Meet the President
Dr. Wade Rousse was announced on April 25, 2024 as the eighth president of McNeese State University.
As an undergraduate, the time I spent living and learning at McNeese provided the foundation for everything that came after in my life. Returning here in 2019 felt like coming home. Our McNeese family is more than resilient — we are determined to thrive! And we will remain laser-focused on our vision to become the premiere regional university in Louisiana and Southeast Texas.
Dr. Wade Rousse
The Dawning of a Brand New Day at McNeese
The last few years were challenging, but we’ve proven to ourselves that our brightest days are still ahead! With a clearly-defined set of measurable enrollment goals, a focus on life-changing student success, and a unified and re-energized brand, we have begun to reverse the 14-year downward trend of enrollment … and we’re just getting started.
Enrollment.
Our initial primary university goal will be to stabilize enrollment. We must stabilize enrollment to stabilize the budget, and to do this, we must prioritize two factors that contribute to our overall enrollment — recruiting new students and retaining existing students.
We will focus on recruitment at all levels: high school graduates, online students, adult learners and more.
We will find opportunities to create exceptional McNeese Student Experiences by leveraging our very unique, family-like Southwest Louisiana culture to facilitate networks that support our students academically and professionally. This will increase persistence rates.
Every employee at McNeese has the power to positively impact student lives, so every employee has an important role to play in stabilizing and growing enrollment. To support this goal, the Executive Leadership Team is redesigning the reporting structure of the university to enable everyone to measure success with clear and quantifiable objectives.
Job Placement.
McNeese is a regional leader in workforce development and we consistently demonstrate our significance in terms of economic impact in Southwest Louisiana.
We will ensure that our academic curricula are market-driven, and that our students leave McNeese with the skills they need to be gainfully employed upon graduation. We also want our graduates to be lifelong learners, so our exceptional faculty will continue to inspire students to be curious, to be pioneers in their chosen discipline, and to achieve more than they imagined.
