Tech marks Guice’s final Saturday walk

Louisiana Tech University students, faculty and community members turned out in force to join Tech President Les Guice on his last official Saturday morning walk through campus and celebrate his time as the university’s leader that will soon come to an end.

For more than two years, Guice has teamed up with members of the Kinesiology Department to lead a Tech Family Walking Group that makes its way through campus every Saturday morning.

The treks begin at the Aspire statue plaza, which Tech recently announced would be named after Guice and his wife Kathy as he retires from 10 years at the helm of the university and 45 years working there.

More than 100 people — including members of the Bulldog softball team, Tech’s Air Force ROTC detachment, legendary former Lady Techsters basketball coach Leon Barmore and many more — arrived at Aspire on a wet and overcast Saturday morning and joined Guice on the final observation of this weekly tradition.

And it was at the Aspire plaza where, at the end of the walk, Tech’s Band of Pride, cheer team, the Regal Blues and Champ got the drop on Guice and surprised him with a rally in his honor.

“Never before has ‘ Tech Family’ been more powerfully demonstrated,” Guice later said on social media.

Started in 2021 following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tech Family Walking Group was organized as a way to promote health and fitness in the campus community, but also mental health and social interaction.

“There’s always a good mix of people, students faculty, alumni and community members,” Guice said. “It’s a good time to fellowship and get together for a short period of time.”

Now as Guice retires in the next two weeks, he doesn’t plan to continue leading the walks.

But fear not, the Kinesiology Department does.

Instructor Jessica Szymanski, who helped orchestrate Guice’s surprise Saturday, said she, student leader Emily Landry and others have come together to keep one of Tech’s latest traditions going.

“It’s wonderful,” Szymanski said. “It keeps people up and moving around on a Saturday morning. You wake up, you get a workout in, you feel good, you’ve started your day out with some sort of physical activity.”

As she walked alongside Guice for perhaps the last time, the importance of a top university administrator turning a healthy activity into a campus mainstay wasn’t lost on Szymanski.

“A leader in his position, to take that initiative and say OK, let’s get this rolling… That is the number one person that we could have had on this campus to do that.”