BATON ROUGE – Dr. Orlando McMeans has been appointed to be the interim Southern University president.<\/p>\n
McMeans is the current chancellor of the Southern University Agricultural Research and Extension Center and dean of the College of Agricultural, Human and Environmental Sciences.<\/p>\n
He’s stepping into the president’s role that will be left vacant by Dennis Shields, whose departure was announced in late November.<\/p>\n
“He’s extraordinarily committed to the success of this institution, and he has a good team of chancellors to support him,” Shields said about McMeans.<\/p>\n
During his speech to the Southern Board of Supervisors, McMeans said he had previously turned down the role of Southern president.<\/p>\n
“When I was approached by board members and just talking about the fact that this is the Southern University and I love that swag in how they put that, I prayed about it, I know it’s a challenge, but I love challenges,” McMeans said.<\/p>\n
McMeans says that Shields has been mentoring him since he arrived at the university, with both sharing many of the same goals.<\/p>\n
“Number one is student success. Recruitment, retention, graduation. That is very, very critical. Now I am a research scientist. I will promote and push research. I think research is critical, and we still need to maintain our R2 status,” McMeans said.<\/p>\n
With McMeans serving as interim president, he says that one of his vice-chancellors serves as the interim leader of the AgCenter.<\/p>\n
“Since 2019, I’ve been working with a lot of young administrators to make sure that when I leave, or when I step down and go back to the classroom, those people will transition easily into the leadership capacity,” McMeans said.<\/p>\n
McMeans was asked what his plans are for the first two months of his tenure.<\/p>\n
“Really, it’s going to be looking at data. 100 percent looking at data. Communicating with all 16 board members to look at what their priorities are, but I will tell you right now, I will be looking at all types of metrics,” McMeans said.<\/p>\n
McMeans’ message to the students is that the institution will continue to be student-centered.<\/p>\n
Whatever we do is for the best of the students, and we want to make sure that you cross that finish line in a timely manner,” McMeans said.<\/p>\n
A search for the permanent president will begin in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BATON ROUGE – Dr. Orlando McMeans has been appointed to be the interim Southern University president. McMeans is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[12592,48049,48052,139,141,140,5242,48050,48051],"class_list":{"0":"post-89029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-chancellor","9":"tag-dr-orlando-mcmeans","10":"tag-human-and-environmental-sciences","11":"tag-orlando","12":"tag-orlando-headlines","13":"tag-orlando-news","14":"tag-president","15":"tag-southern-university","16":"tag-southern-university-agricultural-research-and-extension-center-and-dean-of-the-college-of-agricultural"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}