While students were taking their fall semester finals, the LSU Roger Hadfield Ogden Honors College received a Christmas gift of record-breaking proportions.
University alumnus Roger Houston Ogden donated $12 million to the college. The gift is the largest unrestricted endowment the University has ever received, said Honors College Dean Jonathan Earle.
Earle said the gift will be used to create better educational opportunities for Honors Colleges students, from offering more scholarships and a greater number of study abroad opportunities to enhancing the benefits of being a part of the University’s Honors College.
“This money is going to be spent on students,” Earle said. “It’s not like I’m going to go out and create all sorts of faculty research positions with this money. This is going to students for the most part.”
Since receiving the $12 million endowment, the college has changed its name from the LSU Honors College to the Roger Hadfield Ogden Honors College. It is now named after Ogden’s late father and his son, according to the Honors College website.
Ogden served on the LSU Board of Supervisors for 14 years and owns Ogden Development and Investments, a real estate development firm in New Orleans.
The LSU Foundation, an organization dealing with financial donor relationships with the University, will invest the $12 million. Its interest and returns are to be used as the college’s dean sees fit, said Sara Crow, director of communications and donor relations.
Crow said the University won’t know how much additional funding the college will have to use annually from this gift until it has been invested in the marketplace and returns are collected.
“This is an endowed gift, meaning that it’s not like I have $12 million as of yesterday. What we get is the interest that’s generated from this gift.” Earle said. “We are so excited to be in this kind of position to be able to invest in honors students, essentially in perpetuity.”
Earle said he wants to use the additional money provided to the school to up the college’s ante from every step of a student’s education, from recruiting to opportunities while they attend the University.
“There are some of our peers like University of Oklahoma, University of Arizona and University of Alabama who are doing better than we are, offering top students scholarships,” Earle said. “So we should be able to close the gap.”
He said the endowment could help the University attract and keep top students.
Nhi Trinh, a biology freshman in the Honors College, said some of the perks of being in the college were factors in her decision to attend the University, and she looks forward to the study abroad opportunities she has with the college.
“I think it’s great if this money could be used to make it easier for us to go places and do cool things,” Trinh said. “I think any additional funding is great for students.”
The college currently offers five types of scholarships for incoming freshman and six types of scholarships for current students.
Crow said usually the LSU Foundation uses about 4 percent of the investment returns on a given gift as the annual spending rate for endowed gifts. Each year the endowment grows it provides funds to the college.

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Raegan Labat

The Renaissance-styled French House was built in 1935 and currently houses LSU's Honors College.