The ACU Board of Trustees plans to review and approve a revised Board Policy Manual in its meeting on Friday.
Dr. Barry Packer, chair of the Board, said the existing manual is somewhat outdated and the Board has been working on the revision for the past six months.
“One of the positive outcomes of this revision will be that the Board of Trustees will focus a greater proportion of its time on ensuring that graduates of ACU have the capacity to think and act critically, missionally and globally,” Packer said.
Packer said the Board is ordering its policies around four categories: policies about ends and results; policies that limit the university president’s authority about methods, practices, situations and conduct; policies that indicate how governance is linked to management; and policies that dictate how the Board itself will operate.
Packer said the Board is not radically changing its policy, but restructuring it to be more effective.
“The significance of the Board of Trustees’ impacts and potential impacts on ACU and those it serves requires that the Board proactively define and demand successful organizational performance, not react to and ratify it,” he said. “There is no significant change in content that will signal a change in the overall direction of the university; instead, this restructuring is intended to enable the Board to function more effectively and provide greater leadership for ACU.”
Dr. Phil Schubert, president of the university, said the students are always the Board’s focus, even if its decisions and changes don’t directly affect them.
“The students will be the center of the conversation and the focus of the answer to the questions,” he said. “But I don’t know that students will see any shift or noticeable differences.”
