Presented at EDUCAUSE Annual Conferences, Interaction and Engagement, and Networking and Emerging Technologies

At LSU , student government is extremely active in a spectrum of campus issues, including IT. Like many universities, LSU has a technology fee, but unlike most, student oversight is required by state law. Far from finding this oppressive, students have become "angel investors," initiating investment and stimulating interest in emerging technologies.

New technologies and infrastructure that extend bandwidth and power to the seafloor are being developed within the Ocean Observatories Initiative of the National Science Foundation. A major component of this effort involving construction of major cabled subsea networks is focusing on science and education programs that will make use of this unprecedented interactive access to study the northeast Pacific Ocean. The last frontier on Earth—the deep sea—will be accessible to a global community of scientists, educators, decision makers, and learners of all ages. New technologies will enable new approaches to studies of ocean and earth processes that, for example, regulate global climate, absorb greenhouse gases, generate earthquakes and tsunamis, support major fish stocks, harbor life in the extreme environments of sea floor volcanoes, and form vast mineral resources.