The LSU Board of Supervisors held its last meeting of the semester Thursday, sharing details of the new Construction Management building.
Casey Orillion from Grace Design Studios presented the schematic design of the new building. He said that the guiding principles when developing the building were collaboration, research, innovation and industry engagement.
Last year, the Board voted to establish a School of Construction, making it one of only a few located within a College of Engineering in the United States.
Now, the three-story, 150,000-square-foot building has been approved by the Louisiana Board of Regents and will begin construction in the spring of 2027.
This is one of the next steps of LSU’s Master Plan, which plans to align LSU’s campus more closely with its academic priorities and make it more pedestrian-friendly.
Along with this, the Board also approved a revised mission statement for the university. This new statement comes three years after another revised statement was approved.
Provost Troy Blanchard said the new mission statement reflects LSU as a newly restructured, research-focused flagship institution.
The new statement reads that LSU “prepares future leaders, drives transformative research and innovation, and translates knowledge into solutions.”
The previous mission statement emphasized LSU’s “Land, Sea, and Space Grant” designation, which is not mentioned in the updated version.
This meeting had no public comments, despite one being registered. Vice President of Students for a Democratic Society, Ziad Eissa, had registered to give public comment, but when the agenda item came up, his name was not called.
Eissa stood up to raise the issue of students’ right to express themselves, only to be informed by the legal advisor that he had already spoken several times in earlier meetings, while continuing to deny him the opportunity to make a public comment.
“This was a blatant attempt to silence our campaign…the administration knows that our demands are popular among the student body,” Eissa said. “But they continue to deny us the right to speak to or meet with them because they are beholden to the interests of wealthy donors and politicians like Jeff Landry.”
During the meeting, the board also approved a request from LSU Athletics to hire Vice President and Athletics Director Verge Ausberry. Congressman Troy Carter sent in a proclamation for Ausberry from Supervisor James Williams. He boasted about Ausberry’s leadership and faithful service to the university.
The board also said its’ goodbyes’ to chairs Patrick Morrow, Laurie Lipsey Aronson, and Lavar Henderson, as their term will be up this coming June.
