In 1987, everyone who applied to LSU was admitted.
National prominence? Not quite.
With the closing of admissions in 1988, the Univers-ity began a struggle to regain its former prestige.
Today the struggle has a slogan.
It’s called the Flagship Agenda. And it’s more than a marketing campaign.
“When you give something a motto or a slogan, it seems like fluff,” said Karen Denby, assistant vice chancellor and dean of enrollment management. “But we’re actually going to make something happen.”
Something already has.
The University has hired a world-renowned astrophysicist to conduct ground-breaking research, chosen not to renew instructor contracts and hired tenure-track faculty, offered more fellowships for graduate students and changed LSU catalogs and methods of scheduling to encourage students to enroll in 15 credit hours instead of 12.
And that’s only the beginning.
When the six objectives of the Flagship Agenda have been accomplished, many say the University will be a changed institution. And the timeline is only seven years.
Change will happen. How the change will be received is as complicated as student and faculty reactions to instructor cuts.
The plan is for the University to become more elite, more prestigious and more effective at research and teaching.
But there are always trade-offs.
More professors means fewer instructors. More services means more funding. Higher standards means some Louisiana students will be denied admittance to the University.
But the outcome will be worth it, said Chancellor Mark Emmert. He can best explain how using a baseball metaphor.
“Not too long ago, before Skip Bertman, anybody could have played baseball for LSU — I could have played,” he said. “But nobody came to the games.”
Then came the transformation.
“Now there are thousands of little kids playing baseball and all they want is to wear purple and gold; and almost none of them are going to get to do it,” Emmert said. “But we’re five-time national champions, we fill the stands and everybody is really proud of the team.”
The Flagship Agenda answers the question of whether the University will have a similar transformation with a resounding “yes.”
“Are we going to get there?” Emmert asked. “Yes; the Flagship Agenda is how we’re going to do it.”
But at a school where some students complain about dropping from No. 1 to No. 2 on the list of party schools, and get more excited about football than chemistry, changes such as increased standards and mandatory summer reading could be a hard sell.
A hard sell, maybe, but one Emmert is confident is good for Louisiana, its residents and the University.
The Reveille went in-depth find out why.
The objectives
For many students, the Flagship Agenda means instructor cuts and a new picture on the University’s home page. But the details of the Flagship Agenda promise much more than a change in class sizes.
The Flagship Agenda is a series of six objectives detailing the steps the University plans to take
to “increase research and scholarly productivity and the quality and competitiveness of graduate and undergraduate students.”
In other words, the Flagship Agenda is a plan to help the University better do what it already does: research and teach.
It includes supporting cutting-edge research, building new facilities and initiating programs to encourage the undergraduate academic experience, such as summer reading.
It also includes more faculty and fewer instructors. It includes the possibility of raising the academic excellence fee students pay.
The objectives are designed for the good of the students and the University, Emmert said. He also said the objectives are necessary to transform the University into Louisiana’s flagship university and increase its status both nationally and internationally.
Emmert and Provost Risa Palm argue the increase in prestige will make a University degree and University graduate worth more in the eyes of a potential employer or graduate school.
And some students believe them.
“It’s going to make my diploma look better,” said Jason Nicosia, a psychology freshman.
Nicosia is from Mississippi. He was attracted to the University because he thinks its quality is better than any school in his home state.
And if the University’s standards rise higher, Jason thinks it will become more attractive to the brightest students in his state.
Raising standards is exactly the order of the Flagship Agenda.
Beyond bleeding
purple and gold
Since 1988, admission standards have increased dramatically. 
According to the Flagship Agenda, those standards are going to keep rising. 
Rising standards means higher selectivity. It also has meant higher demand for LSU.
“Right now, our applications are off the charts,” Emmert said. 
But some students fear the University’s focus on increasing standards could mean their younger siblings will not be admitted to the University.
Emmert himself put it best: “It’s hard for somebody to be proud of the university that just rejected their daughter.”
It could be a reality for Louisiana students. It is a reality for Texas students, Emmert said.
“There are kids who can’t get into the school their parents graduated from,” he said.
Jason Rivers, a kinesiology junior from Texas, has seen it happen in his state.
Rivers transferred to the University this past fall. Before transferring, he attended Blinn Community College. It is dubbed “Blinndergar-ten” by Texas A&M students, he said.
But the title of “Blinnderga-rten” aside, Rivers said students are not seen as stupid if they attend a community college. And that is different than Louisiana, he said.
Rivers said many students attend a community college and transfer to one of the larger universities after two years.
“That’s the way it works in Texas,” he said. “Texas A&M and the University of Texas are difficult to get into.”
Balancing admission at the University, maintaining a substantial in-state student population and raising standards is going to be a “complicated and delicate balance,” Emmert said.
But Emmert also said the goal of the Flagship Agenda is not to make admission into the University unattainable for Louisiana students.
“We are first and foremost a state university,” he said. “Our goal is to attract the brightest Louisiana students to keep them from leaving the state.”
Still, some students enrolled in the University would not make it in by next fall’s standards.
Thomas Cook is just a student. A business freshman, he said he met the minimum requirements to be admitted to the University this past fall.
Cook is from a family of University supporters. His mother, father, great uncles, aunts and cousins have graduated from or are attending the University.
“My whole family is fanatic about LSU,” he said.
And Cook wants his children to be able to attend the school.
“By the time they are two years old, I want them to know the fight song,” he said.
For the family that has always bled purple and gold not to see their child admitted to LSU is “the hard part” for Emmert. 
“I don’t like that part of it at all,” he said. “It’s very unfortunate. It’s the hard part of the transformation.”
But without the University’s higher standards and increase in prestige, without the University transforming Louisiana’s economy, “sons and daughters may get into LSU but have to work in Atlanta or Houston,” Emmert said.
“We wind up being one great outplacement service for the citizens of Louisiana,” he said.
But the Flagship Agenda can change that.
“A great, strong, vibrant university is a great vehicle of economic change,” he said. “Louisiana has to have at least one of those. They are powerful magnets for smart people.
“That’s why a bunch of your classmates are going to wind up in Atlanta, Austin, Salt Lake City or San Diego.”
Charlie Weems, chair of the Board of Supervisors Flagship Agenda committee, said an important part of raising standards is a major information campaign in Louisiana high schools. He thinks raising University standards will challenge Louisiana students to work harder in high school because more will be expected of them.
And Emmert hopes other Louisiana universities will improve in the rising tide of LSU, giving state residents more options for an excellent higher education.
As for the flagship university, test scores and grade point averages are not the only changes in enrollment. Two other important components make the list of six objectives in the Flagship Agenda: an increase in the graduate student population and an increase in the out-of-state student population.
In comparison to its peers, the University’s out-of-state enrollment is low: a mere eight percent, compared to Florida State’s 20 percent and Auburn’s 30 percent.
“I think a good out-of-state population would be 15, 20, 25 percent,” Palm said. “For every brain drain out, we want one in.”
Palm came to the University from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where the out-of-state population is around 17 percent. That 17 percent has a student profile comparable to Princeton, she said. 
“The out-of-state student population pushes the university toward excellence and an excellent university benefits in-state students,” she said. 
At the University of Colorado in Boulder, another one of Palm’s former universities, out-of-state students subsidize in-state students, she said.
“They pay more; they support the in-state students,” she said. “But still there is the demand from out-of-state students. We can have that at LSU.”
Emmert’s hopes for out-of-state enrollment are similar: no more than 25 or 30 percent.
The goal for the graduate student population is to increase it from 15 to 20 percent.
The increase in graduate students is part of another major theme of the Flagship Agenda: research.
A research community
The Flagship Agenda’s goal for research is clear: more of it, more people to do it and better facilities in which to do it.
That means more tenure-track professors who are required to do research. It means an increase in enrollment of graduates students who aid in faculty research projects and conduct their own as well. It means larger labs with better equipment.
It means something for undergraduates, too.
When asked what undergraduates should most look forward to from the Flagship Agenda, Palm answers “research.”
The answer may come as a surprise.
To some students, such as Thomas Cook, research sounds like a code word to describe a decreased focus on teaching undergraduates.
And the Flagship Agenda’s research goals concern mostly graduate students and tenure-track faculty. But a focus on research is good for the University, Emmert said. And if it’s good for the University, it’s good for students.
The University is not a liberal arts college, he said.
“The goal of the University is two-fold,” he said. “We exist for research and for teaching; we must excel at both.”
Those goals are connected, Emmert said.
“What you get at a research university are active faculty in the classroom who have excitement and understanding,” he said. “Classes are being taught by someone who has mastered the text, written the text, been quoted in the text.”
Palm said a renewed focus on research will benefit undergraduates in another way.
“Our research profile has a lot to do with how people are going to view your degree when you leave this university,” she said. “You want people to say ‘ooh’ when you apply to other schools.”
Mike Viviano wants his future employer to say “ooh” when he applies for a job. And he thinks a commitment to research and academic excellence is exactly the University’s job.
“The focus of the University should be to bring smart people into the state who can create Louisiana into a place where I can stay and work,” he said.
But still, resources are lacking, Emmert said.
And at a time when state budgets are tight across the nation, the argument to get money for research better be good.
The Flagship Agenda says it is.
One of the major premises of the research is that it will be returned to Louisiana. The University will continue to promote research in areas of importance to the state, such as petroleum engineering and geology.
Research also can entice intelligent minds to come to Louisiana, Palm said. She also said it can create jobs.
“And University students can fill those positions,” she said.
Emmert and Palm said the plan for research is intended to drive the economy of the state so that Louisiana residents and University graduates don’t have to go to Memphis or Dallas to get a job.
Viviano, for one, wants to stay in Louisiana when he graduates. If the Flagship Agenda can help him do that, it has his vote, he said.
A school of academics
The Flagship Agenda is not wholly aimed at research. There are projects designed specifically for undergraduates, under the title of objective three: “increase quality of undergraduate students and programs.”
One of Palm’s favorites is
the summer reading program, she said.
She got the idea from UNC at Chapel Hill, where she was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Undergraduate students at UNC read a book during the summer and meet before the semester begins to discuss the book. The summer after Sept. 11, students were asked to read “Approaching the Qu’ran.”
The North Carolina legislature interpreted the assignment as an unconstitutional mixing of church and state, but the university won, she said.
“The whole thing was very controversial,” she said. “So, of course, all the students read the book.”
As part of the Flagship Agenda, summer reading will happen here next fall with the book “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser.
“Whatever you pitch can have something in it to cause a stir,” she said. “That’s what we want, to incite students to care about academics and to prepare them to cope with society.”
Palm really thinks it will work. So do other administrators.
But some students are not as optimistic.
“I just don’t think students are going to do it,” said Kay Evans, an architecture sophomore. “But, I would be excited to do it.”
Evans thinks a student mindset opposed to summer reading can change with time and effort.
“I think if the culture were different, students could accept more academics and less partying,” she said.
But there is a culture that will have to change, said Paul Janeski, a mechanical engineering sophomore.
“This is a sports school,” he said. “Classes here don’t require much.”
Karen Denby, assistant vice chancellor and dean of enrollment, said the culture will change and the summer reading program is indicative of the projects the administration is planning to foster that change.
“We don’t want to be bookworms, but we want to be academics,” she said.
And Palm said the University has made significant steps toward changing the “party school” mindset.
“We have made steps,” Palm said. “We have higher entrance standards, and when the faculty see more motivated students, there will be a culture of improvement.”
That transformation already is happening right under the nose of undergraduates, with the University encouraging students to enroll in 15 hours instead of the minimum 12, Denby said. That encouragement has included changing the Dean’s List and Chancellor’s Honor Roll requirements and also making it more difficult to hold classes and drop them.
Reaching its goals
“Not everything about the Flagship Agenda is going to make everybody feel great,” Emmert said.
But some students think it actually could work.
“I’ve noticed it already, especially with the increase in standards,” Mike Viviano said.
LSU was a last resort for Viviano, but the attraction of staying close to home was too great, he said. Rising standards will only make him more proud to be a University graduate.
But there also are the Thomas Cooks.
“Yes, I came here to get an education, but I didn’t come here to be an academic,” Cook said. “I came here for the people and the culture. I wouldn’t give it up for anything and I don’t want the University to change.”
But change is happening.
It began with state officials, politicians and political commentators, Emmert said.
“When you listen to rhetoric, they are uniformly referring to
LSU as the flagship university,” he said. “That wasn’t true five years ago.”
It is continuing with the change in faculty make-up and rising standards.
It will bring summer reading programs and initiatives to engage undergraduates in academics.
Not long ago, anybody could have played baseball for LSU.
“Now, to play on that team, you’ve got to be the best in America. You can’t just be good,” Emmert said. “So, yeah, there’s a bunch of kids who are never
gonna get to play ball for Smoke Laval, but they’re sure proud of that team.”
Will the same happen at LSU?
According to the Flagship Agenda, it will by 2010.