U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy to teach class at LSU Honors College

BY CLAIRE SULLIVAN LOUISIANA ILLUMINATOR

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy is trading Congress for college — at least for a few hours each week.

This fall semester, the Baton Rouge Republican will be teaching a 2000-level class at LSU’s Ogden Honors College. The course, taught alongside adjunct bioethics instructor Dr. Mike Rolfsen, is called National Issues: Strategies and Tactics.

The class will give students “the rare opportunity to engage in open dialogues with Senator Cassidy, gaining unique perspectives from his distinguished career in public service,” according to an email sent to students Friday.

The senator will be paid $10,000 for the semester, according to LSU media relations coordinator Abbi Rocha Laymoun. Cassidy’s annual salary is $174,000 as a member of Congress.

Cassidy previously received $20,000 a year to teach for LSU’s medical school.

Cassidy will discuss “the intri- cacies of policymaking, the legislative process, and the impact of effective governance on society,” focusing on issues like national security, climate change, foreign policy and trade,” the email said.

The course seeks to build students’ communication and advocacy skills, analyze national issues, assess the consequences of proposed policy solutions and mirror real policymaking by encouraging teamwork and diverse perspectives, the email said.

The course will run around three hours every Friday at the college and count as a general education credit.

“The best honors colleges are laboratories for innovative and unique courses like the one taught by Senator Cassidy,” Jonathan Earle, dean of LSU’s Honors College, said in a statement. “This class is a tremendous opportunity for our students, as we welcome the largest and most academically talented freshman class in our college’s history.”

LSU’s course catalog shows the 18-person class filled up shortly after the class was broadcasted to students.

Cassidy earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees from LSU. It’s not the first time he’s returned to his alma mater as a teacher; before becoming a senator, Cassidy helped train medical students at

LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans.

This report originally appeared in the Louisiana Illuminator.

EXTREME HEAT, from page 3

Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

The record-number of excessive heat warnings have been worsened by minimal rain that has led to drought conditions. The Louisiana state fire marshall declared a state-wide burn ban was a child. It was true that calculators made doing long addition mentally harder but it was more practical to use a calculator for the sake of furthering mental capacities in other ways, he said.

Leveraging AI in the classroom is like the calculator, he said, adding it’s true that many large language models suffer unignorable flaws, like ChatGPT’s tendencies to fabricate references or make up information.

He said by front-running the class, he said, LSU can trailblaze in an industry that’s here to stay.

“The reason I’m teaching this class is to try to seed the local economy with individuals who are knowledgeable about this topic. In the end of this we’ll have a dozen to 20 students, mostly graduating seniors, who understand how to deploy and develop large language models,” Haggarty said.

James Ghawaly, a senior AI and machine learning research earlier in August because of the extreme dryness.

As LSU freshmen partake in Welcome Week activities and upperclassmen move back to campus, there are a few key safety tips they should keep in mind, per the Louisiana Department of Health:

Drink plenty of water; avoid scientist at the Stevenson Disaster Management Institute, will be the class’s technically-focused professor. Ghawaly said by the end of class students will have made working AI models usable by the university and local businesses. alcohol and caffeine, which can cause dehydration.

Henry Hays, a disruptive innovation entrepreneur and AI consultant for business will be the class’s business focused professor. Hays said the response he received after contacting large local businesses seeking AI help through LSU’s class was overwhelming.

Ghawaly and Hays will do most of the class’s teaching, Haggerty said.

Ghawaly said the class will kick off with an introduction to machine learning, followed by how Python coding relates to large language models and a dive into concepts like neural networks and deep learning as they relate to AI.

Enrolled students are not required to have a background in coding or AI, Ghawaly said.

Wear sunscreen with at least SPF 15; apply 30 minutes before going outside.

Wear loose, light-colored clothing.

Take breaks from being outdoors.

Never leave pets or children

They will work in teams made up primarily of business and computer science students, Hays said, and the entire class is project based. There will be two projects directly related to LSU, and there are two pending projects related to local businesses, he added.

Hays emphasized how important it was for young professionals to know how these systems worked as they enter the workforce because they’ll be expected to know.

All three of the class’ instructors said that LSU was the only university they were aware of that offered a class of this caliber.

Going forward, all of them believe, to some degree, the class will continue as a mainstay course.

“This isn’t going away is the understatement of the year,” Hays said. “I suspect that the idea of this class, the collaboration, bringing in different resources and parts of the university to assist the students’ learning will only grow from here.” in cars.

Heat-related illness can range in severity and symptoms.

Heat exhaustion may come with muscle spasms, clammy skin, dizziness or headaches. If you or someone else is experiencing these symptoms, sip water and move to a cooler place.

Heat stroke, which can be deadly, may include symptoms of a fast pulse, hot skin, high body temperature, confusion, nausea and more. Call 911 if you or someone else experiences these symptoms.

The state of emergency will be in place until Saturday, Sept. 9, unless Gov Edwards ends it sooner.