When the Baker University Board of Trustees met in September, University President Pat Long gave trustees a tour of campus.
At her second BOT meeting today, Long has decided to let others show the trustees another side of Baker.
“This particular meeting, our focus is on faculty and academic mission,” she said. “This one’s to get a feel for what’s happening in the classroom.”
To do this, Long said she has invited members of the faculty from a few of Baker’s schools to talk with trustees about the classroom environment on the different campuses.
Marc Carter, assistant professor of psychology, will be one of the faculty members from the College of Arts and Sciences to present at the late-morning session.
“I’ll chiefly be talking about mentoring students in independent research,” he said. “We do a lot of that here, and our students win awards and present papers at conference.”
Carter said the faculty presentations will be a good chance for the trustees to truly see what happens in the Baker classroom.
“I think it’s a great idea. I think they’re going to be more excited about Baker the more they know what we do here. It really is a special place, but people don’t know about it,” Carter said. “This will be a good chance, I think, to have more interaction with them. The idea is that the more they know about us, the more they’re going to be excited about us.”
Previously, trustees’ interaction with faculty was limited to one annual dinner. However, Carter, who has previously worked at two other institutions, said that even that was an irregular amount of trustee-faculty interaction.
“I think it’s very uncommon,” he said. “I was at Hofstra (University in Long Island, N.Y.) for seven years and never met one of the members of the board.”
Carter also is one of several faculty members up for tenure or promotion, on which the trustees will vote in a closed meeting this morning.
The trustees will also be assessing a new conflict resolution master’s degree at the School of Professional and Graduate Studies.
In addition, Long said she will be giving the trustees an update on the current construction projects – the renovation and addition to Mulvane Hall and a new residence hall, which may be coordinated with a student center.
Long said the discussion of the project will begin soon in order to have the residence hall ready for fall 2008.
“This spring, we will be getting student forums together, so we know what students really want,” she said. “That will be a 12-month build, I’m sure. So we’ll have to get that going right after this board meeting so we can break soil this summer.”
Long said the administration will also be performing an evaluation of the university’s finances and will determine whether a 100-bed or 200-bed residence hall is needed.
The financing of the project is still in discussion. Long said a prominent possibility is the use of a revenue-generating bond, which would not require the university to put funds into the project. Instead, the project would be paid off through room and board fees.
However, Long said there is still a possibility of finding a donor to contribute to a residence-hall fund.
Vice President for University Advancement Lyn Lakin said it may be possible to find donations for residence halls.
“The challenge is always finding potential donors whose interests intersect with our needs, and we are just diving in, seeing what our alumni’s interests are,” she said.
Long said it is important to keep in mind the reason for building new residence and classroom halls on campus.
“We have a strong institution academically, and I think our academic mission drives our university,” she said. “You build a building to support your academic mission. I don’t want to lose sight of that. We’re building this science building that will enhance our teaching, not so that we can have this pretty building on campus.”
The third and final meeting of the year, to be held in May, will be devoted to budgetary issues and to the selection of trustees to fill several positions on the BOT that will be open after this year.
“We’d love some people who know Baker very well to become involved. We’d also love some new people,” Long said. “We have a very committed board. That’s one of the most encouraging aspects of this job – to see how active and involved our board is.”