Board’s annual meeting to be here

NASHVILLE — The University of Tennessee’s Board of Trustees this week holds its first meeting at the system’s Chattanooga campus in nearly three years.

Over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday, the governing board during its winter meeting is expected to act on its revised fiscal year 2019-20 operating budget for the system and its main campuses in Chattanooga, Knoxville, Martin and the UT Health Science Center in Memphis.

Trustees will also hear interim UT President Randy Boyd’s address and conduct an annual performance review for him.

Things officially kick off Tuesday as trustees meet at 1:30 p.m. to hear a campus safety presentation in the UTC University Center’s Tennessee Room. It comes after a scathing state comptroller audit late last year on campus safety problems at the four campuses.

On Wednesday, the more formal work and action starts at 8 a.m. as the Education, Research and Service Committee meets, followed at 11 a.m. by the Finance and Administration Committee. Various proposals to be acted on there are expected to then come before the full 12-member board, which includes a non-voting student member, when it convenes.

Those items include:

› A review of lecturer compensation analysis.

› An update on the UT Institute of Agriculture and UT-Knoxville reunification.

› A vote on the revised FY 201920 budget.

› A vote on FY 2020-21 tuition and fees at the UT Health Science Center.

› Amendments to the board bylaws ensuing vote.

› Annual performance review of Boyd.

› Proposed departmental name change to the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship

at UT-Knoxville’s Haslam College of Business.

› Authorization for conferral of degrees, 2020 spring semester.

› Grant of tenure upon initial appointment at UT-Knoxville.

› The new bachelor of science degree in education, deaf studies major, American Sign Language concentration at UT-Knoxville.

› A new master of legal studies at UT-Knoxville.

› Proposed faculty handbook revision at UT-Knoxville.

› Approval of the UT Health Science Center’s “Long-Range Master Plan.”

› Boyd’s address. One item that won’t be addressed at this meeting is tuition and fees at the Knoxville, Chattanooga and Martin campuses. That will come at the board’s summer meeting after state lawmakers take final action on Gov. Bill Lee’s proposed budget.

The UT trustees’ meeting comes as the university system’s relations — especially at the Knoxville campus — appear to be thawing with the GOP-run General Assembly. Socially conservative Republicans for years have railed at Knoxville students, faculty and the system’s governing board in areas ranging from the campuses’ annual Sex Week to the suggested use of gender-neutral pronouns.

It got so bad that thenGov. Bill Haslam on his way out of office in 2018 recommended and successfully pushed a board overhaul through the Legislature. It cut the number of trustees to the current 11 voting members and one student, non-voting member and resulted in a complete board change.

The first thing the new board did was name Boyd, a successful entrepreneur, multi-millionaire and former state economic and community development commissioner — as well as the intellectual father behind Haslam’s successful Tennessee Promise program with its last-dollar, lottery funded scholarships to attend community and technical colleges — as UT’s interim president.

Boyd, a Haslam friend who lost a 2018 bid to succeed him as governor, has been able to soothe conservative lawmakers’ concerns. So much so that despite last December’s comptroller audit over campus security, GOP lawmakers by their standards were fairly reserved, with some repeatedly praising Boyd for the job he’s done.

That included one of UT’s sharpest critics, Sen. Kerry Roberts, who asked UT Board of Trustees Chairman John Compton when the board was going to take the word “interim” off Boyd’s title.

“If I could vote on it today, I’d vote to take that interim title off your name,” Roberts, R-Springfield, told Boyd.