Tennessee Board of Regents committees to meet March 14

Two committees of the Tennessee Board of Regents, as well as the chairs of all the board’s committees, will meet Tuesday, March 14, to review a number of items in advance of the full board’s next quarterly meeting on March 31.

The Audit Committee will meet at 10:30 a.m., the Finance and Business Operations Committee will meet at 12:30 p.m., and the Committee Chairs will meet at 1 p.m. All the meetings will be held in Rooms 201-202-203 at the TBR system office at 1 Bridgestone Park, Nashville, Tenn., 37214.

Complete agendas are posted on the TBR website at https://www.tbr.edu/board/board-meeting-schedule-and-materials.

The Audit Committee’s agenda includes a report on the search for the board’s next chief audit executive and informational reviews of recent audit reports by the state comptroller’s office, corrective actions on performance audit findings, and internal audit reports. The committee will hold a non-public executive session to discuss audit issues that are confidential under Tennessee law until final reports are issued.

The Finance and Business Operations Committee’s agenda includes consideration of student incidental fee requests by TBR campuses, a proposed new policy on university budgets, and amendments to the TBR capital projects budget’s disclosed projects list.

Incidental fees are fees charged to students for specific courses, programs and services – lab materials fees, for example -- that are not charged to all enrolled students. All requests by campuses for new incidental fees and changes in existing fees must be approved by the Board of Regents. Incidental fees recommended by the committee will go to the full board for consideration at its March 31 quarterly meeting.

The proposed new policy on university budgets is based in the FOCUS (Focus on College and University Success) Act of 2016, which creates new governing boards for each of the six current TBR universities. Although the new boards will approve budgets for their campuses, the Act requires the Board of Regents to continue to review and approve the universities’ budgets for the limited purpose of ensuring that each institution can appropriately fund indebtedness. The draft policy will outline procedures for reviewing and approving the university budgets.

Disclosed projects are campus construction, maintenance and renovation projects proposed to be funded from non-state sources such as grants, gifts and student fees but which must be “disclosed” to the state legislature as part of its consideration of the state appropriations bill. The board approved TBR’s disclosed project list for Fiscal Year 2017-18 at its September 2016 board meeting. Institutions may propose amendments to the lists; if approved by the board, the amended list is sent to the state for inclusion in the disclosed projects list to the legislature. The proposed amendment lists 30 projects totaling just over $368 million.

The Committee Chairs agenda includes updates on the presidential search at Chattanooga State Community College and the director search at the Tennessee College of Applied Technology-Morristown; an overview of the system office budget; an update on the TBR Shared Services Initiative; review of recommended revisions in various TBR policies, and a review of the draft agenda for the March 31 quarterly board meeting at TCAT-Murfreesboro’s Smyrna campus.

All meetings are open to the public as observers, except for the Audit Committee’s executive session. Anyone wishing to attend should contact TBR interim communications director Richard Locker at 615-366-4417 or rick.locker@tbr.edu by 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 13, to arrange access.