BATON ROUGE — The University of New Orleans should adopt LSU branding and become "LSU New Orleans" when it transfers to the LSU system, interim LSU President Matt Lee told the Board of Regents on Tuesday.

Lee said the change is necessary to make the transfer successful. UNO was known as LSU New Orleans from its founding in 1958, when it was considered a branch of the Baton Rouge main campus, until its change to the University of New Orleans in 1974.

“I think for this to really work, it’s going to have to be LSU New Orleans because you’re marrying two well-known brands,” Lee said, referring to LSU and the city of New Orleans. The comments were reported Wednesday by the Louisiana Illuminator.

UNO was previously part of the LSU System until it was moved into the University of Louisiana System 14 years ago, with proponents of the move saying it was necessary for the New Orleans school to get out of the shadow of the much larger Baton Rouge campus.

State lawmakers this year approved transferring the university back to the LSU System in response to UNO’s long-running enrollment decline, which has caused a fiscal crisis for the school. UNO is the only public research university in New Orleans and is considered vital for the region.

A committee to oversee the transition will hold its first meeting early next month, LSU Board Chairman Scott Ballard said.

UNO’s enrollment decline spans two decades. The school had a student body of around 17,000 before Hurricane Katrina in 2005, with an immediate drop to around 6,000 after the storm.

For several years before President Kathy Johnson took over the university in 2023, university administrators did not align spending with falling enrollment. The school faced a $30 million budget shortfall last fiscal year and implemented layoffs, staff furloughs and a spending freeze in an attempt to make ends meet.

Lawmakers and university leaders hope the transfer will have a positive impact on student numbers. Despite the national trend of falling enrollment, every school in the LSU System has reported increasing and often record-breaking enrollment over the past several years.