[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 46 (Tuesday, March 23, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3151-S3152]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            RETIREMENT OF LSU SYSTEM PRESIDENT ALLEN COPPING

 Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, this month marks the end of a 
distinguished and remarkable career in public education for the 
president of my state's flagship university. At month's end, Dr. Allen 
A. Copping will be retiring, leaving the post of president of the 
Louisiana State University System that he has held since March of 1985.
  Dr. Copping's retirement is significant for several reasons. Under 
his able and dedicated leadership, the LSU System has enjoyed enormous 
growth and development and is recognized around the country as a leader 
in educational excellence in numerous fields of academic pursuit. Dr. 
Copping's fourteen-year tenure is significant for another reason: He 
will always be remembered as the first health scientist to hold the 
position as LSU president.
  Allen Copping is a native of New Orleans, born in 1927 and educated 
in the city's public schools. After graduating from Loyola University 
with a Doctor's degree in Dental Surgery in 1949, Dr. Copping entered 
the U.S. Navy and served our country with distinction during the Korean 
Conflict. After the war, he returned to New Orleans, where he began a 
very successful dental practice and also landed on the faculty of the 
Loyola University School of Dentistry. In 1968, Dr. Copping joined the 
faculty of the newly created LSU School of Dentistry as an associate 
professor and, six years later, he was appointed the second dean of the 
LSU School of Dentistry.
  As dean, Dr. Copping's leadership ability and his vision quickly 
caught the eye of the LSU Board of Supervisors, which chose him to head 
the LSU Medical Center as Chancellor in 1974, a position he held with 
distinction for the next eleven years. During his years at the helm of 
the Medical Center, Dr. Copping helped initiate a remarkable expansion 
in both the curricular offerings and in the physical facilities at the 
Center.
  On March 18, 1985, Allen Copping became the third president of the 
LSU System and the fifteenth LSU president, a job that entailed the 
leadership and supervision of the eight campuses in the system and 
management of an annual budget of over two billion dollars.
  During his tenure as LSU president, Dr. Copping guided the system 
through some very challenging years, highlighted by the development of 
the world-renowned Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Baton Rouge 
and the addition of the Health Care Services Division of the LSU 
Medical Center.
  Throughout his years at the helm of the LSU System, Dr. Copping 
enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as a man of extraordinary loyalty, 
honesty, compassion and sincerity who is unalterably devoted to public 
education and the well being of his native state of Louisiana.
  Mr. President, on behalf of the citizens of my state, I wish to 
congratulate Allen Copping on a well-deserved retirement and offer my 
profound gratitude for the leadership that he has provided the LSU 
System over the past fourteen years. He will be missed, but I know that 
I and other public officials will continue to benefit from his wisdom 
and his commitment to providing a quality education that meets the 
needs of our country's most precious commodity--our young people. I 
wish Allen and Betty and their family all the best in this next and 
very exciting phase of their lives.

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