ONLINE DEGREES BROADEN LSUS ENROLLMENT - As institutions of higher education get geared up for the spring 2018 session, Red River Radio takes a moment to visit with Larry Clark, Chancellor of LSU-Shreveport. This is a two-part series; for part-one we ask Chancellor Clark to reflect on LSUS's accomplishments in 2017.
CHANCELLOR CLARK: "LSUS has celebrated its 50th anniversary in September, it's continuing this year and this has given us a chance to look back an reflect on what we've been doing. And in (2017) we started a new Student Success Center, located in our library. And it's a terrific collaboration between the students and administration; they're paying an extra fee.
We've dedicated the entire amount to creating the center and staffing the center. At LSUS, we have approximately 35% first-generation-to-college-students. They need support, it's a different kind of support than what we've had in the past. It's been really helpful for the students and it's been terrific to have that as we begin our 50th year."
RED RIVER RADIO: Speaking of students, is total enrollment at LSUS somewhere around 5800 or thereabouts?
CHANCELLOR CLARK:"LSUS enrollment for the fall (2017) was just 6 students under 6,000. That's because the terrific number of online students that we have and the growth of the MBA program in particular. We had graduation and it was really exciting to see almost 200 students --that were online students -- that came to the graduation, it meant that much to them. And we had a student from Ghana, Africa who flew in just for the purpose of commencement. She took her entire program online in Ghana, Africa.
RED RIVER RADIO: Do you anticipate more international students like that?
CHANCELLOR CLARK:"There are other students like her, it's just that to come that far to actually walk the stage when she was a virtual student. But we had a student from Portland, Oregon and she had her family members in and as we went around, starting from the west coast to the east coast, north to south, seeing
where the students had come in from. They had come in from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, as we were doing the mid-west. They were from Florida, Washington-D.C. area, Atlanta, a number from the New Orleans area, a number from the Houston area, someone from San Antonio had come in. It was just very interesting to see how many of the students had come from afar. What truly was fun; thanks to Skype and things like that, they took their classes completely online but they recognized fellow classmates by the fact they were in projects by Skype. And so they would see them for the first time in-person, but they knew themselves by Skype. It's different than many people think, one of our local legislators kids me of the fact, says 'those aren't real students'; and I'll tell you they're definitely real students. And the student who came to us from Ghana, she's real."
To learn more about LSUS Online Degree Programs, go to lsus.edu.
