After a months-long process and two hours of deliberation by LSU Board of Supervisors, McNeese State University President Wade Rousse is LSU’s 29th president.
A Louisiana native, Rousse pitched himself as a nontraditional candidate who would shake up the university with corporate-oriented leadership after past presidents had lengthy academic backgrounds. He said the exact date he will start hasn’t been set.
In an unexpected turn of events Tuesday afternoon, the board simultaneously appointed another finalist for the president position — James Dalton, executive vice president and provost at the University of Alabama — as the executive vice president of LSU. The position will include the traditional chancellor role of the flagship campus in Baton Rouge and signals a significant change to the current system.
Accepting his position, Rousse said he intended to put a detailed organizational chart out in the next 30 days and called the appointment “the honor of my life.”
“Thank you for thinking creatively,” he told board members. “As we started this process, we started thinking about structure. At every event I went to, I talked about structure. In my mind, I have a 90-day, a 180-day and a 360-day plan.”
LSU executive vice president elect James Dalton, facing the camera, shakes hands with LSU president elect Wade Rousse after their appointments were announced during the LSU Board of Supervisors final meeting in the search for the new LSU president at the University Administration Building on Tuesday, November 4, 2025.
Rousse will take control of LSU under intense public scrutiny — in the past two weeks, football Coach Brian Kelly was fired and Athletic Director Scott Woodward left under pressure from Gov. Jeff Landry.
Additionally, the Trump administration has been attempting to cut federal grant funding to universities nationwide, including LSU. Yet total enrollment in the LSU system is at a record high, adding some financial stability.
A president and a chancellor
The board voted 12-1 to accept both men, with Laurie Aaronson voting no.
The pair replaces former LSU President William Tate IV, who left earlier this year for Rutgers University. The roles of president and chancellor had been combined but have now been separated by the Board of Supervisors, which unanimously authorized Legal Counsel Trey Jones to draft amendments to the bylaws to reflect the changes.
Wade Rousse, center right, and James Dalton, center left, receive a round of applause and shake hands on their way to the podium after being named LSU president and executive vice president respectively during the LSU Board of Supervisors final meeting in the search for the new LSU president at the University Administration Building on Tuesday, November 4, 2025.
The proposed structure laid out by Rousse and Dalton in their acceptance remarks has Dalton overseeing most of the academic and research components of the university.
External affairs, governmental affairs and athletics will report to Rousse, while operations on the flagship campus, the AgCenter, the two health science centers and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center will report to Dalton. Dalton will serve under Rousse.
Rousse strongly advocated for bringing back a chancellor position in his interview with the LSU Presidential Search Committee last week. At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, he said he approached Dalton and discussed the idea with him over the last few days. Ballard said it was discussed during the board’s executive session Tuesday — leading to the long session — but it was “not the first time we knew that they were discussing it.”
Political insiders said Rousse was Landry’s favored candidate for the job and had an inside track with the board, though the governor’s office has declined to comment on the search.
Dalton was an unexpected entrant to the search, officially being announced the day the committee interviewed candidates to pick three finalists.
Business background
Rousse grew up in Golden Meadow, a small fishing town along Bayou Lafourche. He attended McNeese State for three years before transferring to Nicholls State University, where he earned a business degree. While still in college, he began working at a Louisiana-based marine logistics company, and he climbed the ranks over 11 years to eventually become a partner.
Finalist Wade Rousse, the president of McNeese State University, speaks during the LSU Board of Supervisors final meeting in the search for the new LSU president at the University Administration Building on Tuesday, November 4, 2025.
He earned several more degrees before joining McNeese State in 2019 as the business college dean and later becoming vice president of university advancement. In that position, he said, he boosted fundraising and corporate sponsorships and helped bring to fruition a new Liquefied Natural Gas Center of Excellence, which trains students in the LNG industry and will host a new federal research center.
At one point, the center was in jeopardy, so Rousse and his team flew to Washington, D.C. to convince federal officials and lawmakers to keep supporting it.
“We refused to come home until we did get it back,” he said during an interview Monday with LSU faculty members. “We were able to secure it and bring it back.”
At Tuesday’s press conference, Rousse said Jason French would lead the transition team at LSU effective immediately. French formerly served as executive director of the McNeese LNG Center and is a consultant in that industry.
Rousse says he’s ready for a job as all-encompassing as LSU president.
At McNeese State, he wakes up at 4 a.m. and goes to sleep by midnight, he said in one of his LSU interviews. He and his wife spend most nights in their dorm suite, only sleeping at their home off campus a handful of times over the past two years, he added.
“I love to work,” he said. “I feel like I’m the luckiest man alive.”
Plans for system-wide changes
Rousse wants more corporate partnerships at LSU to fund research. He also said he would closely review the university system’s budget and create performance metrics for jobs across the system, like what he did at McNeese.
“Everyone on that campus has some sort of metric that says I’m going to have a positive effect on either recruitment, retention or job placement,” he said in an interview Monday.
Dalton had pitched a more “student-centric” approach, and he reiterated that as his priority Tuesday in his final pitch to the board.
LSU executive vice president elect James Dalton speaks during a press conference at LSU Foundation on Tuesday, November 4, 2025.
Originally from Ohio, he earned a B.S. in Pharmacy at the University of Cincinnati and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry from Ohio State University. He went on to serve as dean of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Michigan before moving to the University of Alabama.
Since 2020, he has managed the academic and research goals of 13 colleges and academic divisions at the university. In total, the area he oversees has included more than 2,000 faculty and 40,000 students, with an annual academic budget of more than $1.2 billion.
After accepting the vice president role, Dalton said he was “tremendously honored” for the opportunity.
“I’m just so excited about it,” he said. “I cannot imagine a more perfect partnership with Dr. Rousse.”
Patrick Wall and Tyler Bridges contributed to this report.
