This week marked the beginning of my third year as President of Louisiana Tech. Each day is special for me and I am truly honored to hold this position for an institution with such a great history of excellence. I deeply appreciate the support and encouragement that I have received from my family, faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends. I believe that our university has made some significant progress over the past few years, on a number of fronts, and we have some exciting ambitious goals and plans for the future. Thanks to all who have contributed time, energy and resources to help advance the institution. This is the time of the year when we are closing out last year’s budget and planning next year’s budget. The uncertainties we have faced with the 2015-16 state budget throughout the past year as well as the timing of budget decisions from the last legislative session have made it particularly difficult to plan our institutional budgets. But we are getting there, and I appreciate the tremendous efforts of our CFO Lisa Cole and her staff to manage this process.  In addition to a few budget meetings with our administrative team, Lisa and I spent additional time in preparing tuition and fee requests to the UL System Board which met and approved those requests on Thursday.

Tuesday morning, I enjoyed a 7:30 AM interview with Tedd Dumas on his “Open Line” program that is broadcast over FM radio stations across central Louisiana. Following that interview, I welcomed to my office Alan English, President and Publisher of the Shreveport Times, and Tech alumna Kathy Spurlock, General Manager and Executive Editor of the Monroe News-Star. It was a pleasure and honor to have both of them on campus and it was great to have the opportunity to learn more about their business while catching them up on the latest Tech happenings and plans. I took them on a brief tour through Tech Pointe to show them some of the companies that are operating there as well as some of the exciting technologies being developed in our unmanned aerial vehicle laboratory.

Tuesday afternoon, Kathy and I began another road tour and met with various alumni and business leaders in Alexandria, Lake Charles and Houston. While in Houston, I enjoyed spending some time with my sons and daughters-in-law. We were able to catch an exciting Astros vs Royals baseball game with Kyle and Ginger on Wednesday evening. I also got to have lunch and take a tour at the new ExxonMobil campus in The Woodlands on Thursday. That is truly a spectacular facility and a great place to work for so many of our alumni. Kathy and I enjoyed spending part of the Fourth of July weekend with our family before heading back to Ruston to get ready for next week’s road tour….