This year was marked with ups and downs for the E.J. Ourso College of Business.
While one of the most anticipated events of the year was the unveiling of the new, multimillion-dollar Business Education Complex, just days before it opened, Dean Eli Jones announced he would be leaving LSU. Jones took a position as the dean of the University of Arkansas’s Sam M. Walton College of Business.
Jones has not publically commented on his reasons for the departure, but the move will garner a $75,000 pay raise for him, according to figures in The Daily Reveille’s salary database and on ArkansasBusiness.com.
Chancellor Michael Martin lauded Jones’ leadership in a news release Feb. 29.
“[Jones] oversaw fundraising efforts for and the construction of the college’s new Business Education Complex,” Martin said in the release. “He has been a good representative of the University, and we certainly did what we could to keep him at LSU.”
The project the Business Education Complex represented was no small undertaking.
The facility’s construction was originally budgeted for $60 million, according to Timothy Rodrigue, assistant director of alumni and external relations.
Construction workers broke ground on the project March 19, 2010, and completed the 156,000-square-foot facility 8 million dollars under budget, Rodrigue said.
“In two years, we’ve gone from a paved asphalt surface to clearing all that, putting up steel beams, glass being installed and a roof put in place,” Rodrigue told The Daily Reveille on March 1.
Classes will be held in the facility starting fall 2012. Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media, delivered the keynote address of the ceremony that was attended by local politicians and former administrators.
In his address, Forbes said funding the project in a time of economic downturn showed the University put a premium on improving the education of its students.
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Jack Hamilton appointed Richard White as interim dean of the college six weeks after Jones announced his departure.
White previously served as a Marjory B. Ourso professor and associate dean, and has been at the University since 1998.
White will assume his duties June 8, pending approval of the Board of Supervisors, and he said he hopes to ease the transition into his role and the transition of the college into its new home.
___ Contact Paul Braun at [email protected]