School of Medicine

After 23 years of remarkable and dedicated service as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, and 38 years as an LSUHSC faculty member, Dr. Joseph M. Moerschbaecher, III will be retiring. 

 

Dr. Moerschbaecher was appointed to his administrative positions in 1998 after serving as a very productive faculty member for 15 years and as Head of the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics for nine years. During those initial 15 years, Dr. Moerschbaecher was an extensively published, multi-grant NIH investigator, an award-winning teacher, continuous NIH study section participant, and member of almost 40 different LSUHSC committees. In addition to his duties as Department Head, Dr. Moerschbaecher was also the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the LSUHSC Alcohol and Drug Abuse Center of Excellence with Dr. John Spitzer of the Department of Physiology from 1991 to 1999.

  

Among his other many positions, he served on the boards of the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center (NOBIC) and the Louisiana Cancer Research Consortium (LCRC), as well as the chair of the Board of Regents Support Fund Planning Committee. Dr. Moerschbaecher also helped promote his own scientific discipline by serving on the Executive Committee of the Division of Behavioral Pharmacology of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutic (ASPET) from 1998 to 2000 and he was President of the Behavioral Pharmacology Society from 2010 to 2012. This society is one of his scientific disciplines’ oldest professional societies and one that was essentially launched by B. F. Skinner.

   

In 1998, Dr. Moerschbaecher was appointed by Chancellor Mervin L. Trail to replace Marilyn Zimny after her retirement. During his tenure as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, Dr. Moerschbaecher has admirably served the administrations of four different Chancellors: Dr. Mervin L. Trail, Dr. Mary Ella Sanders, Dr. John A. Rock, and Dr. Larry H. Hollier. Moreover, at the time of his appointment, Dr. Moerschbaecher was also the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs for LSUHSC-Shreveport as well – an administrative responsibility that existed until 2004. The separation of the LSUHSC New Orleans campus from the LSUHSC Shreveport campus did not change the trajectory or success of Dr. Moerschbaecher’s leadership, however. During his tenure on the New Orleans campus, he played a key role in founding our School of Public Health, the extensive expansion of our professional programs across the six schools, steadily maintaining the prominence of our research enterprise among all of the LSU campuses, expanding and growing our research centers of excellence, and continuously meeting the ever-expanding state and federal regulatory burden on our research and academic activities.

  

Dr. Moerschbaecher has also guided our institution through three successful accreditations by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, and overseen the graduation of more than 20,000 Louisiana health professionals. 

 

Probably the most emblematic example of Dr. Moerschbaecher’s leadership occurred when our campus was overwhelmed by flood waters from Hurricane Katrina. To ensure the safety and wellbeing of those students who were unable to flee, Dr. Moerschbaecher remained on campus with several other staff members until the water receded and they could be transported out of our badly damaged and incapacitated city. Dr. Moerschbaecher, along with Chancellor Rock, also managed the migration of all our academic activities to various locations in Baton Rouge, so that our 2005 classes could graduate on time. This also involved staying on a ferry boat in Baton Rouge with students from all of our schools who could not find adequate housing while they attended classes – truly, a time that almost no institution has ever had to endure, let alone reemerge from with newfound strength and vitality.

 

In recognition of his remarkable contributions, the LSUHSC community would like to express our profound gratitude to Dr. Moerschbaecher for his decades of service, leadership, and commitment to the academic excellence of our schools and institution. We wish him well and are grateful that he will remain with us as emeritus to ensure a smooth transition to his successor.