After a pause in production, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s magazine, La Louisiane, will be putting out another issue in 2022.
La Louisiane is the yearly university-run magazine that highlights the accomplishments of the university, its students, its alumni and its faculty.
According to Jennifer Stephens, associate vice president of Marketing and Communications, the magazine covers a wide range of topics that people involved with the university would want to know about.
“We think about students. We think about alumni. We think about donors. We think about community members, legislators, what is important for all those groups to know about the institution,” she said. “We have an athletics feature. We have different academic features. So we go through and try to get the best of the best of what’s happening at the institution.”
She spoke on the importance of La Louisiane, and how it helps to highlight UL Lafayette’s accomplishments.
“There are all these different things that are occurring, and people who shape the future of the university need to understand the value that it brings,” Stephens said.
The last issue of La Louisiane was produced in Fall 2019. It featured stories such as the university’s collection of preserved crustaceans being transferred to the Smithsonian, UL Lafayette being selected by NASA to develop a biorefinery system to supply water and air for future missions on Mars and a highlight of the university’s Campus Cupboard, which provides food and groceries to students in need.
The magazine has both a faculty editor and a student editor, who work together to decide what stories will be featured in the issue. Faculty, undergraduate and graduate students are involved in various aspects of the production.
“They are very much in the mix and receive assignments and have an opportunity to impact and shape all of the activities that are happening,” said Stephens.
Production of La Louisiane took a short break after the release of the Fall 2019 issue due to the retirement of an editor and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic soon after.
“If it had not been for COVID, we would have never paused the production of the magazine. It’s kind of a jewel, it’s such a great feature for us,” Stephens said.
The magazine is set to return to production, with the next issue due out in 2022.
“We’re already in the planning phases for the 2022 publication,” said Stephens. “We have a new editor as of September 2021, and so we’ve done a good bit of planning. But we’ll have an issue each year moving forward.”
Once the next issue is produced, it’ll be available at different locations around campus for students to take without any additional fee.