Athletics will report to new president; research placed under new chancellor.
Piper Hutchinson | Louisiana Illuminator
Three days before they were hired, LSU’s next leader and the incoming chancellor of its Baton Rouge campus started discussing a plan they would pitch to the Board of Supervisors to restructure the university’s system of campuses across the state.
Incoming President Wade Rousse, currently the head of McNeese State University in Lake Charles, and newly hired Chancellor Jim Dalton, currently provost at the University of Alabama, were two of three finalists for the LSU presidency. Their discussion did not include the third finalist, former University of Arizona President Robert Robbins, in their discussion.
The pair came to the board with their plan to split the president and chancellor roles, which had been merged in 2012. They also wanted Dalton to become an executive vice president overseeing the research-intensive entities in the system, which include Pennington Biomedical Research Center, the LSU AgCenter and LSU’s medical schools in New Orleans and Shreveport.
LSU Board Chairman Scott Ballard had said multiple times he didn’t think the positions should be split, most recently Oct. 29, just after the presidential search committee narrowed the candidate pool down to the three finalists.
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In addition to a new president and chancellor, the LSU Board of Supervisors announced Tuesday its intent to significantly reorganize the system to boost the university’s research goals.
While the new plan is in flux and will not be finalized until the board votes next month, Ballard said about 95% of the new structure is solidified.
Rousse said he and Dalton have an “agreement in principle” that Dalton will oversee the academic side of things, while Rousse will manage the public facing aspects of the university, including external affairs, government relations and athletics.
“The LSU research enterprise will now report as a unified system, reflecting the collaborative strengths of our institutions, unified,” Ballard said at a news conference earlier this week.
Unifying LSU’s research institutions under Dalton is being done to boost the university’s total research spending figures, one of several research metrics LSU needs to boost to join the prestigious Association of American Universities, an organization of the nation’s top higher education research institutions.
Unifying LSU was a key part of the strategic framework for the system put forward by former President William Tate, who left his job in June to accept the same position at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
In 2023, the most recent year data is available from the National Science Foundation, LSU spent $384 million on research, which ranks 83rd among universities. LSU Health Shreveport spent $35 million, and LSU Health New Orleans spent $68 million. Adding their amounts to LSU Baton Rouge would elevate it to the 69th slot, overtaking Carnegie Mellon University, a member of the Association of American Universities.
But according to the National Science Foundation, LSU can’t compile all of its campuses statewide into a single slot to improve its research rankings.
“Each campus with its own chancellor, president or similar head is considered its own institution, a categorization established in 2010… That allows for more comparable data between private institutions and multi-campus state institutions,” a foundation spokesperson said. “We approach the Louisiana State system as we approach all state systems, per those parameters.”
While details are still sparse about what it will look like, LSU leaders have said they are reworking the system’s organizational chart, indicating they may have developed a new reporting structure that could mitigate the National Science Foundation’s concerns.
Having athletics at the flagship campus report to the system president, rather than that campus’ new chancellor, is an unusual arrangement. Before the two roles were merged, athletics reported to the chancellor of the main campus. Having athletics report to the system president essentially elevates it to being treated as an institution of its own rather than part of the Baton Rouge campus.
The arrangement separating Rousse from the academic side of the university comes as a relief for faculty, who expressed skepticism about Rousse’s qualifications to run a major research institution.
Rousse lacks several of the key qualifications the search committee established for presidential applicants. Unlike LSU, McNeese does not hold a top research designation, and Rousse did not ascend to his administrative rank though the traditional academic promotion path. He also hasn’t published a significant amount of research.
Rousse also provided vague answers when asked about LSU’s goal to become a top-50 public research university.
Dalton has an extensive research background and has served for five years as the chief academic officer of the University of Alabama, which, like LSU, holds the top research designation.