The Board of Trustees will gather in Abilene this weekend for its annual Sing Song meeting to discuss the budget and key university business.
Slade Sullivan, general counsel to the university, serves as secretary to the Board of Trustees. He said Sing Song weekend offers a good opportunity to meet, with many board members already in town.
“It used to be the weekend before Lectureship, so a lot of members were traveling to Abilene anyway,” Sullivan said. “So it’s a good opportunity to capitalize on people being in town.”
The audit committee will meet at 7:30 a.m. on Friday morning, with the remainder of the meeting commencing at 10 a.m.
“Their role is to engage the external auditor that engages the university financial statements every year,” Sullivan said. “They monitor oversight and accounting to make sure things are happening the way they should be.”
Sullivan said most of the business to be discussed at this year’s meetings is fairly routine. He said the board will vote approve the fiscal year 2012 budget, elect new members to the Board of Trustees and meet with the president and provost.
“It’s a combination of plannery sessions and committee meetings where the board breaks up into smaller groups to observe what’s going on in the university,” Sullivan said.
The board will participate in a “topping off” ceremony at 11:40 a.m. on Friday. They will help lay the highest beam for the new Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center and tour the new AT&T Learning Studio in the Brown Library immediately after.
Barry Packer, chairman of the Board of Trustees, said he is not anticipating any controversial decisions to be made at this week’s meeting.
“There are really no controversial issues that are coming up,” Packer said. “There are a lot of routine things, but I’m walking into this meeting with a great deal of comfort and very little angst.”
Packer said the big issue to be discussed at the meetings was university accreditation. He said the university will undergo the accreditation process this spring.
“The university goes through this every 10 years, and we’ll have the people who are involved with that come to campus later this spring, so it’s important that the board is aware of that process,” Packer said. “So we are going to have a report that brings the board up to date.”
Packer said the board also will honor retiring members and vote on new members.
