Q&A: Louisiana Tech President Jim Henderson

After serving as president of the University of Louisiana System from 2017-23, Jim Henderson became president of Louisiana Tech University in Ruston. In a recent interview, he detailed his work returning to a student-facing role. 

This transcript of the interview has been edited for length and clarity. The full interview can be heard on Episode 68 of “The Light Switch” podcast. 

Piper Hutchinson: One of your big goals when you were first going into the job is that you wanted to boost Louisiana Tech’s research profile and maybe even become an R1 university. How is progress coming along with that? 

Jim Henderson: To be a Carnegie R1 university, you have to produce 70 research-based doctorates a year, and have at least 50 million dollars in reportable research expenditures on what’s called the NSF HERD (National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development Survey) report. 

Being an R1 has never really been the goal itself, but we have wanted to produce more research, more meaningful, relevant research that solves real world problems, both novel and enduring problems. And to do that, you have to grow your doctorate programs, and you have to to expend more on research. So we’ve seen some remarkable growth. We’ve seen a significant growth in research expenditures. 

The Ph.D.s, the research doctorates, we’ve seen modest growth. We expect to see more over time as we’ve done very well in securing federal grants for public-private partnerships that lend themselves well to bringing doctoral students on and giving them research opportunities. 

Hutchinson: The state is looking at the higher education funding formula right now because a lot of people have been saying it doesn’t work for them. I recall back in the legislative hearing (where a higher education funding task force was proposed), it was a lot about how it didn’t work for Tech. Can you tell me about your concerns with the existing funding formula?

Henderson: I would suggest to you that the funding formula doesn’t work for Louisiana, nor has it ever. I’ve been complaining about the funding formula for over 21 years now, and I think it’s through six iterations of the formula. And that’s not a criticism or complaint about any of the individuals involved with it. It’s just that it is exceedingly difficult to create a single model for distributing funds to such varied institutions, we have very distinct missions. 

Over the years, the funding formula has emphasized different things. At first, it was solely about equity, and that’s the constitutional charge. Over the years, they tweaked it to add cost components to it and then outcomes components. 

I think if we if we take the right steps, we’ll have done something that’s that’s meaningful, that improves how the funding formula helps the state of Louisiana, as and as long again as it’s predictable, it’s transparent, distributes funds equitably, and aligns with a strategic intents, I think we can we have an opportunity to do something pretty important.

Hutchinson: Louisiana Tech had an eventful year in athletics. Y’all switched conferences. You got sued over switching conferences. Now things are settled a little bit. Tell us about that journey.

Henderson: It’s always a difficult journey anytime you have some significant change like this. For us, the change was vitally important. We looked at the health and well-being of student-athletes. We’re going to save an average of 66 hours of seat time in buses and airplanes for our student-athletes. That equates to more time in the study hall, more time in classes, more time asleep in their own beds, that makes sense for us. 

At the same time, we’re going to be bringing in opponents that have fan bases that are in driving distance, that are coming at a that our fans are interested in watching us compete against. So we know there’s going to be a revenue increase associated with this, a dramatic drop in travel expenses, at least a million dollars. 

Hutchinson: You are a former journalist and one of your goals when you took the job was to restart Tech’s student newspaper. How is that going? 

Henderson: Not as successful as I thought. But we do have a great communications professor who has gotten some wonderful students writing for her class and doing a digital version, albeit not beautifully designed. It’s not a full-fledged newspaper, but there is some student journalism occurring. That’s certainly going to be a point of emphasis for us going forward. 

I would love eventually to have a print paper. I don’t know if that’s just a pipe dream, and maybe it’s a little bit nostalgia. Maybe it’s not as necessary, but a robust digital minimum periodical newspaper, at least weekly, would be a great advantage for us. I think it’s essential to having a healthy institution. It’s a great way to keep students engaged, keep them informed, to elevate areas of controversy sometimes, which I think is also healthy. So we haven’t made as much progress as we’d like, but we have made some.