Elizabeth “Liz” Milton Beard, PhD, may be the first female to be named chancellor of LSUA, but she follows her mother as a female pioneer.
One of four children of Kent and Sonie Milton, Liz is not only the first woman to be named chancellor of LSUA in the school’s 66-year history, but she is the first woman to be named chancellor of a four-year accredited college in the LSU system. Kimberly Russell and Nancy Sorenson are past and current chancellors of LSUE, but that is a two-year college.
Liz’s mother, Sonie, was the first woman to graduate from LSU with a degree in forestry in 1969. Her husband Kent is a retired agronomist and soil scientist. With her groundbreaking forestry degree, Sonie worked two stints for the U.S. Forest Service, and she worked at the Forestry Department at LSU, but she may be best known for running a Christmas tree business with Kent in the Poland community for many years until 2007.
Although Liz was born in Baton Rouge, she went to Poland Elementary and Junior High before graduating from Rapides High School in 1992. She said she was blessed to have many great teachers there, especially English teacher Marilyn Jackson.
“Liz Beard was an English teacher’s delight,” said Jackson. She loved, not just liked, but loved English, whether it was the structure of grammar, the history and voice of American and British writers, or self-expression through her own writing.
“She was inquisitive and intuitive beyond her years when it came to understanding what good literature had to offer and relating it to life,” Jackson continued. “That same inquisitive and intuitive nature, along with the ability to write and speak effectively, continues to serve her well as a leader.”
Beard, currently the provost and vice chancellor of academic affairs at LSUA, got her bachelor’s degree in English from Springhill College in Mobile, Ala. While she was in the English honors program there, she said a Jesuit priest on the faculty took time to tell her after reading one of her papers that it was “exceptional.”
Her husband of nearly 30 years, Willard, is a family medicine physician’s assistant in Pineville, and they have two grown sons, Ben, 24, and Charles, 21. Ben is a 2024 graduate of LSU in the finance business in New Orleans, and Charles is in his second year at the U.S. Naval Academy. Both are Menard graduates.
During college, Liz was an intern for two summers at The Town Talk, and she taught a year at St. Joseph’s Academy in Baton Rouge. She has been at LSUA since 2003, where she started as an adjunct professor in English, and she got her PhD from LSU in 2009.
She was named the school’s dean of liberal arts in 2021 and has been serving the last few years in her current role. When she takes over from retiring chancellor Paul Coreil on July 1, she said in her office Sunday afternoon she wants to build on some of the programs she’s proud to have helped start at LSUA.
One is the “Command Your Career” program, a career readiness strategy that aims to help students gain skills, relationships and experience. This program provides students with the tools needed to “explore career opportunities,” she said, “and make connections with mentors in the community and industries” to ensure they’re on the right vocational path.
Beard started the school’s writing center in 2005 in a small portion of the school library, and it has since blossomed into the Tutoring Center for not just writing help but for tutoring by experienced students for nearly all subjects in the curriculum. It started with a $700/semester budget. It is now in a “beautiful place” in the library with a $20,000/year budget, Beard said.
It’s not only beneficial to the students, she said, but a “good leadership experience” for the student tutors.
Another big item on Beard’s agenda is helping to advance the state’s first three-year accelerated bachelor’s STEM degrees for science, technology, engineering or mathematics. This was recently approved for LSUA by the LSU Board of Supervisors.
“These are not shortened degrees,” Beard said when the news was first released. “They are intentionally designed, academically rigorous bachelor’s degrees that focus on the essential core and major coursework required for workforce readiness.”
The 90-hour curriculum is targeted, she said, to “highly technical, quickly evolving fields,” she said, such as data literacy, AI fluency and informational technology (IT).
Beard pointed to the need for the accelerated degree, citing a call she received from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
“A man from the Pennington Center (a health science research center that is part of the LSU System) recently told me they needed workers, and they can’t wait for this to happen,” said Beard, who admitted she will lean on Coreil for advice as she succeeds him as chancellor. “I have the utmost respect for Paul Coreil,” she said. “He is a good person. He absolutely has a heart for his work. He builds up talent, and he’s been an excellent leader and mentor.”
Another mentor who impacted her while she was at LSUA, Beard said, was the late Mary “Boonie” Treuting, a psychology professor and dean of the College of Social Sciences. Treuting, who started working at LSUSA in 1994, died in 2024.
“When she died, LSUA lost a golden human being,” said Beard. She was an excellent mentor. Her legacy still looms large and proud. We were deans at the same time and we leaned into each other. She was a great source of wisdom and counsel.”
It seems that wisdom and counsel rubbed off, giving Beard the look of someone ready to handle the job of LSUA chancellor from Day One.
Marilyn Jackson, Beard’s high school English teacher, said she has followed Beard’s progress from English major to her current position as the designated chancellor, “and she is still the same humble, sincere young lady I loved having in English classes. As a student she worked hard to achieve excellence, and I see her doing the same as the next chancellor at LSUA.”