of South Carolina. John Elstrott (1970 BACH H&SS, 1972 MAST BUS), former chairman of the board of Whole Foods and now chairman of Microbiome Therapeutics, is involved in the launch of BiomeBliss, a patented, first-in-class prebiotic dietary supplement specifically developed to support a healthy gastrointestinal (GI) microbiome. Elstrott recently retired after thirty years as professor at the Tulane University A.B. Freeman School of Business. He also served as the first CFO of natural-foods innovator and specialty tea-maker Celestial Seasonings. Gay Hebert (1973 BACH HS&E, 1975 MAST HS&E, 1978 CERT HS&E) was named Administrator of the Year by the Diocese of Baton Rouge in January and was presented with an award by Bishop Robert Muenche at the Catholic Schools Week mass. She was also recognized for forty years of service to the Catholic schools system, all as assistant principal at St. Aloysius School. Hebert retired in May.
SHARE YOUR NEWS Share news of your new job or promotion, your wedding, honors, awards, new babies, and other
celebrations with fellow alumni. To submit an item and photos for publication, e-mail jackie@lsualumni.org or call 225-578-3370.
58 LSU Alumni Magazine | Summer 2018
Susan Talley (1978 BACH HS&E, 1981 JD), an attorney with Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann in New Orleans, was elected president of the Louisiana State Law Institute. Talley is the current – and first female – chair of the Anglo-American Real Property Institute and previously served as chair of the American Bar Association Section of Real Property, Trust, and Estate Law. As a member of Stone Pigman, she has worked on several high-profile real estate matters in Louisiana.
1980s
Richard J. Arsenault (1980 JD), a partner in Neblett, Beard & Arsenault law firm in Alexandria, La., spoke at a mass tort conference in Cancun earlier this year and next year will co-chair the conference. In May, he co-chaired a mass tort/complex litigation conference in Chicago. Dawn Hebert Beasley (1983 BACH BUS), of Fairhope, Ala., a realtor with Bellator Real Estate and Development and Truland Homes, received the company’s CEO Circle Award from Nathan Cox, CEO,
and Troy Wilson, president, this spring. Beasley is founding and current president of the Alabama Baldwin County Alumni Chapter, the Baldwin Bengals. Jude C. Bursavich (1983 BACH H&SS, 1988 JD), an attorney in the Baton Rouge office of Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson, was named to the 2018 edition of Louisiana Super Lawyers in the area of Business Litigation. Robert J. “Bobby” Crifasi (1981 BACH BUS), general manager of New Orleans Country Club, was elected president of the Club Managers Association of America
Congratulations 2018 LSU ALUMNI HALL OF DISTINCTION RECIPIENT & YOUNG ALUMNUS OF THE YEAR
WALTER JOHN LEGER III FROM
L eger & Shaw
Attorneys
and
Counselors
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(CMAA) Board of Directors. Crifasi previously served as vice president of CMAA and was first elected to the Board of Directors in 2013. He has been employed by New Orleans Country Club since 1988 and previously served as the club’s outside auditor. He became a member of CMAA in 1991 and has served on many national committees. Crifasi serves on the advisory boards of the University of New Orleans School of Hotel, Restaurant, and Tourism and the University of New Orleans College of Business. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Louisiana State Society of CPAs.
Linda K. Ewbank (1986 BACH BUS, 1992 JD) was named a partner in Hammonds, Sills, Adkins & Guice law firm. Ewbank, based in the firm’s Hammond, La., office, is a workers compensation expert and a key member of the firm’s civil defense litigation team. She is admitted to practice in all Louisiana state courts, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Kristy Roubique (1980 BACH BUS), a realtor with Keller Williams and co-owner of Louisiana CNI, was named at 2018 Outstanding Alumna by St. Joseph’s Academy.
2018 Hall of Distinction Inductees
Roubique, who was recognized as “a faith-driven entrepreneur and community volunteer who utilizes her gifts in service to others,” serves property manager for twelve community homes for individuals with special needs.
1990s
Emily Grey (1994 BACH H&SS, 2000 JD), an attorney in the Baton Rouge office of Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson, was named to the 2018 edition of Louisiana Super Lawyers in the area of Health Care.
Do you know an outstanding individual who
has made significant contributions to society and whose achievements have brought credit and distinction to LSU?
Nominations for 2018 Hall of Distinction inductees are now being accepted. For more information, please visit lsualumni.org/annual-events/ Hall-of-Distinction or call (225) 578-3838.
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Helen Broussard Curol (1987 MLS) was presented the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by Marquis Who's Who. A highly regarded voice in the field of library science, Curol has served as a library consultant with the Calcasieu Parish Public Schools for more than a decade. Since 2013, she has taught online library courses through Northwestern State University. Prior to joining Calcasieu Parish Public Schools in 2004, she worked as a media library technician with LaGrange High School for seven years, maintained a consulting business for seven years, and completed her master’s degree while serving as a librarian with McNeese State University for two decades. She is involved with a wide range of industry organizations, including the Louisiana Association of Computer Using Educators, and has received grants from the Louisiana Center for Women in Government and Business with Nicholls State University, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Fair Housing Initiatives Program, Louisiana Division of the Arts, and Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. She was named Librarian of the Year by the Louisiana Reading Association in 2015 and in 2000 received the USA Freedom Corps Silver Medal of Appreciation from Beta Sigma Phi. Curol has contributed numerous articles to professional journals, most recently, "The Power of Collaboration & Content Curation with your Librarian," Region V, published through the Louisiana Library Association in 2017. Canaan Heard (2011 BACH SCI, 2005 BACH H&SS), president and CEO of PROTAC, designs training programs to improve physical fitness, strength, and conditioning, specifically for people in military service and law enforcement, as well as athletes. He recently expanded his business in New Orleans to include security and active shooter training. He also serves as president and CEO of PROTAC Foundation, which provides service-to-civilian support for returning veterans. Canaan has trained U.S. Marines, Louisiana National Guardsmen, Mississippi National Guardsmen, and service men and women in the U.S. Navy, as well as local law enforcement personnel and athletes. Heard has been a presenter at the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States (2014 Annual Conference) and a guest lecturer at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge; the War Related Injury and Illness Study Center in East Orange, N.J.; and the Center for Advanced Operational Culture and Learning with Marine Corps University. He also has evaluated combat conditioning programs and
injury prevention for the U.S. Marine Corps. His work has been published in the Journal of Military Medicine, National Strength and Conditioning Association’s Tactical Strength and Conditioning Report, and the Marine Corps Gazette. His research focuses on human performance, exercise physiology, human physiology, and postdeployment health. Canaan graduated from Tulane University School of Medicine with a master’s degree in physiology in May 2016. He is a certified personal trainer and strength and conditioning specialist. Leon Hirsch (1973 BACH BUS), at left in photo, received the 2018 C. M. Van Zandt, Jr., Award presented by the Outer Continental Shelf Advisory Board. The award was in recognition of lifelong contributions and service to the offshore oil and gas industry. A forty-four-year veteran in the petroleum industry and former president of the American Association of Professional Landmen (AAPL), Hirsch has provided leadership and direction to countless ventures, initiatives, and activities. He has been a Certified Professional Landman – the highest professional designation available in the petroleum land industry – since 1980, is a past president of AAPL, served as board chair of NAPE, and president of the Petroleum Landman’s Association of New Orleans. He co-founded the LSU Petroleum Land Management program and chaired and served on numerous other committees and association boards. The recipient of many industry awards, he was honored with the AAPL Lifetime Achievement Award as well as both AAPL and PLANO Landman of the Year awards. He has also earned the distinction of being considered one of Houston Business Journal’s top 100 most influential Houston business leaders in the energy industry. He was the vice president of land and business development of Woodside Energy (USA), Inc., and previously the co-founder, partner, and vice president for Explore Enterprises. Prior to Explore Enterprises, he was the manager of land and negotiations for Amoco and BP’s Gulf of Mexico Offshore Business Units in New Orleans and Houston. He also served as senior land negotiator for Superior Oil Company in New Orleans and as geographic director for the Amoco Foundation, BP Foundation, and Woodside Regional Community committees. Hirsch is a member of the Professional Landman’s Association of New Orleans, Houston Association of Professional Landmen, and Saint Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston. He and his wife, Sharon, have been married for thirty-six years, and they have two sons who have graduated from LSU.
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Scott N. Hensgens (1993 BACH H&SS), an attorney in the Baton Rouge office of Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson, was named to the 2018 edition of Louisiana Super Lawyers in the area of Business Litigation. Suzette Kuhlow Kent (1990 BACH MCOM), a principal with Ernst & Young’s financial services practice, was nominated in January by President Donald Trump to be administrator of the Office of Electronic Government, Office of Management and Budget, a position commonly known as federal CIO. According to the White House announcement, Kent is an industry leader of large-scale business transformation using technology for the world’s most complex organizations. She has been a partner at Accenture, consulting president at Carreker Corporation, and a managing director at JPMorgan. Kent is a frequent speaker at global industry forums, publisher of thought leadership pieces, and holds patents in banking processes. Gloria T. Nye (1997 PHD HS&E) received a 2017 lifetime recognition proclamation from Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards to acknowledge her
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academic, career, and community service achievements. She was also honored with the Board Member of the Year Award from the Louisiana Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program for her work in St. Landry Parish. Nye retired from her position as a Cooperative Extension Service agent in 2012. Wayne T. Stewart (1991 MAST H&SS, 1994 PHD H&SS) was named a partner in Hammonds, Sills, Adkins & Guice law firm. He practices in the Baton Rouge office, focusing on special education training and legal defense and also provides inservice training for school districts and other personnel concerning the various procedures and laws involving special education students and services. Stewart is admitted to practice in all Louisiana state and federal courts, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Benton Toups, 1997 BACH H&SS, 2000 JD), an attorney in the Wilmington, N.C., office of Cranfill Sumner & Hartzog received an AV® Rating from Martindale-Hubbell, a peer review rating system designed to reflect an attorney’s ethical standards and
professional ability. Toups is vice chair of the firm’s Employment Law Practice Group, and his practice concentrates on labor and employment law as well as commercial litigation.
2000s
Joseph J. Cefalu, III (2009 BACH BUS, 2012 JD), an attorney in the Baton Rouge office of Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson, was named a Rising Star in the 2018 edition of Louisiana Super Lawyers in the area of Civil Litigation-Defense. Jake Credo (2008 BACH H&SS, 2011 MPA), a senior inspector with the U.S. Marshal Service’s Investigative Operations Division’s Technical Operations Group, received a 2017 Top Cop runner-up award from the National Association of Police Organizations. Top Cop awards are presented annually during National Police Week to law enforcement officers in recognition of their selfless acts of bravery and outstanding service to their communities during the preceding year. Credo was selected for his efforts as leader of the Eastern District of Louisiana’s Gulf Coast Task Force with a team of more than twenty task force
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officers from local, state, and federal agencies that had an arrest rate of more than 800 fugitives annually in thirteen parishes and for the critical lifesaving efforts he provided to an officer shot in the line of duty in New Orleans. Eric Engemann (2003 BACH H&SS, 2011 MBA), president of SportsBR, joined the organization in 2007 and served as vice president before assuming his new role. He previously held athletic administrative roles at the University of Kentucky and the University of Wisconsin and serves on LSU Department of Kinesiology faculty. He earned a master’s degree in sports administration from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 2004. Engemann is an active member of St. Aloysius Catholic
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Church and a volunteer and board member of Louisiana Senior Olympic Games. He and his wife, the former Kacie Rae Gill, have three children – Eli, Mills Margaret, and Rae Frances. Cody Farris (2006 BACH A&D) was named an associate and studio design director for Duvall Decker in its Jackson, Miss., firm. A twelve-year employee of the firm, Farris has created many successful projects and received multiple awards for design excellence. He is a local and national member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
Rachael Jeanfreau (2007 BACH H&SS), an attorney in the New Orleans office of Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson, was named a Rising Star in the 2018 edition of Louisiana Super Lawyers in the area of Employment & Labor. Bryan G. Jeansonne (2002 BACH H&SS), an attorney with Doré Jeansonne, Baton Rouge, was re-elected for a third term as chair of the East Baton Rouge Parish Alcoholic Beverage Control Board (ABC).
Jessica J. Jones (2005 BACH H&SS) joined LSU-Eunice as the director of student success, focusing on the retention and persistence of students through developing initiatives that encourage student engagement, resilience, and empowerment. Jones is Quality Matters certified in online teaching and online course design and is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Pi Lambda Theta, and the National Association of University Women. She previously taught English and humanities courses at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.
Eric B. Landry (2002 BACH BUS, 2006 JD), an attorney in the Baton Rouge office of Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson, was named a Rising Star in the 2018 edition of Louisiana Super Lawyers in the area of Health Care. Taylor E. Landry (2006 BACH BUS), of Houston, was promoted to partner in the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth. He advises master limited partnerships, corporations and other public and private entities in all facets of the energy value chain (exploration and production, oilfield services, midstream and downstream) with assets including
reserves, pipelines, storage, processing, and gathering facilities. Landry earned his law degree from South Texas College of Law-Houston. Christopher A. Mason (2001 BACH BUS, 2004 JD), an attorney in the Baton Rouge office of Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson, was named a Rising Star in the 2018 edition of Louisiana Super Lawyers in the area of Civil Litigation-Defense. Kristopher Rappold (2006 BACH SCI, 2010 DDS) of New Orleans, received the Louisiana Dental Association (LDA) 2018 New Dentist Award in March,
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presented annually to one LDA member who has practiced for less than ten years and shared his or her time and talents for the betterment of mankind. Rappold volunteers with the Donated Dental Services program through Dental Lifeline Network and TeamSmile Dental Outreach; attended three mission trips to Santo Domingo Dominican Republic, and Montego Bay, Jamaica; provided custom-fabricated sports mouth guards to several high schools at no charge; and is a level-two volunteer dentist with the U.S. Olympic Committee. He is a member of the American Dental Association (ADA) and current president of the New Orleans Dental Association (NODA), served on the New Orleans Dental Enterprises board since 2012, has served as a delegate to the LDA House of Delegates, and is a past Louisiana president of the Academy of General Dentistry (AGD). He holds leadership positions in the Academy for Sports Dentistry and the Pankey Institute. Rappold is a member of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, American Academy of Craniofacial Pain, diplomate of the International Dental Implant Association, fellow in the AGD, and fellow in the American College of Dentists. Michael P. Robertson (2005 BACH MCOM), of Eric, Colo., was promoted to a partnership position with Reilly Pozner law firm. Michael’s trial and litigation practice is focused on complex business disputes, fiduciary litigation, and accountant malpractice matters.
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2010s
Seth Reich (2010 BACH ENGR) has joined the Dallas office of Caldwell Cassady & Curry as an associate. A member of the Dallas Bar Association and the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers (DAYL). Reich was selected as part of the 2015 DAYL Leadership Class. He also was honored with the 2016 DAYL Pro Bono Service Award based on his work for clients in immigration proceedings, appellate briefings, death penalty litigation, and intellectual property matters for nonprofit startups. He is a graduate of the Duke University School of Law. Heather Stone (2011 MAST HS&E, 2014 PHD HS&E), assistant professor in the Department of Educational Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, is one of thirteen tenure-track faculty selected from Louisiana institutions of higher education to serve a year’s term as a LaDIA Fellow. LaDIA is Louisiana Sea Grant’s Discovery, Integration, and Application Program, which selects candidates who have a potential to develop innovative approaches to coastal research. Teaming up with the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe whose ancestral home is on Isle de Jean Charles, Stone uses virtual reality technology to educate youth about Louisiana’s vanishing coast, thus bringing the coast to the classroom. Students experience a hundred-year-oral history with tribal members, along with drone footage of the island, looking at the state of the land through an emotional context that gives a face and a story to this pressing issue.
BABY
BENGALS Chris Carmouche (2011 BACH HS&E) and wife Mallory announce the birth of future Tiger Eloise Mae Carmouche on Jan. 18, 2018. Eloise weighed in at 6 lbs. 8 oz. and was 18 ¾ inches. The family resides in Cumming, Ga. Brock (2008 BACH A&D) and Marcelle Hatty (2007 BACH BUS) Piglia announce the birth of their second son, Elliot Francis Piglia, on Aug. 2, 2017. Elliot was welcomed home by big brother Noah James. The family resides in Valley Park, Mo. Veronika Humphries (2012 LLM) and husband James announce the birth of their first child, Anna Victoria Humphries, on Feb. 8, 2018. She weighed 7 lbs. 11 oz., and was 21 inches long. Among those welcoming Anna to Tiger Nation were her aunt, Tess Humphries Champagne (1997 BACH AGR) and her grandparents, Emma and Gregg Humphries. Emma Humphries earned an associate’s degree in nursing from LSU at Alexandria in 1996.
Congratulations
ART FAVRE BACHELOR OF CONSTRUCTION 1972 OWNER & PRESIDENT OF PERFORMANCE CONTRACTORS
on your induction to the LSU ALUMNI HALL OF DISTINCTION
as ALUMNUS OF THE YEAR
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Tigers in Print Ashley Baggett (2003 BACH HS&E, 2019 MAST H&SS, 2014 PHD H&SS) Intimate Partner Violence in New Orleans: Gender, Race, and Reform, 1840 to 1900 (University Press of Mississippi) Ashley Baggett uncovers the voices of abused women who utilized the legal system in New Orleans to address their grievances from the antebellum era to the end of the nineteenth century. Poring over 26,000 records, Baggett analyzes 421 criminal cases involving intimate partner violence – physical or emotional abuse of a partner in a romantic relationship – revealing a significant demand among women, the community, and the courts for reform in the postbellum decades. Before the Civil War, some challenges and limits to the male privilege of chastisement existed, but the gendered power structure and the veil of privacy for families in the courts largely shielded abusers from criminal prosecution. The war upended
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gender expectations and increased female autonomy, leading to the demand for and brief recognition of women's right to be free from violence. Baggett demonstrates how postbellum decades offered a fleeting opportunity for change before the gender and racial expectations hardened with the rise of Jim Crow. Renee Horton (2002 BACH ENGR) Dr. H Explores the Universe – from Mercury to Mars (Unapologetically Being, Inc.) The realm of science knows no boundaries, allowing individuals of diverse backgrounds access to this field. In Dr. H Explores the Universe – from Mercury to Mars, children travel alongside Dr. H and BB through the Milky Way, experiencing how different the other planets are from their home planet Earth. The characters begin their adventure at Mercury, learning exciting new facts and landing in some sticky situations during their journey. Highlighting the necessary inclusion of adolescents with different racial, economic, and
social backgrounds in the fields of STEM, Horton turns advocacy into an entertaining adventure series for children. Gary Tiemann (MSW 1987) Miraculous Psychotherapy: Achieve Your Ultimate Happiness With A Course In Miracles (CreateSpace) Gary Tiemann introduces a synthesis of reincarnation theory and evidence, the psycho-spiritual teaching A Course In Miracles and more traditional psychology and psychotherapy theories. These ideas are presented in a style that is readable and easy to apply to everyday living. Tiemann, who has maintained a private psychotherapy practice for more than twenty-five years, has lectured on these topics in professional workshops around Louisiana for more than five years. He has held leadership roles in the Louisiana social work community and received the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award for NASW-Louisiana.
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Distributed by Republic National Distributing Company LSU Alumni Magazine | Summer 2018 69
Tiger Nation
In Memoriam Dorothy Lois Howell (1942 BACH AGR, 1944 MAST AGR) passed away on Feb. 26, 2018, in Baton Rouge. She joined the LSU faculty in 1962 and retired in 1983 as professor and assistant director of the School of Home Economics. A longtime member of University Baptist Church, she served as a deacon and taught Sunday school for thirty-five years. She was recognized in 2015 as the College of Agriculture Outstanding Alumna, was active in Phi Mu sorority, and was a generous supporter of University programs through the LSU Foundation and LSU Alumni Association. Howell was instrumental in the creation of and was editor of Tiger Bait Cookbook, the proceeds of which contributed to more than 125 College of Agriculture scholarships. The book, today published by the Association in cooperation with the Human Ecology Alumni Association, is available at the Shelton Gift Shop in The Cook Hotel.
executing the watercolor drawings. After retiring from LSU, Murrill entered the corporate world. He served on the boards of twenty-seven publicly traded corporations regulated by the SEC and was chief executive officer of Gulf States Utilities and continued on that board after it was acquired by Entergy Corporation. From 1979 to 1997, he was an adviser to the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Laboratory at Oak Ridge. Murrill was the twenty-first living American to be named Distinguished Member of Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society and was a member of thirteen honorary and professional societies. Change Magazine named him one of the top 100 educators in the country in 1978, and in 2003 the Instrument Society of America named him one of the fifty most influential people in history in the fields of automation, instrumentation, and control technologies He served on numerous non-profit boards and foundations and was an ordained deacon at University Baptist Church,
Chancellor Emeritus Paul Whitfield Murrill (1962 MAST ENGR, 1963 PHD ENGR), passed away on April 2, 2018, in Baton Rouge. Murrill earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Mississippi then served in the U.S. Navy as an officer on the U.S.S. Valley Forge. After earning master’s and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering at LSU, he served the University as interim professor, professor, and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering, Dean of Academic Affairs, and Provost before being named Chancellor in 1974. He served in that capacity until 1981, and under his leadership, LSU applied for and was granted a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and became the thirteenth university to be named a Sea Grant Institution. He oversaw the implementation of Title IX for women's athletics at LSU and during the country's bicentennial in 1976 launched a special project, "The Native Flora of Louisiana," with botanical artist Margaret Stones
Dr. Roland Francis Samson, Jr. (1958 MD-NO), passed away on Feb. 6, 2018, at home in Pass Christian, Miss., with family. A 1951 graduate of University High School, he attended LSU from 1951 to 1954 and was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity before enrolling in LSU Medical School. He entered practice in Jackson, Miss., in 1965, cofounding the Sturgis-Samson Pathology Laboratory with longtime friend and partner, Dr. George M. Sturgis, and most recently practiced with the Ocean Springs Pathology Group. Roland and Susan Samson generously supported the University through the LSU Alumni Association’s scholarship program by creating and endowing the Ruth Pitre Flagship Scholarship, Thelma Pitre Global Leaders Scholarship, Roland Samson Global Leaders Scholarship, and John Gray Departmental Scholarship. They also have a named room at The Cook Hotel. The family requests that memorial donations be made to the LSU Alumni Association.
1930s
1950s
Joseph Wallis “Joe” “Jay” Dupuy, 1931 MAST, Jan. 13, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Millicent Merritt “Mimi” Hennigan, 1938 BACH HS&E, 1941 MLS, April 2, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Adele Marie Jewell McKinney, 1939 BACH HS&E, Feb. 14, 2014, Greenwell Springs, La.
Robert Lee “Bob” Atkinson, III, 1952 JD, Jan. 11, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Frank Raymond Clark, 1958 BACH BUS, Feb. 10, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Grover Lynn Dobbins, 1956 BACH ENGR, March 17, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. James Hubert “Red” Dumesnil, 1954 BACH BUS, March 18, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Julia Colleen Cassidy Ferry, (1957 BACH H&SS, 1971 MAST H&SS, April 2, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Ferne Kemp Loupe, 1959 MAST HS&E, April 4, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Dean C. McKee, 1958 MAST ENGR, Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering, Jan. 29, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Richard “Dick” Roundtree, 1957 BACH BUS, Feb. 9, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Georgia Pierson Russell, 1952 BACH AGR, Feb. 19, 2018, Hammond, La. John Andrew Spragio, 1951 BACH H&SS, March 10, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Allan Thomas Tatar, 1957 BACH BUS, May 9, 2017, Dallas, Texas Gus Weill, 1955 BACH MCOM, April 13, 2018, Baton Rouge, La
1940s Frederick Jacob Bahlinger, Jr., 1949 BACH BUS, April 10, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Sylvester Quinn Breard, 1949 BACH H&SS, 1951 BACH H&SS, Jan. 13, 2018, Monroe, La. Doris Lasseigne Carville, 1940 BACH AGR, Jan. 16, 2017, Laplace, La. James Melvin “Jim” Crane, 1949 BACH HS&E, Jan. 25, 2018, St. Francisville, La. William Joseph “Billy” Heroman, Sr., attended 1941-1944, March 1, 2081, Baton Rouge, La. Judson W. Landers, 1948 BACH H&SS, Dec. 12, 2017, Pensacola, Fla. Anne Lester, 1947 BACH M&DA, April 1, 2018, Atlanta, Ga. Leland Earl Morgan, 1943 BACH ENGR, 1945 MAST ENGR, June 5, 207, Troy, Mich. Patricia “Patty” Palfrey Stiel, attended 1944-1947, March 19, 2018, Franklin, La. Walter Bynum Stuart, III, 1943 BACH BUS, Jan. 10, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Gerard F. Sonny” Thomas, Jr., 1948 JD, Feb. 10, 2018, Natchitoches, La. Roberta Goldfarb Zimmer, attended 1942, May 16, 2017, Wilmington, N.C.
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1960s Ronald Keith Avery, 1962 BACH SCI, Feb. 20, 2018, Comfort, Texas William Gary “Bill” Avery, Sr., 1965 BACH ENGR, 1971 JD, Feb. 3, 2018, Baton Rouge , La. Andrea Ogden Bennett, 1967 BACH AGR, Feb. 12, 2017, Zachary, La.
Kemper Faye Luttrell Bornman, 1964 MSW, 1973 PHD HS&E, Jan. 8, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Mary Taylor “Tal” Bourgeois Broyles, 1967 BACH H&SS, Feb. 3, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Donald G. Cave, 1966 BACH H&SS, 1969 JD, Feb. 12, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Carlice Carrere Collins, attended 1964-1966, March 19, 2018, New Orleans, La. Evelyn Nettles Conerly, 1962 BACH HS&E, 1965 MAST HS&E, 1973 PHD HS&E, Jan. 18, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Jeff Kurt Cook, 1987 BACH ENGR, March 17, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Charles P. “Tony” Currier, 1960 BACH H&SS, Feb. 13, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. James Thomas Guglielmo, 1963 JD, Jan. 21, 2018, Opelousas, La. Jason Cannon Hollier, 1966 BACH SCI, 2000 DDS), March 14, 2018, Mandeville, La. Curtis Ray Joiner, Jr., 1965 BACH HS&E, Jan. 8, 2018, Alhambra, Calif. Jacqueline Billeaudeau Labat, 1968 BACH HS&E, 1969 MAST HS&E, Feb. 6, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Gerard Alfred LeJeune, 1966 BACH H&SS, March 31, 2018 Baton Rouge, La. Phillip Abram Lewis, Jr., 1968 MAST AGR, 1975 PHD AGR, Jan. 14, 2018, Gonzales, La. Ronald Wise McCoy, 1969 BACH AGR, 1971 MAST AGR, Feb. 3, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Madeleine Crosby Mosely, 1968 BACH H&SS, Jan. 7, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Louis “Lou” Plauché, 1967 BACH H&SS, 1973 MSW, Feb. 8, 2018, Lake Monticello, Va. Paul E. Ransome, Jr., 1960 BACH HS&E, 1965 MAST HS&E, Feb. 18, 2018, Fordoche, La. Mary R. Sanchez, 1962 BACH HS&E, Nov. 9, 2017, New Port Richey, Fla. John Wurster Wheeler, 1960 BACH ENGR, March 19, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Ralph Lee J. Willie, Sr., 1962 MAST HS&E, Feb. 25, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Helen Gail Powers “GG” Wilty, 1957 BACH H&SS, 1959 MAST A&D, March 9, 2018, Houston, Texas.
1970s Roy Cleveland “Cleve” Brooks, 1976 MAST HS&E, 1980 CERT HS&E, 2006 PHD HS&E, March 21, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Mildred Edith “Millie” Geil Caldwell, 1976 BACH H&SS, Dec. 27, 2017, Baton Rouge, La. Bennie Coates, 1974 PHD H&SS, Jan.13, 2018, Baton Rouge, LA Joseph Culotta, 1970 BACH H&SS, March 5, 2018, Ferriday, La. James R. Dysart, 1971 BACH BUS, Jan. 26, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Nora Lee Lovas Eckert, 1977 MAST HS&E, Feb. 22, 2018, Baton Rouge, La.
Michael Lewis Felps, 1971 BACH BUS, March 1, 2018, Clinton, La. Thomas J. Futch, II, 1971 BACH HS&E, 1973 MAST AGR, 1978 PHD AGR, Feb. 18, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Paul Tudor Gallagher, 1979 BACH BUS, 1982 JD, Jan. 18, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Nancy Bolton Grable, 1979 BACH H&SS, Jan. 4, 2018, St. Louis, Mo. Larry Michael Hall, 1978 BACH H&SS, 1981 BACH ENGR, 2009 PHD AGR, Jan. 19, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Sandra Harling, 1975 BACH HS&E, March 11, 2018, Kingwood, Texas Clyde Gerard Henderson, 1982 BACH H&SS, 1984 BACH HS&E, April 2017, Baton Rouge, La. Kathleen Adele Hightower, 1972 BACH HS&E, March 11, 2018, Lafayette, La. John W. Kirkpatrick, 1970 BACH ENGR, Feb. 17, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Kermit Joseph Kraemer, Jr., 1970 BACH H&SS, Feb. 21, 2018, Prairieville, La. Guy Christopher “Chris” McDaniel, Jr., 1973 BACH MCOM, March 24, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Phil E. Miley, 1970 BACH BUS, 1972 JD, Jan. 19, 2018, Central, La. Charles Stephen Seal, 1970 BACH AGR, Feb. 21, 2018, Woodville, Miss. Wayland Hankins Vincent, 1970 BACH BUS, 1973 JD, April 11, 2018, Lafayette, La. Jerry Zachary, 1975 MAST HS&E, Feb. 6, 2018, New Orleans, La.
1980s Karen T. Bach, 1988 BACH AGR, Jan. 16, 2018, Baron Rouge, La. Vaughn R. “Bobby” Ross, Sr., 1985 BACH H&SS, March 5, 2018, Baton Rouge, La.
1990s John James Hoolahan, 1995 BACH AGR, March 21, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Paul Breaux Lovell, 1994 BACH AGR, Feb. 17, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Timothy Dwight Miller, 1992 BACH ENGR, March 6, 218, Oscar, La.
2000s Gavin Piers Coldwell, 2003 BACH H&SS, Feb. 12, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Cynthia Ann, “CC” DuBois, 2007 BACH H&SS, Jan. 2, 2018, Chicago, Ill. Judith K. “Judy” Eubanks, 2000 MAST M&DA, Feb. 6, 2018, Baton Rouge, La. Madeline Pendergist Hemba, 2004 BACH BUS, Jan. 28, 2018, Zachary, La. Robert Blake Palmintier, 2001 BACH M&DA, April 9, 2018, New Orleans, La.
Alumni By Choice Lorraine Hennrich Pol Alumna by Choice Feb. 18, 2018 Baton Rouge, La.
Sandy J. Roppolo Alumnus by Choice Feb. 18, 2018 Baton Rouge, La.
Pierre Euclide Conner, Jr. Nicholson Professor of Mathematics Emeritus Feb. 3, 2018 New Orleans, La.
Nora Fierro Retired Administrative Assistant Academic Affairs Jan. 30, 2018 Baton Rouge, La.
Frank L. Mougeot, Jr. 4-H Agent-LSU AgCenter April 3, 2018 Kinder, La.
Kinney E. Dickhute Retired Assistant Director of Purchasing Feb. 27, 2018 Buford, Ga.
Jules Barney McKee, Jr. Former Production Manager LSU Press April 10, 2018 Ridgeland, Miss.
Auttis Marr Mullins Retired Head of Food Science March 26, 2018 Jerome, Idaho
Jack K. Nelson Retired Professor of Human Sciences & Education Jan. 12, 2018 Baton Rouge, La. Shirley Paxton Stirling Retired Administrative Assistant Public Relations March 13, 2018 Baton Rouge, La.
If you would like to make a gift to the LSU Alumni Association in memory of a family member, friend or classmate, please contact our office for additional information at 225-578-3838 or 1-888-746-4578.
LSU Alumni Magazine | Summer 2018
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Profile
Tiger Nation
Preserving Film, Video, and Audio for the Future Generations By Ed Cullen
Mike Mashon, head of the Moving Image Section at the Library of Congress.
“Mike Mashon’s office controls access to the world’s largest collection of film and video.”
When Mike Mashon (1982 BACH H&SS) was eleven, he saw D.W. Griffith’s Orphans of the Storm on a Little Rock television station. Griffith’s feature film set in the French Revolution had Mashon and his mother at a public library the next day. “I told the reference librarian I wanted to know more about silent film, and she recommended three books,” said Mashon, fiftyseven, head of the Moving Image Section at the Library of Congress, whose idea of vacation is a silent film festival held each fall in Italy. That day at the public library in Little Rock, Mashon left with three books: Lillian Gish’s autobiography (Gish starred in the Griffith film); A Pictorial History of the Silent Screen, and Kevin Brownlow’s The Parade’s Gone By. Brownlow turns eighty this year, lives in London, and is counted as a friend by Mashon. Brownlow, an archivist and historian, received an honorary Academy Award for his work. Mashon’s route to his dream job was through the Texas Department of Health where the LSU microbiologist was one of the early clinic testers for the AIDS virus in Texas. Mashon first heard of AIDS from one of his professors. Hired by the state of Texas in 1985, Mashon tested for the disease in an Austin lab when he wasn’t flying around the state training other people to conduct the test. In the mid-eighties, Mashon was running thirty blood samples a week. Five years later, he was running as many as 300 samples a week, just in Austin. “There were thousands of other samples being run around the state,” he said. “I was good in science,” Mashon said. “My parents had drilled into me the need for a job with benefits and retirement. I don’t regret my time in microbiology, but I never had a passion for it.” In Austin, Mashon continued to enjoy and study movies. By the time he was twentyseven, he was studying film and television with the idea of teaching the subject. He earned a master’s degree at the University of Texas in 1990 and started work on a doctorate at the University of Maryland the same year. “I wasn’t that strategic,” he said. “I went there because they offered more graduate money, and they let me teach classes.” The fortuitous move put Mashon not far from his first new career job – not in teaching but in film research. Mashon was a part-time researcher at the Broadcast Pioneers Library in Washington, which moved to the University of Maryland in 1994. When the library’s director retired, Mashon was named to fill the vacancy. By 1998, he was at the Library of Congress as moving image curator of film and video. Digital files were added later. Today, Mashon heads a staff of thirty who are charged with acquiring, storing, and maintaining film, video, and sound recordings and establishing preservation priorities. Mashon’s office controls access to the world’s largest collection of film and video. Mashon works on the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, part of the Library of Congress, in Culpepper, Va., where archives are stored in a former nuclear war fallout shelter meant to protect $3 billion in coin and currency, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and staff. His office and a lab are next door, and in a separate building there are 124 vaults, each holding about 2,500 moving images on nitrate film. The Packard center, funded by an heir to the Hewlett-Packard computer fortune, has 1.3 million reels of film and “every conceivable form of video tape,” Mashon said. The archives hold nine million gigabytes of digital recordings. More than 140 million feet of nitrate film translates to 140,000 individual reels. There may be as many as 150 reels of the same film. “We have, probably, 70 percent of the world’s nitrate film,” Mashon said. “We still preserve film on film. We still buy film stock. Obviously, digital will comprise a bigger percentage of our preservation work flow as time goes on.” Ed Cullen, an LSU journalism graduate, is author of Letter in a Woodpile, a collection of his essays for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” He is retired from the Baton Rouge Advocate where he wrote the Sunday column “Attic Salt.”
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Profile
LSU Grad Is Known for His Commitment to Community When Baton Rouge native Ernesto Johnson (1988 BACH H&SS) graduated from Catholic High School, he knew LSU was the right choice for college. He began his career at ExxonMobil (then Exxon) that same year and worked in various capacities during his twentynine-year career. Today, as chemical plant superintendent, he supervises and coordinates the activities of nearly 100 workers engaged in all phases of the plant’s operations. In addition to being recognized for his on-the-job performance, Johnson is known for his commitment to improving the lives of others in the community. He currently serves as Community Outreach Chairperson of the company’s Black Employee Success Team (BEST), coordinating volunteer projects for employees across the company’s five Baton Rouge area sites. Spend just a few moments talking with Johnson, and his enthusiasm for helping others becomes contagious. An avid supporter of education, Johnson has volunteered at a number of area schools to help students complete classroom projects. A Junior Achievement volunteer, he has presented financial management programs to students at several local schools and shares advice from his workand education-related experiences. A key contact for the North Baton Rouge Industrial Training Initiative, Johnson represents ExxonMobil at job information fairs and speaks with students to share job and career experiences. He has been involved with the Big Buddy program, volunteering for the “Day of the Mentor” program and organizing tours of his work area for the students. He helped paint a mural on the exterior of Big Buddy’s office building and helped with interior painting as part of the annual United Way Season of Caring. In the same vein, Johnson
organized volunteers and participated in the annual MLK Day Celebration with the Walls Project and previously in a clean-up project at the Historic Lincoln Theater. Johnson organized and volunteered for Thanksgiving meal distribution to North Baton Rouge families in need with the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank’s Scotlandville Food Pantry and at Allen Chapel AME Food Pantry, located near the chemical plant. He spent Saturdays alongside volunteers from the Baton Rouge Police Department and District Attorney’s office to clean up blighted areas in the northern part of the city. He organized volunteers to represent the company at the annual Communities Against Drugs and Violence (CADAV) Juneteenth Celebration in the Scotlandville-Banks community and helped construct a new playground at the Jewel J. Newman Community Center. The ExxonMobil Foundation’s Volunteer Involvement Program matches Ernesto’s volunteer time, generating thousands of dollars to local schools and nonprofit organizations. Volunteering comes naturally to him. His humble spirt and generous nature have inspired many of his friends and coworkers to volunteer, as well. “I believe it is important to give back and am fortunate to work for a company that allows so many options to do just that,” says Johnson. “I am proud to be an LSU alum. My education has afforded me so many opportunities to help others.” Johnson met his wife, Cynthia, while at LSU. They are the proud parents daughter two daughters – Jasmine (2014 BACH SCI), pursuing a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree at Baylor School of Dentistry, and Courtlyn, a student at BRCC, working toward career as a dental hygienist.
By Lana Venable
LSU alum Ernesto Johnson is a chemical plant superintendent at ExxonMobil Baton Rouge. Photo courtesy ExxonMobil
“Spend just a few moments talking with Johnson, and his enthusiasm for helping others becomes contagious.”
Lana Venable is the public and government affairs adviser at ExxonMobil Baton Rouge.
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Profile
Tiger Nation
More Than Just Man’s Best Friend Ironically, when Larry Randolph (1970 BACH BUS) first decided to open a therapy dog nonprofit ministry, he did not have a dog of his own. So, he and his wife took their daughter’s golden retriever, Cody, along with them on visits to nursing homes. Over the years, people took notice and expressed an interest in joining the effort. Today, the Florida-based organization is a full-fledged nonprofit, comprising 730 trained canine and human volunteers and spanning four countries – the United States, South Africa, Lithuania, and the Netherlands.
By Kaylee Poche
Canines for Christ chaplains and dog teams visited with hundreds of people in the Parkland, Fla., community affected by the school shooting tragedy. From left are Tom Savoca with CoCo, Deanne Rhode with Oliver, Larry Randolph with Gracie, and Steve Kesler with Bruce.
Randolph, a commissioned chaplain with Corporate and Community Chaplains of America, was working as a real estate developer and broker in Tampa when he started Canines for Christ in 2007. Through the program, volunteers and certified therapy dogs visit people in a variety of places, including hospitals, rehabilitation centers, airports, and hospice units. The organization also hosts a study buddy program that allows students who have difficulty reading to practice reading to a service dog. According to Chaplain Larry, the activity often significantly improves confidence in their reading skills. “The dogs are used as a ‘door opener’ to break the barrier of communication so a volunteer can talk to people, find out how they’re doing with their day, and just share the message of kindness, hope, and love that God has told us to do,” Randolph said. “It’s a beautiful way of ministering to people who are really in need of what I call a warm nose and a wagging tail from the dog, as well as a kind, warm smile and happy message from a volunteer.” The idea came to Randolph during a morning devotional. “[God] gave me this whisper and this thought process to start this ministry using therapy dogs,” he said. He wanted to use the benefits of therapy dogs on humans, such as lowering blood pressure and relieving anxiety and stress, to help people in need and brighten their days, he explained. Over the years, Canines for Christ has done just that, organizing a crisis response team to visit people in the aftermath of disasters like floods, tornadoes, and shootings. “There are lots of uses for [therapy dogs], and we’re there as many places as we can be,” Randolph said. Randolph’s favorite part of Canines for Christ is witnessing firsthand how the program changes lives. “Seeing a person who is coming out of an operation at a hospital and is down or depressed from the operation or a person in a nursing home, and then seeing what the dogs can do as far as making them smile and bringing joy into their hearts,” he said. “When you create a smile on a person’s face, that is part of the healing process.” Canines for Christ has affected the lives of the millions of people visited by the ministry – and impacted the lives of its hundreds of volunteers. “When they go out in their communities and volunteer like this with their dogs, they see how it helps other people and it changes their thoughts and makes them want to give back to those communities and reach people in a Christian way,” Randolph said. In the years to come, Randolph hopes to expand the ministry to spread the message of hope, love, and kindness even farther.
Chaplain Larry Randolph and his therapy dog Gracie have made more than 5,000 community visits.
“When you create a smile on a person’s face, that is part of the healing process.”
Kaylee Poche is a senior in the Manship School of Mass Communication and, as a member of the Manship Statehouse News Bureau, reports on the Louisiana Legislature.
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LSU Alumni Magazine | Summer 2018
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Tiger Nation
Tigers Around the World
Chris McGehee on the Great Wall.
Purple and Gold in China – Chris McGehee (2016 BACH H&SS) displays LSU’s
colors on the Great Wall. McGehee and fellow students in the Flores MBA Program visited China in March as part of their studies. “Obviously, Chris is an unrestrained LSU alum,” writes granddad Henson Moore, who shared the photo with the magazine.
Wedding Bells – Ashley M. White (2009 BACH H&SS) and Michael P. Rosalez
Mr. and Mrs. Michael P. Rosalez.
were married on April 7 at University Methodist Church in Baton Rouge. In true LSU fashion, the reception at the Lod Cook Alumni Center included a replica of the family’s tailgate on the patio, complete with a Margarita machine and pirogue of beer, purple and gold lights, and LSU decor. Friends and family kicked off the celebration dancing to “Calling Baton Rouge” as blinking fleur de lis Mardi Gras beads were thrown out. The couple honeymooned in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. The groom, a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 2014.
Sharing Tiger Spirit – LSU Tampa Bay Alumni Chapter board member Mary Lou England (1972 BACH Med School-NO) shares her Tiger spirit in both hemispheres at the equator near Quito, Ecuador.
Mary Lou England in Ecuador.
76 LSU Alumni Magazine | Summer 2018
Vermon Dillon, left with Dr. Walter Timperman, Jr.
Debt Paid – “Hey, y'all, finally paid off my LSU debt – LOL,” writes Vermon Dillon
(1981 BACH H&SS), patient financial services director-meddata at Clinton Memorial Hospital in Wilmington, Ohio. Dillon presented Notre Dame grad Dr. Walter Timperman, Jr., with an Irish hat and ND skullcap from after losing two bets on LSU vs. Notre Dame games – in 2014 at the Nashville Music City Bowl and on New Year’s Day 2018 at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla.
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Tiger Nation
Tigers Around the World Globetrotter - Thomas “Tom” Levitan (1973) BACH H&SS) shares a delightful update with readers. “Attaching a picture of me with a frog at the Daan Park MRT station in Taipei,” he writes. “I retired last June (2017) after working since graduation in higher education – student affairs, academic affairs, institutional research. My last position was senior vice president for research and education with the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. Since retiring, I've traveled a lot. In the last year I’ve visited Taiwan, Japan, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.”
Thom Levitan and frog in Taipei.
Roberta Goldfarb Zimmer’s student athletic tickets.
Student Tickets – While going through the late Roberta Goldfarb Zimmer’s
belongings, her daughter discovered Zimmer’s Athletic Association Student Ticket book for the 1942-1943 season.“ The discovery of the LSU Student Ticket book was the most fascinating item found thus far,” wrote Vikki Garman, an administrative assistant with Zimmer Development Company, who shared the information with the magazine. Zimmer attended LSU in 1942 and also attended the University of Alabama. She passed away on May 16, 2017, in Wilmington, N.C.
78 LSU Alumni Magazine | Summer 2018
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Tiger Nation
Tigers Around the World
Members of the Great Futures Gala Planning Committee. Advocate Staff Photo by Pam Bordelon
Great Futures – A dozen LSU alums served on the 2018 Great Futures Gala
Planning Committee, helping the organization to raise more than $50,000 for the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Baton Rouge. Pictured are, front, from left, Brittany Ernest (2011 BACH MCOM, 2013 MPA), Jennifer O’Connell (2012 JD), Helen Butts (2013 BACH MCOM), Chelsey Blankenship (2010 BACH MCOM) Lauren Westbrook, Dorothy Kemp (2007 BACH BUS, 2009 MBA), and Lani Gholston (2013 JD); back, Benjamin Vance (2008 BACH BUS), Ryan Allen (2008 BACH BUS, 2014 MBA), Todd Hymel (2006 BACH ENGR), Ryan Byrd (2009 BACH H&SS), Jordan Faircloth (2005 BACH H&SS, 2008 JD), and Joseph Cefalu (2009 BACH BUS, 2012 JD).
Tiger Pride Tags - South Carolina Tigers James E. McDermott and wife Renee
DuBois McDermott (1980 BACH HS&E), of Rock Hill, saw photos of LSU license plates in the spring issue of the magazine and decided to send a photo of their LSUTIGR plate. James, a 1974 U-High alum, graduated from USL. And, reader Dave M. Sedlin (1985 BACH BUS), of Dallas, shares his BTBAMA tag.
WHAT’S YOUR VOLUNTEER PASSION? Send a photo of yourself “in action” and tell Tigers Around the World how and why you share your time and talents with others.
OOPS! Stan Williams was incorrectly identified as Stan Landry in a Tigers Around the World item in the spring issue. Stan is the
dad of future alum Maggie Williams (Class of 2021) and National Fund Chair for the LSU Alumni Association. The magazine regrets the error.
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