Ray Authement  Ray Paul Authement Sr. (November 19, 1928 – April 5, 2020), was an American academic administrator and the longest-serving university president in the United States. From 1974 to 2008, he was the fifth president of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, formerly known as the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette, Louisiana. Authement was born near Chauvin in a rural section of Terrebonne Parish to Elias Lawrence Authement and the former Elphia Marie Duplantis; both parents were natives of Terrebonne Parish and born in 1904. In 1950, Authement received his bachelor's degree from UL Lafayette. He subsequently procured both a master's degree in 1952 and a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1956 from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Authement and his wife, the former Barbara Braud (born c. 1932), had two daughters, Kathleen A. Prouet, who died in 1999 of leukemia and Julie A. Johnson of Lafayette. Their son is Ray Authement Jr. (born c. 1965) of Lafayette. He began his career in higher education on the LSU faculty in 1954. He was also a former faculty member at McNeese State University in Lake Charles and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Prior to his UL Lafayette presidency, Authement taught mathematics and was thereafter the academic vice-president of Southwestern Louisiana from 1966 until 1970. Under Authement, UL Lafayette launched a $130 million construction program, moved from open enrollment in the manner of a community college to selective admissions, and joined NCAA Division 1, the highest level of collegiate athletic competition. In 1990, he hired the lawyer and former state legislator Carl W. Bauer as the chief lobbyist, or "Coordinator of Governmental Relations," for UL Lafayette, and the two worked together to expand the campus and modernize the institution. Bauer remained at UL Lafayette two years after Authement retired. Authement worked to develop Ph.D. programs in the fields of computer science, mathematics, English, and history. UL Lafayette became the state's second largest university in enrollment - surpassed only by LSU - and the first public university in Louisiana to obtain a Doctoral II ranking. In 1997, he initiated a drive to increase private endowments to $75 million, which made possible the establishment of 20 endowed chairs worth $1 million each, 217 endowed professorships, and many scholarships. There is also a "super chair" valued at $2 million. During the Authement years the Cajundome, the popular basketball complex which seats 12,800, was constructed along with Oliver Hall, a $10 million computer science building.