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Volume 27, Issue 7, September 23, 2004

Opinion

Metro's Trustee Talk


Stephen Hay
Student Trustee

This is the first of many articles you will see here in The Metropolitan this year regarding our Board of Trustees. Keep an eye out for these as they will appear regularly and provide a wealth of information and insight about the inner workings of our college.

A goal of mine this year will be to provide more information about the Board to my fellow students. I will do this in part by writing articles the week after every Board of Trustees meeting. The following is a highlighted version of the Board of Trustees meetings on Sept. 8.

The Finance Committee is working to prepare the school's budget in anticipation of the predicted cuts higher education will take again next year. Short of any changes to the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, Amendment 23 or the securitization of funds from the state tobacco settlement, higher education will likely suffer another round of budgetary reductions. The Finance Committee is and will continue to work diligently to prepare for this and minimize the impact.

One of the agenda items was to approve the concept of Program Fees based on the recommendation of the Finance Committee. A task force will work in the coming months on implementing this concept in a fair manner. The program fee will replace the current course fee system.

Next was the approval of personnel appointments made over the summer. These included the promotion of twelve assistant professors and one professor, the hiring of eight administrators, and one faculty coordinator. A discussion on this topic requested that grading information be included on the information sheets the Board members receive about each faculty member prior to approval. This is so the grading tendencies of faculty may be weighed with the student evaluation scores presented on the information sheets.

The last agenda item was an informational presentation about one of the challenges the college faces regarding traditional age applicants. Students entering Metro with low CCHE admissions index scores have difficulty making it through their first year. A task force has been developed by the president to evaluate ways the college can help ensure that students who come to Metro succeed at Metro.

If you have questions or seek more information, please contact me by phone at (303)556-2797 or by e-mail at mscd-student-trustee@mscd.edu