People using winword are victims for a phenomenon called a hold up problem.
Continuing to use MSword gives them less disutility than their estimated menthal swithcing cost. Therefore, it is not enough to convience the professors that LyX is better than MS word. You have to convince them that is so superio that it is worth the professor to pay the menthal cost of a complete brain-surgery in the attitude to writing. I feel important in the argumenation. Lyx allows you to keep the document neat with cross references and bibiliographic citations.