Four decades ago, then-LSU Chancellor Paul Murrill had a vision for LSU to be among a “Top 30” university—a center not only for education, but research. The kind of place to which the best minds in the country—students and professors alike—want to come. His successor, James Wharton, had a strategy for getting there: Run the university like a business. To that end, he implemented a program called Quality Thrust, which analyzed each department’s performance, with the clear message that everyone will shape up or ship out. But as Business Report noted in its cover story of August 1984, then as now, money was the issue for LSU.
IF LSU IS to model itself after the top state schools in the country, it will have to be funded accordingly, Chancellor Wharton says. “There probably is a feeling that universities are bottomless pits, and that no amount of money would ever fully satisfy a university,” Wharton said. “When you get to a level of funding like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Georgia, money ‘turns over’ inside the university [when a professor retires or a program is cut back, funds are freed up for other areas]. … The problem for LSU is that it has been underfunded on so many fronts for so long, the turnover of money does not occur. In fact, LSU has faced budget cuts the last few years.”
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PHOTO: FLASHBACK-Shelly Beychok.vu.eps
SHELLY BEYCHOK’S LIFE STORY reads like a series of Horatio Alger novels. Born to Ukranian immigrants in a Brooklyn tenement, the Baton Rouge businessman has acted out one rags-to-riches tale after another in his 49 years. During that span, Beychok has been a successful lawyer, campaign manager and then executive counsel to Gov. Edwin Edwards, part owner of the New Orleans Jazz and of the Pepsi Cola franchise in that city, a leading proponent of academic excellence and accountability as a member of the LSU Board of Supervisors and most recently owner of the Sunbeam Baker in Baton Rouge and the Holsum Bakery in New Orleans.
NEARING ITS FIRST full month of operation, the early returns on Catfish Town indicate it is an unqualified success. And while public sentiment seems to be running highly in favor of the “festival marketplace” concept, the tide of opinion would also seem to be that some merchants in the development just won’t make it. Talk of the possible downside doesn’t deter Jerry Dodson, partner in the law firm that developed Catfish Town. He’s heard it all before, he says.
