My name is Ashley Osborne, and it is my honor to serve as the President of Louisiana Tech University’s Staff Senate. As the Presidential Search is commissioned to replace Dr. Jim Henderson, an incredible leader who has served us well, the Staff have two main requests for the Committee.
University staff number nearly 1,000 employees, but many feel excluded from decisions that directly impact our work. We are often left out of conversations, not included in stakeholder lists, and shut out of committees both internal and external. There is no direct representative for the Staff on this committee, and we are not included in “shared governance” principles. Over the past three years, Dr. Jim Henderson has helped create a culture of transparency, respect, and meaningful staff representation that has begun to restore optimism and trust, even as we find ourselves in systems that do not see or make space for us. After two years of a staff hiring freeze and two consecutive denials by the state for cost-of-living raises, staff morale is low. As we look to the future, our greatest concern is preserving that progress and the relationship with the next University President. We respectfully request that the Presidential Search Committee take special care to ensure the next president remains committed to staff inclusion, transparency, and advocacy.
Much of Dr. Henderson’s efforts have been spent at the state level fighting against the current inequality in the state funding formula. Louisiana Tech remains one of the top-performing universities in nearly every metric set for it, including graduation rates, retention rates, and reporting the only increase in enrollment compared to our sister UL institutions on the I-20 corridor. Despite this, there has been significant resistance from outside entities to changing the formula to better reflect these achievements, and Tech remains one of the lower funded institutions on a per-student basis. I can confidently say that Tech’s ability to meet these performance metrics with unrealistically low funding levels proves that our budget would not be an issue if we were funded even at the UL System average. The decisions from state-level boards have created an environment of distrust of the system. We need a candidate that is willing to “fight” for the needs of Tech and will not give in to political influence or outside pressure to leave the current system in place. We respectfully ask that the Presidential Search Committee specifically evaluate candidates’ ability and willingness to represent Tech’s interests on a state level.
In short, please don’t forget Staff, and please bring us someone who will advocate for Louisiana Tech University.
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