Goal: U of M board
Separate governing body ‘makes sense’
Gov. Bill Haslam said Thursday that he’s trying to figure out how to carve out a separate governing board for the University of Memphis — with authority to hire and fire the university’s president — in a way that’s fair to other large Tennessee Board of Regents schools.
The governor said he’s in discussions about how to accomplish the longtime goals of the U of M’s supporters and advocates for greater autonomy but also set up guidelines for how other schools might follow suit .
He talked about the concept of a U of M board in response to questions in a meeting with The Commercial Appeal’s editorial board, where he discussed details of the broad legislative agenda he presented to state lawmakers on Tuesday.
“I do think that makes sense for the University of Memphis to have their own board,” the governor said. “The University of Memphis has a board of advisers that is really strong and brings a lot to the table. ... What I have to figure out is how to do that in context with the rest of the Tennessee Board of Regents.”
The governor said, “The goal I think would be to figure out a way to have a board that has the ability to hire and fire the president, that can fundraise, that can enter into new agreements and alliances — like if the University of Memphis wants to do a deal with Fedex, that board
should have the full right to approve that without going to TBR.
“There’s some things like that I think that you can carve out that are the basic functions of a board but as yet I haven’t figured out how we do that, how we set the distinctions for who gets their own board, number one, and number two, how we keep everybody from bombarding Nashville with their requests.”
The concepts he discussed Thursday appeared to advance the position he articulated in his 2010 campaign for governor, when he said he favored the idea of a more autonomous governing board for U of M.
Advocates for the university have had a goal of a separate governing board, or a board under the Board of Regents with much greater authority, for several years. Tennessee has two governing boards for its public higher education institutions: the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees for UT’S four major campuses, and the 18-member Board of Regents that oversees 46 institutions with an enrollment of more than 200,000 students — six state universities, 13 community colleges and 27 technology centers.
U of M is no longer the largest school in the TBR system. Its “headcount enrollment” in the fall semester totaled 22,725, second to Middle Tennessee State University’s 26,442.
Haslam said that one of the biggest advantages of a U of M board would be its focus solely on the university.
“The Board of Regents is a great institution but nobody wakes up every day thinking, ‘I wonder what I can do for TBR today.’ People do wake up thinking, ‘What I can do for the University of Memphis today?’ And finding out how we take advantage of that in a good way is what I’m trying to do.”
Haslam later traveled to Jackson for a flag-raising ceremony to formalize the transfer of the former Lambuth University campus to a satellite of the U of M.
Contact Nashville Bureau chief Richard Locker at (615) 255-4923.