On board: Phil Frost, director of BREC’s Baton Rouge Zoo, has been installed as the new vice chairman of the Louisiana Travel Promotion Association Board of Directors, a trade association that represents 750 members. “This organization has worked to lead and strengthen Louisiana’s tourism industry for 54 years now, and I look forward to working with my fellow board members to keep the momentum going,” Frost says in a prepared statement. Linda Curtis-Sparks, with the Sabine Parish Tourist Commission, is the new LTPA chairman. Tourism generated $10.8 billion for Louisiana in 2013 and employed 152,000 people throughout the state, the association says.
On the list: Though the program is only about 2 years old, the LSU Flores Online MBA continues to land on the best-of lists for such programs. LSU announced today its web-based model has been ranked No. 32 in the nation by the Online MBA Report website in its 2015 rankings of the top 50 programs. The website also ranked LSU’s online MBA No. 10 among all Southern schools and No. 38 among all public schools. See the complete rankings. In January, the LSU Flores Online MBA program was ranked No. 57 among all public colleges and universities in the country, and is No. 72 overall, by U.S. News & World Report.
On to England: For the first time in the university’s history, an LSU student has landed a prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship. With the award, LSU Roger Hadfield Ogden Honors College and College of Science senior Zachary Fitzpatrick will pursue a fully-funded master of philosophy degree in clinical science, with a specialization in rare diseases, at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The Gates Cambridge Scholarship competition annually awards 40 full scholarships to U.S. undergraduates for the pursuit of postgraduate degrees at Cambridge. A native of Holden, Fitzpatrick is a senior who is majoring in biochemistry, with minors in political science and chemistry. He was also a finalist in this year’s Rhodes Scholarship competition. LSU has more details.
