As the University begins its plan to remove some Arts and Sciences instructors, campus administrators continue to support the decision to hire more professors in their place.
Chancellor Mark Emmert said there are many benefits to having more professors teaching students in the classroom.
Emmert said having more professors means the University can provide more teaching, scholarship and service to University students.
“We increase the total scholarly work of the University so that LSU has a bigger impact on advancing knowledge and creative art, and we can offer our citizens more direct service for social, economic and cultural development of the state,” Emmert said.
In addition, Emmert said the University lags behind its peers in terms of the number of professors.
“The University of Virginia, for example, has about the same number of professors, but about one-half the total number of students,” Emmert said.
English department chair Malcolm Richardson agreed that the University lags behind other schools, such as the University of Texas and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in terms of the number of professors in the classroom.
Richardson said he was concerned about certain misconceptions about professors.
“I’m worried by the unspoken assumption in several news stories that professors are uncaring about students and egregiously ignore students to pursue their own research,” Richardson said. “Our own student evaluations of teaching don’t bear this assumption out.”
Guillermo Ferreyra, chair of the Math Department, said he thought more professors in the classroom would allow University students to be better prepared for work after graduation and give students more opportunities to do research.
Ferreya said he already has received several applications from professors around the world hoping to come to the University.
“In the last few years, we have designed 10 new courses, and with more research faculty coming in, we will be able to offer even more courses,” Ferreyra said.