This week began with a quick trip to Baton Rouge to meet with ULS President Dr. Sandra Woodley and the other ULS research university senior administrators for the purpose of exploring stronger research collaborations between Tech, ULL, and UNO. Most people are not aware of the collaborations that already occur between the researchers in our universities. Given the sizes of our institutions, we can become more competitive for major grants when we bring our best faculty together for certain funding opportunities. We are working with a company called Academic Analytics who is helping us develop tools to do some research benchmarking and to identify faculty with expertise in selected focus areas. On Tuesday, I had several on-campus meetings and events. We had a large group of prospective students on campus for “Spring Training,” a campus preview event. Our admissions staff met with them at Argent Pavilion for a kick-off event and followed that with campus tours and meetings. Coinciding with our admissions spring training event is Tech football spring training. Coach Skip Holtz and his staff have the team working hard to prepare for next Fall and compete for a Conference USA championship. Tuesday afternoon, I met with my administrative and planning council to review our progress with our strategic plans and to discuss various issues and policies that impact the campus.  Later in the day, I had the local leader for our partner company CSC who was visiting campus to learn more about our academic programs and to do an interview with one of our computer science students.  As mentioned in a previous post, CSC will be bringing 800 jobs to Bossier City and Tech will play a major role in helping them meet their employment goals. We also hope to collaborate with them in other areas. On Wednesday, I met with some business leaders from Monroe in my office and then drove over to Lake Providence to speak with the Rotary Club. This is part of my goal to reach across north Louisiana to discuss the importance of Tech in meeting the education and economic development needs of our region.  I returned back in time to see the great basketball game between the Bulldogs and the Iona Gaels in the first round of the NIT. The crowd was electric and the game was one of the best ever played in the TAC.  With the win, the Tech Bulldogs are now set to play the Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday in Athens, Georgia. Thursday was filled with meetings with my senior administrators to discuss various academics, athletics, facilities, and student life issues. There are always a lot of things going on in each area, and it is important that I meet with each administrator to provide support that they need.  I am very pleased with the leadership that we have in each of our divisions.  I closed out Thursday with a presentation about Tech for the Bank of Ruston and many of their customers. This talk focused on our goals for growth of our student body and how that would impact the community.  It was great to spend this time with so many of our community leaders. Now, Kathy and I are preparing to head out to Athens to watch Coach Mike White and the Dunkin’ Dogs take on Georgia. The Tech Bulldogs are an exciting team and will continue to represent our institution in an excellent way.  Go Dogs!!