 Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the committee meetings for Ellum City State University Board of Trustees. I would like to remind everyone that we will be conducting today's meetings pursuant to the amendments to the Open Meeting Act that apply during the state of emergency. And the amendments were signed into law and allow for public bodies to meet via electronic means. The law does require, however, that we take all votes and via via roll call, which we will do today. Additionally, pursuant to the amendments to the law, all chats, instant messages, text, and other written communications between members of the board regarding the transactions of the public business during the remote meetings are deemed a public record. Finally, I ask that all committee members, board members, and participating staff to please identify yourselves before participating in deliberations, including making motions, proposing amendments, and raising points of order. The first committee meeting will be the committee on academic excellence and strategic growth. Chair Tiffany Jones. Good morning, everyone. Should I do a call to order for the committee meeting? Is that correct? Yes. Okay. I'm a call to order. Do I have a second? Our first. A second. The response is more. I think you need a motion and then a second. So I just want to make sure my notes are clear who provided the motion. The committee. That's not James Copeland raised a hand first. Okay. With Trustee Boswell. Trustee Boswell. Yeah. Okay. That's the case. Okay, we can go ahead and get started. I believe that we have Dr. Ward starting. Okay. Actually, I will give a roll call. Vice Chair, I will conduct roll call for this particular committee. Okay. Thank you. All right. Good morning again. The committee on academic excellence and strategic growth. Chair Tiffany Jones. That's it. Trustee Boswell. That's it. Trustee Copeland. That's it. Trustee Friedrich. That's it. And Trustee Waddell. That's it. Indeed. Everyone is present. You may proceed. Thank you. Okay. Awesome. And then I believe I can turn it over to Dr. Ward to get us started. Thank you. Thank you so much. Trustee Jones. She should have asked me. Okay. Hopefully you all can see it in full spring moment. Thank you so much, Wayne. Unmute Provost Ward. Okay. Thank you so much, Gwen. Sure. The first thing I have is actually an action item. It is to add an online delivery mode to aviation science. So if you all remember in our strategic plan, we have four programs to move online. And so this is the first one that we are actually moving online, which is aviation science. But we're being strategic in our method of actually moving them online. And so the first concentration that we'll move online will actually be flight education, although we're receiving, we're asking for approval for the whole aviation science degree. We actually have a partnership right now with Piedmont Flight School. And they have a part 141 school in Winston Salem. So that's how we're going to actually deliver our flight component. I know that's a lot of questions people ask. How are you going to move aviation science, particularly the flight concentration online when the students need to fly? Again, those actual credentials come from the FAA. And so we will be partnering. This will be our first attempt to partner with the flight school. Subsequently, next fall, fall 23, we will look at moving the aviation management program and concentration online. But this is a proposal and the Trustee Jones, this would require a vote. I'm sorry, I was on mute. Is there, so I need to call for a motion for a vote first, correct? I just want to make sure. Right, yeah, a motion, a second, and a discussion. Okay. I have a question. What, if they're going, the flight schools in Winston Salem, how are they going to, how are the students, are they going to have to move to Winston Salem? No, the students will take their courses, you know, English, math, as well as aviation science core courses online, 100%. And then the flight component would be basically targeting individuals who live close to the Winston Salem area, area Greensboro, and they would have to physically actually go for the flight component. So that would, we can do, you know, the FAA doesn't allow us to do 100% of the flight students actually have to give them the airplane, but they would do that in Winston. So it's targeting students in that geographic area, but they would not have to physically come to Elizabeth City. I see, thank you. Yes, absolutely. I think we have another question from Trustee Colson. Yes. Let's see what else after that, all right, go ahead. What percentage, this is Trustee Copeland, what percentage of the students in the program do you anticipate being in this online portion? We're going to start off slow. So we'll actually be using a cohort method. And so we will only be, again, it's only for this, the first component is only for this particular partnership with the flight school. We anticipate a cohort of about 20 to 25 students, they will move through the program together. And so that's at least initially what we anticipate. Of course, we do see opportunities for growth, especially when we move the aviation management concentration online, that would open it up because there would not be a necessity to partnership, partner with these flight schools, but we're trying to be strategic in our approach. Again, don't want to just open it wide up. And so the first one will be a cohort about 20 to 25 students with this particular flight school. Which just to follow up, and that is, this is Christy Cook, I'm just following up with 20 to 25 students and how many students, and forgive my ignorance, but how many students are in the program, in the aggregate, correct question? There are a total of 165 students in the aviation science program. I also have a question from Trustee Waddell. You want to jump in? Yeah, so I'm kind of familiar with this because one of the first use cases I saw was Liberty University that did this. So my question would be, all of this is to prepare students for the written FAA exam. And then of course, it sounded to me like Piedmont Aviation is gonna handle a lot of the practical exercises, maneuvers, and things like that. So when they go up with a designated pilot examiner, they can pass their check ride. Are we on the hook for providing the different learning modules in preparation for the FAA exam? Or is that something that Piedmont is going to package together for us? I think that it's a collaborative method and we did buy some specific software. I can't recall the exact name of the software for some of the actual coursework, but I think you remember Trustee Waddell, there's a kind of course component and then there's the lab where they actually fly. We will move. Good morning, how are you? I'm fine. Allen, you're not on me. Okay, will there be, I'm sorry, Trustee Waddell, we will provide the course, they will still take the coursework, but the actual physical flying will be with Piedmont Flight School. And of course, we have looked through work with our CFO to look through their credentials, as well as, it's very important, we still have to maintain a passage rate for those FAA exams. And so we'll be working closely to make sure that we continue to keep up those standards. But you're right, Liberty University is the unit, one of the universities that we looked at for utilizing this model, that is correct. Sounds good to me. The only thing that I would say is, so granted we bought that software, that software is proprietary, is it gonna have our watermark rebranding it for Elizabeth City State or that we're gonna push that out there for the, I would say more or less those modules would be used for ground school. I went through this and I've used modules for ground school. We've had several, there's several different companies out there. Are we branding it for just us to push out there or are we just gonna utilize what's already, commercial off the shelf? I can definitely look into that specific situation and make sure I get back with you and let you know what exactly we're doing for that. Sounds good. Thank you. That's wonderful. Is there any further questions or discussion before we move to vote? And I'm not seeing any hands in the motion. Okay. If that is the case, then we have a motion to move to vote. I'll move a motion to vote. This is Friedrich. Okay, thank you. Do we have a second? This is for about a second. Okay. And then do we need to do a roll call vote? Are we good to... Yep, do a roll call. Yes. Yes, please. Yes. Roll call vote. Okay. Tiffany Jones. Yes. Tell us about some more. Yes. Jim Copeland. Yes. Steve Friedrich. Yes. And Justin Waddell. Yes. Okay, all approved. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next, I just want to give a few updates. I know it's been so long that you may not forget. You may forget, but we haven't met since the spring semester. And so I just want to let you all know, of course it seems like a distant memory, but we did delay the spring semester from July 11th, January 11th to January 18th. During that time, of course, that was the height of the Omicron variant. And so we did give faculty the option to move their courses online for the first two weeks. All faculty had that option. Actually about 20% took advantage. And so the rest of them were able to manage using hybrid or face-to-face to manage through those first few weeks. We didn't want to take students spring breaks. We heard loud and clear during the first full semester after the pandemic about students needing that specific time throughout the semester to kind of recoup, but we did have to make up the days that we missed. And so students traditionally had Monday, April 18th off. They would now have class on that specific date. They will have the Friday prior, Good Friday. They would still have that off. So we did not take that day. And then they will also have class on Friday, May 6th, which traditionally was a reading day, but they will have that. The remaining days that we had to delay, they will have additional courses and faculty put those makeup assignments on their syllabus. And so students are well aware of what those assignments are. I did want to give you a brief update on our mission statement. I know it's been some time over two years, but in November 6th, 2019, the board actually approved our mission statement. We actually submitted it via the chancellor immediately to the system office for approval. The mission statement has to be approved by the board of governors per the statute. And so it has not been approved. I did provide a few dates because I wanted to make sure you all knew that the chancellor and myself have been following up with the system office. So those are the four dates we've actually written, written notification to inquire about the status of the mission statement. Initially, there was of course a transition with presidents at the UNC system. And so that was the cause for one of the delays while they made that transition. Subsequently, they have since passed a revision to the regulation on updating mission statements, regulation 400.2.3. They passed that on January 31st, 2022. And so as part of the component of the new mission statement, there is a requirement that each institution includes degrees offered at the institution. This component is actually not in our mission statement. And so I wanted to just show you how we have edited the mission statement that the board of trustees initially approved on November 6th in order to be compliant with the UNC regulation 400.2.3. We didn't change anything substantive, but the portion in red at the bottom is an addition that was not in the previous mission statement, which basically explicitly says that ECSU offers baccalaureate professional and master's degrees. I didn't know if there were any questions on this specific thing, yes, Trustee Jones. Yeah, one question just to clarify that you all do offer some certificates or have plans in the works. And if they're not listed as a degree type, would that create any challenges in the future to your ability to be able to offer those opportunities? Yes, and I did follow up with that. And it does not, we do not have to explicitly say that we offer certificates. And so we can just talk about the actual degrees, baccalaureate professional and master's degree. And then if we offer doctoral, which we don't, we would have to include that as well. Thank you so much. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for following up. I do wanna, of course, continue to talk about our strategic plan. And so we continue to implement real life and apply research into the curriculum throughout the curriculum. Here is one specific example with our partnership with the GR Little Library. They received a grant from Digital North Carolina. We are now a satellite location for Northeastern North Carolina. That's actually a piece of equipment to digitalize historic documents and to have them available to individuals. We also partnered with that grant in the library as well as WRVS radio with our history students and they participated in a digital preservation workshop also in collaboration with Northeast Document Conservation Center. Our history program was also highlighted on WTKR. They did an actual segment that's the TV station out of Virginia, Norfolk to Virginia on Beyond the Green Book. That is our professor, Dr. Melissa Stuckey, and she is working with her students to really capture Beyond the Green Book, which was a historic document that African-Americans used while they traveled throughout the country in order to identify safe locations that they could travel. And so she's updating that document for Elizabeth City. Two more examples of implementing applied research. Of course, during the drone UAS facility opening, I talked about how of course the UAS facility is for our unmanned crash systems degree, but we have a variety of other majors who will be able to utilize that actual facility once it's up this summer. Of course, the Emergency Management and UAS will use it, but our digital media program will also be using that facility. And so here's an example of our digital media students actually engaging in drone flying exercise. In addition, our sport management majors are getting kind of real world experience that they were able to meet with Joe E.C. from the Portland Trailblazers. We'll talk to them about our importance of selling themselves in customer service. So this again, I think highlights how as we transition back, we're still having hybrid and face-to-face content. We also continue to promote an academic environment centered on student success. Here's an example of our community emergency response team. We call them CERT. They're all over the place, but they did receive a grant for $3,000 from the American College Health Association to mentor on COVID safety public education. And so they have been around the community passing our information and literature on that. In the middle, we continue to have a strong partnership with the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. And so we took students actually went to Raleigh to document different ideas and different videos from historic individuals that were featured in the annual 21st African-American cultural celebration. And then on the right, our criminal justice students continue to be active in the community as well as with the local police force. And so here's an example of them making hats and scarves for the EC police department to pass out to community residents when they interact with them on the street. Continue to promote student success. One of our actual components of our strategic plan is to increase the international study abroad opportunities. So up in the left-hand corner, you will see two of our students, Kani and Omar, they actually were awarded a proposal for beyond deficit study abroad and HBCUs by the North Carolina Association of International Educators Conference and presented their work. Kani will actually be studying in South Korea this summer and Omar will be studying in Costa Rica. In the middle, you'll see one of our emergency management students who was selected for FEMA CORE, which is actually the first ECSU student that's ever selected for their program. I'm really looking forward to the June meeting because our students just got back from actually New Mexico where they participated in a special program with FEMA. On the right are two of our students, Jordan and Diana, who actually were chosen for the prestigious Stanford University Innovation Fellows. There were actually 277 applicants to this program, less than 10% only 22 came from HBCUs and two of our students were one of them. And so they'll be presenting their research in Silicon Valley later this month. Our education program is partnering with the North Carolina Council on Economic Education to offer two different week-long programs for the newly required economics and personal finance course that's required in the high schools. ECSU undergraduate students, teacher education students were actually participated again. I created this when we had the initial day but participated in a week-long program from March 7th through the 11th. And this summer, we will be hosting workshops for teachers from local education agencies and they'll be on our campus participating in the workshop with the North Carolina Council on Economic Education. One highlight from our teacher education program is a grant we received from the National Science Foundation for $1.2 million. It's preparing teachers to address challenging scientific and environment topics through research dialogue and experiential learning. We actually have nine students enrolled this year. They're enrolled in our MS and biology program with concentrations in education and they'll receive their credentials once they graduate from the program. They receive full funding and stipends up to $20,000 for their participation in this program. One of the highlights again, this is just a preview but it's a collaboration that we did with our university advancement and thanks Vice Chancellor Walton and her team for collaborating with us. We received a three-year grant from PNC Foundation for $320,000, really focused on entrepreneurship. The highlight this year will be Entrepreneurship Week which will be held April 4th through the 9th. We are glad and happy to announce that we have picked our first inaugural Entrepreneurship Fellow. His name is Nahun Jinnot. He actually was featured on ABC Shark Tank and has a company called Go Oats. And so he is our first PNC Entrepreneurial Fellow. He will be coaching a team of HBCU students from around North Carolina. So all HBCUs from North Carolina were invited to send teams to basically pitch to a team of judges. And so they will actually be doing that on April 9th. Mr. Jinnot will also be visiting with our classes and the community. So small businesses talking about what it's like and what has to kind of go into opening a small business or operating and making it thrive. I did wanna highlight UNC policy 700.1.3 which is the out-of-state undergraduate enrollment policy. I know we've talked a lot about this, but last month at the Board of Governors' Meeting through the Education and Planning Committee, this actually did pass. And so there's a current proposal that will be on the April full Board agenda to pass specifically for Elizabeth City that ECSU will not enroll more than 50% of non-resident students for tuition purpose. As you all may remember previously, four years ago, the cap was 18%. Chancellor Dixon got a waiver for three years to increase it to an unlimited percentage for Elizabeth City. And then last fall, fall 21, it was reduced really for ECSU to 25%. And for all the HBCUs, it was reduced to 25%. I mean, increased for some, but for us a reduction to 25%. I brought to you in December that we had exceeded our cap and were notified that we exceeded our cap of 25%. We were at 32%. But hopefully if this piece of policy actually passed in April, it will increase our percentage from the 25% to 50% for out-of-state students. I think I'll pause now. I think there's a question. Do we have pretty good confidence, whoever works with, you know, with the Chancellor Dixon, who works with the Board, may pretty good confidence that this is gonna go through the Board of Governors and not be a headache. Yes. Yes, Trustee Copeland, this is something that we've been working on for a few months now. And I'm pretty confident that the Board of Governors supports ECSU. I've spoke twice on this issue in their public meeting and have had some comments in regards to our status that are very positive comments. I think they get it. They know the proximity in which we are located and the border campus benefit that we have by increasing this out-of-state percentage. So I do feel as though they will be very supportive. Yeah, I wanna say, I mean, I've had some discussions with House leadership folks on this and they're broadly non-plussed about it. In other words, they're supportive of ECSU as well on this based on my interpretation. I do think that the best thing we could do to continue to buttress that would be to collect data if we can about any of the Virginia students coming in that we retain in the region in Northeast North Carolina, I think would buttress us strongly going forward to continue this sort of support. Yes, so there was a full study done by the system office and that was what was presented to the legislature by President Hans prior to it going to the Board of Governors for discussion. So yes, definitely we have that data that has been presented by the system office to the Board and the legislature. So we feel pretty positive about this passing. Thank you. At this time, I'm gonna turn it over to our Associate Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management, Marcio Moreno. I will say that Marcio is in Charlotte. The second thing you see is a meeting greet. He took ECSU on the road. And so I know he's having somewhat of spotty connection because he's at a hotel right now. So if he is unable to do all his disconnects, I'll just pick back up without. We'll try to turn it over to Marcio if you're available. Good morning. I hope that you can hear me okay. I'm my apologies. I cannot have my video on because I'm scared that the connection is not strong enough. Good morning Chancellor Dixon. Good morning trustees. This is the first time I have the opportunity to be in front of you. Even though it's virtual, I'm looking forward to actually be there face to face and have the opportunity to share more information. Again, Marcio Moreno, I'm fairly new to the university. I started in mid-November. I have been with the system for 19 years and I have been in admissions and enrollment with other universities. I did one year with Faithless University. I did 16 years with Wilmington and I come from UNCG from last year. So thank you for the opportunity. I'm gonna share with you a couple of the activities that we have been planning and developing, making sure that we have strong numbers for fall. So on Wednesday, we had a very good reception in conjunction with the alumni chapter in Raleigh. And it was really good because it was the first recruitment activity that we had face to face in the last couple of years. A strong support from the chapter from Raleigh. We have at least 10 alumni helping us. We had probably 30 people there. And yesterday, we had another amazing reception mid-N-Greek in Charlotte and we had 15 alumni showing up. So I can tell that the support from the alumni, it's strong. We were able to share a lot of numbers and data and then alumni added the emotional part. They share stories about why they chose Elizabeth City and we were able to answer all the questions that the families and those students had. So it feels really good to be back on the road and we are putting our face out where it needs to be. This Saturday, we have our admitted students open house and we have more than 80 families coming to campus for a total of more than 200 people. We are going to start in the fine arts and we have a student panel. We have a nice welcome. We're going to move to the center of campus where we're going to have an academic and student service fair and we have an opportunity to actually showcase two rooms which is amazing because for the last two years, remember these are the families that have no had a chance to actually to come face to face to campus and if we're not seeing the dorms facility. So we are extremely happy that we have that opportunity. Another program that I'm really, really proud that we are also going to be presenting for the first time in the last couple of years is a local high school counselor event. We have sent out invitations to more than 60 high schools in the local area and we are inviting more than 120 high school counselors. We want them to come to the university. We want them to see everything that is going on. We're gonna give them a very good update on everything that has been taking place for the last couple of years and then we're going to replicate that on Thursday, May 19, but now it's gonna be inviting transfer counselors and anyone in community colleges that actually are talking and helping those recruiting transfer students. So all those events are brand new. I just added two more events for next month and those are gonna be called Viking Showcases. So in total, we are providing five different opportunities for students to come and see and bring questions so we can actually make sure that they have all the information, getting them ready for May 1st. Remember, May 1st is national decision day. So all those students have until May 1st to choose a university and we are giving families plenty of opportunities to be here, to be in front of us and to ask all our questions. Next slide, please. In these slides again, I'm gonna be showing you some marketing initiatives that we have been put together and now some of them are actually happening. The first one is actually very, very important. When I first came in, I met with the chairs and the chairs were very, very willing and they were asking can I please have access to these names, the admitted students name because they want to be part of the recruitment process. And of course, we immediately, we put into practice a weekly report that is shared with the chairs on Wednesday. So all the chairs have access to not only the Freshman names, but also the transfer names that are being admitted. And I'm working with them. Some of them are actually making calls. Some of them are actually sending emails, congratulating them and offering a one-on-one conversation. There are a couple of departments who have been very creative and I'm gonna highlight the math department. The math department actually put together a survey and they not only wanted the names for that department, they wanted and they requested the name for the on-the-sided students that is a large group of probably 300 students right now and they put a survey out asking them the likelihood of enrollment, the likelihood of enrollment in their department and then they have identified more than 30 students that had specific questions for faculty in that department. So thank you very much for that. We are in the initial stages of working on a new virtual tour. We are gonna be using U-Visit, which is the largest company in the state. U-Visit already has virtual tours probably with, probably with most of the universities in the system, including probably 30 community colleges. This is a great opportunity. A photographer is gonna come to campus probably next month and we're gonna be recreating the tour, taking 360 pictures and then we're gonna give the students opportunity to go online and with the mouse, they can click, they can follow, they can go inside the buildings and then we will have more pictures and more videos inside the buildings. This is something that I have done in previous universities and as soon as we do it, we can see that numbers for the actual face-to-face actually go up because this is gonna act as a character. They're gonna get excited about what we have to offer and then the next steps try to get them on campus. We are also working on an improved version of our in-person tour. Hopefully we can start this month. If not next month, we're trying to put together a student ambassador groups that is gonna lead the campus tour and we are gonna actually have an information session that is gonna be in the student complex in the auditorium. So we will have families and prospective students over there listening short 15, 20 minute information session and then we will have a tour led by students. We also finished a contract with NIT which is the largest search engine. Many families are gonna come to our website and that's how they are asking for information or the families are gonna go to Google and they are gonna search for who has a program in biology or who has a good program in aviation and Google is gonna go probably to NIT which is again the largest one. They have more than three million students actually searching for schools. We have an updated profile and we have access to pictures, videos and not only that, when students are gonna be sent to sister institutions in the corner now they will see. Elizabeth City also has this program. Please check Elizabeth City out. So we are paying for that and we are of course gathering their information and we get all those names that we put into our database. So we have a strong, strong funnel for next year. The next one is really, really interesting. We are going to geofence a couple of community college and our feeder high schools and we are going to make sure that they are actually receiving very specific ads that we are actually ready to put that into practice. We have been working with marketing and communication and we have ads and we have also developed a 30 second video that is gonna be running on TikTok. That's exactly where the students are right now and they are gonna be also being able to watch that as a YouTube ad. So all those activities are brand new. We started putting together since November and as you can see, we are busy and we are pushing forward and most of them actually will be ready for the final push for this class and definitely to help us to get excited juniors and sophomores next slide, please. Here you can see the final numbers for spring. Here you can see spring 2020, spring 2021 and spring 2022, the total enrollment on the left and the continuing students. And then on the right, you can see the division of the numbers in first time, returning and transfer students. Spring was actually a little bit difficult because it was right there where we were starting to hear more and more about Omicron and we did have a lot of students at the very, very end asking questions about our classes, how it was gonna be and even though it was a little bit difficult, we finished spring just eight students child from last year. So I call that a success and I see a question for trustee Copland. Yes, I'm sorry, very quick. And it's really from the prior slide and just again, my ignorance, if you could explain to those of us who don't know this, what exactly is geo fencing? I'm sorry, I just don't know what it is. Excellent question. If you can see actually the top illustration, you see, yes, that one right there. You see a Google map and you see a circle and then you see someone on a cell phone. Geo fencing is nothing more that we can actually identify places that we want to put a fence where this company that we're gonna be using helps identify cell phones, cell phones and IP computers. So we know that what we have as that we are gonna be trying to show are gonna be shown to the specific market that we want. For example, we know that students are gonna be on Facebook, on TikTok and very specific websites, right? So we can identify those. So imagine of course we are gonna be identifying all the cell phones and all the tablets and all the computers that are active in COA or in all the community colleges. And then we're able to then to actually to share our ads with those specific cell phones and IP addresses. So basically it's a very, very detailed and secure connection. So we know that we are not spending tons of money and ads showing it to people that are not the real market that we want to. So we are going to marketing our ads for the students that we want to bring in. In a nutshell, that is geofencing. That's something that it's been on for the last couple of years and it has been really successful for all the universities. Very good question. Thank you very much. And what you see right now it's a year in time application numbers. You can see on the left you have, you can see the completed apps. And as you can see the 2022 numbers is actually looking really good last year. At the same time we had a 3,363 students. We have received probably over 300 more applications that last year. Very proud to report that the admitted students is very, very strong as of last week. We already made more offers than all the offers that we were able to make last year. So in my mind we are working probably ahead three months if not four months because last year we were still making offers in late July. So we already may have made more offers on the freshman side. And on the right you have the confirmed numbers. Last year we had 260. Right now we have 230. I'm really hoping that after Saturday and opening house that number is gonna grow and it's gonna be very close to where it needs to be. Out of the 85 families that we have invited for open house, 45 families, 40 students have not made a decision yet. So we have the option to convince and impress a 45 minutes this Saturday. So number of admitted students is up 18%. And let me tell you how we did that. I have been given specific weekly goals to counselors. So right now we are reading and we are on top of our read. I can guarantee that a student that applies right now and completes the application, they are getting a decision within two days, which is amazing. Really proud of the hard work that the counselors are doing. And again, we are adding reception. We are adding more recruitment activities. So I think that we have a very, very active admissions office which I'm really proud. And at the same time, we are working with financial and we're working with the register. I'm making sure that I have to make sure that when we are talking about improvement and recruitment, we have a very, very active person that we're working towards helping families. So that's what I have for you. If you have some questions, I'm more than welcome to entertain. Trustee Copeland is here. Hand, would you like to jump in? That's just a question. First of all, fantastic presentation. You guys are doing a great job. And so my question is more just, I'm trying to get an understanding because I don't think it's, I mean, I think you guys are doing a fabulous job. I mean, you do see there a slight drop in our sort of yield rate, at least year over year at the same point in time, which could change and there could be a deosyncrasies that drive that. I just wondered if there was a hypothesis as to what may be driving that shift that we see at least at this point in time. Absolutely, that's an excellent question. And we talk about it daily, if not multiple times a day. I'm gonna share with you a couple of things that we have. Remember, like the Provost mentioned about the new 50% for out-of-state students. Right now, when I take a look at our applications, Trustee Copeland, 56% of our applications are coming from out-of-state. So imagine how hard it has been for us to try to take more than half of our applicants and convert that into only 25%. And that's one of the biggest reason last year we were at 32 because it was extremely difficult. There are still a lot of families who are still on the fence. And remember, we are pretty confident that this is gonna feel they're making sure that this is gonna be actually a good option for a lot of out-of-state families have been also waiting for the opportunity to come to campus. So Open House, again, it's something that we know that it's gonna drive a lot of numbers. And the other reason that I think that it's extremely important and I want everybody to know is at the early part of the month, we lost our financial aid director. Jeremy Watkins had personal reasons and he had to go to Charlotte for personal reasons. And only this week, we were able to bring the new person. And actually we have gone with a consulting company and we have a person that has been here for a couple of days. So before Jeremy left, we were able to send a financial packages to about 1,400 students, but we are still trying to make sure that we can then continue packaging. So there are a couple of families, actually not a couple of families. There are a good number of families who has still not able to send the financial aid package. So we are on track to start packaging one more time. Next week. And I am pretty sure that that is probably what's driving these numbers right now. Once we are able to put our financial package in front of them, then families are gonna sit down the right and then start comparing. And then we're gonna be ready for those questions and making sure that they understand the package that we have put together for them. So those are a couple of ideas that we are thinking. Very helpful, thank you. Are there other questions or discussion on this topic or anything else from the presentation? If not, just wanna reiterate the, appreciate all of the updates and just congratulations on all the good work and we'll keep our fingers crossed that the vote will go in our favor in terms of making sure that you all have additional flexibility that you need to bring in those out-of-state students. And also wanna acknowledge that Dr. Ward and I have been talking about an overdue update to the board related to all the activities for the teacher education program and allow the board to have a robust discussion hopefully next time about those updates and any other inputs into that conversation. So just want to acknowledge that and acknowledge that we, I jumped the gun a little bit at the beginning of the meeting and we did not approve the minutes from the last meeting. So I apologize for that and would like to do that now if that's okay and not out of order. Nisander, is that okay? That is. And maybe I'll pause for a second. Trustee Copeland, did you have a question or something? Yes, I'm sorry. I think I'm talking too much, but just on the minutes point. Yeah. They could just be, the minutes for this meeting could be adjusted so that my last name is spelled correctly. Right now they're including an E and then my actual spelling doesn't have one. So thanks. I appreciate that. Okay. All right. There, motion to approve the minutes from the last meeting along with the corrected spelling of Trustee Copeland's name as well. This is Friedrich. I'll move it. Okay. Thank you. All right. Do we have a second? Just trust me. I thought so. It's happened approved. Trustee Jones, we just need further discussion and then all in favor and go ahead and conduct that roll call vote for you. Oh, okay. I apologize. Okay. Third discussion. All right. None? Okay. Thank you. I'll do the roll call vote for the approval of the minutes with the revision noted. Trustee Jones. Yes. Trustee Bosenward. Yes. Trustee Copeland. Yes. Trustee Friedrich. Yes. And Trustee Waddell. Yes. Thank you. The minutes have been approved with the noted correction. Thank you. If nothing else, then we can adjourn. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Jones. Trustee Jones. We will move on to the committee on operational excellence, but please, please be mindful of the time that your committee has as we move forward. Trustee Jan King Robinson on the committee on operational excellence. Thank you, Chair. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to call the committee on operational excellence to order. As chair of the committee on operational excellence, I want to remind everyone that we will be conducting today's meeting pursuant to the amendments to the Open Meetings Act that apply during states of emergency. The amendments were signed into law and allow for public bodies to meet the electronic needs. The law does require, however, that we take all votes via roll call, which we will do today. Additionally, pursuant to the amendments to the law, all chats, instant messages, texts, or other written communications between members of the board regarding the transaction of the public business during the remote meeting are deemed a public record. Finally, I will ask all committee members, board members, and participating staff to please identify yourself before participating in deliberations, including making motions, proposing amendments, and raising points of order. I will call on Ms. Gwynn to do roll call for us. Yes. Committee on operational excellence, Trustee James King Robinson. Present. Trustee Chris Evans. Present. Yes, thank you. Trustee Jimmy Chambers. Present. Trustee Jim Copeland. Present. Trustee Johnny Tillett. Present. And Trustee Justin Waddell. Everyone is present. Alrighty, thank you very much. I call for approval of the, a motion for approval of the minutes of December 14th, 2021. John, I chose to move. Thank you. May I have a second? Second. Trustee James Copeland, second. Thank you. Roll call for all in favor, Ms. Sanders. Roll call vote for the minutes. Trustee Robinson. Yes. Trustee Evans. Yes. Trustee Chambers. Yes. Trustee Copeland. Yes. Trustee Tillett. Yes. And Trustee Waddell. Yes. Thank you, the minutes stand approved. Thank you. Great, thank you. Now toss the informational updates to our very able VC Allen Goodson. You have the floor, sir. So good morning, everyone. Wanna make sure I provide to you today an update on where we are with some of our capital projects and our strategic planning goals. And then during the governance committee, I will provide some updates on some things that have happened at campus relative to the power outage and other issues that we face. But in this committee, I'll focus more so on the capital project. So I wanna start with our, so one of our strategic goals as you all know is the campus master plan. Very critical to how we proceed because we have a number of projects that are currently underway. Where we have to decide where we're gonna put these buildings and the campus master plan really is the controlling document that helps us determine where we should build on our campus. We have been working with the VICE group. They have whittled their multiple concepts down to three and four, three to four concepts. And we will be sharing those with internal leadership. So I can assure you that that process is moving forward very quickly. And we are very excited about some of the proposed campus master planning strategies that they put in place to help the university grow in a smart way. They're looking at pedestrian walkways. They're looking at whether or not we should close roads and whether we should open roads. They're looking at our campus infrastructure. They're trying to see where students want key buildings to be based on surveys. So it's a lot of data, a lot of work that they are using to inform their concepts. And we should be presenting those very shortly. And I'm pleased to say that those are underway as we speak. I wanted to just remind everyone the life cycle of our construction projects. As you all know, we were awarded a number of dollars to build a housing facility, dining facility, a flight school, and then a sky bridge. All these projects follow relatively the same life cycle. We put out a bid for a designer. The designer is then selected. Once the designer is selected, he comes on board as stakeholders. What do you want to see in this project? Starts putting pen to paper. Once that design is created, we then submit it to SEO for approval. Then once SEO approves, we can now find the construction manager. So we put a bid out for the construction manager. We select the construction manager and then the project begins. So I wanted to bring everybody up to speed on that because I know there are a number of projects that we have underway. Some projects we have already bid and selected a designer for which we will need your approval today. So again, I just wanted to bring you up to speed in terms of what is out there from a bid standpoint. The new residence hall and dining facility, we put that out for a designer, a bid for a designer, and we've actually selected the designer for which we'll need your approval today. Same thing with underground infrastructure. We put it out for the days required and we have selected a designer for which we'll need your approval today. And what also will flow with that project is a campus pump station, which will help us with our water pressure here on campus. And then lastly, we put out a bid to find a engineer to help design our emergency generators. We have not selected that designer yet, that is still open, but we will likely be coming back to the board for your approval of the designer in that process as well. Lastly, we were allocated funds to implement a campus lockdown system here on campus and we found a vendor that was on a state contract that does this work all over the state. They've also worked with NC State and NC State has, I would say probably one of the premier campus lockdown systems in the UNC system. So we're using that knowledge, that skill set and that vendor who was already on state contract, which is good for us because that means we don't have to bid and find a designer. So we're using that vendor and they've already come on board and they're helping us determine what technology is, it's gonna be best for campus. And we intend to integrate that technology with our campus one cards, our ID card so that you don't need keys anymore. When I look at my key ring, it's pretty hefty as I know the chancellor's is because she has every key to almost every building I think you're on campus. And I wanna eliminate that. I want us to just have a card for which we could swipe and it lets us into the building. It also provides other analytics for campus police. For example, it tells you who was in the building, who was not in the building, what time someone entered the building. So as we are dealing with things in our environment like bomb threats and security issues, we can quickly pull up that data and determine if someone is in the building but they did not leave the building. So a lot of good data that can come from this technology, we're excited to get it up to speed and I should be providing more information on that as we move forward with that particular project. So a number of action items chair that we would need the committee to approve today. As many of you all came to the, we had a UAS groundbreaking here, wanna say a few months ago or last month. And if you notice there were about four older houses that will effectively sit right next to our UAS facility. And one thing that we've been talking about internally is, is that the look we want? Because I can assure you that if you walked into those houses, you would not wanna be in there long nor would you wanna put anybody in there. Three of them are vacant. The only one that is not vacant is, I will say moderately livable, but that individual will be transferring, I believe to another space here on, that we've obtained through a apartment complex. But what I will say is we have done a cost benefit analysis of maintaining these spaces and the analysis just does not make sense. We would have to spend a significant amount of money to bring these houses up to speed. If you even look at the picture, you can see that the roof on one of the houses, half of it has been repaired, the other half has not. So it just does not give us the look that I think we need. Also what will likely go in the space where the first house is, is there will be a sort of an academic building, a smaller academic building that will serve just as a small meeting space, but also some additional storage and office space that will support the UAS facility. And that's a part of that project. If you think about it, when you are bringing students over to that particular area, you wanna be able to provide some relative meeting space for them so that you can talk about whatever initiative that they're going to be undergoing at the UAS facility, but also the state required us to make sure that we had restrooms within a certain number of yards from the facility. That is a requirement, which is another reason why that smaller space will be there. So what we are asking the board to do is to approve the first step, which is approve the demolition of these four rental homes. We will then have to likely take this to the board of governors, which is the standard process to demolish, but they start with this board. So chair, I'm certainly willing to entertain any questions anyone may have relative to our strategy around this particular project. Great, do we have any questions from our committee members on this? I have a question for you, Allen. Any ideas on what you might do with the other space in addition to what you've planned for that first house space? So what we are asking our campus master planning group to do, behind those homes, we have about 70 acres of undeveloped land. So what we're asking them to do is think creatively about what that space could be now that we know a UAS facility is going right there. So I have put that ball in their court, obviously with our input. Ask them to look at other schools and see how they are using land in terms of partnerships or whatever the case may be. If a UAS facility is there, maybe a natural partnership would be a business that may conduct drone flights or build drones. I think the possibilities are endless and we're asking them to help us determine what that space could look like. Right beside that one rental home, I mean, right beside that area that you're speaking about, but also the full 70 acres that sits directly behind it. Great, thank you. Alrighty. Okay, we're ready to move on. So if I could, Chair, if we could have a motion a second to approve this. Great, thank you. May I have a motion to approve the demolition of the rental property as described? I'll move Trustee Cook once I'm done. Thank you. May I have a second? Chris Evans, second. Thank you. Any discussion? I think Trustee Cole-Pepper has his hand raised. Okay, I don't see that. Thank you. Trustee Cole-Pepper, is your hand raised, sir? Okay. Well, then I need a roll call for the approval of the demolition of the rental property, Ms. Sanders. Yes, roll call. Trustee Robinson. Yes. Trustee Evans. Yes. Trustee Chambers. Yes. Trustee Copeland. Yes. Trustee Tillard. Yes. And Trustee Waddell. Yes. All approved. Thank you. Excellent, thank you. DC Goodson. Sure, so the next action item that we have on the agenda is for the designer for the new residence hall and dining. And what I can say is we were certainly presented with a very robust number of discussions around what we would like our designer, what qualities we would like for them to have, also in terms of what we would like the dining facility to be. We put out an RFP and we were able to have four, whittle it down to about four national firms. We received 11 total bids for the design of these two projects. And we put the RFP out, RFQ out on January 25th. It closed February 23rd and we had about 11 total submissions. We were able to take those submissions and whittle it down to four very, very strong firms. What I can say is these firms are, we have been getting, I think we've been getting better designers over time. What we, and I think that some of that may be the case because the projects do have an adequate budget. As we know, just the residence hall is a $40 million project. So you're gonna get a lot of interest from national firms. And I think that speaks to the presentations that the committee heard relative to what these firms can do for us in the services, the in-house services that they can provide. So we had four firms, Clark Nixon, Little Moody Nolan, Jenkins Peer and Vines. And based on the presentations that were provided, we settled on Little Moody and Nolan. They are a national, they are a national design firm. They've done 175 plus projects just within the UNC system and North Carolina Community College. So that just lets you know how heavy, how heavy of a presence they have on higher A campuses here in the state. Also they were recognized in 2021 as the architecture firm of the year. So again, I just want us to take a pause and breathe because that is the type of designer that I have not seen here in quite some time. So they are very well prepared to do the work and to provide something that's very innovative for campus. And I think the will of the committee was that we needed a group that was innovative in their approach to design. And we want all the same bells and whistles that you'll see at UNC Chapel Hill or in sustain or ECU or our partners because we are competing in this space and we need the assets to be able to do that. So, Madam Chair, if possible, I would like to receive approval for this designer, Little Moody and Nolan so that we can proceed with designing this very exciting project. Outstanding, very exciting. I'd like a motion for the approval of the infrastructure designer as described by V.C. Goodson. May I have a motion, please? That's to tell it. So moved. May I have a second? Trustee Boone, second. Thank you. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, I call on Ms. Sanders to do roll call. Roll call vote. Trustee Robinson. A very happy and resounding yes. Trustee Evans. Yes. Trustee Chambers. Yes. Trustee Copeland. Yes, congrats, Ellen. Thank you, I'm happy. Trustee Tillard. Yes. And Trustee Waddell. Yes. All approved, thank you. Thank you, boy, this is very exciting. Alrighty, V.C., next one. Okay, and the last action item for this committee is approval of our underground electrical and plumbing project, the designer for that particular project. That will be a long-term project. I just want to level set with everyone. When you're replacing underground infrastructure, that takes a significant amount of time, some multi-year project. But you have to start with the design first. And we wanted the same charge. This is a very hefty budget, I think, to start the project. It is not the full dollars that we need. And I know that we're going to go back and ask for more. But it will certainly get us a significant amount of infrastructure, water, and electrical done. So we put out an RFP on January the 11th and the responses were due February 18th. We had a number of firms, but we whittled it down to three very large firms. And one is even the national firm. Those three firms were RMF Engineering, Timmins Group, and Wiley Wilson, very large firms. And have a lot of in-house services there, so they don't have to involve a lot of other, I guess you could say, subcontractors to do the design work. We evaluated these three groups, and we settled on RMF engineers. RMF is, they have actually already been on this campus before, so they know the lay of the land. They designed our central plant here for our campus. They do a number of projects at UNC, NC State. In fact, they are doing NC State's one of their underground projects right now for electrical infrastructure. So they're in the process of designing that, which we thought was very beneficial, because they certainly understand what level of disruption that could be for a particular campus, and help navigate the university through that as they're putting in the underground infrastructure. We have built a relationship with UNC Chapel Hill, and oftentimes they have a lot of skillset there that we don't have, and they've been very helpful in helping us evaluate some of our firms here. And they recommend RMF, we checked that reference because they had done work on the UNC Chapel Hill's campus. And they thought that they were a very good fit for what we are trying to accomplish here. RMF is a national firm. We're very excited about the work that they do. And Chair, if we could receive approval for this designer as well, so we can start the design work and hopefully start replacing some of our underground infrastructure. All right, excellent, thank you. We'll call for approval of the recommended designer for housing and dining. This is for infrastructure, I apologize. This is for underground electrical infrastructure. I'm sorry, infrastructure designer. I'm sorry, jump to head. Trustee Kelly, so moved. Thank you, may have a second. Trustee White, he'll second. Thank you, any discussion? Ms. Saunders, may we have roll call? Sure, roll call vote. Trustee Robinson? Yes. Trustee Evans? Yes. Trustee Chambers? Yes. Trustee Copeland? Yes. Trustee Tillett? Yes. And Trustee Waddell? Yes. Wonderful, all approved, thank you. Thank you. I would be remiss if I didn't thank our partners around the table for serving on these committees and helping us find good design teams. Our partner, Wilson's team did an excellent job. Lisa, McClinton, Gary, Brown, have all served shoulder to shoulder with us as we have put out these RFPs and found our designers. And thank you to our construction team for helping be a part of that process and leading that process. So thank you to the partners here around the table that have helped us accomplish this first goal in a series of goals. So I just wanted to say thank you. The second phase is... Allen, before you go, I want to use this opportunity to say thank you to you and your team for your leadership. And also just to publicly say, we are grateful for the partnerships we have in the UNC system. Allen mentioned UNC Chapel Hill. I called the chancellor there, called the chancellor at ECU when we were having the power issue. And they did not hesitate to come and assist and to provide us with great recommendations for partnerships and suggestions of who we should work with and talk to. So we are so grateful to be a part of a system that definitely answers the call when we need each other and they showed up and helped us out a lot. So I just wanted to acknowledge our partners at the other UNC institutions that came to help us out. That is great. Thank you, chancellor. Our second phase of projects, as I mentioned to you, we started with a number of projects that we had to put out to be a defined designer for. Our second phase will involve these next two projects, the aviation school and the Skybridge. So those RFPs will go out soon and I'll be coming back to you to seek your approval for the designer once we go through that bid process. So those projects are on the horizon. We certainly don't want to overwhelm our team with 20 different projects at the same time that are going out for bid. So we really had to phase it, but we believe that how we have sort of scheduled the work we'll be able to get it done and make sure that the product that is designed is what is actually gonna be delivered here on campus. So just wanted you to get us a taste of what's ahead. And I believe that concludes my presentation. Chair Robinson, I certainly willing to answer any questions that anyone may have. Sure. Do we have any questions? I have a quick question. Do you, I don't remember, do we have an area identified for the aviation school that we've settled on? So that will be a part of that master planning process. So as I mentioned, they have four concepts. So once we settle in on those concepts, it will tell us exactly where they think, we should put the school and we'll certainly bring that to you. Okay. Thank you very much. Excellent, excellent update and report. We're gonna move on now to information technology update. Mr. Sargami, and please help me with the correct pronunciation of your name. Is that Zahami? Did I get that correct? It's Zahami. Zahami? Yes. All right, I wanna say it correctly. Thank you, sir. All right, you have the floor. Chair Robinson, there will be no IT update this morning. Just one brief update from IT. We are working on some things and preparations. Well, we are working on some initiatives to strengthen our cyber security posture. And those efforts are underway. We are working around the clock to make certain that we have the necessary tools and policies in place so that we are in a good position to circumvent or mitigate the risk of future attacks. Of course, nothing can guarantee that there will be none because the attackers are master threat actors where they can penetrate the most secure environments, but we are taking the necessary precautions to shore up our environment at ECSU. Thank you, sir. Well, then on that note, I'm going to toss the ball to you for communications and marketing update for our very own Dr. Derek Wilkins. Thank you, and good morning again to everyone. I have just a, well, quite a few action items to share with you this morning. And when I say action items, let me say first of all, is an action of another kind. The action items that I want to share with you this morning are the great things that are happening at ECSU. The things that communication and marketing are working on, I say, delight because of the great things that are happening. One of the things Chancellor Dixon wanted us to do when she arrived, they said, at ECSU, we have to control the narrative. And so the cabinet, along with the academic departments and other departments of the university, they are really making it a pleasure to be in communications and marketing from the standpoint of storytelling. We cannot tell the stories fast enough as you have heard from Provost Ward, from the admissions office, and as you will hear from our colleagues in the other areas, ECSU, we're really working hard. And so we're just this morning in communications and marketing. Just sharing a few highlights of the things that you might have seen over the past quarter or since our last meeting. You know, one of the great things starting out in January, we had some great coverage around our partnership with Cognizante and our students getting internships through our partnership with them. Our students have been successful in getting the internships and we were all for just working in communications and marketing to just increase our immediate coverage. As I said, great things are happening and we want to make certain that every media outlet who will run our story will know our story. Provost Ward mentioned about the delay in the spring semester. So anytime we can get our name out or when we put it out, we are getting picked up in various media outlets be it on print, television, broadcast, and even social media. And so even our delay in the spring semester, it was, you know, ECSU's name was picked up in news outlets in various areas beyond our local media. The exciting news when we had the opening over the groundbreaking for our drone facility, you know, we talked about that this was a one-of-a-kind drone facility. This was not just another drone facility in North Carolina, it's a one-of-a-kind drone facility. And by our telling the stories that way and messaging it that way, it gives us greater traction and it allows the region and beyond to see the great things and the impact that Elizabeth City State University is having. And also we were partnering with Renaissance foundations where the scholarships and communications and marketing was working with them and university advancement. And even through some of our communication strategies it increased the number of applicants and it also allowed the Renaissance organization to see some of our strategies, how we have used it to increase our number of applicants where they could also use a strategy that we were using. Some other great things, great action. ECSU is number one HBCU in the nation for helping students. This was something that hit the news and it gave us tremendous coverage in the media and on social media as well. And we're just proud to be able to tell these types of good stories. The PNC grant, ECSU receives the PNC grant to expand entrepreneurship resources. It was another news action item. We got a new police team that was another news action item. And I live in the WITN market and it is so repression to see WITN telling ECSU's stories now. For years, the only time they would mention us was if something bad was happening. And if someone threw paper on the street two blocks over from the university they would tell the story by, Elizabeth City State's campus is trashed but they don't do that anymore. And so we're so appreciative of our efforts to reach out to our media outlets where we're partnering with them. We're giving them plenty of good stories to cover for us. And they are using it to our advantage and we are greatly appreciative of that. Here's some other examples. All of our stores are not good but so the bomb threat it got us in media all over. But fortunately our response to this was very proactive and we were able to move through this scenario thanks to the masterminds behind it in campus university police and vice chancellor Goodson. So it was a good story where we put it out there and it did get traction for ECSU. Here's another good piece. ECSU ranked number one most affordable for year HBCU by student loan hero. Anytime that we can tell our story we're getting it out there. And then finally for today I would like to just show you some of the media that we have out there that we're using in our marketing efforts. And so today's is a very short clip that deals with our unmanned aircraft systems. We partnered with PBS television to come to our campus to help and they developed this video for us. Blimey Jones, it's on a different level. Just knowing if you can fight about 15, 20 mile winds and have your drone stay steady with a camera stay at a steady shot it's honestly an amazing feeling. Let's just know that you can see your drone that you're moving, moving the way that you want it to go. It's unreal. As you know that North East North Carolina has large infrastructure projects like solar farms, wind turbines, with miles and miles of coastline and then large farm land in North Carolina. Drones have application on these regions. So we are now preparing students to learn more not only about flying the drone but also how to gather data from these inspections on decision agriculture on monitoring shoreline but also bringing data and then process the data that could make sense to a general public. Cool thing about North Carolina is the way you drone. The drone will open up new doors. I mean, you can see D or T out there working with drones now. You can actually see the place for criminal justice if you want to see graphics to go on a wedding or you just want to go out and have fun. There's so many applications that you can drone and bring that. And each student knows that. This is a light arm system. It actually sends out a 10,000, 10,000, 100,000 pulses per second down to the surface of the earth. And when the reflective signal comes up it's trapped in the scan card. And when we download the 3D mapping it actually gives a very precise picture of how that topographical surface terrain looks. Has your dreams mature, you know? You really hone in on what you really want. And my dream said I want to be a drone pilot on my experience in high school up to the college level and college things. I said, you know, drones are my thing. And it really worked out. You're living in a city-state in person. I'm happy to be here. Madam Trustee Robertson, that concludes my update. That was great. Thank you so very much. That is so very exciting for us to see. And we appreciate all the information that's been shared with the board too. And as someone who's been in the community for 23 years it is a delight to see positive press coming out more frequently on our wonderful school. Before I adjourn, are there any questions, comments from any of our trustees on our latest report? Okay. I'd like to take a moment of personal privilege here and just acknowledge Dr. Wilkins that the passing of your sister we want to let you know that we recognize that and continue to have our prayers sent up around you and your family. So I wanted to let you know. All right, if we don't have any other matters I'm going to adjourn the meeting. Thank you. Thank you. At this time we will have the Committee on Finance, Audit and University Advancement. And hopefully we will not have technical difficulties with Trustee Cole-Pepper. So if you're on, oh, I see him now. I see Trustee Cole-Pepper, thank you. You have to turn off your mute button. Your mute. It's off. Trustee Cole-Pepper, we cannot hear you. Chair Johnson. Yes. I am happy to assist on Trustee Cole-Pepper's behalf if that is your desire. That is my desire. B.C. Goodson. That is my desire. Okay. So on behalf of Trustee Cole-Pepper I'm first reading the statement. Well, good morning again. And on his behalf, as Chair of the Committee on Finance, Audit and University Advancement, I want to remind everyone that we will be conducting today's meeting pursuant to the Amendments to the Open Meetings Act that apply during states of emergency. The amendments were signed into law that allow for public bodies to meet the electronic means. The law does require however that we take all votes to be a roll call which we will do today. Additionally pursuant to the Amendments to the law, all chats, instant messages, texts, or other written communications between members of the board regarding the transaction of the public business during the remote meeting are deemed a public record. Finally, I will ask all committee members, board members, and participating staff to please identify yourself before participating in deliberations, including making motions, proposing amendments, and raising points of order. And I can, I know that Trustee Kim Brown is on. I don't know if he wants to move this meeting forward. I do have the agenda in front of me. Okay. I would be glad to do that. For my friend, Trustee Colpepper while he works out his technical difficulty. Good morning to everyone. You've heard the statement. I would take pleasure in calling to order the Committee on Finance Audit and University Advancement. Ms. Gwynn, if you would be so kind as to call the roll. Roll call for the Committee on Finance Audit and University Advancement. Trustee Colpepper, we know it's here. He's just working through technical difficulties. Trustee Brown, yes. Yes. Trustee Evans. Trustee Friedrich. Yes. And Trustee Tyne. Yes. All right. Everyone is present. So we definitely, I have a quorum. Everyone is present. We have a quorum. Trustee Colpepper, if you get online, you can just raise your hand and I will, I've been married 32 years, so I know how to hush and take my place. So just feel free. All right. Ms. Gwynn, I don't have the agenda for the Committee in front of me. Obviously the Chair has that. No problem. We are ready for committee reports. We will, if it's okay, Trustee Brown, we will act on the minutes of the last committee meeting. Yes. And call for- The Chair will entertain a motion that we receive the minutes from the last Committee on Finance Audit and University Advancement Committee meeting. Is there a motion? Friedrich, I'll move it. Thank you. Is there a second? I'll find a second. Thank you, sir. Thank you to both of you all for your motion, your second and your preparing us for any unreadiness. If there is no unreadiness, Ms. Gwynn, would you do a roll call vote, please? Roll call for the minutes. Trustee Colpepper, I'm sure we can raise his hand. Trustee Brown. He says yes. Yes. Trustee Evans. Yes. Trustee Friedrich made the motion and Trustee Tonne off at the second. The minutes are approved. Thank you. All right, thank you. I think we are now ready for committee insight for reports. Yes. And I believe we have action items and Vice Chancellor McClinton, I'm sure will walk everyone through this. All right. Thank you. And her presentation. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning everyone. I just want to start out with action items for finance committee member, I mean meeting this morning. The first action item is an approval of a resolution to authorize to issue debt to not to exceed 7.5, but let me give you the backstory. And also it's email materials. As you know, the state awarded us $40 million for housing, but 7.5 for a dining person. Yes. That's what $30 million and we ended up with 7.5, but Dale is currently over 20,000 square feet. We can only build about 13,000 square feet for 7.5 million dollars. So then working with the system office and of course trying to get a scenario of how we can make it happen. So one thing they are planning to do is combine the projects up to $55 million total. But at this point for us to move along to ensure a fall 2024 deadline, we have to start this process. Our goal is not to take out any debt. This is not taken out for debt. This is just given the authorization to increase the budget so we can actually build both projects for a total of $50 million. One thing we are looking at, what it is, the 7.5 will not be on dining, it will actually be on housing. That's what the system office said because housing, of course, we will be gaining approximately up to 200 new beds. So that will pay the 7.5. They did say it may be opportunity to shift some money around to reduce that because of course the system office don't want us to take any debt but we don't understand how our 30 million acts got reduced to 7.5 million dollars. So with that, this is why we're asking for the board to do a resolution. This resolution will go to the April meeting. So the Board of Governors approving, I'm sure it's gonna be a whole lot of questions asked because they gonna say why are they taking out debt because the state was gonna pay for both the housing and the dining facility. But as I said, we just, y'all just recently approved the design and for us to move with this $55 million budget, we actually have to have this documented as approved to move on the process. So with that, I'll take trustee, co-prep or trustee Brian. Any questions? If there are no questions, the chair or if there are no questions representing the chair, we will receive and entertain a motion approving. Item number one, a resolution authorizing the university to issue debt, not to exceed 7.5 million dollars. This is Friedrich. I'll move it. Thank you, sir. Is there a second? Outstanding, you've heard the motion. It has been seconded. No unreadiness exists. If no unreadiness exists, Ms. Gwynne, would you call the roll please? Roll call for action item number one, trustee Culpeper. Okay. Trustee Brown. Yes. Trustee Evans. Yes. Okay. Trustee Friedrich offer the motion and trustee Tonne offer the second. Okay. Action item number one is approved. Thank you. Chair Brown, Chair Brown, can I just mention to the trustees, thank you for those on the committee who supported this action. As Lisa said, the university asked for 30 million and we received 7.5. We should be building a dining hall for the future. We should not be focused on size from the standpoint of where we are today. The Dell is not large enough to support our growth. So I appreciate the support. We don't know what happened with the numbers, but we did request what we knew was needed based on our research or other UNC campuses. So I appreciate your support in helping us navigate this because our dining hall should be equivalent to the predicted growth that we have at ECSU. So thank you. Mr. Chair, I have a question. So I'm just gonna pose it. With no problem. With, you know, this is something that I've followed closely with the legislature and I assume we have made a request in the short session for the additional funds, which the short session, you know, we know is where they make adjustments to the main budget. Have we received feedback from the system office in regards to that request at this time? Yeah, I think, Chancellor, I could just, I have been talking to Chancellor. It is not one of their requests. Their request was we take that bit. Okay. Thank you very much. I will go to the actual, the second we have another, well, we have two more action items, but this item number two is actually approved of the revised 2022 budget. If y'all recall, the state budget was finally passed in November of 2021, but that was after the board approved the budget for this year, 22, because this is something we have to do for SAS and say that the board is aware of our total budget. So the initial budget that was approved was $39 million. But of course, the budget was good to Elizabeth City State. We actually got all we wanted. We just didn't get enough, but we did get increased recurrent enrollment growth, North Carolina Promise funds, and then we got the Moore Hall Building Reserve was finally made recurring. And then of course, we did get a 2.5 increase this year. So the state covers just state funds of that. The caveat is we're still having that those final numbers. So that number can change because it's still at OSBM. And so they tweak it based on different factors for benefits and all that kind of stuff. But estimated right now, it's 935, but I asked for the board to approve our revised fiscal year 22 budget from 39 million that y'all approved back in September to $46 million, approximately $46 million dollars. Any questions? If there are no questions, the chair will entertain a motion that we receive the revised FY 2022 general fund budget as an increase of approximately $7 million so that we can stay in line with our SACs requirements. I move we approve. All right, it's been long time. Paul Tine. Friedrich will second it. I love how you all work as a team. So thank you for the motion, a second. All in favor, if there's no unreadiness, Ms. Gwen, will you please call the roll? Sure, a roll call vote for action item number two, trustee Culpeper, trustee Brown. Yes. Trustee Evans. Yes. Trustee Friedrich offered the second and trustee Tine offered the motion, all approved. Thank you. All right, thank you. You can move to item number three. Yes, before we move to item three, I meant to share this slide with you. I did want to show that all that recurring money, how we allocated, we did allocate all the items in consistent with the ECSU strategic plans. The details are in your breakdown, but as you see, we actually, this is funds that the university is getting, which has helped reveal what they from the, we're finally getting the money that we need to rebuild our organization and to keep pressing and making sure we meet all our strategic goals. But I did want to show you this breakdown just so you know where that money has been allocated. Just so like right now, we were getting what a total of 12 new positions, one new police officer, we're funding five existing positions. We are fully funding our existing maintenance agreements. So we are above the line, which is really great. We did add to the partner operating budgets. We did build our reserves because as you know, we have to have reserves because it's enrollment change. If anything, money can go up and down based on our growth funding as well. Now that we're going to a performance based model. And then of course reserve for aviation program, which I was discussing a moment with an update on that. So this is just a breakdown of how we allocated the money. And the most important thing, it was all consistent with strategic planning. All right, thank you. Can you leave that slide up just for a moment? I just want to ask it probably is a question for attorney Allen. I'm excited about the new FTE for law enforcement officer. Where are we typical of other university campuses where we have FTEs unfulfilled in the police department? Does anyone know that? Yes, we have a few vacancies, but what I was going to share during the governance meeting is that our new police chief, who I was going to introduce the board to, has already come in and he is filling those vacancies rather rapidly. He just, he hasn't been here more than a month and he's already filled one vacancy and there's another one that we're working through right now that should likely be filled, which will leave us with about two vacancies left. So he has been a rock star in terms of, what I will say people wanting to work with him based on his experience and his relationships. And I would not be surprised if by August, every single one of those positions that we have vacant will be filled. Outstanding. Okay. All right, Ms. McClendon, you can go to item number three. This is the final action item. It is action to approve our fiscal year 23, all funds budget. So just give you a little background about all funds budget. This is initiative at the UNC system office and the board of governors. This is something they wanted to know because you know, campus revenues is state appropriation plus tuition. That's pretty much based on most of our money, especially at Elizabeth City State. But however, non-state funds make up half of the revenue at other UNC schools. But we know who those are. Those are the big schools like the Chapelville, the States, the Appalachians, the East Carolina and Charlotte because they have a bigger pool of different types of funds. So the board of governor's solution was to create a template and adapt that annual fund called all funds budget is to identify unique funding sources, balance the years, operate expenses with revenues. And then I can say it puts athletics on the spot. It shows athletics budget. It shows the deficit. It shows where the university is making support to. So this is something that it is a breakdown. This is the first year we will be doing it. This has to be approved for the proceeds because it goes to the board of governors in May. So this is the guidance we got from the system office. And also the detail is actually in materials, but I'll show a higher level. We have the general funds, which is our normal state funds, our appropriation. We have auxiliary and other trust funds. That is where you have your housing and they gave us the ones we had to break that. And of course they chose the ones that were significant. They chose your house and they chose your dining, student health, they chose student activity and they chose and then everybody else is grouping other opportunity because they don't make up that much of money. And then overhead receipts, which has been really, really kind of small, but there really wasn't focus on that. And then we got restricted trust funds, which is like our grants, our foundations and different things like that. But it does exclude our endowments and exclude capital funds. And of course it excludes our ECSE foundation. But the guidance on the funds was, basically our speculative fund balance with trust funds should be included. So we start with what, and you should make money on your trust funds because of course that is where you got yourself supporting entities that should be supporting themselves as well as building reserves for whether it's deferred maintenance, increase in salary and benefits and different things like that. So just to give you a highlight, the general fund budget of course is 48 million dollars. This year, y'all just approved 46. So next in September, we'll be bringing another increase because right now we're projected to get another additional $2 million. As we said, the board approved a 5% increase over two years, well not the board, but the legislators improved the increase for 5%, which 2.5 was already awarded in January. We get additional 2.5 in July, which is estimated about $1.5 million. So it's just a placeholder. And then we will get existing enrollment growth funds, which is pretty much for the last fiscal year because there's still one behind. And then right now we have trust funds at 18.9, expenses are 18.3. So we are actually saying we are carrying 4,600 thousand dollars for the put-away. And actually there's a little bit more than that, but as you see in your details, after this policy, it's covered by other sources. So that is what reduces our care for overhead receipts. The reason why overhead receipts and grant funds are your revenue equal your expenses because you know a grant fund and overhead receipts, we're not really trying to make money. It's we get these money, we spend them out in accordance with the federal government or the grant agency. And I think that's it. Do anybody have any questions about this all funds budget? All right, if there are no questions, the chair will entertain a motion on action item number three, the UNC system FY 2023 all funds budget. This is ball time. I move that we approve the all funds budget as presented. Ms. Friedrich, I'll second it. All right, you've heard the motion. It has been seconded. If there's no questions or unreadiness, Ms. Glenn, would you please call the roll? Roll call for action item number three, trustee Culpepper, trustee Brown. Yes. Trustee Evans. Yes. Trustee Friedrich offered the second and trustee Tyne offered the motion. Action item is approved, thank you. All right, thank you, Chris. Ms. Evans, I apologize to you that you didn't get to do a motion or a second. We will work on that and be more equitable at the next committed meeting. That is okay. Y'all are fast to the trigger, so. Yeah. All right, Ms. Glenn. So with that, I go to trustee Brown. Thank you. Just to give you update of strategic goal, everything y'all just approved actually, it's joined the university budget and process prioritized resources according to the strategic plan. This is what we just did. Our all funds budget actually contributes to that as well. And we recently, one of the things we just got funded is implementation of our budget software. This is something that all the most, actually we're, it's only one school that just signed their contract. So now all the UNC schools are on this budget software. It is really taking us off a sales spray sheets and being able to create reports spit out out of our system and relying on it, creating high level dashboards and providing that data. So these are some things that we are making progress to make sure we meet our operation excellence. And of course, meet that financial system sustainability for all of the cities that you first. Just to give you that. Okay. And then update on fiscal year 23 tuition and fee changes. This is what I mentioned about aviation, but I did want to know the board of approved increases that we went through the tuition fee process with the students as well as the tuition fee committees back in December, but there have been some changes. Once the board of trustees approval, we actually have to send it to the board of the UNC system office who goes through their review process. They kick back our student activity fee because of course it was for transportation. They said that based on consultation with them, we actually changed it from mandatory fee to a miscellaneous fee because in that case, they said it would look good for not to approve it. So the chancellor has authority to approve such fees. So that's consistent with basically actually some of the other UNC schools. They have it as a miscellaneous fee to get it approved. So we actually sent this request in writing to the chancellor of January, 2022 to support the miscellaneous fee increase for $39. So I did want to give you that update because that was a change from originally which I approved. We are not pursuing a mandatory, well, it changed from a mandatory fee to a miscellaneous fee. And then also back now, also approved all nine flight fee increases in December, 2021. Of course, when it got to the system office, they will stick a shock based on the increase, even though we were the least expensive school. And they didn't think it was gonna get through the board of governors. And as you know, aviation is very underfunded. That's why I put that one, we put a million dollar reserve because the fee increases not happening this fiscal year, meaning probably not the next fall of 2023-20. So with this, we actually had to, they gave us an option, they gave us two options. If we wanted to proceed with the increase, they will not advocate for recurring funds in this short session. So we, based talking with the chancellor, we agreed to hold our fees until next academic year. So the system office is currently gonna advocate for approximately $1.7 million of recurring fees. And that's to keep residential students find the fees affordable. And we totally agree. We wanna make sure in-state students' fees are very affordable to them. And so if funding ECSU will only proceed, pursue an increase in flight fees in 2023-2024 when non-residential students. But if the short system does not give us a $1.7 million, then we can pursue the increase in flight fees for 2023-2024 for all students. So this is what's gonna make us in a whole and make sure of $1. So that's why we put up the reserve just to keep it, just cause we had to delay the fees for one year, after the year. Provost, if you're still on me, if you wanna add anything, did I miss anything that I've covered up? Yeah, I think you covered it all. The only thing I would add is, and I thank the board for supporting during our last meeting our increased fee. Again, we don't wanna put the fees on the back of students, but right now as our enrollment actually increases in aviation, particularly the flight education concentration, our deficit grows because we're losing a per student, we're losing money per student. So each student, we lose more and more money. And so we wanna still be competitive. And so this was the kind of ultimatum that we were given. And so we hope that the legislator does support us in the short session and does give us the recurring funds. But again, they're only gonna give us funds for in-state students, which is fine. And then next year, we would be able to increase the flight fees for out-of-state students. I just wanna ask a question as well, or maybe not a question, but insight. This is a critical concern, especially given the times that economically right now, the nation, especially the oil industry is in. And here's why, all of our aviation equipment, we don't own jets. So all of our aviation equipment, we don't buy JP5. What we're buying is a low-layered fuel that I'm sure has been subject to astronomical fuel costs increases. So whatever money we were losing, we're losing probably more now every time one of those prop propelled aircraft takes off to fulfill hours for pilot certification. So I just wanted to kind of throw that out and let the trustees know why this is even now more critical that we gotta get this funding. Brian, I think we got a couple of hands. Okay, I think I see trustee time. And then I think trustee Copeland. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Two things, for those of you that talk to the legislature or to your representative or your senator, this is not unheard of funding. Two of our schools have $40 million in recurring funds for engineering programs. So I know a lot of times they don't wanna do something out of the usual or break precedent at the legislature. So that's something to bear in mind and I think it's NC State and A and T. And so the second thing was, is I thought we were asking for $2 million, especially with the comments that trustee Brown was just talking about with the increases and also the growth of the program. Can you update me on that request? $2 million versus the 1.7? Well, the $2 million was because we wasn't gonna increase the fees, but since they said they wouldn't go support non-residential students, we brought it down. They did not wanna support non-residential students on state funds. That's interesting time. I mean, when we run the numbers because we fees are set right now, but oil and gas prices change. And so really we probably will need $2 million in order to sustain it. But again, we had to send a number in way ahead. Of course, at flight schools, they'll change it the next year. If something's going on, they'll just update their flight fees. The one thing that they did also put is that if we change our flight fees, we cannot ask for another increase for, I think, three years. So that's another reason why, if they can give us $2 million, I think that's what we would want. But of course, we had to send some of the system off months ago. And so that's the differentiating number. To follow up, Mr. Chair, I mean, that's an interesting policy decision for staff at the system office to make as to whether or not we're gonna pay inside of a program for some students and not for other students. I don't know that is a precedent that exists with the funding ask at the legislature. So, that to me makes me very uncomfortable. And I know that's not an ECSU decision, but I would, as we are advocates of the institution, I would like our fellow trustees to hear that that is an awkward decision on their part, in my opinion, just speaking as Paul Tine, not as ECSU. And if you have a chance to talk the $2 million, it sounds like what the program is. Really needs, yeah. I'm gonna remind us to try to push through so that we can save some time with that. Trustee Copeland. Yes, and thank you for the time, Trustee Brown. I'm actually technically not on this committee, but I just didn't wanna frame what I think the UNC system office is probably thinking about here for those who aren't lawyers or who are in state or whatever. I mean, North Carolina State Constitution has a provision calling for the university system to be free as far as practicable for the state residents. And so there's obviously sensitivity to that and a balancing here when you've got a program that is obviously expensive to run. I am hopeful, and I think that's why there's a push towards the two-tiered fee approach that Trustee Time was talking about here, is to try to remain consistent within that and not create red flags under that provision, which is one that's hard for the courts to enforce, but it's one that I think a number of the people on the Board of Governors and in the legislature take seriously. So I think it is incumbent upon us like Trustee Time was saying to try to communicate the needs of this program to the legislature and given that it's a unique program within the state and so central to the university's current mission and vision, I'm hopeful that there'll be responses. All right, thank you, sir. Ms. McClendon. Yes, and with that, I'm almost finished. I just wanted to give y'all an update of where we are on our general fund budget. As of December, we was at 50, a little bit over 50%. That's where we should be because we should be spending in quarters 25%. Fiscal year, auxiliary budget, they was a slightly down, but that was just due to the normal spend of the file receipts and then they won't get a new one until January. And with that, that concludes my finance presentation. All right, we're gonna ask Ms. Shanita Parker to come and be as, you know, we wanna hear from internal audit. So we wanna be as expeditions as possible and then university advancement with Ms. Walton. We just ask you to be sensitive to, it's not my committee. So it'll really be trustee Cole Pepper that's in trouble with the chair. You just won't have any luck. Good morning, everyone. Can you see my screen? Yes. Okay, so I have one action item and that is a revision to the internal audit charter. The first change is in the responsibility section of the charter. And what I had to do was add additional entity that we report to in the section. In addition to ensure performance with the standards, we are required to include the core principles and the core principle language is added in the standards of internal audit section highlighted in yellow. I present these two revisions of the charter for the committee approval. All right. This is a UNC Board of Governors requirement, Ms. Parker. The standards, the Institute of Internal Audit. Right, okay. Just wanted to clarify that for everyone. If there are no questions standing in for the chair, we will entertain a motion that we receive this change. I'm waiting for Chris Evans to move. I was waiting for her to. I teed it up for her beautifully. That was the best alley you're gonna get at March Madden. It's all you have to do is drop it in the hoop. Gave me the pause and everything. So I'll take that as she makes the motion. Yes, I make the motion. I'll give a second. Just keep it right. All right, all right. The motion has been made by Trustee Evans and seconded by Trustee Tyne if there's no unreadiness or questions. Ms. Gwynne, would you call the roll please? Yes, roll call vote. Trustee Culpepper, Trustee Brown. Yes. Trustee Evans, offer the motion. Trustee Friedrich. Yes. And Trustee Tyne, offer the second. It is approved. All right, thank you all. I'm keeping my mic open since I'm trying to chair the committee. So if you all hear someone snoring in the background, I apologize. It is my dog laying right under the table and he is calling them. All right, University Advancement, I'm sorry. Is that all you have, Ms. Parker? I have two quick updates. Okay, thank you. Thank you. There were two reports completed this quarter. The first report was the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund. The purpose of this engagement was to determine compliance with the funding requirements of Department of Education. There are no findings for this review. The second report was financial aid operations and the purpose was to determine if there were adequate internal controls in regards to awarding students. There were no, excuse me, no findings for this report also. My final item is the result of our external quality assurance review, the process to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire internal audit function and it also identified opportunities for improvement. The assessment concluded December of 2021 and we did receive the highest rating of generally performed. Internal audit must obtain an external assessment every five years by a review team to maintain performance with the standards. A full copy of this assessment is included in your materials. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. That includes my update. Thank you. Before we go to university advancement, for those of us who have been on the trustee board for a moment, I've got to take advantage of this opportunity and celebrate Ms. Parker and celebrate our chancellor because just a few years ago, there is no way that we would be getting a report from internal audit based upon financial aid and I'm looking at trustee Jan King Robinson. So can we stop and just go church and put our hands together and thank God for that. So thank you so much. Those of us that have been up here a moment really appreciate the fact that there were no needs to be governed accordingly. All right, university advancement, Ms. Walton. All right, I'm gonna quickly share my screen and I am going to swiftly go through my report today at the request of our chair, but certainly happy to entertain any questions. So today we're gonna do our standard fund raising progress, stewardship efforts, solicitations, engagement and finally an update on the strategic plan. So I'm happy to report today that we are at 1.2 million, which is 70% of our fundraising goal for this year as we are about to complete the third quarter and still over 200,000 from where we were last year. Also, I just wanna note that when we met in December, we were around 750. So we've really kind of gone up about a half a million dollars. I'm sorry, $500,000. I wish it was a half a million, half a million. But 500. It is a half a million. Oh, it is a half a million. Okay, so $500,000 as we are completing the third quarter. And so our donor comparison, we are finally slightly past where we were last year at this time. And as a reminder, we have closed a gap of 189,000 donors from December from where we were last year at this time. And just as a quick note to the data that I've provided you in the report was from February 28th, but it is so stale. I have updated it for you today to ensure that you have the most accurate information since we are finishing almost our third quarter. So we have closed that gap, still going into our third quarter, we expect to continue to grow that number. Our dollar comparison year over year, you can see that we are trending very nicely in the corporate and foundation area. Our alumni giving is also trending very nicely and other organizations. So change the barcode a little bit. You can see what's happening here, but hopefully what you see is pretty self-explanatory for you. Our donor comparison by constituents, we are still slightly behind in the number of alumni who have given, but very close. We have more alumni who have given more money, but less in numbers. And as a reminder, again, I'll speak a little bit more to this when we talk about reunion giving. We believe that gap is from the ability to record the individual reunion gifts. But again, we are closing the gap in terms of trying to either acquire new donors or retain donors who have not been annual year over year donors. Finally, as we think about projection going into the third quarter, we have doubled the number of submissions at 60 that we had in December. And our proposals that are funded, but not included are at 552,000. So if all of that money comes in before we get to June 30th, we are certainly on track to meet our goal and we are continuing to have proposals under review at $1.2 million. So we are hopeful that some of these things will come through as we complete our third quarter and we are not going to stop submitting proposals because we'll always be ready to have the money on the books for next year. Finally, I want to applaud you all for your support. If you'll recall in December, we were at 42%. We are now at 83%. And our giving was at 24,000 and we are now at 77,000. So thank you so much for your ongoing support. We have until June 30th to get to our 100% and I know that we will. The same is true with our foundation board. They too have gone from 42% to 83%. And then their giving is five times what it was at our December meeting. So we thank you for your leadership giving. Quickly with stewardship, hopefully some of you were able to attend our elevated game day experience for basketball. For basketball, we focused on first time donors. We focused on playing givers. We just kind of segmented different populations and didn't necessarily focus only on amounts that were given by individuals. Our tax letters were mailed. Hopefully you all received yours. And in the tax letter this year, we included a magnetic calendar, which you'll see there on the right of your screen. And then we are working with our foundation board to write handwritten notes starting with our endowment holders. And then of course, ongoing creating donor walls so that we can instantly acknowledge our donors as they give. Finally, well, not quite finally, in the solicitation area, we have transitioned to a new platform that is easier to use, more robust, and actually allows us to really kind of focus and target our efforts and allow our campus colleagues to do so as well very easily. I'll mention a little bit about the GALA, our Dean's Mailing Class Support and Retool Your School. So first of all, we had our CIAA Chancellor's Annual Breakfast. And at that breakfast, we raised $10,886 for the When Now Football campaign, which Coach Hillier envisioned. And of course, we were excited to celebrate lots of things, but I just chose the picture of Ms. Rollinson, Ms. CIAA. Two weeks ago, we held our annual scholarship GALA. It was once again, virtual. Thanks to you all who were able to attend and support. Our goal was $100,000. The goal is always set based on a three-year average unless there is an average that's thrown out. And so hopefully this year our average will go up and so we will be seeking to acquire more than $100,000. But we certainly honor our award, our Chancellor's Legacy Award Honorees for their contributions. This year we added a journal pages that had half-page and full-page ads. And as of March 16th, we were at 117 and counting. I say and counting because we've gotten a few checks over the last couple of days. And we also sent an email asking if individuals wanted to give. Before we made the final cut on the video, we could include them as well as the final cut on our digital program book. We can still add folks at this time. So just a quick snapshot of who our honorees are. I think they all enjoyed themselves and we appreciate all that they have done and continue to do for ECSU. So in alumni engagement, we are this year combining a solicitation effort with an engagement effort. Next week we'll have our third installation of Evening with the Deans. We've had two already. Each of the programs begin at six and we are also archiving these on our website so that individuals who did not get a chance to participate can go back and hear these discussions as well as each of the areas a solicitation has gone out. It dropped on May 9th in the mail to select constituents who have either given to the area, graduated from the area, or graduated from the area. It's a way for us to reach out to new or never donors as well as folks who continuously give. So reunion giving is something that we are trying to be more strategic about this year. So we have developed class reunion pages where each class can have their own page, which will allow them to not only have a page where they can give and promote and track their giving, but if they have a specific endowment fund or they want to target a specific fund, we can also help them track that. It is also a hub where they can post information and their leadership can provide them with details. They will know who their leaders are. This is something that we are developing right now, class of 82 and class of 77 are probably the most robust users. And we will continue to grow this effort as we move toward reunion season. You probably have seen online, we are in the running for Retour Your School. We are hoping to receive $75,000. Our project will be a relaxation garden to continue the onward march for healthy students and healthy faculty and staff. The voting ends on Sunday. So you can still have a few days to vote if you have not done so. Upcoming on April 23rd, we will have our 40 under 40 luncheon and we are looking forward to bringing this program back after it's been on hiatus for two years and we will be in person at K.E. White. Our annual day of giving is coming up on April 29th and we are looking forward to leveraging some new opportunities through our annual giving, through our annual day of giving efforts by creating relationships with campus ambassadors so that they can advocate for their areas. And of course we'll have our commencement weekend with our senior pinning ceremony as a part of that. Finally with the strategic plan, all of these bars, what do they mean? So FY20 is our base based on the strategic plan. FY22 is the dark, dark blue. As you can see, we are not where we need to be in a lot of these areas because we are behind from the two years previously but what I will say is we are excelling and our touches and communication levels still have a ways to go but we're increasing in that area. We have more gifts but not necessarily major gifts so that is an opportunity for us as well and plan giving among our alumni and friends is really an untapped area that we need to unlock. And of course our corporate dollars are up but we are not where we need to be in terms of the number of corporate donors. So we will continue to track this progress when we see you again in June, we look forward to having increases in all of these areas. Mr. Chairman, that concludes my report and I am happy to entertain any questions. All right, any questions for Ms. Walton? Okay. That's all right. At the beginning of the meeting, Trustee Chair Johnson mentioned that we had a great night last night and I thank her for being here. I tried to keep her out all night. At least I didn't but it certainly felt like that. ECSU received $15,000 for scholarship from Alpha Kappa Alpha at the Mid-Atlantic region here in Hampton, Virginia. Outstanding. Outstanding, thank you. All right, if there are no questions, the chair will declare that the Committee on Finance is now closed. Thank you. And do you owe me lunch when you get your technology right? Thank you for stepping in, Trustee Brown. Trustee Brown, as we move forward, we are really behind on our meetings time. It is, we will move to the Committee on Regional Development, where it is chaired by Paul Tine. Trustee Tine. Good morning, Anne. Good morning. I'm calling the Committee on Regional Development order as chair of the Committee on Regional Development. I want to remind everyone that we will be conducting today's meetings pursuant to the amendments to the Open Meetings Act that apply during state's emergency. The amendments were signed into law and allow for public bodies to meet via electronic means. The law does require, however, that we take all votes via roll call, which we will do today. Additionally, pursuant to the amendments to the law, all chats, instant messages, texts, and other written communications between members of the board, regarding the transaction of the public business during the remote meeting are deemed a public record. Finally, I will ask all committee members, board members, and participating staff to please identify yourself before participating in deliberations, including making motions, proposing amendments, and raising points of order. Gwen, would you please read the roll call? Committee on Regional Development, Trustee Paul Tine. Yes. Trustee Billis-Bosomor. Present. Trustee Kim Brown. Yes, president. Trustee Andy Culpepper. Yes, sir. Trustee Johnny Tillett. And Justin Waddell. Thank you. Thank you, standards. Now I'd look for a motion for the approval of the minutes. Trustee Tillett, so moved. Thank you, and a second. Trustee Wadden with a second. Thank you. Any discussion? If you please read the roll call, please. Roll call for minutes. Trustee Tine. Yes. Trustee Bosomor. Yes. Trustee Brown. Yes. Trustee Culpepper. Trustee Tillett offered the motion and Trustee Waddell offered the second. Minutes approved. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have no action items today and so we'll move directly into Dr. Wilkins' presentation for informational items. Thank you. You're on mute, Dr. Whitkins. Good morning again. The Committee on Regional Development has just a few items for information purposes. Of course, with our Committee, the overarching goals from the strategic plan is to secure our position as a catalyst in regional, economic, social, and environmental development and facilitate collaborations with industries and governments to improve our region. One of the things that we have done in October, we reported hosting the Regional Economic Development Summit and a part of that summit was for ECSU to lead the effort in developing an economic forecast for the region. Our own professor, Kingsley Nawala, did the economic forecast and he developed a very extensive report. And so some of the highlights of the report we have shared with you in the report that we shared via posting to you. And in this report, we're looking at now, how do we break this extensive report down and chunks that can be consumed by regions, by areas, because he did compile a lot of very useful information but it's too much to just report out in one document. So Trustee Entan and I, we have been looking at ways that we can be strategic and we're working with communications and marketing to see how we might message this and began to share the insights that Dr. Nawala has compiled through his research of the region. But some of the things that we've gathered for the forecast highlights, support innovation and education, support workforce development programs across the region, stabilize and transform rural health, expand accessible and affordable high-speed fiberboard band. These are some of the areas of growth that have been identified as he was developing this report. Here are some additional highlights for expanding and upgrading transportation infrastructure, developing opportunities for volatile tech and value-added food processing manufacturing and others such as enhancing regional collaborations and partnerships. He identified so many great opportunities for regional development that would require a regional partnership and collaboration along with necessary stakeholders investments from across the state. The other item we would like to report from our strategic plan at 6.2.3 was the establishment of our board of visitors. We have established a board of visitors that was reported, but since the last meeting, the board of visitors has elected their officers and you see the officers of our VOV Brian Spence. He is the chair, Wendy Pierce, the vice chair and co-specs is the secretary of the board of visitors and highly engaged group. They're very excited about partnering and working alongside and with us to advocate for ECSU. They are creating committees and they're also longing and looking forward to collaborating with board chairs from the board of trustees along with the foundations to see how they can align their initiative so that we can all be great advocates and supporters for the university. In the ECSU SBTDC office, they are continuing to have an impact in the region as they partner with and work with small business developers in our region. They are starting out with quarter, I'm sorry, let me pause for a second. The first column here shows their progress for 2021. And then the second column is now they're starting over quarter one. And so they are well on their way with their capital formation goal for the year. They are continuing to engage with local businesses and people in the area who want to create or improve their small businesses. They're providing counseling hours and they are continuing to be a great resource throughout their service region. Here's one of the things that they've done on January 27th. They're working with the Whiting Turner Group. The Whiting Turner Group is a contractor who is working on this entire project. And so through this series of workshops and training, they're training vendors and subcontractors so that they are in a position to pre-qualify to work on the hospital project. And so they covered different topics in their sessions to make certain that some of the highly, historically underutilized businesses are in a position to compete on this local project for some of the business in our area. So we're glad that our SBTDC are working with them to convene these groups and to facilitate these sessions at our K.E. White Graduate Center. That concludes the update on trustee time. Are there any questions of the report at this time? Are there any questions? Any questions from the committee or the board at large? I don't see any. Thank you very much, Dr. Wilkins. As we made up a little bit of time, Madam Chair, I'm going to, and part of our committee is outreach. I just wanna clarify my comments earlier in regards to my concern about funding. It was not in reference to the fees, which I understand is a separate issue. It was addressing programmatic funding on a recurring basis, which is not usually separated. So just to make sure that I clarified my comments because I didn't do a very good job the first time. But with that, Madam Chair, we stand adjourned. And you are on mute. Thank you so much for helping catch us up. I'm so excited about where we are. This is, now we call for the committee on university governance where I am the chair. As the chair of the committee on university governance, I wanna remind everyone that we will be conducting today's meeting pursuant to the amendments, to the Open Meeting Act that apply during state sub-emergency. And the amendments were signed into law and allow for public bodies to meet via electronic means. The law does require however, that we take all votes via roll call, which we will do today. Additionally pursuant to the amendment to the laws, all chats, instant messages, texts, and, or other written communications between members of the board regarding transactions of the public business during meeting, the remote meeting, I deem a public record. Finally, I'd like to ask all members of the committee, board members and participating staff to please identify yourself before participating in deliberation, including making motions for polling amendments and raising points of order. May I have the roll call? The committee on university governance, Trustee Johnson. Yes. Trustee Jones. Trustee Evans. Yes. Trustee Brown. Yes. Trustee Culpepper. Trustee Robinson. Yes. And Trustee Tine. Yes. May I have a motion to approve the minutes from the last meeting? Who will entertain a motion? Ms. Paul Tine, I move that we approve the minutes. And Brown, I second. Thank you. Roll call. Roll call for the minutes. Trustee Johnson. Yes. Trustee Jones. Yes. Trustee Evans. Yes. Trustee Brown off at the second. Trustee Culpepper. Trustee Robinson. Yes. And Trustee Tine offered the motion. Minutes approved. Thank you. And thank you. We will quickly turn this over to Attorney Goodson, the Vice Chancellor and General Counsel, and Dr. Shamika Lane, the Chief Human Resource Officer. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'll be doing both updates, as you all know, and consistent with our practice. The HR report is in your materials, which will inform you of new hires, retirements, and other personnel actions that have taken place. With respect to campus updates, I did want to take this opportunity to introduce you, as I mentioned in my committee earlier, introduce you to Chief Tommy McMasters, or affectionately, as any police chief. We just call him Chief for short. So Chief is, he actually was the Chief of Police at Hamlet County, in Hamlet, but he was also the deputy Chief of Police Officer for North Carolina Central University. We were able to lure him from one of our sister institutions, and he gladly came. I will say that that process and bringing him here, I know for the campus was really a blessing, and I'll tell you why. Chief actually, he went through the bomb threat that happened at North Carolina Central prior to coming here. He was actually, and Central was actually one of the first schools that received the threat, and he was able to really work through that to make sure that the campus responded, and everyone remained safe. So he, when we recruited him, he came already battle tested, I think is fair to say, and he executed, I will say that he executed our plan that we had in place flawlessly. So Chief did a phenomenal job. He has come in, and as I mentioned, already started filling some of our vacancy positions. I know he has a couple more in the hopper. So I wanted just to take the time for the board to see, put a face with the name, and Chief McMaster, I don't know if you, if you want to say hello to the board or add anything to that. Thank you, Attorney Goodson, and I would love to just tell the board that I am happy to be here. I'm proud to be a part of the City State University. I have been a part of the community in the past at COA, and I just want to offer my commitment to the safety, security of all faculty and staff here at the City State University, and the surrounding community. I have an open door policy. Please reach out to me with any concerns. As I always say, the smallest concern can be, we want to get nipped in the bud so it does become a larger concern. So feel free to reach out to me. I'm glad to be here. And again, my door is always open. Thank you, Chief, and thank you for your leadership as we navigated some turbulent waters as of late. So thank you so much, and thank you to the entire police staff. I did just want to also update the board on the power outage that we experienced campus-wide. As many of you may be aware, we had a wire that burned up on the ground, which then created sort of a power outage on a loop for a number of our buildings. We were able to isolate that power outage and continue to operate. We'll be conducting repairs after graduation to permanently restore that bulk of the main and redundancy, the redundant part of the loop. So we have that in progress. We were only down, I want to say thank you to my colleagues because they were quickly able to make sure that we did not lose continuity. Provost was able to shift classes, which she has done now for a number of different issues that we have faced this year electronically. So thank you, Provost. And then, I know Gary and Lisa were instrumental in making sure our students had an alternative relocation space for the one dorm that was offline and also being able to make sure that we continue to provide food service. So we have navigated some turbulent waters, but we've done it with grace. And I just want to again acknowledge my colleagues for standing shoulder to shoulder with us as we continue to do those things. And I will also highlight that this chancellor also requested those funds for underground infrastructure repair. And that's why that's so critical because we really need to make those repairs. So with that, I will chair, I will yield back to you. I think we are moving now to closed session, or at least we need a motion for closed session to continue business. Is there someone who will make a motion to go into closed session? Yes, I can make a motion to send to the vice chair. Yep, I'm prepared to make a motion. Yes, so I move that we go into closed session to consider the qualifications, competence, performance and condition of appointment of a public officer or employee or prospective public officer or employee. And to consult with our attorney to protect the attorney client privilege. Is there someone to second that motion? I'll second it. Chris Evans. Thank you. We're now moving into closed session, which means that everyone else should be moving out of the framework. I think you got to take the roll call vote first. Roll call. Okay, roll call. Motion. Roll call. Okay, roll call for closed session. Trustee Johnson. Yes. Trustee Jones made the motion. Trustee Evans offered the second. Trustee Brown. Yes. Trustee Culpepper. Trustee Robinson. Yes. Trustee Tine. Yes. Okay, and if you would just give us an opportunity, Dr. Wilkins, if you will assist with moving into the waiting room. Thank you. Back to our master schedule, the committee on finance audit and university advancement. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, wrong page. The committee on student excellence. All right. That's to Kim Brown chair. Thank you, Madam chair. I'd like to call the committee on student excellence to order, March 25th, 2022. And I would start by asking Ms. Gwynn to call the roll please. Sure. The committee on student excellence. Trustee Kim Brown. Trustee Phyllis Bosenworth. She may have had to read. Trustee Jimmy Chambers. Present. Trustee Chris Evans. Present. Trustee Tiffany Jones. Present. Trustee Johnny Tillard. Present. There is a quorum. All right, thank you. As chair of the committee on student excellence, I want to remind everyone that we will be conducting today's meeting pursuant to the amendments to the Open Meetings Act that applied during states of emergency. The amendments were signed into law and allow for public bodies to meet via electronic means. The law does require however that we take all votes via roll call, which we will do today. Additionally pursuant to the amendments, to the laws, all chats, instant messages, text or other written communications between members of the board regarding the transaction of the public business during the remote meeting are deemed a public record. Finally, I ask all committee members, board members and participating staff to please identify yourself before participating in deliberations, including making motions, proposing amendments or raising points of order. Madam chair, we have three reports today. No action items. We will start with Dr. Gary Brown after our nice church meeting. Or I mean, I'm sorry, a nice student affairs meeting that turned into a pastor to pastor meeting. And then we will hear from our AD, Mr. George Bright. And finally from our president of student government association, Mr. Jimmy Chambers, Dr. Brown. Thank you so much. Good afternoon to everyone on the call this morning. And thank you to Chancellor Dixon and all members of the board of trustees. Thank you for the opportunity to present some updates on what is happening in the division of student affairs. In the next few minutes, and I'm not going to go as deep as we normally would. I'll try to get through this as quickly as possible. We will provide some overview of new staff appointments, provide you a snapshot of what's been happening for this spring related to COVID-19. We'll update you on some special initiatives that we have been working on, some information related to military and veteran affairs. And then we will close with some information on our strategic plan and upcoming events. So I want to share with you three new staff appointments. One is we have Pronto on Mr. Ray Broughton. He's the interim director for military and veteran affairs, has served for over 23 years in the US Army. And he recently joined our staff at the beginning of this month and is providing some leadership over our military and veteran affairs department. You will see some additional information later on in this report that comes from some of the work that he's already begun. Mrs. Monica Miller, who had prior been serving as our director of project gap, has now been appointed to be the director of TRIO ELC. And Ms. Carol Butts has been hired as a program assistant for TRIO ELC. We do have a program coordinator position that we will be announcing very soon that will be filled. For those of you who may not remember or recall, TRIO ELC is a US Department of Education grant we received during the fall semester. All told, it amounts to about $1.1 million. It's a five year kind of renewable grant each year with a focus on encouraging adult earners actually to pursue education within a higher ed setting. And so this staff will work with them quite diligently to ensure that individuals within a seven county area around our community will have the information necessary to pursue higher education. From a spring semester 2022 snapshot, I wanna just kind of provide to you that this semester we actually have 84% occupancy in our residence halls. That's 882 residents and we required COVID-19 testing upon students return. They had to either provide documented negative COVID test within 72 hours of their return or they were tested on site. And as a part of our protocols at that time, in terms of our reentry statistics, we actually facilitated 473 COVID-19 tests during move-in. And during that time, we actually were able to identify 27 COVID-19 positive individuals and to ensure that our campus community was safe and well. As Provost Ward shared earlier, this was right in the height of the Omicron variant being kind of in a surge. And so we were very diligent during that timeframe to ensure that we would protect our campus as we have during the entire pandemic. To date, we are still continuing to kind of track our COVID numbers, although we do recognize that things have shifted quite a bit here within the state of North Carolina and on our campus related to COVID-19. And all told, we have had 76 of our students during this term to be positive. 21 of our staff and faculty to be positive. And that's a total 97 positives for our campus. But you should know that we have maintained a number of quarantine and isolation beds within our housing facility. And at no time during this semester, have we actually used more than three of those at one time. And so things are quite different on our campus related to COVID-19. And we are certainly thankful for that, but also very appreciative of the hard work of our entire campus community, but especially our health and wellness staff, our folks within the student affairs who have done a really good job, I think of trying to kind of manage this situation as it relates to our students on campus and trying to ensure the protocols are adhered to. We've also facilitated over 3,000 COVID-19 surveillance tests, and that is an updated number as of this week. Our current surveillance testing process really is heavily focused on students who are unvaccinated because we are still encouraging and committed to ensuring that we are encouraging individuals to take advantage of the vaccines that are available for us all in terms of keeping our campus healthy and well. From a special initiatives perspective, I do wanna share with you about Empower NENC or Empower North, Eastern North Carolina. This is specifically the grant that was provided to us by my future NC, which is a, it helped us to develop a local educational attainment group, basically a group of partners who gather together for us to try to impact the bottom line goal and number of two million individuals to be credentialed by 2030 within the state of North Carolina. I think I shared with you prior that we had hired a community project manager. There are monthly meetings that are ongoing to help us solidify our focus on this work in terms of making people more aware of the opportunities that exist in our local community and to set a course for moving forward. I'm not gonna share the video that I was going to share related to this particular initiative, but I believe this actual video is included in your board notes. And so certainly we would appreciate if you take a look at that. That was something that was produced as a part of this particular grant as well. We wanna provide you some update related to the Adult Learner Initiative that was funded by the Lumina Foundation. We have been hard at work along with a number of our partners from across the campus in Provost Ward Shop and Academic Affairs related to several things that will help us strengthen our capacity to serving adult learners as we move forward, as we recognize that that is an area of growth for our institution. And there are substantial gains that have actually been made over the last several years related to the number of adult learners who are actually enrolled here at ECSU. There have been four things that have occurred thus far. And then I will share with you, I will share with you a brief two minute video that highlights some of the adult learners on our campus. So the first thing that occurred within our group is a process mapping exercise that was designed to help us to address the barriers of success and to help us to design some support mechanisms that will encourage persistence, retention and degree attainment for our adult learners. It was meant to help us to understand where problems might occur for our adult learners and our particular group decided to focus our process mapping exercise around how it is that we garner feedback from our adult learners, which then shifted us to us being able to leverage a tool that exists, which is the Kale Adult Learner 360 and an assessment tool that we have purchased that will help us to create a baseline of understanding from our adult learner students as well as from those within our university community on how well we're actually meeting the needs of adult learners. The really great thing about this particular assessment tool is that it is standardized and a number of institutions across the nation have actually facilitated this same assessment tool on their campus. And as such, we'll be able to measure where it is that we currently are against, where it is at institutions that we either are competing against within our state or that we might be kind of aspiring to the levels that they are at related to the way in which they service adult learners. And so we're really excited about this particular tool and are in the process of working through the survey development aspects of it. There are some additional questions that we have been meaning about to add to it that will be specific to ECSU. Additionally, we have completed the Lumina Innovation Survey instrument as a group or as an initiative. And this is also another aspect of us trying to determine the level of implementation of best practices as it relates to servicing adult learners and interventions that are really tied to their student success. And we will go back to this survey instrument over the next couple of years as we continue to work through this initiative to measure our progress along the way. Final thing I wanna share with you from this perspective is we have contracted with Dr. Jelena Austin who is an Associate Professor for Adult Education, North Carolina A&T State University but actually is the CEO of Austin Educational Group. And she will be working with us as an institution to provide some layered professional development for all members of our university community. And that would actually even include members of the Board of Trustees as well as other boards and other partners within our institution, our faculty, our staff, everyone. So that we all are coming into this work in terms of servicing adult learners from the same place. She's also providing some consultation with us in the development of our specific adult learner 360 assessment and then she will be reviewing some historical data to determine trends in areas of focus as we consider specific degree programs to leverage for adult learners. And so I'm very appreciative of my partner, my colleague across the institution, Provost Ward and for her continued support in this work as we worked with Dr. Austin to kind of formulate what really her focus needed to be. So I wanna share with you this brief video and then we'll shift to the remainder of our presentation. Can you all see the screen? Yes. Traditionally, colleges and universities have been made gateway for students who are coming right out of high school according to national reports by the end of 2022. It is projected that the number of students 25 and over. I can't see that. I'm not seeing the video. I'm not seeing the video. Sorry. You see, Brad, we're seeing your slide that says special initiative, but we're not seeing the video. I got it. Okay. Give me one second. Stop, share. I'll tell you what. So there's not to belabor and to delay this further, we will send you all the video after we conclude today. Is that all right? All right. Can everyone see the slide still? Obviously. Yes. Yes. All right, very good. So shifting to military and veteran affairs, Mr. Broughton has done a deep dive for us already on the number of military affiliated students that we currently are working with at ECSU. We currently have 204 students enrolled this particular spring semester that are the military, military affiliated and military affiliated students are spouses or dependent students. And currently we only show that 82 of those military affiliated students are leveraging their military benefits. The breakdown of those 82 in terms of their branch or affiliation are represented below. But as we continue to move forward, we will be trying to kind of delve into the reasons as to why individuals are not taking advantage of some of the benefits that we know they actually have. And we are excited about the fact that there's some great potential for continued growth. You can see the numbers there. There's some work to do there. And certainly we believe that we are heading in the right direction in terms of looking into this particular, this particular aspect of our support for military and veterans. Additionally, we decided that we needed to increase the visibility and services of our offerings. And so we relocated our military and veterans affairs center from here in Griffin Hall and placed that particular unit in the center of campus. Actually it's located it in the Viking Services Center which is the old Ridley Student Center. We have upgraded furnishings and technology and have co-located the center there in that space near counseling services and the Vikings care food pantry. And so we're really excited about what that's going to mean in terms of the number of individuals who take advantage of the services that are offered by military and veteran affairs. We have planned for an open house on March to 29th which is just next week. There will be a lunch and learn series that will be launched and then we are facilitating some educational benefit sessions with military agencies, especially our Coast Guard partners because we want to ensure that people are aware of all it is that is available to them in pursuing their education here at ECSU. From a strategic plan perspective you can see here our progress report. So I think VC McClinton shared earlier the creation of the miscellaneous fee for transportation services. And so we're excited about what that's going to mean for our student experience on next year as we launch a transportation service that will provide some shuttle opportunities around our campus. And so that's gonna be really exciting for the students in terms of implementing a leadership and professional development training for our emerging student leaders. We did have two of our staff members trained by truest through the emerging leadership certificate program. And to date we have actually trained 25 students through that program. So we're moving well in that perspective. There is a strategic plan goal for this year to program as a part of our orientation program to orient our students to the Elizabeth City community and within the orientation budget for this coming year. There will be an initiative that's launched. There's been $3,000 has been earmarked to support that particular aspect of our orientation program, which we believe is really going to do a lot in terms of how our students feel here within Elizabeth City and the Elizabeth City community. Cause the role of a college student and the experience of a college student is not just shaped by what happens on the campus but what happens off. And so we have a good neighbor initiative that was started out of our Dean of Students office and they will be taking the lead on orienting our students to the Elizabeth City community in general. Our survey for student transportation needs, we actually have had double conversations with institutional research about that. We will be launching that particular survey by mid-April and so that will help to inform some of our direction related to transportation services. And then as it relates to developing this descriptor and definition of ECSU culture that makes it unique and attractive. We've been garnering feedback from our student attendees and Vikings views with our Dean of Students. So there's a lot going on here that I have not shared but there is certainly substantial progress towards meeting our goals and I feel really good about where it is that will be at the end of this term. So upcoming events, community connections has been I think really well attended and greatly facilitated on our campus during this semester. On next week, we'll welcome ECSU alum to our campus, welcome him back to our campus for a night of music to Shelby Shelby. We're very excited about his return to the campus. And then in April, we'll have Dallas Black Dance Theatre here just as a note, go ahead and mark your calendars for December of 2022 because we are solidifying the final date in December but we have received confirmation that the North Carolina Symphony will be here as a part of our community connections, performance and lecture series which is really a great opportunity for our campus as well as our community partners. From fraternity and sorority life, we're in the new members presentation season. Chancellor has been at several as well as other members of our university community. And so certainly any member of our board, if you are in the area you wanna stop by for the new member presentations, there are two presentations scheduled for this Sunday, Kappa Alpha Psi and those great brothers of Black and Gold, Alpha Alpha will be coming out to the campus on Sunday. And then Viking Fest is coming up in April as well. So please be on the lookout for additional information. And the final thing I'd just like to say, we recognize it on April the 1st, the elections for our new student leaders will take place. And that would mean that for the first time in two years or three years, we'll have a new SGA president. And so I do wanna say thank you to the trustee and president, Jimmy Chambers for the hard work that he has done for his peers and students and advocating on their behalf. I think he's done an outstanding job. And certainly we look forward to all that he will continue to do. But I just wanted to kind of take that personal moment of privilege just to say that as I close my report. At this time, those are all of the things that I have to share. And so we'll take time for any questions. All right. If there, I don't see any hands raised. If there are no questions, we will move on too. Sorry, I had a question here. Okay. Just real quick, thank you for the presentation. One thing I'm wondering about, maybe it's more of a comment as you all are doing your deep dive around the strategy for engaging more adult learners or returning students is to also think about the connections with philanthropy because there's particular communities or particular needs of returning students that funders are focusing on right now, whether it be, I had some conversation about students who've been impacted by a criminal justice system, wanting to be able to participate in education so they can make good choices moving forward. And there's a lot of philanthropic dollars attached with institutions that are able to provide opportunities or student parents if we can go on and on. But there's particular populations within that larger bucket that philanthropy is aligned around. And so you might be able to connect your efforts there as you think about what it's the right fit and focus for the institution. And I'm happy to be a thought partner as that's helpful as you all solidify what your strategy and plans is allowed to think about what education funders are focused on, what parts of that adult learner population. All right, thank you. Thank you so much. If there are no other questions, we will move to A.D. Bright. Good morning. I am George Bright, your director of athletics, Chancellor Dixon, Chair Brown. Thank you so much. And of course, to all the distinguished members of the board of trustees, bless to serve as your director of athletics. And I look forward to this short presentation for you as we move forward. Today's overview, we'll talk about the CIAA basketball tournament recap. Our student athletes in the classroom introduce a few new athletic staff. We'll go over the NCAA convention as a recap and then take a look at the 2022 football schedule. We all had the opportunity, hopefully to celebrate with our basketball programs as we participated in the CIAA tournament just a few weeks ago. On the men's basketball side, Zach Hobbs had certainly had the opportunity to join the 1000 Point Club this year. We celebrated with the Rookie of the Year from the CIAA, Mr. Jaden Bellotti. And of course, there were some other members including Jaden Bellotti with the all-CIAA team. Our men's team lost to Bowie State in the tournament and ended with a 14 and 13 overall record and seven and nine in the CIAA. On our women's basketball side, we certainly ended with the second best record in the CIAA. We ended with the second team, second seed in the CIAA tournament and defeated Claflin in the quarterfinals. Also defeated Virginia State in the semifinals and lost, of course, to Lincoln in the great CIAA championship game. We garnered several awards including the offensive player of the year with Sirianne Pitts. Many accolades in terms of player of the games and all tournament teams, several of our women's basketball student athletes were there. And of course, we landed with Coach of the Year in our first season, Tanisha Lewis. So very excited about what is to come with our women's basketball program. Congratulations to, of course, to a women's basketball program in that regard. In the classroom in the fall of 2021, our student athletes succeeded. Of course, we represent over 20 different majors in terms of our student athletes. Our women's tennis team had the highest women's GPA with a 3.96 and our men's golf team had the highest men's team GPA with a 3.69. We've had 13 student athletes with a straight 4.0 and 76 student athletes that lift 3.0 or higher. And you can see the other breakdowns with 14 in a range of 3.25 to 3.49, 21 and 3.5 to 3.74 and 23 in that range of 3.75 to 4.0. Congratulations to those student athletes. We've had some new Vikings that we brought aboard. And of course, we had the introduction of Coach Marcus Hilliard. He took over the program, of course, in January this year. He is a former ECSU assistant head coach, a defensive coordinator here, 2004 alum. He returns to ECSU with the history, knowledge of the program, with authentic homegrown biking pride, if you will, and a vision to revive the program, to restore the culture and to bring a new errand brand of biking football to ECSU. He brings along with him his offensive coordinator, Matthew Finnan, his deco coordinator, Nigel Rio. Some of you might recognize that name. Brings back to the staff, Marcus White. It has new folks in Brandon Dahl, Tyrone Glanton, Fred Bladney, Wayne Worley, and brings on two grad assistants who played just last year, Mr. Brandon Joiner and Mr. Greg Miller. Proud of both of those two gentlemen, everybody that's welcome to our Viking nation. And in women's tennis, Mr. Richard Harfs also returns back to Viking land to be the women's tennis head coach. The 2022 NCA convention was held in Indianapolis. There are several things that happen at this convention, new legislation, changes in football, and of course, changes in what our transfers are able to do. The new constitution now ensures that student athletes have voting representation on each division's presidential body. That's the division one board of directors, D2 presidents council, D3 presidents council, and the NCA board of governors all there. The NCA convention legislation now establishes a civic engagement day. This prohibits athletic activity annually on usually the first Tuesday of November to allow for voting and volunteering to occur with our student athletes and staff. New legislation established a negotiated resolution path in a division two infraction process as well. It brought in D2 legislative options in three areas, the emergency legislation, resolutions, and special conventions. And that is effective immediately. New legislation permits use of a maximum of six credit hours earned during a summer term toward a voluntary or optional minor to help student athletes meet that progress towards degree and that is effective immediately. And then the last piece of legislation eliminates the option to sign a written release or waiver that declines the sickle sale solubility test that gets into effect as of August 1st. There were some changes in football which extend the actualization period from five to seven days with a day off. There are new changes in football that reduce the maximum amount of full contact practices from 17 to nine. And of course, it eliminates the restriction on the number of football student athletes per group that can engage in those practice or skill instructions. On the transfer side, the new legislation allows for the required undergraduate student athlete to complete an educational module before entering that portal. And it also eliminates the previous school's ability to object to that one time transfer option. And then it requires written certification that no one can contact that transfer prior to the authorization through the notification of the transfer process. So coach can necessarily recruit. He has to make sure that there is no contact before the authorization through the transfer process. And you can see some of the other changes below in transfer. In our football schedule, we have an exciting schedule coming forth starting off with that at Benedict College for the Carolina Classic, first weekend in September. We come back to the Downies Viking Classic versus Living Stone on September 10th. First home game in Elizabeth City will be against Winston-Salem State on the 17th. We hit the road three weeks straight against Shaw, Johnson Smith and Virginia Union. Come home for homecoming on Saturday, October 15th. Make sure you mark that down with two additional home dates against Virginia State and Bowie State. And then wrapping up the season on the road in Murfreesboro against Trawon University. For our strategic plan initiatives, of course 2.52 and 2.5.2 and 2.5.3. We talked about in terms of the increasing fan engagement and exposure. I think our representation of the at the CAAA tournament certainly speaks to those. And 2.5.7, the facility improvement plan, athletics will be a part of the master plan that BC Goodson talked about just a few minutes earlier. Trustee Brown, that concludes my report. Can I entertain any questions at this time? All right, any questions for Eddie Bright? If not, we will move to his, I'm sorry. Nevermind, I'll reserve, I'm sorry, continue. This will be, I believe, President Chambers final SGA presentation. So sir, on behalf of the board, thank you for your service, especially your service during the two years of a global pandemic. And not only the global pandemic, but some of the social justice concerns that would confront an HBCU. You have led with great prowess and example and we're proud of you and we look forward to who you are destined to become and always set the standard high because of Viking pride. So with that said, we are ready for your presentation. Yes, sir. Thank you, Trustee Brown, let's see, share this. All right, so once again, my name is Jimmy Chambers, the student body president serving from 2020, 2022. Just an overview of the this year's goals was to amplify the student voice. We were able to do that by having several town halls create surveys to collect data, do student activism by providing different civic engagement opportunities, inclusion, improving the collegiate experience by amplifying Viking pride and creating initiatives to enrich the student experience as well. When it comes to civic engagement on March 9th, we were able to send a group of young ladies down to Alabama to participate in the HBCU Black Voter of Matters March. They told me how much fun they had. They were able to engage with other HBCU students, but at the same time learn history down there in some of Alabama, so it was great for them to experience that as well. As well as when it comes to civic engagement, we even had alums at Hawkins this week come and talk to myself and some other members about voting and some ways that they would like to partnership in the years to come when it comes to civic engagement, which is huge and beneficial as well. Some panels that I was able to sit on was February 16th, I partnered with our title of non-department and did a red and green flags when it comes to relationship talks. On February 23rd, with Miss Jody Grandy, I did the North Carolina DHHS and HBCU Mental Health Summit. And just the other day, I did the Hunt Institute panel where it was me, the SGA president from Federal State, A&T, North Carolina Central as well as Johnson C. Smith. And we were able to talk about our experiences as student body presidents, what supports looks like and different things that we were able to do during our time as student body presidents. When it comes to a UNC ASG report, we were able to have conversations with as student body presidents with Governor Jim Holmes during that meeting with him. We were able to talk about athletic fees. He's not really a fan of students, making up the cause difference for athletics. But he said one thing he is committed to is trying to look for different ways to make up the effects so students aren't having to pay a higher athletic fee each year. When we talked with Governor Jenner, she's not a governor, I'm sorry, but with Miss Hager, she talked to us about the new funding method. But like Jenner said earlier, as long as ECSU continues to grow, we are going to benefit from that. And with Governor Sanya Nichols, we were able to talk about different issues that HBCUs and MSIs are experiencing at a time. And during that meeting, one of the HBCUs did bring up the bomb threat that we all were experiencing. But at the time ECSU were the only HBCU in the UNC system that had not experienced it at the time. But later on, we did experience one, the threat. When it comes to student experience survey, we were able to do a small sample. It's not a, we were only able to get like 144 responses. So I can't really say it's a big, big number of our students who responded to the essay, but of the 144 that did respond according to the numbers. Let's see. 84 of the students did prefer in-person classes. 58 preferred more online classes. When it comes to different ratings, residence building was more of a 6.78 rating. Campus safety was at 8.5. The student experience outside of campus was outside of the classroom was a 6.95 and a dining hall of food was a 4.46. But when we were taking a deeper dive and looking to the student experience outside of the classroom, the lower numbers came down from seniors who were able to, during that first, during their freshman and a little bit of sophomore, you knew how the campus operated outside of COVID. But when we took those numbers away, we did see that it was about an eight where regular, where the more the freshmen and sophomore than some of the juniors, they still gave a very positive rating because of everything that the university and student affairs and student engagement have been doing to keep our students engaged. When it comes to the dining hall, me, Chancellor, VC McClendon, we all have been having different conversations around this issue to make sure that we fix this issue as food and security is real. We do not want our students to be unhappy or unpleased or feel like that. Wherever it goes that they don't wanna eat somewhere or either that they're forced to go off campus and eat something else whenever they're paying for a meal plan. And Ms. Elizabeth City State University this year, Diamond Rawlison, she did when Ms. CIAA, she's the fifth Ms. Elizabeth City State University to do so. We are proud of her, everything she was able to do this year during her reign. We do look forward to whoever comes after her as well. So therefore I just wanted to congratulate her and highlight her once again. Any questions? All right, Madam Chair, if there are no questions that concludes our presentations and we will prepare to adjourn under your direction. Yes, we would thank all of you for that engagement. It's around 12, 18, we'd like you to be back. At 12, 50, we'd like you to log in so we could get going at one o'clock sharp. Thank you so much because we thought it would be much longer than this and we were able to come back. So I appreciate you. Do we need to make a motion to adjourn? You may adjourn without objection. All right, we may adjourn without objection. Thank you. And just I wanna remind everyone, it's the same link that we use for the committees in terms of logging back in for the full board meeting. Thank you. And it will need to unmute. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to the full board meeting of the trustees of the Lisbon City State University. We will have invocation by Trustee Kim Brown. All right, let us pray, God, we thank you for the legacy of our institution and for the leadership of the Lisbon City State University. We thank you for how you have grounded her over the years and for the bright future that we see in front of us. We're grateful for the privilege of being able to be a part of stewarding that legacy. So as we conduct business today, we ask that you would crown us with wisdom and discernment that our decisions would always be first and foremost to serve and direct education and matriculation of young people. We thank you for that now and we ask that you would be pleased with all that is said and done. In the name of Christ, we pray, amen. Amen. We have roll call by Trustee Kristi Evans, our secretary. Is she on? Then I will just- If she's on, she's muted. When would you- Trustee Evans, I can assist if needed. Yes, yes, please, please, please do. Okay. Roll call and record of attendance for the March 25th meeting. Trustee Phyllis Fawzenworth, I know that she did have to leave, okay. Trustee Kim Brown. Present. Trustee Jimmy Chambers. Present. Trustee James Copeland. Present. Trustee Andy Culpeper. I do see him. He's present. Trustee Chris Evans is here. Here. Trustee Steven Friedrich. Here. Trustee Stephanie Johnson. Present. Trustee Tiffany Jones. Present. Trustee Jan King Robinson. Present. Trustee Johnny Tillard. Present. Trustee Paul Tine. Present. And Trustee Waddell did say he was being called into another meeting at one, but we do have a quorum. Thank you. Thank you. It is my responsibility as the chair of the Board of Trustees to read the state Government Ethics Act. As chair of the Board of Trustees, it is my responsibility to remind all members of the Board of their duty under the State Government Ethics Act to avoid conflicts of interest and appearances of conflict of interest as required by this act. Each member has received the agenda and related information for this Board of Trustees meeting. And if any Board member knows of any conflict of interest or appearance of conflict with respect to any matter coming before the Board of Trustees, at this meeting, the conflict or appearance of conflict should be identified at this time. Yes, there are none. We will move to have a motion to approve the minutes from the December 14th meeting, 2021. So moved. Second. Second. Thank you. Let me get the motion maker. I'm sorry. Anne. Thank you. And the second, I'm sorry. Tim Brown. Thank you. All right, thank you. Do we have to do roll call? We need to do, yeah, you need to carry out the motion and then roll call, yes. Yes. The motion has been moved and probably seconded. When we have a roll call. Sure, this is for the approval of the minutes. Trustee Kim Brown offered the second. Trustee Chambers. Trustee Copeland. Yes. Trustee Colpepper. Trustee Evans. Yes. Trustee Friedrich. Yes. Trustee Johnson. Yes. Trustee Jones. Yes. Trustee Jan King Robinson offered the motion. Trustee Tillard. Yes. And Trustee Todd. Yes. Thank you. Thank you all so very much. Now we will move to the approval of consent agenda. A, approval of the demolition of rental property. B, approval of the resolution authorizing the university to issue debts, not to exceed 7.5 million. C, approval of the infrastructure designer. D, approval of the house and dining designer. E, approval of revised FY22 general fund budget due to allocations of new recurring funds in November of 21. F, approval of FY23 all funds budget. G, approval of revised internal audit charter and HBS aviation science and online delivery mall. Do I have a motion to, for this approval of the agenda? This is Friedrich, I'll move it. Second. Second. It has been moved and probably second that the consent agenda has been approved. Can we have a roll call vote? Roll call vote for the consent agenda. Trustee Brown. Yes. Trustee Chambers. Yes. Trustee Copeland. Yes. Trustee Colpepper. Trustee Evans. Yes. Trustee Friedrich offered the motion. Trustee Johnson. Yes. Trustee Jones. Yes. Trustee Robinson. Yes. Trustee Tillard offered the second. Trustee Tyne. Yes. Okay, yes. Thank you. We have a quorum for the approval of the consent agenda. Thank you. Thank you. As you notice, we're moving right along. We will now move to the committee on academic excellence and strategic growth. Trustee Tiffany Jones, your report. Yes. We had a great discussion today, starting off with our vote to support the continued efforts for the development of the online aviation science program. We also had a discussion about the changes to the mission statements that would allow for the specification of the types of degrees offered at Elizabeth City. We also talked about some additional investments or grant work that have been made to help strengthen the academic programs. There are a number of them, but just a couple of highlights. One related to the mentorship that the Elizabeth City State University students will provide to the community in the public on COVID education and how to be safe as well as over $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation. We also had a bit of a discussion about some of the changes to the out-of-state undergraduate enrollment requirement. So that's UNC policy 700.1.3 that still needs to go for a full vote in April and fingers crossed that if that legislation passed, then that out-of-state cap could be raised from 25% to 50% and allow the flexibility they need to keep increasing the enrollment. We also had a conversation about just the admissions process and kind of where we are. We had Mr. Marcio Moreno joined us for the first time being able to present to the board regarding some of the strategies. And one highlight is that there seem to be some great alumni engagement and some of those activities across the state which is great to hear. We did notice in that kind of comparison between this year and last year in our enrollment data a little bit of a dip in the yield rate but had a good conversation about some of the contributing factors. So we look forward to seeing those numbers improve as well. And so yeah, those were some of the highlights and that concludes the report for the committee on academic excellence and strategic growth. Thank you, Trustee Tiffany Jones. Now the committee on student excellence, Trustee Kimbrale. Thank you, Madam Chair. We had three different information reports from our Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, our AD and our SGA President. Starting with Dr. Gary Brown gave us a highlight of presentation that included new staff and appointments, gave us a snapshot of the campus spring 2022 update on COVID-19, housing and residents life. Some special initiatives information was given on my future North Carolina and Lumina adult learning initiative. We were informed on veterans and military services updates and the new location of their office, gave us a snapshot of the strategic planning goals and upcoming events and concluded with upcoming community connection events for March 31st and April the 21st. And he also shared a video presentation via email for each of the trustees. AD Bright highlighted several athletic accomplishments for the year. One of them was coach of the year, rookie of the year and our success at the 2022 CIAA tournament. In the classroom he shared numbers, GPA standards for tennis and other athletes golf. Lots of academic success was evident among our students. We also welcomed new football staff for serving with our head coach, Marcus Hilliott and full team of his assistant coaches and graduate assistants. We also welcomed and were made aware of a new women's tennis coach and then there was a recap of the 2022 NCAA convention that included new legislation from the NCAA football changes and transfers. He shared the 2022 football schedule informing us that the first game would be September the third. And then he reviewed strategic plan initiatives given to increasing fan engagement and exposure and facility improvement plans for athletics. And then finally, as we commend and put in the record, our last moment of sharing with our last year's SGA president, Mr. Jimmy Chambers, we thank him for his service. He gave us information update as well, overview of SGA goals, civic engagement students that attended a march in Alabama with the Black Voters Matter Initiative shared with us information relative to panel environments with title nine, red and green flags, some HBCU mental health initiatives that were gained at a summit and the Hunt Institute along with other HBCU SGA leaders. He gave us information relative to the UNC, ASG report conversations with Governor Jim Holmes, Jennifer Heygood and Governor Sonia Nichols. He reviewed the student experience survey which had 144 responses in reference to campus residence halls, campus safety dining services and student experience. And he introduced us to the new Miss Elizabeth City State University and we congratulated her on being also Miss C-I-W-A. That concludes on my report, Madam Chair. Oh, thank you. We will move to the committee on operational excellence, trustee, Jan King-Robbins. Thank you. During the committee on operational excellence, we received progress on the infrastructure and BC Goodness presented the following information. The campus master plan, a Vines architecture is moving quickly and proposing smart design concepts for locations on all the new buildings and capital projects on the horizon. A nationally renowned engineering firm, RMF, was selected for the underground infrastructure for electrical and water. This project will take some time to complete. BC Goodson asked for a motion to approve the following action items, approval of demolition of rental property, infrastructure upgrades, design firm and housing and dining hall designer. The board approved all action items. BC Goodson will update the board on phase two of capital projects of the aviation school and the Skybridge project. Information technology updates were provided. BC Wilkins reported that DIT had no new updates. However, the initiative on preparing to mitigate cybersecurity breaches is ongoing. Policies have been put in place for future attacks. And our communications and marketing update, BC Wilkins reported the update by stating that ECSU has been put in the most favorable and positive light recently. ECSU has been strategic on controlling the narrative of the university. The media outlets have been giving positive traction on all the great things happening at ECSU with students getting internships, collaborations with other outside stakeholders and even the delay of the spring semester. ECSU has made it a point to give media outlets newsworthy information and they have responded very favorably on our behalf. This concludes the report for the committee on operational excellence. Thank you. Now on to the committee on finance, audit and university advancement. Trustee Andy Colpepper, is your mic working now? Okay. So can we get, can we get trustee Kim Brown to follow up with that? Thank you. You stepped away. Okay. I was, okay. I'm happy to assist with that if you like. Okay, that's fine. Okay. So this will be on behalf of trustees Colpepper and Brown during the committee on finance audit and university advancement updates were received from the finance internal audit and university advancement. Vice Chancellor for Business and Finance, Lisa McClinton presented action items and informational items, these three action items were approval of a resolution authorizing the university to issue debt, the approval of the revised FY22 general fund budget and approval of the FY23 UNC system all funds budget. The committee approved all of those. She then gave informational updates on her unit strategic plan progress, FY23 tuition and fee changes, general fund expenditures and revenues and endowment. For the strategic plan progress, she stated that the completion of the all funds budget and the expected implementation of budgeting software moves us closer to reaching strategic go 5.1. The updates of FY23 tuition and fees were that the $39 increase to student activity fee that we approved in December 21 to support student transportation has been changed to a miscellaneous fee that Chancellor Dixon approved in January, 2022. Therefore there will be no change to the FY23 student activity fee. The increases to the nine aviation flight fees that were approved in December 21 and sent to the Board of Governors for its consideration has been removed from the system office status. It would advocate for recurring funds to support the university's aviation program in the upcoming FY23 general assembly budget short session. The update on the FY22 general fund and trust and auxiliary budgets where it's follows general fund expenditures revenues as of 1221 are on target and 1221 trust and auxiliary fund balances for 13.4 million with 9.9 million of these funds being unrestricted. Finally, the endowment fund update was given overall net earnings were 80.1% for the current fiscal year and as of 1221 with the net market value of the endowment being 10.49 million. Chief Audit Officer Sharnita Parker presented one action item and information items. The action item was the approval of the internal audit charter which contained revisions to add additional entities that we report to and to include core principle language in the standards of internal audit section. The committee approved this resolution. The information items, the informational updates are as follows, the completion of two reports. The first was higher education emergency relief fund two and the second was financial aid operations. There were no findings for either report. The second update was the summary of the internal audits quality assessment review. Internal audit received the highest rating of generally conforms at the completion of their quality assessment review in December, 2021. Vice Chancellor for University Advancement, Anita Walton provided the committee with an update on fundraising progress to date, stewardship efforts, solicitation, engagement and efforts to other strategic claim goals. Total dollars received as of March, 2020 to 1,278, 902. This is a difference of roughly 227,000 over where we were in March of fiscal year 21. Current total number of donors is 994. Steady trends for donor participation are reflected across our constituents. Fund raising progress was reviewed. BC Walton shared 60 proposals that have been submitted this year for requested fund amount over 8 billion year to date. Recent stewardship efforts were reviewed, which included the elevated game day experience for basketball, 2021 tax letters with magnetic calendar inserts to 1,381 donors, handwritten notes to donors and donor walls. Solicitation efforts were shared, including the Founder's Day Scholarship Gala, Dean's campaign, reunion giving and the annual day of giving. Upcoming engagement reminders were shared. Finally, BC Walton shared a strategic plan update for institutional advancement. This concludes the report of the committee on finance audit and university advancement. Thank you, Ms. Sanders. Thank you for that report on behalf of Trustee Andy Kopepper. The committee on regional development, Trustee Paul Tine. During the committee on regional development today, we received the report from Dr. Wilkins on the various initiatives for regional economic development, included in strategy initiative number six. We first heard about identified growth strategies that resulted from the economic form where ECSU, these initiatives are where ECSU can provide a positive impact on economic growth in the region. He also reported that we are preparing an ECSU branded county by county economic status report and forecast that was developed by Dr. Nwala. We received a report about the officers that have been elected to the Board of Visitors. They are forming committees that they expect to parallel our efforts here at the Board of Trustees and provide opportunities for collaboration. Finally, we had a report on this SBTDC's efforts. This concludes the report on the Committee of Regional Development. Thank you, Trustee Paul Tine, and on the committee on university governance. During the committee on university governance, a human resources update was provided. The Board members received information on personnel matters. Legal affairs gave a campus update. Items requiring approval of the Board were discussed in closed session, and that concludes the report on the Committee on University Governance. Thank all of you for your committee leadership and all of the members, and now we will have the Chancellor's report. Thank you, Chair Johnson. So good afternoon, everyone. Chair Johnson, ECSU Board of Trustees, and guests. The amount of work my team and I carry out each day just amazes me. I am truly blessed to lead this great university with your support and the dedication of my cabinet, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends of ECSU. Thank you for your efforts in building a strong foundation for the sustainability of Elizabeth City State University for future years to come. As you've just heard through committee reports, we have accomplished a lot. Endured many challenges, but we still continue to thrive. Just the first few months of 2022, we faced several difficult and sometimes perplexing issues from another COVID surge to a power outage to bomb threats, just to name a few. But as always, our leadership team, faculty, staff, and students continue to take these challenges and stride and bounce back with remarkable resiliency while facing unpredictable circumstances. All that said, we also have some exciting things that are happening on campus. ECSU has been recognized for excellence in several national reports again this year. First, the National Think Tank Third Way ranked ECSU the number one HBCU in the nation for social mobility. Again, let me repeat that, trustees, the number one HBCU in the nation for social mobility. So we are in the business of transforming lives of our students at ECSU. That was followed up by a student loan hero naming ECSU the most affordable four-year HBCU in the country. And again, this month, we were just notified that we received accreditation from the prestigious Aviation Accreditation Board International, also known as ABBE for our BS in Aviation Science. You know, this is so important and critical to us because there are only 40 aviation programs in the world. Let me repeat that, only 40 aviation programs in the world with accreditation from ABBE which requires robust integrity, performance and quality standards in order to become certified. And so I am just so excited about this certification. We are confident this new certification will continue to open doors to new partnerships with employers, which gives our students more opportunities and continues to diversify the aviation industry. I hope that you join me in thanking the faculty and staff, our provost, our dean, Koleed Rawat for all the hard work they did to earn this accreditation. It is a big deal for ECSU to be one of the 40 in the world to have this type of accreditation. So we're excited about what's to come. With the North Carolina General Assembly's adoption of the state budget, ECSU's allocation of $140 million will help us to address some major infrastructure needs and enhance our campus with some much needed capital projects. And you heard BC Goodson talk about that in committee report. We will continue to enhance our student experience, academic programs, expand our training fleet, upgrade our labs and focus on recruiting and retaining our talented faculty and staff. We need to recruit and retain our talented faculty and staff. We will be intentional and strategic as we utilize this funding and other donations to meet the goals of our year two strategic plan. Our enrollment has nearly tripled in a few short years. We're building strong partnerships in Elizabeth City across our state, across the country and beyond. We will continue to focus on growing ECSU and need you to help us recruit outstanding students, both traditional age and adult learners to the university. We need your help, continuous advocacy, support, recruitment of those great students. I know that you all know to come to ECSU, traditional age and adult learners. Earlier this month, ECSU renewed its agreement with the US Coast Guard for the College Student Pre-Commissioning Initiative, also known as CSPY. And I wanna thank our Chair, Chair Johnson for your presence at such an exciting event. She sat on the front row and was just excited about what she was seeing with this partnership and signing of this MOA. CSPY provides a clear pathway for students from ECSU's academic programs into the Coast Guard service. Rear Admiral Laura Dickey and I publicly stated, this MOU is not just words on paper. We will be intentional about this partnership. The MOA is an example of our continued commitment to educating our students and ensuring their readiness for the workforce. Students get real-world experience and the Coast Guard gets talent located right here in our community. A huge thanks to Vice Chancellor Gary Brown and the Military Affairs team for all the work that you all did to bring this to fruition. ECSU also celebrated 131 years, a couple of weeks ago. A special thanks to Deputy Chief of Staff, Gwen Sanders, for organizing an exciting and outstanding in-person Founders Day Convocation. Our campus community heard from an inspiring keynote address delivered by ECSU alumni, Dr. Patricia Johnson. Dr. Johnson is a retired educator and we were so proud to welcome her back home to ECSU during Founders Day weekend. We had another successful Founders Day Gala. We had it virtually, this is the second year we've had it virtually, and we had so many people join us that we raised more than $117,000 for the ECSU Foundation Board's General Scholarship Fund. Thank you to the Foundation Board and a special thanks to Vice Chancellor Anita Walton for leading this effort. And again, thank you to the trustees. 83% giving rate, I know we're gonna get that 100%. And to everyone listening, thank you all for your continued support, your donations, your time and your treasures are definitely important to the university and our students. Trustees, as I always remind our campus community, we have accomplished a lot in a short period of time. However, we must keep the mindset of continuous improvement. We have more work to do, but again, thank you for your continued support of ECSU. We truly appreciate your advisement, your encouragement, your support from the standpoint of advocacy. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Together, we will be successful. The rising tide is lifting the Viking ship. Let's embark and keep selling in the right direction. Thank you, Board of Trustees, for all that you do for ECSU. Thank you, Madam Chair. That concludes my remarks. And thank you, Dr. Dixon. I just wanna say on a special note, thank you for taking us from good to great and requiring that standard of excellence. Your leadership team is phenomenal. They have high skill as well as high will. And I don't think you can get better than having a full leadership team that does the job so well. I continue to represent you as much as possible to the Board of Trustees as many places as possible. And I just want to say that I get to interact with the Chancellor nonstop, whatever issue happens on that campus, she lets me know. So if you all are interested, you can always call me and I can give you an update. But I don't put it out in emails and that kind of thing. So that's how we'll have to continue to communicate with each other. Once again, I wanna reiterate the fact that we are going to 100%, we're moving towards that right this second. It will be wonderful. And I think it's sometimes it's just because we don't remember, we forget, but we are giving board. So we will continue to give. And I wanna welcome that the new Chief of Police, Chief McMasters, I look forward to meeting him. And I just wanted to say thank you for a job well done. And thank you for hanging in there with all of us. We will not have closed session because we've already been in closed session. So it's not necessary. And I want to know if any of you have any announcements before we adjourn. No one? We got a little time. We didn't have time this morning, but we. So no announcements. I do wanna share that I was with Mrs. Walton last night when we received that, that check. And we're excited about that because it was regional. The regional department of the AKAs I gave Norfolk State, Elizabeth City, and was at Hampton University, $15,000 check and piece. And we are very, very appreciative of that. I like to, if there are no announcements, I like to close with the thought when you talk about people, when you actually talk about people and feeling needed and feeling like they are valued or they're not value. There's a story that I know most of you have heard before. It talks about that bottle of water. If you go to Costco, a bottle of water will cost maybe 25 cents. But if you go to that same bottle of water in the supermarket, it will cost 50 cents. And that same bottle in a bar will cost about $2. And a good restaurant or hotel can be worth up to $3. And at an airport or on the airplane, you may be charged $5. The bottle in the brand is the same. The only thing is that change is the place. So each place gives a different value to the same product. When you feel like you're worth nothing and everybody around you belittles you, change places and do not stay in the same place. Have courage to change places and go to a place where you are given the values you deserve. Surround yourself with people who really appreciate your worth and don't settle for less. You need to stand firm and know that you are appreciated. So you are valued in this circle. Thank you. We would have, can we have a motion to adjourn? Motion to Trustee Tillard, motion to adjourn. Second. Wake up, John. I was coming. Trustee John is, well, now I'm not gonna, since Johnny said, no, second. Trustee Don, second. Thank you. We'll adjourn and we will meet again. Our next meeting will be June 14th. Thank you again for your attention. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.