2015 Provost's Report

INNOVATIVE SPIRIT 2O15 PROVOST’S REPORT LOYOLA UNIVERSITY NEW ORLEANS

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INNOVATIVE SPIRIT 2O15 PROVOST’S REPORT

An innovative spirit pervades campus at Loyola University New Orleans, where we provide a powerful liberal arts education that inspires creativity, discovery, and action. Through their time here, our students transform from young men and women with open hearts and minds to critical thinkers who are prepared to make a difference in the world.

We foster an environment that encourages our students to question the status quo, to spark positive change, to harness their collective talents to address challenges and develop solutions. They learn, in a spirit of creative entrepreneurship, to move the world forward—and to do so being “men and women for others.” Our Catholic, Jesuit tradition and strong mission of social justice lead many of our students to undertake work that improves their communities in creative, revolutionary ways.

St. Ignatius of Loyola calls on us to “go forth and set the world on fire.”

And so our programs lead students beyond the boundaries of campus.

Loyola students are working to eradicate homelessness, staging professional productions that enhance New Orleans’ rich musical culture, helping NASA’s Stennis Space Center to spur economic development and growth, and fighting for the rights of unaccompanied immigrant children.

The students, faculty, and alumni featured in this report possess an innovative spirit and deep motivation that help to improve the world around them.

It is with great pride that we share some of their achievements, along with the recent distinction of Loyola University New Orleans being named by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs as a top producer of Fulbright U.S. Students and Scholars.

Sincerely,

Marc Manganaro, Ph. D. Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs

Table of Contents 4 Loyola MBA students bring NASA technology to market

Through a new partnership between NASA and Loyola’s College of Business, MBA students use an innovative model to bring space technology to markets on Earth.

6 The frog calls heard ’round the world

Loyola students take part in a global effort to document amphibians, studying frog calls not only as a means of identifying animals but also of learning adaptive biology.

8 Vulnerable immigrant children find advocates in Loyola law students

Unaccompanied minors who arrive in New Orleans from Central America find allies in the Loyola Law Clinic, whose students shield them as a means of living the gospel.

10 Students and faculty urge you to #SAYHERNAME

African-American student groups lead the organization of a forum on the problem of female invisibility within the Black Lives Matter movement.

12 Translation and interpretation connect Loyola to the community

Loyola’s highly successful certificate program in translation and interpretation—the only one in the Gulf South—meets growing demand by transforming into a degree program.

14 When federal work study means improving lives

First-year student Lacinea McBride develops a federal work study curriculum that advances her longtime goal of working to eradicate homelessness.

16 Loyola’s “School of Rock” is the next level in music business education

Students produce a musical performance in a famous New Orleans venue as part of a new program that combines creative learning and business savvy.

18 Three generations of physics brilliance Loyola professor emeritus Carl Brans is one of the world’s top physicists, inspiring new generations at Loyola to make exciting advances in the field he helped pioneer.

20 New Orleans small businesses receive a boost from Loyola Brand Lab

Students in Loyola’s award-winning School of Mass Communication develop strategies for entrepreneurs who are fueling New Orleans’ economy.

22 Where students are proud to graduate as First in the Pack Thanks to Loyola’s First in the Pack program, students who are the first members of their families to attend college wear the distinction as a badge of pride.

24 Bookshelf

Loyola faculty members published groundbreaking books on subjects ranging from silence to Sufism to civil liberties in 2015.

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Loyola MBA students bring NASA technology to market NASA IS CONSTANTLY INVENTING new devices, many of which have uses on Earth—the camera in your smartphone, for example, was initially developed for interplanetary photography. But there is yet to exist a uniform bridge between NASA’s laboratories and consumer markets. Loyola students are working to change that.

This year, the College of Business and nearby NASA Stennis Space Center became partners in making the space agency’s technologies and intellectual property available to private companies. A new graduate-level business course, led by professors Jon Atkinson and Rob Lalka, pairs Loyola students with NASA engineers to hone business models for inventions and actually pitch them to potential buyers. For instance, a sophisticated valve designed for rockets may have uses in offshore drilling—Loyola MBA students will help NASA approach oil and gas companies with the product.

Loyola MBA director Ashley Francis said the college worked closely with NASA to develop a program that would fit the agency’s needs.

“We didn’t just tell them, ‘We can make this happen,’” she said. “We showed them very deliberately and succinctly a process for commercializing technology that will hopefully become the national model.”

At the same time, the program provides Loyola students invaluable experiential learning opportunities.

“We are focused on transformational education,” Loyola College of Business Dean Bill Locander said. “We want to reshape in a holistic way our students’ abilities to conduct business. In this program, they learn communication skills, research skills, entrepreneurship, and they learn about technology, all while networking in the community.”

NASA is among the most respected organizations in the world. Loyola’s partnership with the Stennis Space Center integrates technology with business, students with engineers, space travel with earthly pursuits, and two of the most esteemed institutions in the Gulf South.

“We didn’t just tell them, ‘We can make this happen.’ We showed them very deliberately and succinctly a process for commercializing technology that will hopefully become the national model.”

Ashley Francis, Loyola MBA director

A new partnership between NASA and Loyola’s College of Business gives MBA students an invaluable experiential learning opportunity.

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The frog calls heard ’round the world IN 1989, THE INAUGURAL World Congress of Herpetologists convened in England, bringing together for the first time reptile and amphibian biologists from around the globe. They came to a disturbing conclusion: It seemed to everyone that there were fewer frogs than there had been years before, but the scientists lacked the empirical evidence to prove it.

Acting on this shared hunch, studies began on six continents to survey frog populations, including the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program. Loyola Chair in Environmental Communication Bob Thomas has participated in the program since its inception. He has incorporated the survey as a tool to teach herpetology students lessons that range far beyond reptiles and amphibians.

“I tell students what we’re really going to focus on is learning adaptive biology through critical thinking,” he said. “We’re going to learn frog calls, but then we’re going to think about how those calls work, why they work, and how they came to be.”

Frog calls are key to the survey.

Rather than trying to count frogs visually, surveyors learn the calls of different species and listen in various locations to gauge frogs’ relative populations. But while students learn which distinct sounds each species makes, they also are tasked with deducing why a frog’s call may be high-pitched in one area and low in another and why some make no calls at all (perhaps they live near a loud stream that would drown out their calls). This thinking can be applied with little variation to all sectors of biology.

“It makes students realize that when they study animals, they need to look beyond the first impression,” Thomas said. “It takes students beyond the obvious, and that is what a Jesuit education is about.”

“It makes students realize that when they study animals, they need to look beyond the first impression. It takes students beyond the obvious, and that is what a Jesuit education is about.”

Bob Thomas, Loyola Chair in Environmental Communication

L E F T Professor Bob Thomas is constantly finding new ways to make science come alive for his students.

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Vulnerable immigrant children find advocates in Loyola law students THE JOURNEY OF CHILDREN escaping violence in Central America often involves unspeakable horrors, trauma, and—if they are lucky—arrival in an alien land, the United States.

For unaccompanied immigrant minors who reach New Orleans, the journey also often involves the help of Loyola law students.

Since 2007, Loyola’s Stuart H. Smith Law Clinic and Center for Social Justice has assisted children from countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala whose loved ones have sent them to a safer place—but also into legal limbo, where they face being deported.

Loyola law students become certified by the Louisiana State Supreme Court to represent these minors and their families under supervision of Loyola clinic attorneys. Handling these cases to secure minors’ green cards provides valuable experience for the students and crucial help for the community.

“It’s a confidence builder for students,” Law Clinic Director Ramona Fernandez said. “You go from classroom to courtroom. You have to be an advocate for somebody who can’t speak for themselves.”

Student Robert Goeke sees his work with unaccompanied immigrant minors as a way to fulfill the Jesuit mission at the core of a Loyola education.

“I get a lot of gratitude from these families,” Goeke said, “but only because the clinic allows me to do work that elicits that gratitude. It’s a way of living the gospel in a manner that’s in line with a lot of the values the Jesuits live for.”

“I get a lot of gratitude from these families but only because the clinic allows me to do work that elicits that gratitude. It’s a way of living the gospel in a manner that’s in line with a lot of the values the Jesuits live for.”

Robert Goeke, student

Unaccompanied minors who arrive in New Orleans from Central America find allies in the Loyola Law Clinic, where students transition from classroom to courtroom while helping the community’s most vulnerable members.

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SAY HER NAME

WHY ARE AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN INVISIBLE IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY?

Students and faculty urge you to #SAYHERNAME WOMEN SUCH AS Rosa Parks and Ella Baker were instrumental to the civil rights movement, but history typically treats them as supporting actresses. Today, women face similar erasure from the Black Lives Matter movement, despite the fact that three women started it—Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.

This fall, Loyola’s Women’s Resource Center, the African and African-American Studies Committee, and African-American student groups L.O.V.E. and the Black Student Union partnered to address this issue with an interdisciplinary forum organized around the social media trending topic #sayhername.

“Social media has become the backbone of organizing social movements, and it was interesting to see how it was applied to putting women of color on the nation’s agenda,” said sophomore Armani Eady, who co-moderated the forum.

#Sayhername addresses the phenomenon of invisibility of black women. Patricia Boyett, director of the Women’s Resource Center, said invisibility functions at many levels— it could be history obscuring the contributions of black women to civil rights or today’s news media ignoring black women who are victims of police violence.

“It is important to understand this invisibility because it speaks to the persistent racism and patriarchy in our nation, and it calls on us to find ways to address those social ills,” Boyett said.

Eady said studying these issues at Loyola prompted her to start L.O.V.E., a student group for women of color, fusing her academic and activist pursuits.

“Oftentimes, [women of color] are disregarded and our needs aren’t addressed,” she said. “This is why addressing invisibility in the university context is important. We too must be seen.”

“The invisibility of black women functions at many levels—it could be history obscuring the contributions of black women to civil rights or today’s news media ignoring black women who are victims of police violence.”

Patricia Boyett, director of the Women’s Resource Center

L E F T African-American student groups have partnered with the Women’s Resource Center to increase awareness of female contributions to the civil rights movement, both past and present.

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Translation and interpretation connect Loyola to the community LOYOL A’S SPANISH/ENGLISH Translation and Interpreting Certificate program is the only one of its kind in the Gulf South. As the Latino population increases in the region and demand grows, it is no surprise that Loyola students and graduates are virtually everywhere in the community working to provide these crucial services.

“We get calls and emails constantly for help with translation and interpretation, and I pass the requests on to students,” Lisbeth Philip, the program’s academic director, said. “They all jump on it, like, ‘I got it!’”

Loyola has established partnerships with local school boards, courts, hospitals, and the city of New Orleans for which translation and interpreting students supply professional services.

With two tracks that emphasize either health care or legal specializations, the program provides immersive opportunities that prepare students to go directly to work.

Judges, police officers, physicians, and all manner of community partners visit class for role-playing to train students for fast-paced, intensive scenarios.

“It takes more than just being bilingual to do these tasks,” Philip said.

“This is a skill, and this skill requires people to be well-versed in the vocabulary, the setting, and the procedures of these different, very specific situations.”

Now in its third year, the certificate program has trained dozens of adult learners. The next step is to launch a degree program for the Fall 2016 semester, offering traditional students a bachelor’s degree in translation and interpreting.

Whether they are translating a mayoral speech in real time or helping a Spanish-speaking patient understand a doctor’s diagnosis, Loyola students are set to expand their presence in this field of language access that many feel is a human right.

“It takes more than just being bilingual to do these tasks. This is a skill, and this skill requires people to be well-versed in the vocabulary, the setting, and the procedures of these different, very specific situations.”

Lisbeth Philip, academic director

Loyola’s certificate program in translation and interpretation has partnered with numerous local agencies to help serve the rapidly growing Latino population.

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When federal work study means improving lives FIRST-YEAR STUDENT LACINEA MCBRIDE arrived at Loyola with a mission: All her life she has wanted to open a shelter for homeless people; she came to college to gain the skills she would need. Her first step was securing a position at the Harry Tompson Center, a nonprofit shelter and resource, through Loyola’s community-based federal work study program.

“I have been drawing out plans for this shelter since I was a child, and now it feels like it’s finally becoming a reality,” McBride said.

Students who qualify for federal work study financial aid can choose to do their work at a nonprofit or public agency that serves the community. These organizations often operate on limited budgets, so having students like McBride work on their behalf with the support of federal funds is a blessing. Loyola students often secure jobs after graduation with their organizations.

McBride’s work at the Tompson Center strengthens her interpersonal skills and on-the-ground understanding of the challenges homeless people face. Her studies at Loyola dovetail with these experiences to give her a well-rounded understanding of complex issues related to homelessness.

“It’s amazing to see the needs of the marginalized groups in the city get completely ignored,” she said. “Studying consumerism in my business classes and classism in my sociology classes helps me draw connections and develop strong opinions on many issues.”

McBride’s work study and academics are giving her a concrete foundation upon which to build her future of advocacy.

“Through the experiences I’ve had at the Harry Tompson Center, combined with what I’ve learned in my classes so far at Loyola, I know more about how I will actually execute my goals of making a difference in the lives of those less fortunate than I am,” she said.

“It’s amazing to see the needs of the marginalized groups in the city get completely ignored. Studying consumerism in my business classes and classism in my sociology classes helps me draw connections and develop strong opinions on many issues.”

Lacinea McBride, student

L E F T First-year student Lacinea McBride came to Loyola with the ultimate goal of gaining the skills she needs to open a shelter for homeless people. Her studies, combined with her work study experience, are getting her closer to making her dream a reality.

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Loyola’s “School of Rock” is the next level in music business education

WHEN THE LIGHTS went low and the first chord rang through New Orleans’ House of Blues one night last November, there were Loyola students on the stage and behind the soundboard, Loyola-designed marketing and promotion all over the city, and a packed dance floor ready to boogie.

The production belonged to Loyola’s new Popular and Commercial Music program—or, as students call it, the “School of Rock.” Beginning this fall, students from the program will take over the well-known French Quarter venue each semester to showcase their skills in all aspects of pop music production and performance in a real-life gig setting.

“The kids were so psyched,” Sanford Hinderlie, professor of music and the program’s director, said about the November performance. “We could have done this on campus, but it’s not the same.

We had at least 100 students who are not in the program come, plus the musicians, and parents flew in from Boston, Miami, Austin.

People came in from off the streets.

It was great.”

Loyola’s renowned Music Industry Studies program has been placing interns at the House of Blues for years to work on the business side of the music industry, so hosting Loyola performers there was a natural extension. The School of Rock performance reflects the dual emphasis of the program, in which students hone both their creative and commercial abilities.

“It’s an experience of opening our minds and figuring out how to create music with a band,” senior Tracci Lee said. “I’m also learning the business side and the performance side of music, so it’s definitely helpful.”

Loyola’s music students have long enjoyed the fact that New Orleans offers a robust live music culture, providing them many places to play. The School of Rock’s partnership with the House of Blues amplifies that opportunity and allows student performers and producers alike a taste of the spotlight.

Loyola’s renowned Music Industry Studies program has been placing interns at the House of Blues for years to work on the business side of the music industry.

The School of Rock performance reflects the dual emphasis of the program, in which students hone both their creative and commercial abilities.

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Program Director Sanford Hinderlie teaching a “School of Rock” student.

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Three generations of physics brilliance LOYOLA SENIOR RICHARD BUSTOS decided to study gravity shortly after he began to defy it.

“I didn’t really appreciate gravity until I learned to fly an airplane,” he said.

The young pilot and physics major is in good company at Loyola. Professor Emeritus Carl Brans is one of the foremost physicists in his field and an expert on gravity. This year, the American Physical Society named a paper Brans co-authored— which offers an alternative to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity—among the most influential of the past century.

Bustos collaborated with Brans and Associate Professor of Physics Tirthabir Biswas on research he presented recently at an APS conference. Bustos discussed how gravity from massive objects bends light traveling through space.

“For an undergraduate to present a proper talk at a conference, not just a poster presentation, is not trivial,” Biswas said.

For the past decade, Biswas has won wide professional acclaim for developing his own modifications of Einstein’s theory, capitalizing on Brans’ pioneering work. He said being an active researcher energizes him in the classroom.

“If you’re contributing research to what is going on right now in physics, you feel excitement that you can easily translate to students,” he said.

Brans downplays his role as a mentor, saying he is merely an “old man with a long history.” But students and faculty disagree, saying that he is an extremely valuable presence at Loyola.

“Brans is like an open book for me,” Bustos said. “Anything I need, he’ll teach it and introduce it to me.”

After graduation, Bustos plans to study aerospace engineering and become a military pilot so he can fly “bigger, badder jets.” The nuanced understanding of gravity he gained at Loyola, with help from Brans and Biswas, will prepare him well for both pursuits.

This year, the American Physical Society named a paper Brans co-authored—which offers an alternative to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity—among the most influential of the past century.

L E F T Loyola Professor Emeritus Carl Brans, one of the world’s top physicists, is still teaching, inspiring, and mentoring students, along with Associate Professor Tirthabir Biswas, who is continuing Brans’ legacy.

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New Orleans small businesses receive a boost from Loyola Brand Lab NEW SMALL-BUSINESS OWNERS can agree on two things: First, mastering social media is crucial, and, second, hardly anyone has the time to do it.

“If there’s one thing we hear over and over again from local startups and makers, it’s, ‘I need to do more social media, but I don’t have time in the day because I’m inventing my business,’” said Andrew Nelson, visiting professor of communication at Loyola.

Luckily for new businesses in New Orleans, there is now the Loyola Brand Lab.

Brand Lab launched this fall in Loyola’s School of Mass Communication as a means of providing students hands-on learning while helping local startup ventures develop strategic communication plans.

The first class of six Brand Lab students paired with Tchoup Industries, a maker of high-end backpacks, totes, and other bags that are handcrafted in New Orleans. The students helped Tchoup owner Patti Dunn with media outreach in advance of a trip to sell her wares at a North Carolina music festival, they expanded Tchoup’s presence among New Orleans college students using a blend of live events and Instagram, and they executed a Facebook ad campaign that launched on Black Friday.

“The experience with Loyola Brand Lab gave me new ideas about how to promote our brand awareness at a grassroots level,” Dunn said. “And it’s always helpful to see our company through fresh eyes—especially young, well-educated eyes.”

Loyola’s School of Mass Communication is among the best in the Gulf South. It will continue to produce students who offer real value to New Orleans startups via participation in Brand Lab for years to come.

“If there’s one thing we hear over and over again from local startups and makers, it’s, ‘I need to do more social media, but I don’t have time in the day because I’m inventing my business.’”

Andrew Nelson, visiting professor of communication at Loyola

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L E F T Students in Loyola’s award-winning School of Mass Communication teamed up with local company Tchoup Industries to increase its brand awareness and social media presence.

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Where students are proud to graduate as First in the Pack ROUGHLY ONE-QUARTER to one-third of each incoming Loyola class consists of students whose parents never graduated college. Because they have no one at home who can provide experiential advice on the stresses of university life, these “first-generation” students face particular challenges. But they also offer great hope: One college degree can change the trajectory of a family’s future.

In 2013, Loyola launched First in the Pack, a program that provides mentorship and support for first-generation students. Its inaugural class will graduate in the spring.

“It has definitely given me a sense of community, just knowing that I’m not alone on the journey of being a first-generation college student in my family,” junior psychology major Nydia Araya said.

First in the Pack pairs incoming first-generation students with faculty or staff mentors as well as “peer mentors,” often first-generation upperclassmen and -women like Araya. The program also hosts gatherings where firstgeneration students swap experiences and Loyola faculty members who were the first in their families to attend college share stories.

“We’ve made being a first-gen student into something that’s a point of pride,” Elizabeth Rainey, director of retention and student success, said. “Students wear their First in the Pack T-shirts.

It’s more of a celebration here than an at-risk population.”

Creating such an encouraging atmosphere depends in large part on the students themselves, who use First in the Pack as a framework to help each other along.

“It gives me a really good sense of purpose,” Araya said. “In addition to getting my own degree, I can mentor another student and help them feel like they want to finish their journey here. It’s really important to me.”

“We’ve made being a first-gen student into something that’s a point of pride.

Students wear their First in the Pack T-shirts. It’s more of a celebration here than an at-risk population.”

Elizabeth Rainey, director of retention and student success

L E F T First in the Pack launched in 2013 to mentor and support students who are the first in their families to attend college. The inaugural class will graduate this spring.

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Bookshelf

Silence

By John Biguenet (Bloomsbury) In this artful contribution to Bloomsbury’s “Object Lessons” series, author and playwright John Biguenet describes silence in its many forms: as a servant of power, a lie, a punishment, the voice of God, a terrorist’s weapon, a luxury good—in short, as an object we both do and do not recognize.

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Right to Revolt: The Crusade for Racial Justice in Mississippi’s Central Piney Woods

By Patricia Michelle Boyett (University Press of Mississippi) The 1966 murder of a civil rights activist by the Ku Klux Klan in southern Mississippi functions as a focal point for Patricia Boyett’s investigation of racial violence and heroic activism in one of the South’s most tortured and transformative landscapes.

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Involuntary Heroes: Hurricane Katrina’s Impact on Civil Liberties

By Mitchell F. Crusto (Carolina Academic Press) The Constitution affords Americans certain civil liberties, but they are often suspended during emergencies—legally or not. On the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Mitch Crusto uses cases from that disaster to assess how secure our civil liberties are in times of crisis and to ask whether they need greater protections.

Literature and Moral Economy in the Early Modern Atlantic: Elegant Sufficiencies

By Hillary Eklund (Ashgate Press) Renaissance England found itself in an ideological struggle between traditional standards of what it meant to have enough and promises of material abundance from an expanding world.

Hillary Eklund surveys a diverse body of drama, poetry, and prose to illustrate how the pursuit of plenty—through plunder, trade, and plantation—changed moral attitudes in the period.

Building the Land of Dreams: New Orleans and the Transformation of Early America

By Eberhard L. Faber (Princeton University Press) This lively new narrative biography of New Orleans, spanning the 1790s to the 1820s, traces the city’s transformation during the most crucial turning point in its history, from a sleepy Spanish imperial outpost to a bustling Jeffersonian powerhouse of American culture and industry.

From Chaos to Continuity: The Evolution of Louisiana’s Judicial System, 1712 – 1862

By Mark F. Fernandez (Louisiana State University Press) This study of Louisiana law’s development places the state’s legal codes—a blend of civil and common law that reflects Louisiana’s transition from a French and Spanish colony to an American state—within the context of the region and the larger picture of law in the United States.

The research and creative work highlighted in this report are a small representation of the expansive body of scholarly work ongoing at Loyola University New Orleans. For a complete list of publications, presentations, and performances in the 2014-2015 academic year by Loyola’s faculty, go online to loyno.edu/provosts-report

From Sufism to Ahmadiyya: A Muslim Minority Movement in South Asia

By Adil Hussain Khan (Indiana University Press) Readers interested in the evolution of religions can turn to Adil Hussain Khan’s account of how the Ahmadiyya movement grew from a mystical Sufi brotherhood in 19th-century India into a transnational religious organization—albeit one many Muslims consider beyond the pale of Islam. The book presents many sources in English for the first time.

Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism Edited by Uriel Quesada, Letitia Gomez, and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (University of Texas Press) This collection is the first to gather oral histories and personal essays by Latino/a LGBT activists whose struggles against discrimination in the 1970s to ’90s led to the creation of several organizations prominent in the fight for LGBT rights.

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