Based around 1884 as the Louisiana State Normal School to train teachers. NSU was a foremost school inside Louisiana to offer degree computer software inside nursing & business education.

NSU was one of a number 1 six colleges to enter into NASA's Joint Venture Program ("JOVE"). Students working by owning JOVE created experiments for the 1996 Space Shuttle Columbia shuttle mission.

NSU besides hosts Louisiana's intended honors college in a liberal arts & sciences, known as the Louisiana Scholars' College.

NSU presently offers other than L degree software & complete accreditation of tons of its accreditable degree computer software. Fall 2002 amount enrollment was 10,159, the record high. NSU too claims to a higher degree 70,000 alumni.

Its student-redo every week newspaper, The Todays Sauce, was founded within 1914. Its annual student-dog yearbook is known as a Potpourri. There exists too the student-do radio station, KNWD The Demon 91.7FM, & the faculty-administrated & student-operated local tv station, NSU22.

NSU's literary magazine is known as A Argus. These are student-rerun, & published when you took a spring semester. A magazine content is provided by competitions within various fields of writing & graphics.

NSU hosts a annual Miss Northwestern-Lady of the Bracelet pageant each spring. A winner of that pageant qualifies to compete in the Miss Louisiana pageant, a qualifying event for the Miss America competition.

Singer/songwriter Jim Croce died in the plane crash hours fallowing finishing the 1973 concert on the NSU campus.