Shreveport, Louisiana · Founded 1967 · Jaguars and Lady Jaguars
“The two-year HBCU on MLK Drive in Shreveport — the city's front door to college, nursing, aerospace, and a transfer ticket to anywhere.”
Official campus tour filmed for pandemic-era recruiting — the MLK Drive campus when students couldn't visit in person. Channel: Southern University at Shreveport.
The school's own brand film, built on its official motto. Channel: Southern University at Shreveport.
Official pitch piece on why students choose the school — access, workforce programs, transfer. Channel: Southern University at Shreveport.
The school's retrospective on its first 40 years (1967–2007). Channel: Southern University at Shreveport.
Official short feature telling one student's story. Channel: Southern University at Shreveport.
International Affairs office testimonial — the school is SEVP-certified for international students. Channel: SUSLA International Affairs.
Official explainer on the school's e-learning offerings. Channel: Southern University at Shreveport.
Aerial/ground look at the 103-acre MLK Drive campus. Channel: Southern University at Shreveport.
Spotlight on the allied-health program that descends from the 1978 MLT degree — the school's workforce flagship. Channel: Southern University at Shreveport.
The Miss SUSLA pageant tradition — one of the campus's signature rituals. Channel: Southern University at Shreveport.
The full first-ever virtual commencement of June 27, 2020 — COVID-era history on record. Channel: Southern University at Shreveport.
The 2018 Bayou Classic parade — the year SUSLA's brand-new Soundwave made its debut before the Human Jukebox. Channel: ShowtimeWeb.
Shreveport's 48th mayor and its first Black female mayor (2014–2018); a 43-year educator who did graduate study at the Southern Shreveport campus.
17th president-chancellor of the Southern University System (2015–2022); climbed every rung at SUSLA before becoming its chancellor in 2000.
Current SUSLA chancellor; SUSLA alumna who started her career there as a TRIO Educational Talent Search counselor.
Educator and community leader who began as a SUSLA student and rose to Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs; the Student Activity Center bears his name.
Shreveport attorney and SUSLA alumnus honored among the inaugural class of the Law Center's Semester in Shreveport.
Program director for KOKA radio and a SUSLA alumnus; moderated the university's 2022 True Blue Talk live broadcast.
2017 SUSLA nursing alumnus; charge nurse on the Electroconvulsive Therapy Unit at Brentwood Hospital.
The Louisiana Legislature passed Act 42 on May 11, 1964, establishing 'as a branch or extension of Southern University, a two-year junior commuters college' for the Shreveport-Bossier City area. The State Board of Education was directed to pick the site, acquire the land, and build and furnish the college. Governor John H. McKeithen signed the act on June 27, 1964. From day one the mission was plain: deliver the first two years of college work to a metro area that had almost no public higher-education option for Black students.
Southern University at Shreveport opened for instruction on September 19, 1967, as a two-year commuter college serving Shreveport-Bossier City. It was pushed to fruition by the McKeithen administration at the height of the civil rights era, giving northwest Louisiana a public Black college option close to home. On the same day, a second two-year school, LSU at Shreveport, also opened its doors — but LSUS later grew into a four-year university while SUSLA stayed true to its two-year mission. Dr. Walter Austin served as the institution's first chief executive officer.
On the recommendation of Southern University president G. Leon Netterville, the State Board of Education appointed Dr. Leonard C. Barnes as Vice President of the Shreveport campus in July 1971. Barnes would become the longest-serving chief executive in the school's history, staying through July 1987. The administration building that now houses the Chancellor's Office was later named for him — the Leonard C. Barnes Administration Building. His era defined the young institution's identity as a working-class commuter college.
On October 28, 1974, the Louisiana Coordinating Council for Higher Education (now the Board of Regents) approved six associate degree programs: business, humanities, medical office assistant, natural sciences, office administration, and social sciences. The school's own history calls this the moment that 'resolved any conflict of definition' about what SUSLA was — a real degree-granting college, not just a satellite. It set the template for everything that followed: practical, workforce-ready associate programs.
The Southern University Board of Supervisors changed the Shreveport campus leader's title from Vice President to Chancellor in March 1977, and Dr. Barnes carried on as the campus's first chancellor. The same year, the Board of Regents' Master Plan for Higher Education charged Southern University at Shreveport with becoming a comprehensive community college — expanding one- and two-year offerings tied to Shreveport's manpower needs and cooperating with nearby vocational-technical schools. From then on the school measured itself as a community college first, not a Baton Rouge branch.
By April 1978 the Board of Regents approved an associate degree in Medical Laboratory Technology, the school's first real step into allied health. It was a deliberate pivot toward paraprofessional and occupational education — training lab techs and medical support workers for northwest Louisiana hospitals. That 1978 decision is the ancestor of today's School of Nursing and the allied health labs that fill the Metro Center. SUSLA nursing graduates now average first-time passage rates above 90% on national registries.
In 1981 the U.S. Justice Department forced the Southern University System into a Consent Decree, ordered September 8, 1981, that sent shockwaves through SUSLA. A panel of experts studied post-secondary education in the Caddo-Bossier area, and by March 15, 1982, all parties signed an Addendum (Civil Action No. 80-3300) with heavy consequences for the Shreveport campus. The addendum mandated new administrative positions, an assisting agency to write long-range plans, a six-year institutional plan, off-campus extension sites, and — most famously — the interchange of students and faculty with neighboring Bossier Parish Community College. SUSLA lived under the decree for seven years, reporting bi-monthly to the Board of Regents, and was the only state institution publicly commended for how it presented and defended its proposals — winning approval for fifteen new programs during the period.
The Consent Decree had required a satellite site accessible to the city's diverse workforce, and downtown won out because of the concentration of business offices. After studying what downtown employees needed, SUSLA bid on portions of 610 Texas Street; the Board of Supervisors, Board of Regents, and Division of Administration approved the bid in October 1987. The first classes met at the downtown Metro Center in spring 1988. The building is turn-of-the-century urban commercial architecture — a 1919 six-story red-brick Jacobs family office building joined to the 1929 Barrett Building, a Little Rock department store's ladies' fashion shop — and it earned the 1992 DSU Award for Preservation of Historic Architectural Buildings in Downtown Shreveport.
Under Dr. Robert H. Smith, the campus's third executive officer, spring 1988 enrollment passed 1,000 students — the largest in the institution's history to that point. For a school built as a small commuter college, crossing four figures proved the Shreveport-Bossier demand was real and growing. Smith's tenure showed the campus could scale. The Metro Center's first classes that same spring gave the growing student body a second home downtown.
Dr. Mary L. Wilson was appointed Interim Chancellor in June 1993, becoming the first woman chief executive in the university's history. That November, Dr. Jerome G. Greene, Jr. assumed the chancellorship. Under Greene the campus developed a General Studies degree program and broke ground on a new gymnasium and physical education building — a real investment in student life for what had been a purely commuter school. The gym groundbreaking signaled that SUSLA intended to be a full college experience, not just classrooms.
In 1999, for the first time in Louisiana higher education history, a two-year college board was organized — controlling all two-year colleges except those under the Southern and LSU systems. Because SUSLA answered to the Southern University Board of Supervisors, leaders revisited its clunky 'Southern University at Shreveport-Bossier City' name. They aligned it with the system pattern: Southern University at Shreveport, alongside Southern University at Baton Rouge and Southern University at New Orleans. The acronym SUSLA was assigned to the campus, and the school kept its name identifiable by location — a branding move that stuck. Dr. James C. Brown became chancellor in May 1999, with Dr. Press L. Robinson serving as interim chancellor from October 2000.
In November 2000 the Board of Supervisors named Dr. Ray L. Belton chancellor, effective December 2000. Belton had climbed every rung at SUSLA — director, department head, associate professor, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, executive vice chancellor, faculty senate president — so he knew the campus cold. His arrival started the most transformative decade and a half in school history. Enrollment records would fall, high school partnerships would multiply, and the campus would grow buildings it had never dreamed of.
On June 20, 2002, the Student Activity Center was renamed the Johnny L. Vance, Jr. Student Activity Center, honoring educator and community leader Johnny Vance (1954–2001). Vance had begun his academic career as a SUSLA student, then returned to serve as counselor, recruiter, financial aid director, dean of students, student support services director, and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs. It was the first building ever named for an individual who had contributed to the evolution of the Shreveport campus — a signal that the school was old enough now to have its own legends.
In fall 2008 the Jaguar Courtyard opened, giving SUSLA residential housing for the first time — 240 fully furnished two- and four-bedroom units in a gated community in the middle of campus, next to the library and classrooms. It made SUSLA one of only two community colleges in Louisiana with on-campus apartments. That same year the university opened the Southern University Business and Community Development Center at Hilry Huckaby and MLK Drive, a joint effort with the City of Shreveport and HUD to serve small businesses. The commuter college was officially becoming a living campus.
In June 2015 the Board of Supervisors selected Dr. Ray L. Belton as President-Chancellor of the entire Southern University System — the first SUSLA chancellor to rise to the top job. He left behind a campus with enrollment up 156 percent, a doubled graduation rate, national recognition as the 22nd fastest-growing institution of its size, a new ASN nursing program, and more than $34 million raised for capital improvements including academic buildings, student centers, and the first student apartments. In February 2016 the board named Dr. Rodney Ellis — former chancellor of Central Louisiana Technical Community College — as the seventh chancellor. Ellis started in April 2016 and brought a grant-writer's hunger for partnerships, delivering what the school called historic levels of philanthropic support.
The Alphonse Jackson building opened in 2017, a $7.5 million, 36,000-square-foot learning facility named for the late State Representative Alphonse Jackson Jr. It was the first new classroom building constructed on campus since the late 1950s. The building houses most of SUSLA's BSTEM (Business, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) classes and features a 150-seat stadium-style lecture hall plus conference rooms and offices. That same year SUSLA launched its dual-enrollment partnership with Caddo Parish high schools — a pipeline that would later put associate degrees in the hands of more than 100 graduating seniors a year.
SUSLA's new marching band, the Soundwave, made its debut performance at the 2018 Bayou Classic in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, playing a prelude to Southern University A&M's world-famous Human Jukebox. Under founding director Dr. Albert Jackson, the band electrified the crowd and was formally recognized at the January 11, 2019 meeting of the newly installed Board of Supervisors. The program was built inside the Student Services division under Vice Chancellor Dr. Melva Williams — one of the newest band programs anywhere in HBCU life. A two-year college with its own marching band is nearly unheard of.
COVID-19 canceled in-person classes and the traditional spring ceremony, so SUSLA did what it had never done: a virtual commencement, streamed Saturday, June 27, 2020 at 2 p.m. on SUSLA.edu and the university's Facebook and YouTube pages. Chancellor Rodney Ellis wrote the Class of 2020 that their persistence through a pandemic and the national reckoning after the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor would define them. The ceremony wove in videos from the chancellor, faculty, staff, and special guests — a fully digital graduation for a commuter college that had never needed one before.
Chancellor Rodney Ellis informed System President Ray Belton of his intent to resign effective December 31, 2021, taking personal leave until then to focus on personal and family matters after five years leading the campus. Belton praised Ellis's innovative partnerships and public-private gifts as 'transformational.' Belton immediately tapped Dr. Vladimir A. Appeaning — the system's vice president for strategic planning, policy and institutional effectiveness — as interim chancellor. Appeaning, already serving as SACSCOC accreditation liaison for the Baton Rouge campus, guided SUSLA through its decennial reaffirmation of accreditation and posted solid fall 2022 enrollment growth.
Dr. Ray L. Belton culminated thirty-five years of service to the SU System at the June 2022 Board of Supervisors meeting, held on the SUSLA campus. Fourteen of those years were spent as SUSLA chancellor before he made history in 2015 as President-Chancellor of the system, a dual role he held seven years. SUSLA and the board hosted a tribute reception at the Shreveport Hilton, where Mayor Adrian Perkins presented Belton with the key to the city and the Caddo Commission gave him the key to the parish. Interim Chancellor Appeaning announced the creation of the SUSLA Dr. Ray L. Belton Endowed Scholarship Fund — the campus naming a scholarship for the man who built its modern era.
The school marked its 55th anniversary — 'SUSLA turns 55!' — with campus celebrations and a spring commencement on May 10, 2023 that sent more than 300 graduates across the stage, livestreamed on the university's official YouTube channel. The year also cemented SUSLA's health-science identity: the School of Nursing's pinning ceremonies, where graduates receive a faculty-designed pin and a lamp honoring Florence Nightingale, became signature campus rituals. By fall 2023 the dual-enrollment pipeline with Caddo Parish was one of the strongest in Louisiana.
The Southern University System board unanimously approved President Dennis J. Shields' recommendation of Dr. Aubra J. Gantt as the next SUSLA chancellor. Gantt is a Shreveport native and Green Oaks High School graduate who began her own professional career at SUSLA as a TRIO Educational Talent Search counselor — and an alumna of SUSLA, Southern Baton Rouge, and Southern New Orleans. She brought 25-plus years in postsecondary education, including dean of enrollment management at Scottsdale Community College and founding vice president of academic outreach at Tarrant County College's TCC Connect Campus. On October 1, 2024, the campus honored businessman Roy Griggs — the McDonald's franchisee whose giving put his name on the Roy Griggs School of Business — with a public reception at the Jackson Building. (Exact appointment month unverified on the school's site; the first chancellor's report under Gantt's name is dated January 2024.)
On June 10, 2025, the SUSLA Staff Senate adopted a Resolution of No Confidence in Chancellor Aubra J. Gantt, addressed to System President Dennis J. Shields and the Board of Supervisors, citing autocratic governance, disregarded hiring-committee recommendations, and a climate of fear among staff — a rare public rupture for the campus. The same academic year, the Jaguars men's basketball team gave the campus something to cheer about, clinching the 2025-2026 LCCAC conference title and advancing to the NJCAA Region 23 tournament. And the Caddo Parish partnership hit a new high: 106 graduating seniors from the Class of 2026 walked with associate degrees already in hand — the most since the program began.
The conference matchup that defines SUSLA basketball. The first meeting was January 27, 2010 in Shreveport — SUSLA won 68-66 — and the Jaguars led the all-time series roughly 24-22 heading into the 2025-26 season (contemporary reports vary by a game). BRCC snapped a nine-game conference win streak against SUSLA with an 83-76 win in February 2026 after the Jags had led 67-61 late. It is a genuine juco rivalry: two public two-year Louisiana schools fighting for LCCAC and Region 23 position every winter.
The 1982 Consent Decree addendum mandated student and faculty interchange between SUSLA and Bossier Parish Community College, forcing the two cross-river two-year schools into each other's classrooms for seven years. That forced intimacy made BPCC the natural measuring stick — the nearby juco SUSLA has competed with for students, programs, and standing in the Shreveport-Bossier metro ever since. (Matchup history unverified in sources checked.)
🥁 The Marching Jags — Soundwave Marching Band · since 2018
One of the newest band programs in HBCU life — a two-year community college with a full marching band is nearly unheard of. Beyond the Marching Jags, the program fields a Concert Band, a Pep Band, and small ensembles, with a Jazz Ensemble in the works. The band plays local parades, high school and college events, and campus showcases alongside the Jazzy Jags and JBelles dance lines. Band Service Awards (audition-required) recognize students with extraordinary musical or academic skill.
Founding director; led the Soundwave's debut at the 2018 Bayou Classic as a prelude to the Human Jukebox, and still listed as Band Director in the 2023-2024 catalog.
No Greek-letter organizations; Southern University at Shreveport is a two-year commuter college, and no collegiate NPHC or other Greek chapter could be verified on campus. The school's own chancellor's report mentions Greek life among student activities in passing, and local D9 alumnae chapters engage with the campus community — Delta Sigma Theta's Shreveport Alumnae Chapter awards scholarships to SUSLA students and co-hosted a voter registration drive on campus — but no undergraduate chapter names, charters, or rosters were found in the school's catalogs, handbooks, or site.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
The two-story Natural Sciences Building went up in 1973 (32,208 square feet), later renamed Louis Collier Hall for the physics department chairman. It gave the young college real laboratories and lecture classrooms — a science home to match its new associate programs.
First classes at 610 Texas Street in spring 1988 after the October 1987 bid approval. Today SUSLA occupies nearly half the 70,000-square-foot building — computer labs, allied health labs, classrooms, a media production studio, the Southern University Museum of Art at Shreveport (SUMAS), and a compressed-video distance-learning classroom — in a structure that won the 1992 DSU Award for preservation of historic downtown architecture.
Groundbreaking held under Chancellor Jerome G. Greene, Jr. — the campus's first major athletic facility, a turning point for a school that had been purely commuter and classroom-based.
The Student Activity Center (erected 1970) was renamed June 20, 2002 for Johnny L. Vance, Jr. — the first building named for an individual who shaped the Shreveport campus. The Vance Center was expanded and renovated in 2009.
Opened fall 2008: 240 fully furnished two- and four-bedroom units with all-inclusive utilities, high-speed internet, and gated-community security, steps from the library and classrooms. First residential housing in school history — one of only two community colleges in Louisiana with on-campus apartments.
Opened at Hilry Huckaby and MLK Drive as a joint effort of the City of Shreveport, HUD, the MLK community, and SUSLA to incubate small businesses — the campus literally building economic development into its corner.
One-story, 8,469-square-foot building (erected 2008) combining with the Student Union to form the Student Activities Center: student lounge, dining facility, kitchen, activity areas, and student support offices.
A $7.5 million, 36,000-square-foot learning facility named for the late State Representative Alphonse Jackson Jr. — the first new classroom building on campus since the late 1950s. Houses most BSTEM (Business, Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) classes with a 150-seat stadium-style lecture hall.
The 47,232-square-foot two-story administration building — home to the Chancellor's Office, Academic and Student Affairs, Fiscal Affairs, Financial Aid, Registrar, Admissions, Cashier, and IT — is named for the longest-serving chancellor (1971–1987). Exact naming year unverified in sources checked.
The business division was named for Roy Griggs, the Shreveport McDonald's franchisee and CEO of Griggs Enterprises whose longtime giving seeded the school's business programs and scholarships. Griggs — who started at McDonald's at 18 and retired owning 14 stores — was honored with a public campus reception October 1, 2024.
The FAA-certified Airframe and Powerplant Maintenance program operates from the Shreveport Downtown Airport (1560 Airport Drive), with the Aerospace Technology Center housed in the first hangar ever built at the airport — Shreveport's first commercial airport, where Delta flew its first routes in 1929. Students train for professional licensure in working hangars with classroom space in the main terminal.
The university's museum of art operates from the Metro Center downtown, anchoring SUSLA's cultural presence in the city center alongside the media production studio and allied health labs.
A small-campus leadership bench where people wear two hats: the athletic director also manages student housing, and the band director built a marching program from scratch. Retirees like Dr. Phillip Pennywell remain the campus's moral voice at Founders' Day, and long-serving staff (40-year veteran Jimmy Daniel was honored at the 135th anniversary) carry the institutional memory of a school that only opened in 1967.
Unanimously approved by the SU System board; SUSLA alumna and Shreveport native leading the campus since 2023.
Listed in the January 2024 chancellor's report as the academic-affairs lead.
Listed in the 2023-2024 catalog as the student-affairs lead.
Runs both the athletics department and the residential complex — a two-hat job that says a lot about a small campus.
Leads the Port City Jags, the 2025-2026 LCCAC champions.
Leads the Lady Jaguars.
Founding director of the 2018 band program.
Featured speaker at the SU System's 135th-anniversary Founders' Day, challenging the campus to 'continue to work to sustain ourselves.'
2023 Above and Beyond Award recipient; built the Engineering Technology degree program with multiple certificate concentrations plus an 8-week STEM Summer Enrichment Academy.
Leads multicultural and international student affairs; a SUSLA alumnus himself.
SUSLA still feels like the working person's college it was founded to be — many students are non-traditional, and the Handbook's own glossary defines the 'non-traditional student' as anyone 25 or older. But the 2008 Jaguar Courtyard turned a commuter school into a place freshmen can live, and the dual-enrollment pipeline with Caddo Parish high schools means some students now arrive already holding associate degrees. The vibe is family-style: the campus showcase that drew 600 middle and high schoolers was carried by the band, the dance lines, cheerleading, and TRIO students — and a freshman class president who told visitors 'SUSLA feels like a family.'