I spent much of this week in Baton Rouge as the UL System Presidents convened for a retreat. System President Jim Henderson did an excellent job in guiding our team through some planning sessions that will serve to focus us in the coming years in achieving significant outcomes that will positively impact the State of Louisiana. The ULS includes nine institutions serving 90,000 students across every corner of the state, ensuring that citizens in every region have relevant educational opportunities and support for enhanced educational attainment, economic prosperity and quality of life.  No other system has as broad of a reach or impact, and we believe that we can reach even more of our citizens in the future who need a baccalaureate degree or higher to have greater success in life. We have a lot of work to do to elevate our diverse citizenry and elevate Louisiana’s national competitiveness. I believe that we came up with a good framework for advancing our collective impacts. I enjoyed working with my presidential colleagues as well as our system staff. And we all enjoyed having a special dinner prepared and hosted by Tania Henderson, with a little help from Jim. We all found some opportune times to rib our presidential colleagues, in jest of course. And each president had bold predictions about upcoming gridiron competitions between our institutions.