CEE and ME Departments Added to LSU's "Foundation of Excellence"
October 19, 2007
The Departments of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering have been awarded LSU’s prestigious Foundations of Excellence. The Foundations of Excellence are those programs on which LSU students and faculty are building to make the university a leading center of learning and research for the 21st century. They are the programs that have exhibited the strength to advance to the most competitive level, thereby heightening LSU’s reputation as a top public research institution, nationally and internationally. Each of these departments is eligible to receive extra resources to help recruit and retain the very best faculty and graduate students.All University departments not already on the list were invited to apply for the designation. Departments were required to submit proposals that demonstrated: national excellence, recent achievements, outcomes of recent program reviews and accreditation reports, faculty and program changes since 1999, strategic plans and department culture and contributions to the university’s mission and reputation. Based on the written proposals and additional presentations by department heads, the University Planning Council – made up of top faculty and senior administrators from across campus – selected the four units to receive the designation.
The Foundations of Excellence program originally began in 2000 when the University designated 12 departments as Foundations. In 2005, Chancellor Sean O’Keefe requested that the University Planning Council (UPC) come up with a new, peer-review process for the selection of the Foundations. This new process leaves the selection up to a group of eminent university leaders who examine an exhaustive list of criteria to determine which programs should be named Foundations of Excellence. It was based on these new criteria that the seven programs in 2005 were selected. At the time, O’Keefe and the UPC promised departments that did not make the list a chance to be reevaluated in 2007. For more information on the Foundations of Excellence, please visit www.lsu.edu/foundations/.
Article by Sherif S. Ishak, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, 225-578-4846, sishak@lsu.edu
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