Office of
Academic Affairs
Interim Executive Vice President & Provost Troy Blanchard
Troy Blanchard currently serves as the Interim Executive Vice President & Provost of Louisiana State University. Blanchard, the Chief Operating and Chief Academic Officer of LSU’s flagship campus in Baton Rouge, maintains executive oversight over instruction, student support, and research while simultaneously serving as the chief academic officer for all LSU campuses across the state and chief academic advisor to the President.
Blanchard joined the faculty of the LSU Department of Sociology in 2007 and has since held multiple leadership positions, most notably serving as dean of the LSU College of Humanities & Social Sciences (HSS)—one of LSU’s largest colleges— from 2019 through 2025.
Academic Enterprise
The Office of Academic Affairs supports the Executive Vice President & Provost in ensuring university excellence in learning, discovery, and engagement. The office works closely with the faculty senate and the president to advance LSU using a shared governance model. We also make communication and transparency a hallmark of the office. Lastly, the essence of our academic core--our faculty and staff--are preeminent in everything we do.
LSU ELEMENTS & DISCOVERY
LSU's faculty information system, Elements, allows for robust faculty activity data collection, maintenance and reporting on the teaching, research and service activities while the Discovery Module provides an interface for faculty collaboration and integration which allows collaborators to connect with faculty.
Since its inception in 2006, LSU’s Coastal Emergency Risk Assessment has been delivering ever-improving storm-surge forecasts via an easy-to-use website meant for coastal residents and the emergency managers tasked with keeping them safe.
Contraflow, a method of evacuation thought up by LSU Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Brian Wolshon, is now used all over the world to save lives and was an integral part of getting people out of New Orleans before Katrina made a name for herself.
As LSU aims to become a leading research institution and join the Association of American Universities, groundbreaking researchers from all six of LSU’s research campuses gathered for a first-ever two-day collaborative retreat on the Baton Rouge campus.
LSU’s Traci Birch dedicated her career to helping Louisiana recover and prepare for future storms, blending research, planning, and community collaboration statewide.
Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Louisiana coast, a team of LSU researchers has driven the most significant overhaul of the nation’s flood loss reduction standards since 1973.
