LSU axes CFO, and former DEI staff.

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BATON ROUGE (La. Illuminator) — LSU has fired its chief financial officer, the administrator in charge of handling sex-based discrimination complaints and its former diversity, equity and inclusion staff in what campus leaders say are cost-reducing layoffs.

Twenty-five employees were let go last week, and LSU President Wade Rousse said the savings will be redirected to hire new faculty and fund research.

The layoffs will save LSU approximately $3.7 million, according to an analysis of state employee salaries, obtained in public records, and LSU’s reported benefit rates.

“Louisiana deserves transformational change from LSU,” Rousse said in a statement. “I committed to streamlining operations and finding efficiencies so the university can focus on, and afford, the faculty needed to become a top 50 research institution.”

The layoffs include CFO Tommy Smith, who was paid $390,000 a year. He has held the position for a year, and his duties will move for now to LSU System CFO Brandi Roberts, spokeswoman Meg Sunstrom said.

Todd Manuel, former vice president of LSU’s Office of Engagement, Civil Rights and Title IX, was also terminated. He received an annual salary of $329,824.

Manuel was hired in 2022 by former LSU President William Tate, who resigned last year to accept the same job at Rutgers University in New Jersey. One of Tate’s big moves after accepting the LSU job in 2021 was merging LSU’s Title IX, civil rights and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts into one office.

Tate picked Manuel for the job although he had no previous experience in higher education or with Title IX.

After Republican Gov. Jeff Landry was elected in 2023, Tate renamed the office to remove its reference to inclusion. Around the same time, the university deleted references to diversity and inclusion from official campus webpages.

Former DEI staffers under Manuel were given titles that included the word “engagement.” Those staffers have now been terminated, and their workplace has been renamed again to the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX, an LSU webpage shows.

Sunstrom said the duties of those employees were redundant and will now be handled solely by LSU’s Student Affairs office.

The layoffs also included a major purge of the university’s marketing and communications department, with 16 writers, video producers and photographers terminated.

The layoffs are part of ongoing efforts to restructure LSU, a process that began when its Board of Supervisors hired Rousse and Chancellor Jim Dalton, splitting what had previously been a single job into two.

Under the new structure, all research-intensive campuses in the LSU System, which include its main campus, the LSU AgCenter, Pennington Biomedical Research Center and LSU’s medical schools in New Orleans and Shreveport.

While Dalton oversees academics and research, Rousse manages the public-facing aspects of the university, including government relations and athletics.

Unifying LSU’s research institutions under Dalton is being done to boost the university’s total research spending figures, one of several metrics LSU needs to improve to achieve its goal of becoming a top-50 research university.

According to the National Science Foundation, LSU ranked 83rd in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available.

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