As Louisiana bleeds educated young people to other states, LSU wants to give them a reason to stay.
The LSU Honors College has historically been an add-on option for qualifying students’ existing degree paths, allowing them to take classes that typically have fewer students and more focused subject matter. But the program has struggled to retain students as they matriculate. The value of being an LSU honor graduate has not always been enough to outweigh the effort needed for the required thesis.
Honors College Dean Jonathan Earle hopes to fix this with the creation of a Traditions in Critical Thought and Scholarship (TRACTS) bachelor of arts degree.
The program will admit a small number of high performing students; 28 are enrolled in the first cohort and eventually 100 will be admitted annually.
Though they are bound together as TRACTS students, the program is compatible with all other undergraduate degrees at LSU, giving participating students their own unique focus. As a cohort, they are provided an education comparable to a small liberal arts college but with all the perks of being at a large university, Earle said.
The biggest selling point of the program comes after students graduate. The Honors College is currently lining up employers and agreements with graduate schools in the LSU System to be able to offer every single TRACTS graduate either a job in Louisiana or a placement in a graduate degree program.
The goal, Earle said, is to generate buy-in from students to remain in Louisiana so they might one day become the leaders who tackle the state’s problems.
“This is the premier group of students in the entire country that [we] are going to recruit into the state … They are going to not just come to the state and get an education. They’re going to start the businesses that are going to hire the students that LSU is producing,” interim Provost Troy Blanchard said in an interview.
“It’s the tip of the spear,” LSU Board of Supervisors chairman Scott Ballard said.
The new Honors College degree received approval from the LSU Board of Supervisors and the Louisiana Board of Regents in 2024 and enrolled its first class for fall 2025.
Current students haven’t been promised a guaranteed job yet, though the goal of that guarantee is circulating among them, several TRACTS enrollees said in interviews.
Brian Haymon, CEO of the Baton Rouge-based logistics company Loadstar, founded and chairs LSU Honors College advisory committee. He is among those spearheading the effort to line up jobs for TRACTS graduates.
The first step, Haymon said, is signing up employers who are willing to take on the students as interns before they graduate.
“Everyone who hears this story about the Honors College is interested, if not enthusiastic and excited, because these are the students that every organization wants,” Haymon said. “I think that’s the starting point, and we’re on that path.”
“This is a very deliberate attempt to address some fundamental challenges that the state has,” Haymon said of the program.
To attract students to the program, administrators are touting what they call a truly interdisciplinary education. Its course titles include “Physical Science for Citizens: Lean Systems,” “Great Conversations: Self-Discovery in Science and Literature” and “Critical Analysis – Louisiana: Where Are We Headed?”
Haymon said his fellow company leaders are searching for students skilled at reading, writing and thinking critically.
“We want students who come out able to reason clearly, problem solve, write and speak well, and have that classic educational background to then apply in other substantive areas, whether it be medicine, law, science,” Haymon said.
The process to qualify for TRACTS starts with the application, Earle said, as students seeking admission must submit an essay on a piece of literature or art that inspires them. They must also have a 3.5 high school GPA and scored at least 30 on the ACT or 1360 on the SAT.
Supporters of the TRACTS program say elements from a classical liberal arts education are as vital for science-oriented majors as they are for those studying the humanities.
Irene Kaiser, a junior kinesiology major in the TRACTS program, said she believes science, technology, engineering and math students are those most in need of an interdisciplinary education.
“Sometimes you get so dead set on like, I’m learning organic chemistry and genetics that I don’t remember what it’s like to be a human at some point, like, when’s the last time I actually read a book about a real experience and I had that feeling of, like, empathy and communication through collaboration,” Kaiser said.
