 Good morning to everyone. Good morning Chancellor and staff and all of our trustees as we start our September 14 meeting. I'd like to call on committee chair Stephanie Johnson, Dr. Johnson, to move forward with committee on academic excellence and strategic growth. You're on mute. Trustee Johnson, please on mute. Thank you. I'd like to call the committee to order for the committee on academic excellence and strategic growth. And as the chair of the committee on academic excellence and strategic growth, I want to remind everyone that we will be conducting today's meeting pursuant to the amendments to the open meeting 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 law, all checks, 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. May we have the roll call, please? Yes. Good morning. Committee on academic excellence and strategic growth, Trustee Stephanie Johnson, Trustee Billis Bosemore, President, Trustee James Copeland, President, Trustee Steve Briedrich, Trustee Tiffin Jones, and Trustee Justin Waddell. President. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Sanders, and now we will turn this over to the Provost for her PowerPoint. Thank you so much. Trustee Johnson, if we have the lead, we'll need to do the approval of the minutes. Can we have a move to approve the minutes? I move. Well, we do need to have someone that's within the committee to make the motion and the second, please. This is Billis Bosemore. I make a motion to accept the minutes. Thank you. I'll second. James Copeland. Thank you, and we will need to do a roll call for the approval of the minutes within the committee. I can conduct that. All right. A roll call for the approval of the minutes. Trustee Johnson. Yes. Trustee Bosenworth made the motion. Trustee Copeland offered the second. Trustee Jones. Approved. And Trustee Waddell. Yes. Thank you, Trustee Johnson. Thank you. And now we will move to the Provost who will give her presentation for the academic excellence and strategic growth plan. Thank you, Trustee Johnson. So, of course, I start each BLT presentation off with our most important item, which is our road to reaffirmation 2021 timeline. So it's getting closer to our final decision. We had one item that was due, our response to our on-site. As you recall, we had no issues with any of our standards. The only thing we had to respond to were three recommendations dealing with our quality enhancement plan. We did, in fact, address those items and sent that response in on August 18th. And so we are awaiting our final decision from SAC CLC, which should come at its meeting on December the 7th. In terms of faculty, we continue to work with our faculty and get online training in alignment with our strategic plan, 1.3, to invest in faculty development. So we have partnered, once again, with Accu, the Association of College and University Educators. In particular, during this partnership, we are focusing on our online teaching. And so we have 33 faculty that will be participating in two specific micro-credentials. One is on promoting active learning in online courses, and the other is on designing student-centered courses, both really focused on the online learning environment. I would like to happily report that we have been accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation Program. Some of you may recall that two years back, we were accredited for our undergraduate programs. At that time, since the teacher education accrediting body was transitioning from then in CAPE to now being governed by CAPE, they were not actually done with their advanced degrees. And so we had a slight delay while they developed the standards. But we did, in fact, go through the accreditation process, and we received advanced level accreditation for our Master of School Administration and our Master of Elementary Education. And we received both of these accreditations with no recommendations. Our focus on teacher cadet, of course, in our strategic plan, our objective 1.6 is really to collaborate with our K through 12 schools and then think about how we increase the actual pipeline for teacher education. And so one of the things that we focus on this year is creating a teacher cadet program. Some of you may remember it kind of referred to back in the day as Future Teachers of America, a similar program where we partner with our local high schools to try to really recruit those students while they're in high school and encourage them to come to ECSU and to major in teacher education. And so we are partnering with the North Carolina Foundation for Public School Children through the National Education Association for Greater Public Schools. And we did receive a grant from them and had our first summer training this summer. We continue to focus on COVID-19 mitigation. Of course, last year we did receive a one million dollar grant from the North Carolina Collaboratory to do testing. We tested in all 21 county service area that ECSU serves. We've received additional funds, $280,000 this year from again the North Carolina Collaboratory to really sequence the COVID-19. So we're still doing testing right now statewide and that'll be for the next six months. We are also seeking an additional $1 million from a specific foundation to do some actual vaccine development, I mean, non-development disbursement through the local 21 counties. And so we are waiting to see if we have received those additional funds. And that will really be outreach taking our mobile lab out into the community to do vaccinations. Of course, enrollment is extremely important. And so I'll talk a little bit more in future slides about kind of where our enrollment aligns to our strategic plan. But this year we did see slight growth in our overall enrollment with 2054 students. Of course, last year we had 2002 students overseeing our strategic plan goal. Kind of wish driving the enrollment continues to be transfer students. Of course, our continuing students, meaning students who have been enrolled in the previous semester are the make up the majority, but our transfer numbers still remain strong. And so this year we had 196 transfer students. Another population that we've seen increase enrollment is our stopout students. So those students who were previously enrolled, but have taken at least one semester away from the university, you can see back in fall 2016, our numbers were extremely high. At that time there was an initiative by the UNC system called Parkway Home, where they really had additional funds and resources to try to get those students in. And in addition, fall 2017 was actually when we rolled out our first ever online degree program in interdisciplinary studies. And so we really did a lot of heavy recruiting and really captured a lot of students who had stopped out at that time. And fall 19, you can see that kind of slip. And then fall 2020, it slipped again. And so we have made a concerted effort to reengage those students who again have taken at least a one semester break. And so we did see an increase this fall of those students. Our freshman retention rates have dropped about 2 percentage points this year to 73.4. And one thing that I will note is that last year, fall 2020, which reflected the fall 19 cohort, during the pandemic in spring 2020, we actually, of course, had the past fail as well as basically eliminated academic standing. And so some of those students, we do know that would have been suspended if they would have had academic standing or may have not been successful because if we didn't have the past failed grace, they were able to come back in during the fall 2020 semester, which I think actually contributes to such a large increase of our retention rate from fall 18 cohort to fall 19 cohort. But again, we're still remaining steady and we are going to regain focus on our freshmen. And you'll see where this aligns to our strategic plan in a later slide. And then lastly dealing with enrollment, you know, this really is the biggest driver of how we've been able to increase enrollment over the last several years. And this has been the fall to fall persistence rates, which really indicates all students who are enrolled in the fall semester. As long as they don't go graduate, all of those students who are eligible to come back the next fall. So all the students who are enrolled in fall 20, and we're eligible to come back in fall 2021. And so we would have been able to retain 70% of those students. As you can see in 2015, we were only being able to retain about 50% of those students. So you can see how that has really increased over the last several years and continues to be a main focus. It's good to recruit students. And of course, we want to do this. But if you can't retain them, and then of course, ultimately graduate them, then you really have lost focus on what the mission of the university is. A little switching over to, excuse me, admissions, our fall admissions schedule. We have a full schedule for the fall. You know, last year was definitely a different year. We did not go into any schools at all over the last recruitment cycle. In fact, September 3rd, when we were down East Classic, we actually went to three high schools. That was the first time we had actually been in a high school in over 18 months. And so this cycle, I think will look a lot different than the last recruitment cycle. We do have September 3rd. Here are two pictures from when we were at down East and Rocky Mount recruiting in the high schools. Our open house, we have switched the date. So it's now going to be October the 30th. Right now we are planning a face to face open house. Again, last year, all the open houses were virtual. So this will be a change from last year. And schools are allowing us to visit face to face, of course, making sure that we abide by all COVID-19 protocols, but we are going face to face. We have recruiters actually on the road right now. And then we are also participating still in some virtual college fairs, but there are now some face to face college fairs. So we believe that this will improve our overall recruitment cycle now that we are able to engage in some more face to face visits. Switching our attention to the strategic plan, I'll go over what our focus will be during the 21-22 academic year for our two strategic plan goals, goal one, academic excellence as well as goal three, sustainable growth. In terms of objective 1.1, which again is our ultimate focus to implement real world experiences into the curriculum. This year, our focus is on making sure that we have consistency with our internships across all majors. The vast majority of majors actually have some form of internship tied either a course or some have a requirement. And there really is very little consistency, how many credits with the requirements of the students. And so we really have a team that's going to be looking into to try to standardize that as we continue to push forward for internships and integrating real life and applied research into the curriculum. 1.2 is our continued focus on improving academic environment centered on student success. We will refine our academic advising model for our first year students. We've done some realignment. We actually have a new office, the Office of Student Success and Retention. And the advisors for the first year students are housed in there, that actual unit. We have moved them to the newly renovated more hall have hired a coordinator of tutoring services to oversee our tutoring. So again, that's one. And then the second one is I'm again tied to student affairs, which is to implement living learning communities. And we for academic affairs side are working on three of those living learning communities, aviation science science, our honors program and then a federally funded grant from the National Science Foundation, which is called co bands, which is really building a community of biology and math students. So biology and math majors are in that learning, living learning community. In terms of 1.3, which is to expand our academic offerings to align with the community demand. We are going to finish up our second year of our market analysis, which is the preparation for us to determine what new academic programs or certificates we will have. And so we have acquired some software that's going to help us complete that project. Once that project is completed, then you will see the rollout of new academic programs and certificate programs. And then secondly, align to this objective is to redesign our general education curriculum, which of course is a requirement by our accrediting agency, but we really want to refine it and align it to the workforce needs, as opposed to it just being viewed by some students as just a checklist that they check off in order to complete their undergraduate curriculum. Objective 1.5 focuses on our signature program aviation science. And so this year we will be establishing a specific collaboration and one additional specific industry cluster, as well as our for our UAS, which of course is our kind of new measure into the aviation field, which is unmanned aircraft systems or drones, or we're going to identify one specific area of focus. Some of the things that are being viewed right now are insurance agriculture, of course, is a key one in North East and North Carolina, and then law enforcement and transportation. So we'll choose one of those to really focus on and build partnerships this academic year. And then lastly, in terms of academic excellence is 1.6, which again, as I alluded to earlier, deals with our collaboration with the regional K through 12 local education agencies. And so the specific subject that they will focus on this year is to evaluate the recruiting practices for education majors, and then develop new and innovative ways to attract students into our education program. I'm proud to say that over the last two years, we have grown our enrollment in elementary education, the undergrad program by 29% and the graduate program by 44%. Some of you may remember that just three years ago, our graduate program literally only had three students enrolled, and now we have 52 students enrolled in that elementary education graduate program. And so we will continue to focus on both of those programs. And then lastly, I'll talk a little bit about our kind of goals for our strategic plan 3.1, which deals with identifying strategic opportunities for sustainable growth. I added some slides in here now some graphs so you can kind of see where our trajectory is taking us, and then how we are aligned until where we want to be at the end of the strategic plan. So our goal is by 2024 to have 2300 students. You can see this year's goal was to have 1,981 students. And so we came in at 2054. Again, continuing to grow next year, our goal is to have 2088 students enrolled as we continue to march towards 2300. In terms of retention, you can see the line, our baseline year was when our retention was 70.6%. We had a huge increase that I discussed earlier. And then this year, we came in at 73.4. Again, this year, our goal was 73.6. So we are two tenths of a percent below our strategic plan goal. Next year, our goal is to increase our retention rate to 75%. And we've already begun working on that freshman cohort to make sure that we aren't on a path to actually reach that 75% mark. 3.2, which is again, maximizing persistence and retention and graduation rates. We look at two specific graduation rates in the strategic plan. First is the six year graduation rate. You can see that we actually dropped. And so we have three percentage points down from our graduation rate right now. We have focused on the 2016, 17, and 18 cohorts of students to see what we need to do in order to ensure that we're able to increase the six year graduation rates next year. And so that is where our focus is right now. And then I don't have the specific marks yet from the system office for five year graduation rates. Again, the five year graduation that we measure in the strategic plan is a special five year graduation rate, because it aligns with the UNC system strategic plan. And in that strategic plan, when they count the five year graduation rate, they actually count students who initially attended ECSU, but transferred to another university and ultimately graduate. And so since it's in our UNC system strategic plan, we have put it in our strategic plan as well. But we have not received the data from the system office to say where we have landed for this year. And then lastly, I just wanted to add, although we do not monitor the four year graduation rates in our strategic plan is not one of our metrics that we chose. It is a metric that we continue to monitor because it really is one that's looked at a lot externally. And so I put this graph because I think it's quite telling. And for our 2008 cohort, we were only graduating 14.9% of the students, which is extremely low. This year, we have graduated 29.2% of the students for four year graduation rate. You can see since 2008, we have never graduated this many students in four years. And so we will continue to focus on improving our four year graduation rates as well. Chair Johnson, that is my final report. Thank you, Dr. Dr. Ward. That was an outstanding presentation. We do have time to interact to share to ask questions, to share ideas. I just wanted to start by saying that I think it's so important to have that online training, because as you all should realize, even with having children in school that the promotion of that active learning environment is really important at every level, at college level, at high school level at middle school level at elementary level. And I just think that I will on point for that online training. Also, the big takeaway for me is that as the words, no recommendations in the Cape accreditation, that is a big, that's a joy for a university to have no recommendations. Most people that go to Cape do not come away with no recommendations. And to think that they've gone through their view. We have gone through the advanced level of accreditation. And it's just powerful for me. I learned something about enrollment. I had never heard of stopout taking a semester off. I know people take a semester off, but it's actually called stopout. And we just have a dire need right now for elementary teachers, and for people with the Master's Degree should be surprised that so many people are turning away from becoming teachers now and we're going to we need teachers. So I just think that that's a wonderful explanation with the data of how things are working and why things are working and going from one number to another. And I love that you always show why the drop, why what happened that we didn't go in schools. And that's why numbers may have not been up in a certain area. But I just think it was a very impressive presentation. And I'd like to open the floor for questions at this time, or, or suggestions. Everybody on reaching in at one time or speak at once. Just one question. Oh, I'm sorry. I saw a hand went up. I don't need to jump in front of you, trustee Colton. You want to go first? No, go ahead. Go ahead. I had a quick question. I saw the change in the retention rates is quite significant over time and in those four year graduation rate. So I was just curious, maybe as a new member to the board, if you had to identify just one or two things that you think over time or the reason why are most significant to those changes, I would just be curious to see and then if there's anything that you all have been thinking about that haven't been able to execute that you think will be critical to kind of moving the needle on those just wanted to get some more of your thinking, but that's very impressive and a lot that the university should be proud of. In turn, you normally see those types of jumps in that short period of time. Thank you, trustee Jones, you know, since I've been here for 14 years, I really will say that, you know, we see the end result, but it's really years before when the changes were made. And so one of the things I would say is really our focus really on student success. You know, there was not a lot of monitoring of these cohorts and, you know, what gets measured gets done. And so that was one of the things I will also say we use a system, a system you may be familiar with that we branded an internally for you, which allows us to monitor students progress, progress, individuals can put notes in to see if they visited someone's office. And so our real focus on advising. And then many years, even years before the UNC system mandated, we actually went to 120 credits before. In 2016, we were at 124 to 128. And it may seem like a slight maneuver, but going to 120 credits really enabled us to really focus on that 15 and finish, take 15 credits each semester. And then we really restructured our academic curriculums. Every academic program has a mandatory non free electives. And that really helps students because we know students change majors and we want them to retain those credits when they actually change major. And I think just those kind of little things going to 120 and then putting those nine free electives have really enabled students to retain those credits. So those would be two things that I would identify. Yeah, I just want to echo what chair Johnson said and and trustee Jones. I mean, this is just an impressive report. And so, you know, I've been on a lot of boards and I've seen a lot of numbers and the job that Chancellor Dixon and you, Provost, would have done in your team is just remarkable. This type of turnaround in this length of time, with a pandemic in the middle of it, no less, I think is just is just fabulous. I mean, I also do applaud you for noting that there may be idiosyncrasies and anomalies in the data with the pandemic that may actually be the case as well coming out of the pandemic. And I would just suggest we not overreact to that and to a process it because, you know, who knows how that might affect student retention. I mean, sometimes student retention is going to be affected by economic conditions in both directions. And so we may see some anomalies, but you know, you folks are to be applauded for just a just a fabulous job in a short period of time and really changing the trajectory of this university. Thank you, Trustee Pellett. Anyone else? We still have a few minutes. Yeah, Madam Chair, this is Kim Brown. Yes, I think I don't know if Dr. Ward has this or Dr. Gary Brown has this, but I know one of the one of the challenges sometimes with retention rate, thinking back on Trustee Jones's question, is the percentage of young people that are employed while they're going to the university. And at an HBCU that's usually an exceptionally high number. I don't know if we track that with our student body, but a lot of times retention rate gap is directly correlated to other responsibilities, especially employment. Well, Trustee Brown, I'll just say you took the words right out of my mouth because I was just getting ready to make a comment about that because, you know, though we have to report four year and six year graduation rates, you're exactly right. I mean, the emphasis looking at the population of students we serve, the six year graduation rate is more accurate, you know, as far as our students having jobs and other responsibilities. And so, you know, though we've seen a jump in our four year is really the six year that we speak about mostly because we know that that relates very closely to the population of students we serve. But Provost, do you want to add anything to that? Because I know you always make that distinction and we try to draw people to that six year rate more so than four. Yeah, we don't track, and I don't think we do, I'll let of course Gary chime in, but I will say one of the focuses that Gary and I, BC Brown and I have focused on is really trying to get our students of course internships and things to expose them to the job, but it's also a financial thing too. If we can get our students to, you know, go into jobs during the summer that are related to what careers they want to actually involve them once they graduate. Well, they can get paid and most of these internships were working on a lot of partnerships right now, BC Brown and myself. You know, they, these companies are paying pretty well and so if we're able to again work with them before they get in, work on even financial literacy, which we know is a component, then we're hopeful that eventually it will actually taper down. The other thing I would say we're doing is we're really redesigning our financial aid for our work study. We've used work study, probably not in the best way in times past. You know, sometimes students were putting things in envelopes and we understand that that's a necessity, but we are now really trying to match the students work study with their experience. I think VC McClendon is going to have a accounting work study student this upcoming academic year and we're really trying to push them across the university because we know they are on campus and they work on campus. Again, that will help ultimately increase the retention rate. Any other questions? Any other comments? Well, if we don't have any other comments, I would like just like to share that the most impressive thing that you said was that we never want to lose sight of what the mission of the university is and that is to graduate these students also. I would like to know if there is a motion forward to close the committee on academic excellence and strategic growth at this time? So moved. Second. Is anyone with a second? Okay. Thank you. So it's been moving probably second that we've brought the committee on academic excellence and strategic growth meeting to a close. Thank you and we're turning it back over to the chair. Thank you very much, Chair Johnson. So I think what is that? Chair Robinson, please excuse us. We have a motion and a second but I do need to vote out with roll call for the adjourn adjournment of this meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Trustee Johnson. President. Yes. Trustee Bosenworth. Yes. Trustee Copeland made the motion. Trustee Jones. Yes. And Trustee Waddell offer the second. Thank you. You are now adjourned. And Chair Robinson we have about 10 minutes before the beginning of our next committee. That's right. Thank you. I have a question for you a procedural question. In our full board meeting we are able to say if without objection we adjourned but not so with our committee meetings. Is that correct? But you can do both. We can do both? Yeah. Okay so then we don't have to do roll call. I think that that will be good so we don't have to do roll call at the end of each committee meeting. Great. Thank you. All right we get to play for nine minutes y'all. You can refresh your cup of coffee or bottle of water. Yeah that's right. That's right. Ready to roll. All right we'd like to call on chair Kim Brown for the committee on student excellence. Sir you have the floor. Good morning to everyone. It's my honor to call to order. The committee meeting on student excellence. As the 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 apply during states of emergencies. 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 vote to be a roll call which we will do today. Additionally pursuant to the amendments to the law 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 staffs to please identify yourself before participating in deliberations including making motions proposing amendments and raising points of order. All right with that said I would ask Ms. Gwynn to please um lead us in the roll call. Committee on Student Excellence trustee Kim Brown. Present. Trustee Phyllis Bosz award. Present. Trustee James Copeland. Present. Trustee Chris Evans. Present. Trustee Tiffany Jones. Present. Trustee Johnny Tillett. Present. Everyone is in attendance sir. Outstanding. At this time the chair will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the June 8th 2021 committee meeting. So moved. Trustee Tillett. Is there a second? Phyllis Bosz award. Second. Thank you. Ms. Gwynn if you'd be so kind as to call the roll now that we have a motion on it. Roll call for the approval of the minutes. Trustee Brown. Yes. Trustee Bosz and Worth offer the second. Trustee Copeland. Yes. Trustee Evans. Trustee Evans. Yes. Trustee Jones. Yes. Thank you and Trustee Tillett offer the motion. The minutes are approved. Thank you. Outstanding. We will be sensitive to time. We have three great presentations for you coming. First of all from Dr. Gary Brown, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs. He will give us updates that are directly correlated to our strategic plan initiatives. Then Mr. George Bright our Athletic Director is going to explain to us how we're going to score more points. I mean I'm sorry he's going to give the report from the Athletic Department and then finally our illustrious President Mr. Jimmy Chambers will communicate initiatives and goals from SGA. So good morning. Thank you very much. Chairman Brown and some members of the Board of Trustees. Thank you so much for the opportunity to provide an update from the Division of Student Affairs this morning for the Committee on Student Excellence. As a part of this presentation we'll focus you on all of the activity that has been occurring since our last meeting with you all at the end of the spring semester 2021. We'll talk a little bit about our new hires of the summer. What happened over the summer in terms of our staffing and preparedness for opening the fall. We'll give you an update related to our reopening process where we are with health and wellness. Our fall programming described to you some special initiatives that you need to be aware of. Our resource development and then an overview of our 2020-2025 strategic plan goals. We were very busy this summer as you can see by this slide. We welcomed several new staff members to Elizabeth City State University and to the Division of Student Affairs. We're very excited about all of the growth and movement. We're able to attract very top talent from other places who chose to come here to ECSU to make a difference in the lives of our students. Our Career Development Center which is also focused on meeting the goals as outlined in the Quality Enhancement Plan is now fully staffed. Our Counseling Services has expanded to provide additional counseling support and resources for our students. We have reshaped the role for Mrs. Felicia Brown who formally just carried the responsibility for student accessibility and testing services. Her focus is now a lot more broad related to diversity, equity, and inclusion while she still continues to carry some responsibility related to supporting our students who have documented disabilities, housing, and residence life for the first time since I've been here is now fully staffed. Every single position that we have available within the housing and residence life has been filled which is optimal because we also have the highest number of students living in housing this year than we have had over in recent memory. You can see there we have a new staff member in the Office of Title 9 who we are really excited about. Former Ms. ECSU, recent alumnus of the institution, Student Health has expanded its focus as well with Mr. Dwayne Saunders actually assuming the permanent role now as Director of Campus Recreation and Wellness. He's doing an excellent job and then we recently also hired Ms. Brandy Bragg to be the Community Program Manager for Empower NENC which I will share with you the focus of that work here very soon. Throughout the summer we facilitated a summer professional development series for the staff within the Division of Student Affairs and also extended the opportunity for a number of our partners across the campus. It was an eight-week professional development series really focused on giving the staff the tools that they need to ensure that they can meet the diversity of needs that exists amongst our student body. We talked about leading and possibility and we trained them up on how to support our students who identify as a part of the LGBTQ plus population. We gave mental health first aid training focused them around customer service and then also talked specifically about how we meshed the individual department of goals with institutional goals and helped to kind of ensure that we were all moving in the right direction. So I'm very excited to see the outcome of all of this intentional training that we did with our staff this summer and over the next two weeks we'll actually focus heavily even more so on some cultural competency aspects of the work to ensure that our staff are still on or maintaining on the cutting edge in terms of the support for our students. In terms of fall reopening you know health and wellness has been a central focus for us over the last several years because of the fact that we are right in the midst of a pandemic there is a heavy push towards vaccination. We are tracking this number every single day and have rolled out several incentive programs that to our students as well as to our staff related to encouraging them to become vaccinated. We required reentry testing of all of our residential students on the way in to the institution this year and as of yesterday we have implemented mandated weekly testing of all individuals who have not produced a vaccination card. We are moving steadily towards the goal we have a goal in mind in terms of how many individuals we would like to be vaccinated and we're seeing great progress to be quite honest I think we're moving in a very very positive direction you all can check out our COVID reporting numbers COVID cases on the Viking Compass website but our numbers are low comparably to our peers within the UNC system. Our housing capacity this year we're actually at 90 percent occupancy which is really amazing when you think about the fact that a number of institutions are struggling to kind of fill their residence halls but we have 944 residents within our residence halls and we actually have launched four five living learning communities for this year and assisted assisted which is a women's mentoring program champion scholars which is a male mentoring program first flight and aviation our co-bam's program which the provost mentioned earlier and then the honors living learning community all of these living learning communities are housed within bias hall which we reopened this year it's a very exciting time within our university and our housing system our fall programming is off to a great start decided to just give you kind of a display of some of the great things that are happening on our campus we started off this year with a week of welcome it was very vibrant well attended by a number of students we had an awesome new student induction and period pinning ceremony I believe trustee time was able to be there he can testify to how good of an event that was we sponsored a bus to take our students to the downies Viking football classic and hosted a great tailgate for them there's an open house today for the career development center all of our campus recreation facilities actually open on yesterday but we have a number of group fitness and intramural activities for them and students are heavily involved there's a totally different field on campus this year than it was last year to be quite honest we are getting back to normal and we're excited about that but we are still facilitating a number of our programs in a hybrid format there's some that are face to face some that we're offering virtually and we are steadily watching what it is is happening related to COVID-19 and trying to place our students in the very best position as is possible from a special initiatives perspective I wanted to share a little bit more of a deep dive on what Empower N-E-N-C is Empower Northeastern North Carolina for for for breadth of title this we are part of the my future N-C educational collaborative we applied to be a part of this program with a focus on supporting local education to increase the number of students who successfully complete degrees and credentials and certifications this ties into not just our local school systems but also kind of local community members as well this initiative was launched by the NC Impact Initiative at the UNC School of Government we were awarded $33,000 to be a part of this program to be used in this capacity work and we are moving right along Brandi Bragg was identified as I mentioned on a previous slide and we have a number of community partners that have begun to work with us on this initiative and we're excited about what the outcomes will potentially be in terms of how it will impact our region because we recognize that Elizabeth City State University is a is a true partner in the region of northeastern North Carolina we also have great news to share with you all back in the month of March we applied to be a part we submitted an application to the U.S. Department of Education related to the Educational Opportunity Center program that they offer and we actually were awarded this this expands the number of TRIO programs that we have on our campus and this particular program focuses on providing support to participants on the college admission process including financial aid and support services and the number of the ultimate goal is really to increase the number of adult participants in post-secondary educational institutions this award is a yearly award it has lofty goals we're supposed to touch 850 participants in a year and we are actually working through the process now with the human resources office in terms of creation of the positions that will help to staff this particular area we are going to be hiring a director program coordinator and a program assistant to help us to meet this goal and this particular program ties in to the previous initiative that we just talked about a few moments ago related to Empowered ENC and along with that we are always trying to kind of make connections and so we pursued an opportunity with the Lumina adult learner initiative we have applied to be a part of the program for two years of capacity building work to support our adult learners it has a focus in terms of this particular program on policy and practice to and for an increased opportunity for adult learners success and we have three goals that were submitted for us if they've selected which we believe we will be all sides point that way is to assess our effectiveness in serving adult learners to develop a credit for life and work experience policy and then also to explore the feasibility of relaunching an evening and weekend program here at ECSU when we are selected we will be one of five HBCUs in North Carolina to be a part of this particular program and so we're very excited about this as a provost was kind of going through our presentation and talking about enrollment trends one of the other enrollment trends that we have seen at the institution is an increase in the number of adult learners who are becoming a part of our institution just from last year to this year we grew about 15 percent and so we know that that is a specific focus that an area that we want to to continue to expand and this work will help us in terms of ensuring that we are able to support those adult learners as they make decisions to come and pursue their education here at ECSU I want to speak to you a little bit about proposal development sharing with you now some of the proposals that were submitted and that were still outstanding as of our last report with you I've already spoken to you about the U.S. Department of Education and the proposal we submitted for educational opportunity center so we were awarded that we received another $1,000 another $1,000 grant from Campus Compact which focuses on community engagement the Empower NENC opportunity which we asked for $25,000 we actually were awarded $33,000 to assist with some additional resources we have a pending response from Lumina which we believe will be communicated to us on October the 4th and then we're also a part of this the National HBCU's Alumni Association Foundation for voter engagement and so since March there were about $512,000 dollars worth of proposals that were outstanding we've heard back on having received about $275,000 since March and all those funds have actually been received since June 1st and so we're really excited about the work that we're doing there'll be some additional proposals we'll be putting out here very soon that will help us to expand our levels of support to other student populations as well and finally I wanted to share with you the goals that we will be reporting on as we move forward over this year for from the Division of Student Affairs our specific goal within the 2020 to 2025 strategic plan is goal two which is to create transformative experiences for our students that support academic outcomes and build Viking spirit and so we will be working diligently this year as we're about to kind of go into the tuition and fees process to propose appropriate funding mechanisms and student fees that will enhance the student experience and prioritize student services this particular objective ties to 2.33 as we have heard from a number of students a desire for there to be some increased transportation offerings for our campus and so we've begun to kind of do some of the work some of the legwork necessary to ensure that we might be able to propose some sort of fee increase that would help to provide those transportation supports as well as additional supports for our students 2.16 is the implementation of a leadership and professional development training program for emerging student leaders 2.32 is developing a program to orient our students to the Elizabeth City community and that would be facilitated during orientation and then 2.61 which I think really ties into some of the things that have already been discussed this morning by my colleague Provost Ward and will certainly require us to work together is the development of a descriptor and definition of ECSU culture that makes it unique and attractive to prospective and current students as the name of the game for us is to increase enrollment to increase graduation rates and for us as an institution to continue to do the great work that we do by providing education to the citizens of the state of North Carolina and to make an impact in this particular region of the state. So I thank you all very much for your time just a heads up homecoming is on the way we will be reunited if you all have seen the video then you heard the Chancellor even sing a line or two of that song and so we're excited about homecoming 2021 all of the great things that are being planned certainly we will be following COVID protocols as we move forward but if your schedule is allowed we'd love for you to join us on the campus here during homecoming at this point that's all that I have to share with you this morning and I'll take time for any questions any questions for Dr. Brown yes I have a comment Chair Brown just been connecting dots and thought this might be informative for the trustees that the Lumina Foundation was one of the founding partners for my future NC and I believe it was Margaret Spellings who helped make that connection but it's really very encouraging to see the different entities partnerships that are coming together to encourage and support economic mobility through our HBCU so I just just wanted to connect those dots I sent you all an article last night about that and I found that very informative as I'm trying to track and remain encouraged about all that's being done and that we're an integral part of that so thank you very much Dr. Brown as always Dr. Brown very very informative so thank you so much for your professionalism as well our Chair just reminded me that Margaret Spellings sends her love to everyone at the University I was able to speak to her last week she was excited about what she sees happening at the University all right I think we're ready for A.D. right now I have a question yes ma'am I just want to this is Spellings by Zemore I wanted to thank V.C. Brown for all the work he's doing this is a great report I did have a question about what what is your goal for vaccination of the city she said you had a goal but you didn't mention it I was just wondering what that is so we are hopeful you know we certainly we have some peers in the systems who have seemed to set the bar high in terms of the number of individuals that they say have have submitted their vaccination records you know we I think internally if we could get to around 80% I think we will be doing an outstanding job and we are we're well on our way towards that and I think one of the things that we need to to recognize is we as an institution made a strategic decision not to do attestations but to actually have people submit their physical vaccination record right I think the difference between the two is that you know an attestation is basically you're just attesting that you took it no one kind of verifying the information and so we we wanted to ensure that for our campus we could know without a shadow of a doubt that we did have individuals who were doing that so thank you that's a that's a great goal appreciate what you're doing one one quick question this is trustee Copeland first of all just I agree completely with with chair Robinson that the luminal program is exciting all this adult learning stuff is I just think essential for northeastern north Carolina and I just had a question vice chancellor on you said that the ECSU was one of five HBCUs in the program in the state and I just wondered are the other four the other UNC system schools or is it a public private mix it's just just for my interest well you know trustee we actually have not heard who the other institutions would be and they haven't heard that that we will probably will likely be a partner of theirs either and so you know we are people of faith and so we believe in faith that we've we've kind of sealed the deal on this already and so we don't know quite yet as to who the others are I do believe it will probably be a mix though just based on the conversations that I've had with Lumina they were looking strategically across the state recognizing that there was a high number of HBCUs within the state of north Carolina and that our numbers in terms of adult learners across the state were trending a little bit higher than they were in other places and so what we put forward over these next two years you know once confirmed will be a model I believe that people will be able to pick up and hold on to which I think is really exciting for institution like Elizabeth City State University that has such a long history of tremendous work for us to be a model in this particular area they speak highly of of the institution and the impact that we actually make all right if there are no other questions it looks like she has a question just one one quick question just appreciated the presentation and super excited about all of the opportunities coming up and making a connection to the previous conversation I think the adult learner strategy could have a positive impact on all the efforts to increase retention and completion rates as that's a segment of the higher population that typically does a little bit better and so that's great I'm excited I think one question I had was from a development kind of perspective and focus on students you have mentioned some additional fees that might lead to some additional services and supports for students I was curious how you all might be thinking about the it's all still potential obviously we have to see what Congress is going to do but there's a lot of dollars on the table that so far we'll just see how the budget reconciliation process will go but a lot of set aside for for HBC youth as well as if the college affordability you know plan goes through in terms of dollars to help cover tuition at HBC is for two years and so I was just curious to see if you all had done any thinking about ways those dollars if they come through could be but leverage for some of the student success work that you had in mind so yeah just was curious if you all have been having conversations about that and how that might contribute to some of the things that you have in the works or hope to do so I think there's some broad conversations that we have had related to kind of what what potential exists if we were to garner additional resources certainly I think as we have kind of worked through this process of pursuing this opportunity with Loma that has has kind of focused us even more intently in terms of like are there services that could be expanded in a way to be more adult learner friendly are there ways in which our kind of modes of instruction might shift in some way are there technological things that are there lessons that we've learned through COVID-19 that you know if we could could we invest more resources to kind of push our capacity forward so I'll say yes absolutely but certainly we are in a place where we are kind of continuing to have those conversations and looking at what's happening in other places where they might be doing some really great work already Christy Johns I'll just add that the adult learner pipeline is one that we have to pay attention to and I say that because when you're looking at enrollment and enrollment projections we can no longer focus on recent high school graduates we've seen the numbers remain stagnant over the years and within our state and beyond and then now they're predicting a decline in 2022 so we know that we have to focus on and get the ball rolling with transfer students military students adult learners those are going to be the main pipelines that's going to help us with our growth so I'm happy that BC Brown and Provost you know we're jumping on this ahead of the game because we want to be in position to make sure that we're making some strategic and intentional moves in regards to how we make our appeal to those populations that's great thank you so much any other questions before we go to A.D. Brighton I don't have a question but I do want to share that I'm just excited about the TRIO Education Opportunity Center that you would talk about a lot Dr. Brown and it's just phenomenal that you all are working in these areas and I want to thank you personally for making sure that these these opportunities are taking place for our students all right A.D. Brighton you're on sir thank you sir and good morning again Chancellor Dixon trustee brown and the distinguished members of committee on student excellence and all in attendance of course I'm George Brighton and I'm blessed to serve as your director of athletics and I thank you for the opportunity today to present to you on behalf of the Department of Athletics Overview today will consist of a welcome of our new Viking Head Coaches our strategic plan updates our spring 21 athletic academic honors of course our winter sports schedules and some updates there I'll talk a little bit about our return to action and our educational series continues on athletic booster responsibilities I'd like to welcome to Elizabeth City of course Elizabeth City State University and welcome the Viking Nation two new head coaches our cross-country men's women's cross-country head coaches Hashim Staten he is an ECSU alum of course and great here for us he's returning to take over as the men's of women's cross-country head coach Coach Staten was a member of the Vikings cross-country team as a student athlete who's a four-year captain and a four-year MVP Coach Staten became an all CWA runner in 2017 and had a 14th place finished at the championship of that at that time he is a has a degree in graphic design he comes to us after a successful Staten as head coach of Pascotan County High School Coach Staten is excited about the opportunity to to transform the men's and women's cross-country program into a consistently competitive program and again we have Mark Cole Mark Cole is no stranger to student athlete and student athlete development he comes to ECSU with the wealth of collegiate coaching experience he is the former head coach from Coddy College's golf program he led that charge in the recruitment of competitive student athletes the designing and implementation of indoor training areas and fundraising and assisted admissions at that time he's also the head coach at North Carolina Wesley and he transformed their golf program into a nationally competitive program through very aggressive recruiting efforts and while at Wesley and he was a part of the advancement department that raised a significant dollars for athletics and student life so we're excited to have both of those those coaches here again Coach Cole has received at Wesleyan the golf program received the highest national ranking moving from 258 to number nine in the country he comes he comes to us with a bachelor's degree in special education and a master's in general education both from Mills Verrill University and he received his level three instructional certification from the U.S. Golf Teaching Federation welcome to Coach Cole Eddie Bright can I interrupt just a moment yes sir how has the closing of the golf course affected their practice routine well a great question and thank you we have partnered of course with the Park Recreation Department of Elizabeth City so what what that means is that we have the opportunity to use the Knob's Creek course it's a small part three courts we also use the driving range it's out at South Park and we've also partnered with a continuation in partnership I should say with the the album all plantations call the sound so there our team practice and compete there as well so it has affected us because it does reduce one place for us but I'm optimistic with the new purchase of that site and hopefully we'll be able to partner with the new owners moving forward it has affected us in terms of that but it hasn't slowed us down thank you strategic plan wise you're welcome strategic plan wise just looking at our department initiatives with 2.5 to 2.53 and 2.57 of course we had some COVID delays that affected us for these particular three goals we are moving forward again with our social media engagement under 2.52 just making sure that we're increasing the exposure of all of our athletic teams through student activities and events we've had as VC Brown has talked about partnering with our student affairs folks with the Down East Classic I think that that went very well and we had a great turnout like Dr. Brown talked about we also are looking to develop our that facility improvement for a Robux stadium in the Von Center so these strategic initiatives are ongoing the Pacific City State University announced its academic honors for athletes for the spring of 2021 and that particular academic term the awards included highest team GPA and academic honors for the semester with other cumulative GPAs we had 81 student athletes receive scholar athlete status for their hard work and dedication in the classroom student athletes must have a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or better to receive these academic honors the Viking volleyball team earned the highest GPA award consecutive years with a combined GPA of 3.34 they really work hard on and off the court so being recognized for this achievement in the classroom is really appreciated by them we had the spring blue team was the largest academic honors group with 33 students earning between the 3.75 and 4.0 so congratulations to our student athletes and thank you all including just a word to Provost Ward to our faculty for helping ensure their academic success really excited about the return of action for men's men's and women's basketball teams of course you recall that the seasons were canceled last year a few highlights on the men's schedule of course our exhibition at North Carolina State on November 1st and our exhibition at UNC Chapel Hill on November 5th the we have also been selected to participate in the P.S.A.C.C.I.A. Challenge LB and Cookstown PA but of course the C.I.W.A. Conference schedule and the C.I.W.A. Conference tournament schedule will be in Baltimore on the women's side a few highlights on the women's schedule are we've again been selected to participate in the C.I.W.A.S.I.A.C. Tip-off Challenge in Albany, Georgia that'll be against Albany State and Clark Atlanta the something new for us is the 252 Down East women's basketball invitation also being Rocky Mount at the event center on November 27th so trying to bring again more attention to the Rocky Mount the 252 area and of course the C.I.W.A. Conference schedule the C.I.W.A. Conference tournament will be in Baltimore more to come in terms of the information and their schedules I want to take a moment to inform you and discuss a little bit the return to action plan this is this simplifies what it looks like so schools with a vaccine mandate of course there's a declaration of status prior to the season that has to occur they would be distributed conference-wide to athletic directors and internally to sports medicine staff for tracking those are with the vaccine mandate some of our schools in the C.I.W.A. have vaccine mandates and some don't we currently do not schools without a vaccine mandate we will test to the end as the NSA requires and provide attestation requirements to those that to those schools that are coming to those schools that are also participating this is on a game by game basis and we do our testing twice a week for our student athletes currently each C.I.W.A. contest again we'll have an exchange of that attestation form and then there's following expectations of the conference to support that initiatives this also includes our officials as well so we're moving and returning back to our return to action we do exchange attestation forms athletic directors medical professionals signing off on that for each particular contest and of course we're trying to keep this as safe as we possibly can for our student athletes and finally our educational series and try to do for each of our board meetings just bring some information to you regarding what what can and what can't happen just to provide some data for you so in this case we're talking about what is an extra benefit you can see the information here but an extra benefit is any special arrangement to a prospect an enrolled student athlete their relatives or friends that is not expressly authorized by the by any NCA regulations so then the question becomes what are boosters how do we define boosters the NCA has specific bylaws that determine who qualifies as a booster if you follow in some fall in some of these groups if you're a Viking Varsity Club member in Viking Investor Program auxiliary sports hall of fame any of those or if you've donated money or product if you're involved in recruiting prospects or providing benefits like jobs things like that you are then a booster you can see these other things here you're an employee of our department of course if you purchase season tickets again that defines your level of being a booster what can a booster do a booster can have contact with a prospect only if they have a established family or friends relationship with that person that person or that individual a booster can choose to attend a prospect's athletic competition but you cannot have contact with the prospect can you go to the game yes can you say I can get you on a team absolutely not okay all right so make sure that those definitions are clear with you you can speak to a prospect by telephone but only if the prospect initiates the call and it's not for recruiting athletic recruiting purposes you may have incidental contact as long as no athletic recruitment occurs and you may provide some employment but those employment rates need to be similar to local rates almost identical what can a booster not do a booster cannot have any in-person recruiting contact with the prospect or the prospect's parent guardians or relatives on or off campus at any site you cannot do that cannot have an in-person recruiting contact and of course you can see the other elements listed below please do not provide any payment or expense of the loan of the automobile for student-athlete and please do not employ the use of name or picture or enroll student-athlete to directly advertise or promote sales of a commercial product or service so again in our educational series Trustee Brown I just wanted to make sure that we're on point with what we do for each of the weeks questions at this time I'd just like to thank you for the clarity of the booster so if you buy it so you're saying if you purchase a a season pass then all those things apply to you that you just talked about but if you don't purchase a season pass you automatically become a booster once you reserve it you purchase a season pass right that is correct yes okay if you have a booster and not just buying the season pass but you become a booster if you are a member of certain clubs if you participate or have given to an athletic initiative or entity this yes you then become a booster so and again this educational series Trustee Johnson is just to be informative and as always I just want to make sure that if you do have a question it's best to ask myself or Jacob Mullins is on the screen before you act and in any case that's the smartest way to to move forward we just want to stay in a culture of compliance as much as we possibly can I know we're not going to be perfect but it's our goal just to educate continually so we can make sure we're making if we're going to make mistakes they're they're not maximum thank you for the education I would suggest that all of us on the screen consider ourselves boosters yes I don't want to limit it to you know just season ticketed if you're on the screen you're a booster and and and one of the things that ad bright has helped me to understand is and it really helped me with enough with with my university simply because social media can really blur these lines when you see a kid saying I'm doing my my athletic visit to the university and then you communicate something via social media that can be very easily misinterpreted or across that line so I've just learned now I consider myself a booster in always shaping forms so that way it keeps it in the forefront of my mind so I think we've got to always think through the lens of being a booster thank you thank you trustee brown that concludes my report thank you sir all right trustee Jimmy Chambers and one of the things I'll say as he prepares to come that's so interesting and exciting for me is not only do we have student representation sitting on the board but he has literally authority on the board and he's the chair of a committee which you know is is quite unusual so we're grateful for his leadership as well as he comes Mr. Chairman you you kind of jumped see I mean you guys are giving these these rookies enough chance to respond real quick but again this trustee tell it and this is back to the AD I just wanted to follow up with the AD and and let him know and folks from this on our board to know that for as trustee tell I'm very passionate about the athletics I will be kind of bird dog in that as well and I just wanted to know there's several things I want to know about and hope we can talk offline Mr. AD if that's possible but I know we look after to our meetings later today but I just think it's a lot of stuff going on that we can help I think I can help with and looking forward to it and working with the chancellor as well just want to put that out there last week welcome looking forward to it yep and I guess just so AD Bright so you're aware last week trustee tell it and I had a conversation about him becoming more active on the committee in relationship to athletics and I have not talked to our chair yet so I don't want to be out of order with that but at the other at one of the other universities we have a trustee that is basically a board liaison to athletics it doesn't break that out as a separate committee but it gives it a little bit more intentionality and trustee telling and I have talked about him being the representative from the committee that would serve in that capacity directly with athletics so just wanted you to know we have talked about that and I'm fully on board I think he will definitely be an asset to give some give you some some support in being able to bridge the community gap and do some other things that he's got great ideas about so I look forward to seeing his leadership become a part of helping us to go to another level athletically as well all right president chambers all right so good morning everyone like trustee brown was saying my name is jimmy chambers I serve as a student body president once again here out of the city state university so some of the goals of SGA is making sure that we are amplifying the student voice and what does that look like so we're going to have town hall meetings that give students the opportunities to voice their opinions we're going to create surveys to collect the data and come up with strategic ways to address those issues activism we want to make sure that we're providing civic engagement opportunities to our students inclusion and improving the collegiate experience so that's amplifying the black and pride creating initiatives that's going to ultimately enrich the student experience as well so some of the initiatives that we have so far is I want to advocate for better relationships with the community businesses here in elizabeth city improve campus safety increase civic and community enhancement stigma-free ECSU that is something that is a mental health initiative that SGA is working on to implement working on challenges that the campus community are facing at the time as well as UNC ASG initiatives which ASG stands for the association of student government within the UNC system I wanted to give you all a UNC ASG report so some of the things that we do at ASG as we meet Friday evenings and Saturday mornings right now we are doing a virtual and ASG comprised of all the 17 institutions that makes up the UNC system so we talked about the one-year extension for the waiver of SAT and ACT requirements and that's because since COVID started approximately about 22,000 students have been unable to take the test because of COVID we also talked about the $5 million from the governor's emergency education relief fund and that's going to continue to fund protocols for COVID such as 24-hour mental health hotline as well as building a referral network system and exploring how to increase capacities for institutions who do not have enough psychiatric providers on their campuses when it comes to the campus security fee update our ASG president told us that he's trying to make sure that they're getting crisis intervention training for all campus police officers and increased accountability and to start a student advisory board as well and when it comes to the mental health first aid training they want to make sure that faculty, campus police officers and number of students are trained and they're looking to provide a MHFA training to students, faculty, and staff over the next year or so I talk about the enhancement of student life so for the down east classic SGA and CAB were able to partnership and basically pay for a bus to down east for students and we also provided them t-shirts as well we have in this other picture we have was an issue that we talked about over the summer with Chancellor Dixon where we were able to reach out to the links of Elizabeth City where they provided female hygiene products so that we can place in our residential buildings we also have the Epsilon Conlander chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha who will be doing the same thing but providing the male hygiene toiletries for us so I'll be able to give you that at the next meeting when we talk about civic engagement on August 25th we had Sherry Beazley who's running for senate came on campus and talked to a group of students on two important topics which are college affordability and voting rights just sitting in that hearing how students felt on these two critical topics where you know it was great just everyone had their space to speak openly and freely on those two topics and their voices were able to be heard another civic engagement opportunity that we will be doing is we will be hosting the candidates for Paso Tain County Sheriff on September 30th here on campus in the really student center in room 216 at 6pm I think this is important that if we try to get our students involved at an early age of understanding civic engagement it will ultimately carry on once they leave the university and I have time for any questions any questions for president chambers if not if it's okay I have one I'm sorry I'm sorry um yes just want to say thank you for a great presentation and it sounds like like you all are up to some really great work and so my question is just more centered on how the board can help and in particular you mentioned town halls you mentioned you know focusing on activism so I'm just curious to hear more and if there are any places in particular where you know you it makes sense for to receive some additional support for myself for our other members of the board to help support students if you all would like to come in and listen to a town hall I do not mind seeing you all the zoom link when we do have those if you want to just hear what are some things that the students feel it's another way for you to you know first hand here what are students facing if you want to ask questions as well we can do that as well if you want to meet with our students in it which comprises of three individuals of each class council freshman sophomore juniors and seniors if you would like to do that as well I can try to hook that up for you all if that's something that you all are interested in thank you you all love to receive information on the the town halls as it's appropriate to to have us in those spaces so appreciate that invitation yes ma'am any other questions for trustee chambers if not I think we've been informed that if there's no concerns we can adjourn all right thank you very much chair brown we are in time for our next meeting and just want to thank our trustee student trustee jimmy chambers just like all the other trustees whenever called upon he agrees to serve so we thank you sir for today convening the committee on operational excellence it is your floor chair all right I would like to call meeting to order for a committee of operational excellence as chair of the committee of operational essence I want to remind everyone that will be conducting today's meeting pursuant to the amendments to the open meetings at that applied during state over the emergencies 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 those via roll call which we will do today additionally pursuant to the amendments to the law all chats instant messages texts or written communication between members of the board regarding the transaction of public business during the remote meetings are deemed public record finally I will ask all board members and participating staff to please identify yourself before participating into deliberations including making motions proposing amendments and raising points of order orders Ms. Glenn can we now take roll call sure the committee on operational excellence trustee jimmy chambers present trustee Chris Evans trustee Chris Evans I do see her here trustee James Copeland present trustee Johnny Tillett present and trustee Justin Waddell present thank you you do have a quorum okay can someone please make a motion to approve the minutes from June 8th so trustee tell us so moved and can someone please second that please trustee cope one second all right thank you thank you I'll do the roll call vote for the minutes trustee chambers yes trustee Evans trustee Copeland offered the second trustee Tillett offered them offered the motion and trustee Waddell yes thank you the minutes are approved all right thank you so we will have three presentations today the infrastructure update coming from vc Goodson the information technology update coming from mr Eric and the communications and marketing update coming from vc Dr Derek Wilkins and vc Goodson the floor is now yours thank you sir I'm hoping everyone could see my screen yes so uh when transportation came on board there were two major facilities issues that um she immediately had to confront one was uh leaky building our roofs um were creating some water infiltration inside of the buildings but then also we had aspect systems that were um inadequate one uh central plant that was not strong enough to support all the buildings that was that are on its loop and then two are independent chillers that support buildings that are not on central plant those chillers needed to be upgraded controls need to be upgraded and in some cases the chillers needed to be replaced I'll start with the roofing issues we received Dorian funds 5.2 million dollars to replace many of the roofs on our campus we have as a state entity we have to go through what they call a state construction office who approves the architectural and engineering designs for any work on campus we have received approval from that office and we have started construction on our roofs we've completed phase one we've compete completed construction for university tower that roof at least the lower roof has been completed crews are now currently working on Viking Village which is one of our largest storms they're moving ahead of schedule so that's very good news and they're replacing that roof with the shingle roof and then if you were to drop around campus and see the Thorpe building you would see scaffolding on what we like to call the south side of the building I will note that my colleagues on the south side of the building are certainly hearing the drilling and the other construction work and they are they are real troopers through this process but what we are intending to do is is to replace some of the flashing around the building which is behind the brick and then rebrick the building back up that will stop some of the work infiltration issues that that building is receiving phase two we would then jump to the stem building which needs exterior wall repairs MacLennan Griffin ITC the Vaughan Center trig and then Dixon Hall so those will begin very soon thereafter we did not put all our edge in the basket with respect to one vendor doing all the work we separated this out using multiple vendors so that we could one get the work done we wouldn't overload one vendor we could sort of spread the will but also we found good quality roofers and building overload repairs to do the work so these projects are moving moving along quite nicely I mentioned to you one of the other major issues that we experienced was our HVAC systems I can tell you that when I took over facilities we had HVAC systems that were we actually had three different HVAC systems on build on our buildings maintained by three different vendors which is just quite frankly not how we should be doing business now what we've been able to do is select one vendor which is a national vendor that many institutions use which is train train is going to be the single vendor on our campus that manages all of our HVAC needs they have a ton of technicians and they are extremely responsive whenever we need them they actually do all the work for Hampton University and a number of universities in the Tidewater area one of the things that we had to implement immediately was our new control system the way that we would lower temperatures and buildings because our old control systems was end of life and the support would be by turning a little knob and by turning this knob it would either increase the cold water or decrease the cold water but we couldn't set it to a particular temperature so it was really you know sort of a guessing game in terms of how cold we would put a building and how warm we would put it but now we've implemented at least the hardware into all of these buildings our HVAC controls and you can see on the left in this picture this is actually a picture of fine arts you can see the different temperatures for each particular space and the good thing about this system is it will actually allow us to one deploy it out to academic affairs for example since they control this building and they will be able to set the temperature with parameters but we'll be able to set the temperature in these spaces as they see fit they won't have to reach out to facilities to do that it's something that they'll be able to do on their own same thing for athletics and our auxiliary services so we intend once the software updates are completed we intend to deploy this to particular individuals on campus so that they can set their own temperature within each building so this is a major upgrade for us moving from just turning a knob to now with more specific sophistication online it will also allow us to be more proactive so this system will tell us when things need to be fixed or when something is broken so instead of us waiting on a call from someone sitting inside of the thorn building that the air is warm because there's some particular breakdown in the system once the software has been put in and updated it will tell us or send alerts to us to be able to sort of get out there faster or even replace particular parts within the system because they are end of life so we are very excited about this technology it's one that we certainly needed and once the software upgrades are completed we will be more moved from a firefighter mentality which is what I call my team to more proactive preventative maintenance mentality so very excited about these upgrades two particular system upgrades which is chiller upgrades university towers right now is on a temporary chiller we are working with train to order a permanent chiller to come in and replace that particular chiller that's there the design has been approved by state construction office and we are waiting the chiller to arrive and to be installed in university towers same thing for Williams Hall Jenkins science and university suites we've recently received state construction office approval and we are waiting for the parts to arrive during COVID there have been long lead times in terms of technology in these parts I think everybody is experiencing that so you know we've been getting sort of delays with respect to our initial timelines but we're working with our manufacturers to sort of get that technology here in a faster way one specific project that we've been working on is our UAS facility as I mentioned to you we have to go through state construction for approval for any engineering electrical plumbing work that happens here on campus we've received four out of five of those approvals and I've been told that the fifth approval should come any day now but what that means is we'll be able to move directly to construction and we're anticipating based on the state construction timeline that will begin construction in October next month here's a picture of the vendor that we are using and some of the work that they've done at other institutions you can see that they are standing up the facility using metal poles and the netting around it now we won't have it in the middle of what appears to be a parking lot ours will be simulated more so with a grass foundation which is I believe what Dr. O'Waie specifically requested to mimic real-time sort of use for the drones in this facility this facility will sit as many of you know it will sit in your K.E. White Center right in front of our water tower and then we'll also have a converted building which will serve as sort of a classroom space so that the faculty and students can meet in that space prior to being able to go out and fly their drone so we're excited about this we believe that this will provide some tremendous upside to the academic affairs department and we're excited about launching this very soon one of the key things that we've been that's in our strategic plan that falls under facilities is our master plan and I'll talk a little bit about our process because our process is what we really need your approval for today so we went through a bid process we put out an RFP to select vendors there were approximately about five vendors that we whittled down to in terms of selection and we received presentations on I'll tell you that I appreciate Trustee Copeland because he's stuck with us for I believe five hours on a Monday which is probably the last thing that he wanted to do but he heard presentations from five vendors I was very impressed and I'll let Trustee Copeland say his piece but I was very impressed with the expertise of the vendors that applied they've done work some in North Carolina all over at other UNC system schools but many of them did work nationally for large universities and Trustee Copeland I don't know if you have some comments to provide on the process and the quality in terms of presentations that we received that day Yes, thank you G.C. Goodison it was a eye-opening experience I learned a lot and I was extremely impressed by the quality of the vendors that were bidding on this opportunity and I thought all five were outstanding firms and I thought four of the five were exceptionally well equipped to handle the scope of this work and so it was really more a question of the fit for the university as it came down to me and who would give us the best attention and the best service but I really appreciate all that you did and all your team did and facilitating that and I think we're going to have a good working relationship whenever the designers actually approve I'm not sure if that's today or... At least today That's right So each committee member had a set of criteria that they used to to vote on sort of one through five their top candidates and we all landed at at least for the number one candidate we all landed based on the tally of the committee votes at Victor Vines' group which I will share they do work for other UNC system schools to include Central and ANT they've been longstanding well over 20 years at both of these institutions helping them develop their institution from a building standpoint architecturally to a campus master plan standpoint they were also instrumental in millennial campus designations and P3 partnerships which currently North Carolina Central has has seen the benefit of now but they have quite a bit of experience in terms of space in terms of expertise in the UNC system and working through state construction and working with our institutions in terms of vision and mission so that's our top that's our top candidate and that is the candidate for which we need your approval for today again we went through the appropriate bit process so we can check that box one of the formal things that we have to do now is get the board of trustees or this committee rather get their approval to sign off on the Vines' group so Mr. Chair I will open it up for a vote on the approval of our designer for our campus master plan yes sir Ms. Gwen I'm going to allow you to take over so we can repeat the rules for our so there we do need a motion from a member of the committee to approve the designer for the campus master plan so moved since I was involved in the process thank you Trustee Copeland okay and we need a second so I could tell it thank you so we have a motion and a second I will now conduct the roll call vote of the committee trustee chambers yes okay trustee Evans yes trustee Copeland offered the motion trustee Tillett offered the second trustee Waddell yes thank you thank you has offered approval for the designer and we'll take that to the full board thank you Gwen the chancellor will provide some additional updates in terms of facilities that have been renovated and reopened reopened during her presentation I'm certainly willing to entertain any questions anyone may have related to facilities in our progress for the same thank you for your time just a comment just a comment I want to thank trustee Copeland and also BC Goodson for putting such time into trying to look at these vendors to help us with our master plan is long overdue so thank you both for the work that you put in and identifying this candidate and this is trustee Tillett I just want to echo that what chancellor just said but I just want to say for Mr. Goodson I really appreciate appreciate you and give me my information again trying to get the speed what's going on it looks like state's been a very challenging but you've been right on spot and I just want to thank you for that and get me prepared thank you sir appreciate your support okay I'm sorry I have seen another comment well I was going to just mention two trustee chambers that we can now move to the next update I believe that Mr. Zergami is on our interim chief information officer thank you please go ahead yeah I was going to say go ahead Mr. I'm going to blame you for not being you know my last name is a is a project so thank you chair chair chambers good morning everyone I'm Eric Zergami interim chief information officer here at ECSU I will provide a brief informational updates for the division of information technology we have completed the third party cyber maturity assessment and submitted the risk review board charter to the system office pursuant to the board of governors policy 1400 in one which is focusing on the IT governance by the direction of ECSU chancellor the IT risk review board will provide key reviews associated with governance risk tolerance risk acceptance and compliance the risk review board will authorize process and criteria by which ECSU shall demonstrate that it is operating in accordance with ECSU and UNC policies now the memberships of the IT risk review board will consist of the following the chief information officer the deputy chief information officer information security officer wise chancellor and chief of staff wise chancellor of operation and general counsel and wise chancellor for business and finance the chair of chambers that concludes my update thank you all right thank you Mr. Zaragami now we will have DC Garrett Wilkins with his update good morning everyone thank you chair chambers just a brief update from communications and marketing first we hope that you have been enjoying reading the news article that we have been sharing with you we try to give you a real time update of the great things that are happening at ECSU so if you are not receiving them please let us know so that we can make certain that you get to hear all the wonderful news that we are sharing we also invite you we encourage you to please follow us on social media like post repost retweet all those things as you see our good news to share it with your network we're getting good traction across social media and as the chancellor has shared with the group marketing budget is not as robust as some of our competitors however we can do great things as you all have experienced with the power of social media and you all have dynamic networks so please begin to allow our stores to live in your networks just three announcements and we will send some information out to you as we get closer to these dates with some marketing opportunities with the university on this Saturday WTKR out of North Virginia that's news three I believe they will be conducting live remote broadcasts from the listed city regional airport this Saturday and they will be featuring our aviation program for Dr. Cole Deeper Watt Brenna Daniels and some of our students will be on their broadcast and they will be doing some uh the remotes will be scheduled to air at 6.15 6.45 7.15 and 7.45 I know you're looking for a reason to get out early Saturday morning this is your reason to catch us on the WTKR and North Saturday morning another one is Chancellor Dixon it's going to be featured on ABC 11 and again we will share this with you when we get closer to the date but ABC 11 out of Raleigh I came to ECSU to do an episode for their series on our America the HBCU experience so ECSU will be featured on ABC 11 and this is coming up near the end of September and again we will push this out to you I suppose to be September 28th at 5.30 but we will share this good news and Chancellor Dixon and some of our students had a wonderful day of interviewing with DeWon Hawke-Hogard from ABC 11 and the final one is going to be PBS North Carolina in partnership with UNC system and the Board of Governors historically minority serving institutions committee they are doing a series on the innovators the transformative power of North Carolina's HBCUs and American Indian universities once this gets ready for airing we will share that with you so again great things are happening you have seen our stories that we have shared with you continue to follow us on social media and you will be excited about the great things that that we are doing at ECSU thank you Mr. Chair thank you VC Wilkins are there any questions for him would that being standard I think we can say we standard adjourned thank you very much trustee appreciate you all righty we're going to move now to our committee on finance audit and university advancement and we call on committee chair Andy Culpeper chair Culpeper you have the floor thank you madam chairman I had to get my mic working anyway call the meeting to order and as chair of the committee on finance audit and university advancement as other chairman have done I want to remind everyone that we'll 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 a life of public bodies to meet by electronic means the law does require however that we take all votes for our roll call which we will do today additionally pursuant to the amendments to the law I'll chat and send messages, texts or other written communications between members of the board regarding the transaction of the public business during the remote meetings or deemed a public record finally I'll ask all committee members, board members and participating staff please identify yourselves before participating in deliberations including making motions proposing amendments and raising points of order Ms. Gwynne would you call the roll yes the committee on finance audit and university advancement trustee Andy Kopepper here trustee Kim Brown here trustee Chris Evans here trustee Steve Friedrich here and trustee Paul Tye here you may proceed everyone is in attendance everyone's in attendance good is there a motion by a committee member to approve the minutes of the last meeting held on June the 8th I believe this is Kim Brown that's a move is there a second I will second Chris Evans okay Ms. Gwynne can you call the roll for we will do a roll call for approval of the minutes trustee Kopepper yes trustee Brown offered the motion trustee Evans offered the second trustee Friedrich yes and trustee Todd yes thank you the minutes are approved thank you this morning the meeting will be divided into three parts with Ms. and Clinic giving us the financial review Ms. Walton review on advancement and Ms. Parker the review of the audit and what the audit committee is doing so if nobody objects I'm going to turn it over to Vice Chancellor McClendon for the financial review good morning Board of Trustees yes we still in the one time I would like to give an update on business and finance we will start out we actually the first item will be an action item this morning and is the approval of our fiscal year 22 general fund base budget so this is just a general fund it does not include all funds we actually have to get our budget approved before the by the Board of Trustees because of SAC's requirement let me start out saying the proposed budget is $39,000 $39 million.7 million this year it is an increase of $286,000 approximately from the previous year's budget yes we do not have a fiscal year 2022 budget this year because of there is no budget as of right now the detail is broken the details is breaking down is including your materials but let me just give you an overview of what the 39.7 is 72% of that budget is personnel which is salaries and benefits the remaining percentage is operational budget so if you can take a break but most of our state fund general fund budget is really personnel and then really of that academic affairs makes up 72% of the personnel the next one is facilities which makes about 15% so if you kind of give a perspective overview of the budget and then IT only has 5% yes we have some things that we need to shift around and grow and as we continue to grow our budget should increase over the years one of the things we're hopeful for this year is recurring funds of enrollment growth that will help us increase our $39 million budget because it will be recurring this budget last year when we compared to last year's budget our total state fund budget ended up being $44 million but that included just one time funds so we only have to approve our approval of our base budget so before I go on with that thing I think we need to get approval for our approval fiscal year 22 general fund budget of $39.7 million so we need a motion to approve this general fund budget from a member of the committee I'm sorry I didn't hear you I would say this is Steve I'll move it okay is there a second yeah I'm going to second trustee Cole Pepper but I want to share with the board it's going to be hard for us to keep pace with the technology budget that was just shared I mean everything that I'm studying right now for organizations is talking about the percentage of technology in relationship to the budget and that is an extremely low percentage so I just wanted to you know as I second the motion remind us some kind of way we got to fix that because we will not be able to compete with less than 5% of our budget being technology we just won't be able to compete that is correct and you know just UNC I mean ECSU has been flat and the UNC system has been the advocate of increasing ECSU funding because if we buy has been a promise school you know part of our $39 million $35 is state of appropriations there five the additional four million plus is actually receipts but buy has been a promise school we are flat meaning you know it's $500 for students and then we get a buy down for the state of appropriations we haven't been allowed to increase our base rate of tuition rate so we have remained flat since 2018 and the only way to increase our receipts we have two options we increase our receipts which will be our you know tuition and fee base increase which the state will give us the funding or the state needs to give us a recurring funding and if they doesn't this is pretty much going to be the standard for us with a section of their enrollment growth so then we have to shift our focus to making sure we meet our enrollment roles though so we can actually get that recurring funding based on the the head count increase yeah numbers that I've been hearing just just so the board is aware foundational numbers I've been hearing is at least 10 percent of operations budget you know being technology driven and that's that's still a low number but I second the motion any other questions or comments Ms McClendon if the state finally approves a budget is there provision for us to go back and adjust this budget well yes if if our budget base budget increase for the fiscal year we will actually I will probably be coming back for a modified approval budget just so we can have that for sex accreditation if they ever need it because our budget will change so right now we have to get approved based on what we are in since this fiscal year 22 has started okay bottom line Lisa is that this is the maximum budget that we can approve correct that's correct as of right now as of right now so in some ways this is a little bit moot but I do take you know Bishop Brown's comments on board because I do think we're a little bit light on some areas and the challenge for us right now going forward is how do we increase this budget and we're going to have to look to non-state funds as the feeling that I'm getting as we continue to go through this so that's going to be a big piece of what we talk about in the future with endowments and other things and how we do fundraising great any other comments I have one one of the major issues though if I just want to make sure that I'm correct on this is that we have not been given the funds for our growth and the recurring funds that would naturally have occurred if we weren't in NC products and and I don't because that's the gap month we haven't received the gap money for growth in in funds for two years is that right we're not on a recurring basis so like when you have one time funding all you can use it on this one time needs it can never be personnel calls or pretty much a maintenance agreement like with our IT you know that technology is recurring so we can't use it really maintenance agreements things that we need to do to shift it usually is one time institutional needs that we need to support all right thanks any other questions or comments then I'll ask when to call the row this is the approval of the fiscal year 22 general fund budget trustee call pepper yes trustee brown offered the second trustee evans yes trustee redrick offered the motion and trustee time yes thank you but now we'll just give you a recap of how we ended at fiscal year 21 so if you notice our base budget has stayed the same this is what I was talking about it was 39 million dollars but if you look our total budget increased to 44 that was because we got a lot of additional funds from COVID related as well as we did get enrollment growth but it was really one time funding and then we did get our North Carolina promise funding for two years in the rears because of course we didn't have a budget so one year we didn't actually fiscal year 20 we didn't get any promise money for the buy down of our tuition for charging that rate so with that we actually ended our total expenses as well as revenues at 43 percent why you say why we at 90 not 100 percent well the 0.4 percent is what we actually carried for this year we was able to carry for additional almost approximately 1.7 million dollars really only one million of that is R&R money because that was what the General Assembly allowed the additional was summer school because of course summer school cross fiscal years and you know faculty is not paid until July June and July so we have to cover that cost but we was able to carry forth some funds for R&R which will help Alan's group this year because as we said a facilities budget is only 10 percent and that's still kind of small because the first thing you see when you come to campus is grounds so you know given that additional money which helped him this year for their budget and also that is a requirement but I did hear that it may be lifted this year so it could be used for R&R or operations because in the past you could each campus can use their carry for for anything but this year we can only use it for R&R needs just to give you an update of where we ended at fiscal year 21 auxiliary and trust funds and as you were saying this is also where we need to boost up to help our other needs because state appropriations have been flat based on my experience I will say for the last five, six years we really haven't seen major increases without the exception of enrollment growth for different things like that so universities do have to find other screens avenues whether it's invest in endowments get endowment money doing some making sure we're profit anywhere we can meet that need so when we started our unrestricted balance was only 2.7 million dollars we ended with 13.4 million dollars why is this significant this is very significant because that is where the university can do whatever they want with this unrestricted money and plus unrestricted money can go a long way and we still gotta you know I'm glad we had 13.4 million dollars because I think when we got here in 2020 when I got here in 2020 was in the one millions but for us to be at 13.4 shows we're moving in the right direction plus you know one of our goals is to actually increase our Moody's rating because right now we're BAA and we really should be at A3 based on our size with our peers but of course what's driving that is our unrestricted resources as well as our endowment portfolio so we have to find ways to increase it but of course the reasons that our fund balance increased McKenzie's Scott gift we had a reduction of housing debt service due to a bond refinancing we also had you know reduced general fund operating expenses due to COVID I can tell you auxillars really did a great job this year in the last year managing their you know just managing their budget really really well and then of course we also had the cares and the health reimbursements which I think this year all we have received a total of 29 million dollars in federal funds which is great because what our focus is being rebuilding auxillaries helping out and that's pretty much what the system office wants us to do because they want us to keep the costs affordable so we have really been trying to instead of increasing fees we have really been using the cares and health reimbursements to loss revenue as well as supplement payroll or different things like that oh I went back sorry hit too quick but I do want to give you something that's coming I just want to put it on your radar because this year the board of governors have issued all campus funds budget so right now we have really been focused on general funds but now it's a board of governors mandate about an all funds budget we are actually starting the process of working on it is due to the board of governors in May of 2022 so I will be coming back to this board of governors for approval of the all funds budget in March of 2022 but we was actually ahead of their curve because we was already working on our three-year budget for fiscal year 23 and 25 so this is where you know we had three major goals out our major goal and I think I shared this with the new trustees coming on that out we have three major goals our goals is recurrent revenues equal recurrent expenses that's on state fund of course on trust funds we want to make a profit because higher education I know they hate to say it but it's like a business we got to be able to make money we want to expand our academic support as program project enrollment grows academic affairs took a lot of cut positions in faculty when over the years and we have to build that back as well as enrollment growth as well as IIT support as well as facility so we do have to make some strategic moves to make sure we get it what's going to help to get us there is the recurrent funds it is in the senate budget I believe and I'm not for sure if it's in the house but it is looking good that we maybe get recurrent enrollment growth what does that mean for us we would get one plus million dollars annually and recurrent starting with fiscal year 23 and that will be great because by fiscal year 24 and 25 we can truly now start funding our strategic plans initiatives that's in our strategic plan as well as additional one-time needs that come up because of the university so this is just something I wanted to put on your radar because it is coming and as we know budgeting is a great tool and you need it to be financial sustainable long term we have to be able to plan for the future and that is my goal as the vice chancellor for business and finance and then one more thing I did want to mention is tuition fee guys will be coming out this week with the board of governors they have pretty much said is flat for in-state non-resident tuition again so if you notice that's three years flat of no increases for tuition for in-state non-resid- I mean in-state students so that's just one thing to let y'all know that has been already decided and with that do anybody have any questions yeah vice chancellor I have a question for you the outstanding debt that we have the housing issues and other things from a bond standpoint what's our average interest rate that we're carrying currently oh it's really high it's actually because they went up before I got here the previous CFO refinanced the board I mean the bonds for the housing and some old auxiliary debt it's in the threes so if you look at the rates now a lot of schools are getting tubes and if you look at our financial statements our previous year you will see we had a loss on refunding which you really don't want to have a loss on refunding but I see why he made that move because of cash flow restraints and then it pushed out the bond debt for principal payments until 24 fiscal year but when you look at the interest rate it is it's not the best deal we if we would have waited one more year we probably would have got a better deal and then on top of that you know we our foundation ECSU blended unit actually just closed on the USDA loan for 19.7 million dollars which was a great interest rate but it is a 35 year loan and it was to refinance Viking Village as which is owned by the foundation and then also it was to they did the like 10 million to complete bias home so we actually have some significant debt and this year you will see it in our financial statements we went up almost 20 20 million dollars because of that but we are stuck with this debt for at least a couple of years because of course you know due to covenants you can't really refinance until after the call period so that's where that was my question so the call periods three to four years out yeah and then if you know unless we can get a big donor and I'm praying for it and hoping for we got McKinsey Scott out of the middle of nowhere but I'm hoping for a 20 million to pay off that foundation debt because that's 35 years on buildings that will be 50 plus years old yeah that's yeah as we discussed the last time I was there okay and what when your outlook for an upgrade in terms of the rating when do you think that would be achievable well if you ask me I wanted to have it make sure but we did just get reaffirmed my same rating which was great because actually universities many universities was declined or downgraded because of the pandemic so the pandemic actually hurt a lot of universities but if you look at our numbers we improved and I think that you know this we have a great senior team and our chancellor we was really wanted to make sure we was good stewards over our resources and we have been managing then we haven't been doing anything lavishly I can say you know athletics I don't know if I think we probably I would say we probably were one of the only few schools that had a not a deficit in our athletics supply funds this year which is great they actually had a little bit of money to carry over so I think that that just speaks to the senior administration team but in the next two to three years I will hope for upgrade just because if we partner with Anita Walton her advancement and fundraising she is pulling in the dollars but we do have to drive our endowment because that's what talking with Patrick unrestricted resources and our endowment is pulling us down and if we can pull that up it can offset that debt that's on our financial savings you're talking with Anita Walton right now yes VC Walton oh sorry wrong Walton's family so that's fine okay it'd be nice to talk to the one you're talking about can you introduce us yes that'll be great let's take this offline but trustees I just want to make a comment and Lisa hit on this but this is so significant that I have to just reiterate the fact that this team at ECSU is a strong team and when I tell you we have done what we've been able to do through this pandemic without furloughs without layoffs you know it's phenomenal and this is something that you all and we all are very proud of and so just getting that story out there you know is very much strategic and intentional and as VC McClinton said we were not lavish in our spending we were very strategic and if anything looked at ways to cut back and look at ways to reevaluate how we were doing things and taking in a different direction so I'm extremely proud of the team that I serve with because they too took it very seriously to make sure that our employees our staff were not harmed in any way by loss of jobs and other things that could have actually happened during the pandemic so please thank them as I do all the time and you know we are in a great place and thank you VC McClinton for your leadership I would like to echo that as well Chancellor Tix and I've been very impressed with VC McClinton and the conversations I've had since joining the board and I really appreciate the outlook and the focus on the for lack of a better term the profit and loss statement of the university because that's what's going to drive us and have an ability for us to grow in the future so thank you Ms. Walton are you ready sir thank you let's see if I can hopefully everyone can see my screen good morning everyone this morning I'll give you an update on university advancement I'll talk about four areas where we ended for FY 21 our FY 22 fundraising goal and metric metrics our strategic plan priorities and introduce you to a couple of our new foundation board members for FY 21 you can see here a side-by-side comparison where we ended at 1.78 for FY 21 and I'll share with you a little bit of data about you know how we achieved our goal and the breakdown of that of those dollars I just shared so for FY 21-22 you'll see here where we have we've got more donors than FY 20 however just a slight increase two things I want to point out to you as we look at this slide the first is the number that you see at the bottom where it is noted that we had 1,653 soft credit donors that is not something that we have been tracking what that means is couples that give people who give through donor advice funds or matching gifts those things were not being counted another example is when an organization might give one check for you know 90 people 10 people if we have that donor contact information and we know which portion of the contribution was given then we can count those as soft credit donors I wanted to be fairly pure in the numbers for a year-over-year comparison so our actual number of soft credit donors when you consider all of those was 1653 as we move to have your year-over-year comparison for that I will replace the number the other thing that I want to point out is we as we dive into our data analytics we have a donor retention problem of the donors last year in the year before approximately 450 of them were first-time donors and those first-time donors from FY20 who made a second given FY21 there were only of those there were only 54 so donor retention is an area of growth for us and strategy the average donor retention number is somewhere between 40 to 50 percent 40 to 45 percent as you look at our comparison by constituency you'll see our year-over-year comparison of alumni other individuals includes everyone who is not an alumnus that would be parents students employees friends and you can see where we've had some growth in our other individuals pretty steady in our corporate relations growth significantly in our foundation and then fairly steady in our other organizations even though one of the things that we were challenged by last year with COVID was our inability to fellowship with as many religious organizations as we typically do however some had virtual services and supported ECSU again you'll see my reference to the soft credit alumni giving this is particularly the case when it comes to alumni couples and that that slide the last slide related to fundraising comparison is the breakdown of where the dollars came from you'll see here with our alumni giving there appears to be a significant increase I want to note that the FY20 glue bar that number includes a significant six-figure gift from one donor so that that is slightly skewed for other individuals certainly our individual giving was up for our friends of the university and that bar represents an almost 150 gift from a single donor so while there is some growth and you see some significant jumps some of these are from significant gifts from individuals for corporations and foundations this continues to be our bread and butter and where we are bringing in quite a bit of our resources as we've tried to leverage and take advantage of the opportunities that have existed finally other organizations that's everyone that's not a corporation or a foundation and you'll see that there appears to be a drop for FY21 that that is not exactly the case that includes a one-time gift in the FY22 FY20 bar from the KB Reynolds charitable trust in the amount of almost $200,000 for FY22 goals and metrics we have set a goal this year in collaboration with our chancellor and our chair for the advancement committee of 1.8 it is a three-year average and the math is not wrong we are counting 2019 as a little bit of an anomaly there was a transition in advancement a full-time staff member out on FMLA and other vacancies and we want to demonstrate our effort to grow and we don't ever want to set a goal just based on previous year's numbers so the three-year average is 18, 20 and 21 plus 10 and so that is the goal that we have set for this year we will keep you abreast of those goals and our efforts toward those as we move forward this year we are partnering with Ruffalo-Norwell Levitz Ruffalo-Norwell Levitz is a company that supports the fundraising efforts as well as enrollment management we have partnered with them for a synergy program you should begin to see some of the impact of this partnership very soon we are partnering with them to try to do a multi-channel approach in our fundraising so this includes some direct mail some digital engagement email as well as crowdfunding of course we want to increase our partnerships and exceed our alumni participation number by 20% with 979 is what that would be finally as we think about the advancement priorities we want to increase and track engagement we believe engagement certainly leads to giving increased financial support as outlined in the strategic plan and at the next meeting I will provide a graph for you to share our baseline which was set in 20 and then with the launch of the plan where we ended in 2021 and what we are hoping to achieve in 2022 these baselines include specific numbers related to our engagement with high dollar donors which we had to actually determine what that was based on giving history for ECSU our goals toward our annual fund increased efforts engagement with corporate and foundation relations as well and we have specific targets for each of those areas where we want to achieve for at the body end of the strategic plan we want to develop and implement a stewardship plan we believe that part of our challenge as it relates to donor retention is greatly impacted by stewardship we are limited in what we we can do there and very limited in what we have done so that is a target area for us to hear more about that as the year goes on in our stewardship efforts continue to develop policies and procedures to increase operational efficiencies and articulate our case for support so that we can work more effectively and closely with each of you to garner resources for ECSU and then finally and this may be something that might be adjusted but last year we asked each of our board of trustee members to make a minimum contribution of three thousand dollars we were able to achieve that by the end of the fiscal year and we are asking for 100% and leadership giving again this year I mentioned earlier articulating our case for support we we want to ensure that everyone is clear on the difference between our strategic plan and our case for support our strategic plan outliving provides objectives for us to measure our success and progress toward the plan our case for support allows us to articulate to our prospective donors and friends what it is that they might how they might support us and the impact of their gifts there are some things that we would not articulate or request of course of our donors and friends that are priorities within our strategic plan so what you hear see here are the four priority areas as outlined and determined by the chancellor and executive team and we'll flesh those out and provide begin to provide some level of documentation to work on sharing and spreading what the university priorities are finally our two new board members for the ECSU foundation Mr. Elston Howell class of 88 is a chancellor's appointee and is a chief operating officer of spoken board communications and Dr. Sadie Johnson Carter class of 1973 she's a retired HR professor also has background in higher ed Mr. Chairman that concludes my report if there are any questions I'm happy to entertain them at this time okay questions about anybody hey Mr. Mr. Chair if I can this is Kim Brown thank you VC Walton for your report I am many of you know this we are an HBCU family from my wife to my children all of us different HBCUs and between us there's like six endowed scholarships at different HBCUs well this week one of us received something from my and I'm going somewhere one of us received something from my advancement office where they literally gave us a full breakdown of how our particular that person's particular endowed scholarship had done this year everything from who got awarded names of people and so as we talk about trying to retain or motivate giving I can tell you that those of us that didn't get that were really you know impressed that a university had done that so I guess I say all that to say is that something we're capable of doing is it something that might be hard because of limited human resources in the office but it was like a three page document that talked about the nuts and bolts of that endowed scholarship I mean it gave you to return on the investment what part of it was restricted what part of it had been given to students and then it named the students and what their majors were that had received funding out of that endowed scholarship yes okay so I put myself on mute because the phone was ringing I had to relocate because of building construction so we actually have endowment reporting which is what you're talking about and we use a system called endavico that helps us to accurately report the interest I don't know if anyone else up here but we mailed all of our endowment reports that have the level of detail which you have outlined to all of our annual scholarship holders and our endowed scholarship holders as of last year we started doing that and we tried to get it done no later than September this year our goal was August and so you'll need to check to see where your report is or why you didn't receive it but our reports have the same level of detail there's a message for you that talks about the impact you get a list of those individuals who have received your scholarship so we are doing that and I don't know why you do yours but we will certainly we will certainly work on and find out why you didn't receive it but just for information today we have 48 restricted scholarships and 52 endowed scholarships and so every one of those individuals received a report unless it was lost in the mail now we do have some that have been returned and I think the other piece as it relates to your point about stewardship we know that it's so important for our donors to meet our scholars so this year for the donor appreciation brunch which is scheduled on Friday we have also identified a list of our student recipients and we are inviting them to the brunch as well and hopefully we'll be able to pair them with their donor and if not then certainly they'll be able to meet other individuals who are making an impact I don't need you VC walking you don't have to worry about getting me mad I'm just excited that we're doing it so I'm fine and I'm excited that I received I did receive the information from mine and I'm just extremely excited to know who the students were I mean I felt really good about feeling that I was making a difference and some student slides even though given to that but not hearing from that about that so thank you I was thoroughly impressed with it that's wonderful to hear if you see Walton so does that mean also that individuals who gave this part of a scholarship fund would get that same information? No all of those reports go to the endowment agreement or the scholarship agreement signer we do have some class endowments like I don't want to say class of 85 maybe and so we send it to the class representative who signed the endowment we can send it digitally and what that individual has done is they have chosen to share it with other other members of the class via their list of specifically I really was really looking specifically if you had a scholarship fund that was set up and you had multiple people who were part of that would they be getting that kind of information that individuals were identified if they're part of a large part of a group several people in a group I just want to manage expectations yes only it would only happen if directed but other than that it goes to the agreement signers okay so then I should be getting something like that yes okay and the luncheon that's on Friday or Saturday that's meeting folks excellent yes it's going to be on Friday October 22nd I believe this homecoming is on the 23rd and we have had a couple of drafts of the invitation we're just finalizing it and we should be sending that out to folks outstanding thank you any other questions yep bc walton how many living alumni are there and what type of access do we have to them currently um I can't tell you the exact number of living I tend to live by addressable and so our addressable alumni is 16 000 um and we are constantly trying to update addresses and information I can tell you though that of the 16 000 addressable alumni only 4 000 have made a single gift at any time and so we have a very open field of opportunity of 12 000 but 4 000 have just only 4 000 have made a single gift we have been using some data analytics products in fact we had our first meeting about it yesterday and 195 individuals who are considered our top rated prospects are on that list for us to contact and begin to engage we're using blackboard data analytics because it comes with the product and we don't have to pay an additional fee to to utilize that but we have our top 195 some of you are on it so I'll be calling you and we are beginning to look at trying to establish qualification now that we've identified group qualification visits for these various individuals and even having to prioritize them great thank you any other questions all right can we hear from the audit committee miss parker yes sir good morning everyone good morning I start out with my action items um the first one is the internal audit charter and the audit committee charter currently both charters contain the previous audit committee name of finance audit and strategic planning and we would like to update the charters to include the current name of the committee on finance audit and university advancement so both of those need to be changed and I'm asking approval for that the second action item is the annual audit plan and the audit plan consists of areas that we're going to review this physical year there are five categories of audits to include a section for special projects um as in the past if there is a special request for management or a hotline allegation that does take precedence over what we have on the plan so we just take those on a case by case basis so those are my two action items that I'm asking approval of at this time so the two charters the only change is we're actually going to have the correct name of the committee is that correct yes sir yeah the finance audit and strategic planning committee is the previous name so I just need to update it to the current name okay uh and then it's the let's take that one first is there a motion to approve two charters from a member of the committee this is paul time and a motion that we make the corrections as submitted by miss parker is there a second this is kim brown second can we uh roll call did roll yes roll call vote for the charter change um trustee co-pepper yes trustee brown offered the second trustee evans yes uh trustee free drink yes and trustee tine offered the motion it is approved thank you now only uh the um what do we call it again miss parker the audit plan are there some questions about that if this if you especially for the newer members you hadn't seen this before it um maybe a little complicated was to me first time I saw it no questions all right is there a motion to approve the annual audit plan this is paul time a move we approve the annual audit plan is there a second this is Steve Friedrich I second it roll call for that for the annual audit plan trustee co-pepper yes trustee brown yes trustee evans yes trustee free drink offered the second and trustee tine offered the motion it is approved thank you okay any other questions about any of these reports here co-pepper uh this is paul time I know um it was touched on here I don't think our committee is the right place for it but I'm wondering if it's going to be brought up at the full board we had established as a non-binding uh agreement amongst the board members of a three thousand dollar uh minimum gift or in the case of our um student at least some sort of um gift on there and again this is to include helping to raise those funds if necessary we had discussed a higher limit during our last board meeting which obvious or last time we discussed this obviously we have several new members and wanted to see if we were going to um sort of reestablish that expectation moving forward would you like to propose a motion not not in committee I think that it would be a board decision that uh I just wanted to make sure that we're going to be discussing at some point since we're in the new year uh I I agree with you that we probably should discuss it and uh we will pass that recommendation since she's listening on to the chairman of our board of trustees how about that typically and I and paul you're my procedural man typically we get recommendations from the committee and then when it goes to the full board the full board can respond so it really is the choice of uh the chair and his committee member how we do this today the reason I suggested that would go to the board was that um and I think procedurally we're fine either way um we can have an action item we can suggest that we bring it up but um I want to make sure that all board members have an opportunity to discuss it and make sure that because it's about all of us being uh of the same mindset uh again we it's not finding uh vc goods but uh I just want to make sure that we had a platform to discuss it when we all have the opportunity to to participate that's right so it's it's really a matter of where we discuss it um it's 11 50 we can take the time of this afternoon if you like but um either way because it's full discussion as you know everybody that's uh board member can participate even during committee meetings so it's a matter of where we do it so if it's the pleasure of our chair we can take it up this afternoon and move on with our committee and that way maybe I get you all a little bit of a break between now and our uh our full board meeting you're called uh chair colt bepper thank you madam chairman I appreciate that uh well let's think about it until we have our board meeting and we uh maybe can think about it and do a better discussion this afternoon when we're have all thought about it I was just thinking we increase the operating budget we didn't increase it but uh what does miss mcleanon think the operating costs are going up what percentage of operating costs going up miss mcleanon um well I know we went up three million dollars what percentage is that I can calculate it real quick it wasn't that big because we went from 65 to about 68 million dollars um just because I was reviewing our mdna that they have to actually submit from uh to the state auditor so one of about 4.6 percent which is probably about right because uh you know we have increased maintenance costs and um also we also had a increase in purchases due to covid you know buying covid supplies and there's different things like that but yes our operating costs did increase this year well I think a good 10 increase on the trustee's given would be something we could all live with so if we went from 30 to 3300 that could buy for this afternoon so uh if there's no objection I'll uh declare the meeting of the finance committee adjourned with that thought in mind trustee co paper I have one more item which was an informational item may I proceed oh excuse me I'm sorry I didn't read it all right go ahead I'm sorry okay that's fine in your documents I included a report and that was the one report completed this quarter and that was the statewide federal compliance audit and this was a follow-up review from the state artis office the follow-up contained two findings one that was resolved and one that was not resolved so based on the one that was not revolved we are planning to do a follow-up in the fall for the remaining unresolved finding that concludes my discussion okay then if there's no further objection I will declare the meeting of the finance budget and audit committee whatever our full name is ended all righty we are ready to hear from our committee chair paul time on our committee on regional development you have the floor sir good morning I'll call the committee to order as chair of the committee on regional development 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 state's emergency the amendments were signed into law and allow for public bodies to meet via electronic means the law does require however 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 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 if I could please have the roll call please committee on regional development trustee paul time present trustee phyllis bosom work present trustee tim brown present trustee andy callpepper present trustee johnny tillett present and trustee justin waddell present everyone is present thank you very much uh we'll look for a motion to approve the minutes from jenny so moved trustee tillett second i can always bother more okay you take it all right either one just keeping it moving all right any discussion if i could have the roll call please roll call for the approval of minutes trustee time yes trustee bosomworth offered the second trustee brown yes trustee callpepper yes trustee tillett offered the motion and trustee waddell yes thank you the minutes are approved thank you very much all right we've had a lot going on since the last meeting and i will ask dr wilkins to go ahead and give us an update good morning everyone again thank you uh chair time we'd like to bring you a brief update from the regional development committee as trustee time did share with you a lot has transpired since our last meeting and these are activities that are moving us in the right direction towards our strategic initiative of being able to secure our position as a catalyst in regional economic social environmental development in this region and so we are happy to share with you that we have we are planning our regional economic summit which will take place on october 14th we have sent invitations to you we hope that you have received them and we asked you if you would to click on the image and the invite if you can attend so that we can uh register you for the event uh we are having the event on the 14th of october and decay white graduate center of course we will follow all safety protocols as it relates to gatherings we will have mask requirement as is the requirement for all campus uh indoor facilities uh we have some dynamic topics and dynamic facilitators lined up to be a part of this event we presently have uh the secretary of commerce who is scheduled to be the keynote the morning keynote speaker and then you can see the topics that we will be discussing that would be of interest to a blended audience from across the region we are excited that we really have stakeholders uh from every area of tourism and economic development uh in our 21 county region and we are also appreciative to our uh to our sponsors of those who are supporting this event so you will see on the invitation that this event is brought to us by atlantic new bank town bank and then the abramaral commission and so we would like to thank trusty time for uh finding uh those who would raise their hands to say they would have underwrite the cost of this event we are doing it uh without charge this year we want to show people that we can offer uh something of this magnitude of great interest to the region and so once we get them on the hook then next year perhaps we will have some fees associated with this year the cost is being underwritten by the sponsors of the event our fbtc office there's continuing to work under the leadership of miss wander wander cooper and so miss cooper we thank you and your team for your efforts as you see here this is the fbtc scorecard and you will see their progression as you move across to quarter three uh in terms of the capital formation created they have created uh over 11 million dollars and they'll uh and then they have created new businesses they're doing trainings and they these are the events and activities that are really impacting our small businesses in our region which will directly impact our regional economic development so to the fbtc team thank you miss cooper and team here's an activity that we hosted at ecsu and this was the last deal together a program where miss cooper along with centera and the whitey turnip root they have they came together to train our subcontractors to be in position to help build the centera medical center that's coming to elizabeth city and so the new subcontractors and vendors uh or people interested in being a part of this they receive some valuable information as to how they might be in a position to compete for some of the subcontracts that will be offered while we are building this centera album our medical center in this community so thank you again miss cooper and we are appreciative to centera and the whitey turnip root for making this possible for subcontractors in our region part of the regional development is we also look at social development and we are happy to say that our wrbs 89 radio station our fbtc we partner with the elizabeth city passport tank county parks and recreation and the elizabeth city police to host the 10th annual back to school bash and food ride this has been a hit for each year and as you see uh in addition to the book bags and the school supply giveaway uh young men can come and get free haircuts we have barbers from the community who will line up the clippers and get in their stations and provide haircuts for our young men as they're preparing to go back to school and of course a little face painting and some fun activities for children another activity as we look at how do we bring people to our campus this is another event that is hosted by our radio and television station on campus and this is the sixth annual northeast north carolina high school football media day and so this is another successful event where we can provide a service to our community and to invite them to come to bcsu for an experience on our campus that concludes my report uh are there any questions there any questions from the committee or the board i want to thank um this that's a small business technology development center um one of cooper she has helped us a lot with developing some of the speakers that will be at the economic uh forecast forum and also just there's obviously a lot of good work being done there um having a long history of working with the spd tdc i see more activity out of that group than i've seen in a long time so that that is great i also wanted to highlight dr noahla who is is he the chair of our economics department the head of our economics he's an economics guy that's right that is there you go um and he has been crunching the numbers for the 21 county service area and you know for the longest time our region has had to rely on greenville for its economic forecasts and they've done a great job uh but it was very greenville centric and so for the first time that i'm aware of we're actually going to have um uh somebody speaking about what's happening in our economy based on the numbers for the the 21 county region that we have here in the far northeast which people are really excited about um i appreciate you you're mentioning that i was able to find some sponsors but quite frankly it was easy i had three that all wanted to to be participants and and jump in the fray immediately so it is a free event um we've got to make sure we've got the networking breakfast on there i just noticed that i'm i'm not sure that that's on there uh but we're having that to start and then a free lunch and uh dr noahla finishes it up representing ecsu and of course dr dixon will be there to to talk about highlighting what's happening at ecsu so does anyone have any questions or comments i have a comment uh and you know you can let your ears burn if you like but i do want to go down memory lane here and for our new committee our new board members to know that this committee on regional development is a new committee for the board of trustees and uh back in the day i guess two years ago we started having a lot of conversation about the importance of our regional development and who we are in the great northeastern part of the state so long way around to say thank you paul for your leadership for understanding the importance of doing this and for the people that you've brought together and dr wilkins for partnering with trusty tine on this this is huge and just just we spoke about earlier my nc future lumina it's all tied together so it is amazing to see when we follow our hearts our interest that there's always a bigger picture if we can look up and see that it all comes together so i just uh wanted to thank you on behalf of the board and all of ecsu for your leadership on this very critically important committee thank you trusty tine and dr wilkins madam chair i appreciate it and thank you dr wilkins and miss sanders and karsten for making me look good um if there is no other objection uh i will call the committee adjourned all right thank you sir there's a fighting chance we might get a lunch break it's just it's up to me let's see what we do here all right let me get my script together all right as chair of the committee on university governance i want to remind everyone that we'll be conducting today's meeting pursuant to the amendments to the open meetings act that apply during states for emergency the amendments were signed into law and allow for public bodies to meet the electronic means the law requires 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 rote meeting remote meeting are deemed a public record finally we'll ask all committee members board members and participating staff to please identify yourself before just participating in deliberations including making motions proposing amendments and raising points of order thank you and i call on miss sanders for our roll call committee on university governance trustee robinson present trustee brown president trustee call pepper president trustee chambers president trustee johnson and trustee timon president everyone is ready thank you i would ask for a motion for the approval of our minutes start june 8th 2021 meeting of the johnson so moved i'll second that jimmy chain appreciate it a roll call miss and roll call for the minutes trustee robinson yes trustee brown yes trustee call pepper yes trustee chambers offered the second trustee johnson made the motion and trustee time yes minutes are approved thank you okay thank you i'd like to call on dr shamika lane who's going to provide our human resources update this morning thank you chair ravison good afternoon everyone you have before you the personnel report are there any questions have none trustees we have none thank you all right thank you all right trustees i might and let you go just yet uh this morning uh trustee tillett made a comment about his interest in providing a stronger role in working with athletics um in the spirit of our shared governance i would like to have a take a moment uh so that we have buy-in i just i don't know that we need a title liaison because usually uh our chairs have been able to either fulfill those roles or have somebody on their team fulfill a particular role based on their interests i know uh trustee brown has been very very interested in athletics and has sort of been our point person and now trustee brown you've got another athlete on your hand so i'm not sure that we need to go down a title role i'd like to make sure that all of our trustees um have the facility to move into any areas of interest uh one of the things that we have done very well on is being collegial and collaborative uh so any role that any of us have is advisory we are an advisory board so trustee tillett i'm asking for comments from our board if we need to do anything more formal than you're having major interest that you'd like to have a primary role in working with athletics and so i open uh it to the floor of our committee we have all of our chairs represented chair i'll just say this as the um chair of the committee um you all know i'm a minister in my real job and i just really appreciate trustee tillett's um um respect to the order of the board that you know he would he would share his concern not concerned with his desire with me and um so i really appreciate that i think he will you know do a tremendous job of assisting um ad bright and the the the trustee board in um advance in athletics i can honestly say that you know ad bright is a great guy has been doing a yeoman's job the piece if you didn't hear it today the thing that is something we should really celebrate among all the other things that we celebrate today is it is rare that an athletic program finish with any kind of surplus that is um and in spite of doing several things like you know the new pool robux stadium some other things so um i just want to reassure everyone all the trustees that i'm on one accord with trustee tillett um i think he'll be a great asset so i have no concerns as the chair of the committee however you madam chair would desire to move is fine with me great madam chair yes i think um you you know me in process so i i think that um it's great to have people deputized to to go and interact so that the staff knows um you know who to go to and who board to go to um just as far as process is concerned i would think that if one was going to be opened up and i don't want it johnny but just that people would say hey i have an interest in this type of thing and then they would go to the chair and then the chair would be the one to say you know go to the committee chair the committee chair would then go to the full chair and then uh move from forward from there but just opening it up to the board that's pretty consistent multiple people that want to do it with the way we've done it so for example trustee bosnworth had an interest in you know setting up connections community connections she told me about it she told her committee chair about it and she went forward so that we had we're small enough and it has worked that we talked to one another so nobody is stepping on anybody's feet or anything but we've got people who have specific interest and talent in areas and we want to fan those fires so i'm just saying you know let's continue to work in tandem and you know we're all advisors and trustee till it you know go forward yeah can i just plead my case to let me just let me just explain kind of what why and then and i'll set whatever happens just as a new board member granted i just think as in athletics and i serve you know i serve another board another university and i'll just you put an example but the reason we kind of i wanted to kind of break it out because it's easier for me for me as uh however you want to do it i thought maybe i didn't know how you guys i think i asked you before chair robson how this thing worked and and i felt like from the athletics side of not only trying to raise money for athletics i just didn't want to be able to have to go on every conversation that we make like today we're meeting with somebody can possibly give turf for the field the lighting i don't want to have to run down uh chair brown you know and i don't want ad but i just think as i can bring all back to the group right having to go through different people you can do that you have license to do that sir absolutely absolutely and that's how we have worked before the main thing that we wanted that i i always try to encourage our board members and reminding them is that we're advisors so alan and derek have been very helpful with me on that pulling me back back in the day i think i got better guys but because i was going out everywhere talking to everybody and they pulled me back by the scrub from my neck and said chair chair chair you're killing our vcs you know can you go through one of us or the other and i said i can do that as long as i have somebody i can go to and i have a point of contact your point of contact uh trusty till it will be the ad and so that way it's consistent you don't have to go through and i know that you know you as a matter of fact you'll be keeping you know people informed as you need to inform them so that way that's that's the way that we've worked in the past and i just want to hear from all of our uh members on their governance committee if you think otherwise or we should be doing something differently that you'll see the work if you don't mind you did take that advice and we appreciate uh you taking that advice you know one of the things that this we'll be talking about between now and october one is delegations of authority which will specifically outline what authorities the board has and and does not have and you know as you all know the boards were set up to be advisors to the institution and i think we'll be able to talk through um you know specifically what what power but it's truly a governance power what power is it's primarily a binary and in this capacity you know we're not to get ahead of our delegations of authority meeting but in this capacity there truly would be an advisory uh type of role so everything to do is advisory right and the main thing is having a point of contact and trusty till it your point of contact that's why i wanted to say this here so that we could be pulled back chancellor will be the ad i mean make no mistake about make no mistake about it i wasn't trying to my role wasn't to be the ad or assisted ad i was just trying to make it easier for you normally in other boards i've served what i'm just bringing experience we have the chair of board but we also have subcommittees all i was looking for was to be would it be something it was a question do we have a great idea and if we do have a subcommittee i was willing to chair that committee put together a group because again it's not only what we're trying to do we have to raise money for athletics and i also have a full-time job so i wasn't trying to step foot in anybody's phone oh no no no i'm not taking it that way at all i was trying to make it easy i think a subcommittee makes sense as we need it because it functions that way i know they communicate as a subcommittee that's all i was asking to be able to do again we want to take again we got to move ahead we've tried stuff in the past that's work so it's time to change it and i understand about advisory again but i'm just saying it's easier to put together a group of folks that we know can focus on that i mean focus on we've got to raise millions of millions of dollars for athletics to get our facilities up right 1987 i mean you're preaching to the choir you got us we're there that's where i'm going with this so here's the thing if someone is not the chair of a committee because you get to move as the chair of committee to do all kinds of communications and what have you but as someone has a specific interest you are that subcommittee so however trustee brown as the chair of the committee of which you have a subcommittee now you all want to make it work that's go forward does that make sense to everybody on the governance committee here i mean i don't know that we need any formal action here just wanted us to have a meeting of the minds of how we're going to communicate and move forward well you wanted to hear from all of us um on the committee on university governance um i'm mr tillett i trust you till it called me um the other day and had conversation with me and about because he knew i was the uh would be upcoming whatever and um he he shared how he what he wanted to do and how he wanted to feel how he felt about it and i'm excited that um he wanted to even create a committee which i don't think we can do that but there's already committee in place and i love the idea of the subcommittee going through trustee brown i love the idea that we are shared with everybody today that we are advisory to everybody we are not um we're not managing whatever so um i feel comfortable with the idea of a liaison um i as more than i do a whole committee on just just athletics so i am on board with the idea of creating um and him as a liaison to the athletic committee because there is a lot that has to be done i wish somebody felt that way about the library since i didn't really change since i went there into uh 1970 so help me understand the difference between uh liaison and a subcommittee lead is that just are we just understand no i was just saying that he that uh trustee tilly had talked to me about actually creating a committee on just a new committee and i didn't think that was something that we would could do but i love that we are talking about being a liaison to madam chair i might i might be able to bring some clarity as the chair of the student affairs committee this would be is my understanding a subcommittee of that committee perfect the leader of that subcommittee would be trustee johnny tiller perfect the only thing i the only thing that he and i have talked about is obviously he doesn't have authority to just go out and and and start doing things he will do that through either myself or the ad right but you know you've got to be able to at least acknowledge that he does have in quotation marks authority because if he's out there talking to someone about replacing the turf and they ask him well who are you at least needs to be able to say i lead this the athletic subcommittee perfect you know blah blah blah now here is the difference when when i see liason i am literally the athletic liason at norfolk what's different though is we're not an advisory board right so when when the board designates me is that liason i'm i i don't i know who the football coach is going to be me and the ad before anybody else knows right so i don't think we can go to that level because we are an advisory board but i think trustee tiller is clear you know i don't think he's going to be going out there trying to hire a football coach you know that's the ad's job but i do think he has some connections that as that you know as long as he's informing the ad i think we're fine and i know he's going to be doing that it's a subcommittee under the student affairs committee may i just call her perspective so you know subcommittees are committees that oftentimes have a scope and a charge and and report back to you know the committees for which they are the subs of it sounds like and if i'm hearing it correctly it sounds like our trustee tiller just wants to work there more more closely or align with the ad and the chancellor in terms of some strategic that's right absolutely he already sits on the committee that does that um so there may not necessarily be a reason to appoint a whole new subcommittee with now a charge and a scope that reports back if he's already sitting on the committee for which athletics is his under he can just you know what i'm hearing is he can work just more closely in alignment with the chancellor and the ad in terms of pushing for the objectives so it sounds to me that the infrastructure really is already in place just by him sitting on that committee right there may not necessarily be a need to create a subcommittee that then has a charge and responsibility to do things to you know to for particular objectives to report back to the full committee so i offered that perspective because i it sounds like we started with leads on then we went to subcommittee in it and from what i'm seeing in terms of just what's already on the committee we may already have that infrastructure in place and there may not necessarily be a need to create a subcommittee with a charge that has a specific responsibility and reporting relationship back to the the committee for which athletic falls under and then the full board so thank you vc goodness i'd like to hear from drosti tell it for a minute to make sure we're not getting away from because i saw two thumbs up when we said subcommittee to help me well again i mean i don't know what this is didn't really didn't we want this to be so difficult but i'll just i'll just use for example i'm serving the same capacity at wing at university it's same that we're advisory board but in come january i would chair their athletic committee i'm on the same excellence committee the same thing falls under there and right now we're looking for ad so we have a committee and i'm on that committee to look for the next ad at wing at university but we did the same it's the exact same thing we all we do is as far as four people and we meet with the the athletic the excellent committee and we go through the same process it's not anything we don't tell ad or anybody what they do all we do is meet i'm on this side trying to raise money i'll bring it back to our our chair of our board and he takes it back to the whole committee i mean it's not only things that it's all it's doing is giving when i'm staying out there in the ball field or if i run into a potential vendor you know i'm saying listen as a chair for the athletic committee we we like to have a million dollars for wing at university or listen to each state all it is it's not a major thing and i'm okay however y'all want to do it i just think that again i don't see what it's so hard it's not hard it's just saying you guys okay if you don't want to do it do it so come that's fine i'm okay all right well we're talking about it yeah yeah just a moment i just wanted to just to reset that uh there was something that was said and we said you know subcommittee trustee brown commented on it and so now i'm asking for the trustees i've heard from stephanie uh andy your comments on having a subcommittee well my my overall comments is we got to be very careful that we don't enter into some management discussions because what we're talking about is picking out a turf that's a management discussion raising money is a good idea but that's more under the advancement area than it is in the athletics unless we want to change it i think we need to be careful that we don't let a trustee get into the management area of deciding what kind of turf we're going to do and we definitely don't want to tell somebody i'm on the trustees and we want to buy a million dollars worth of turf like he just said he could do it when getting in university because we didn't then we i'd never enter into some ethical situation okay hold on hold on uh you saw very very no i did and uh okay hold on a second let's just so trust me okay well anyway that's we did excuse me sorry if you didn't hear that i'm sorry thank you for your comments we're just trying to get comments and then i'll do my best i can make this through i can make this real simple madam chair could you could you just give me one more minute sir please just one more minute as i think we're going to be fine uh trustee chambers did you have any comments no no no ma'am i'll pass okay thank you trustee time subcommittee any comments on this particular topic yeah i just want a little background that we've had probably we've just gone through for you new members we've just gone through a culture change on this board where we recognize our advisory capacity as opposed to our more proactive management which was never our charge but some trustees certainly took it as their charge um and so i think that's part of the background of this discussion that needs to be recognized that no matter what uh trustee tillett is saying that previous history is coming into the conversation that we're just trying to make sure that everybody's on the same page as we move forward um and and for example in my chairmanship i am there solely to help dr wilkins do whatever he needs to do and so i think that is where trustee tillett is i think that we've we've all arrived back at the right spot um and um you know i do think that having whichever way we label them liaison subcommittees right now your committee chairs can appoint a subcommittee according to the way things work right now so that's right um you know this is normal practice just making sure that we have the right scope on it i think that we're fine tuning so thank you for the discussion thank you yeah uh trustees just want to say that we want to help facilitate our trustees who have particular interests talent background contacts to do their job to the best of their abilities so what we're hearing this morning is uh trustee tillett saying hey if i can say i'm chair committee or liaison that's going to give me a little bit more clout when i'm out there talking to all the people that i know i can talk to so the subcommittee is in uh processes in place i just wanted us to be careful about making sure the use of that word liaison that you know our committee chairs go you know we we do what we do we go to the board meetings we have license we try to make sure everybody is aware and that we've got subcommittees that have worked for so um i'm going to ask ellen i don't know if we need a vote on this or can this just exist because trustee brown has said we can have a subcommittee just as we've done with with uh community connections we don't need to vote perfect i don't think it should go that formal i mean great it's like what trustee paul time just said if there's a board member that has uh expertise in the area of his board he has the right as the chair of you know the regional development committee to say i'm using this person's expertise that's right just want us to be consistent with language so great perfect okay so trustee tillett thank you so much for chairing our subcommittee on athletics we look forward to hearing from y'all um are there any other matters for us in governance before we adjourn for lunch and a break hearing none uh we are adjourned have a good lunch and we'll see you back here for our one uh one o'clock when or 130 time is back at 130 130 chair robinson and it will be the same zoom link thank you thank you bye bye now bye bye when yes i may have to drop a little thank you all right good afternoon everyone trustees staff and visitors i'd like to call to order our board of trustees meeting september 14th 2021 as chair of the board of trustees i wanted 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 a 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 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 will ask all board members and participating staff to please identify yourself before participating in deliberations including making motions proposing amendments and raising points of order as chair of the ecsu board of trustees it is also 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 committee meeting if any board member knows of any conflict of interest or parents of conflict with respect to any matter coming before the board of trustees at this meeting the conflict or parents of conflict should be identified at this time all right hearing none i'm going to call on trustee kim brown if you will give us the indication please all right let us pray gracious god our father we thank you so much for the strength that you have endowed us with that gives us the ability to serve our community to serve our student population we thank you now for the leadership of our illustrious university and for all of those who give their time to serve her and to assist her in forwarding the vision and the mission of the elizabeth city state university would you always remind us that it is our responsibility to serve the interests of the students and not those interests of ourselves that we might always be mindful of the spirit of collegiality that we would always be ready to extend olive branches of peace that we might be about the university's business we thank you for the community and the impact that the university has had on it and as we share this day in business may all that we say and do be done respectfully decently and in order and above all may you be pleased with everything that is done remind us to always steward our gifts and our abilities for they are endowed by your grace we serve at the pleasure of your grace and we thank you for another day and finally lord we thank you for how you have sustained this university even in the midst of a global pandemic may you continue to have your hand upon each of us and most importantly your hand upon the university as our prayer in the name of christ our lord we pray amen thank you trusty thank you very much the stunders will call on you for a roll call please i believe that um secretary trusty stephanie johnson yes and dr roll call thank you yes good afternoon good afternoon i would like to ask all trustees to take their um take their their the sound the sound we won't have to worry about that as i call the road trusty phyllis bozenworth present trusty kim brown present trusty james coplin present trusty andy colepepper trusty andy colepepper you're on mute andy trusty jimmy chambers president trusty andy colepepper trusty christine brown i'm sorry trusty christy evans i'm president too uh trusty steven frederick president uh and i'm trusty stephanie johnson trusty tiffany jones president trusty jane king robinson president trusty johnny tillett president trusty paul tine president and trusty justin waddell president you can now take your your you put your phones back on mute and once again trusty andy colepepper do you see him all right he is present he is here thank you i turn it back over to dr jane king robinson i turn it back over to you thank you trusty johnson it is always a pleasure when we have the honorable judge read with us and we have her today to have the oath of office administered to our four newest trustees uh judge read we thank you for being with us you're always welcome and you have the floor map thank you so much for inviting me it's always a pleasure for me to do a little bit to give back to a listed city state university uh it is my pleasure to uh swearing the four newest trustees james coplin tiffany jones johnny tillett and justin waddell trusty coplin yes okay i state your name hi james coplin do solemnly affirm do solemnly affirm that i will do solemn support and maintain do solemnly affirm that i will support and maintain constitution and laws of the united states the constitution and laws of the united states delay do we lose judge read i think so and she may need to call in because um the connection is not very good where she is um so we may need to come back to that i'm going to send her a message that maybe she should call in okay is that okay that's great and also miss sanders um i did read the state government ethics act already is that correct yes thank you so much okay all right we'll move toward the approval of the minutes from our june 8th and july 30th uh special meetings do i need to make that two separate emotion motions or may we um take that together trusty time you can i was looking for goods and oh yeah there he is you can do two separate motions okay i will take a motion then for the approval of our june 8th 2021 meeting i also moved since you hadn't found me lately thank you i second kim brown thank you trustees i need a roll call i would do the a roll call for the approval of the june 8th 2021 minutes trusty bosinworth yes trustee brown offered the second trustee chambers yes trustee coakland yes uh trustee cult upper off the motion trustee evans yes trustee fridrich yes trustee johnson yes trustee jones trustee jones yes thank you trustee robinson yes trustee tillett yes trustee time yes and trustee waddell yes thank you thank you she's coming back in on the phone uh cheer robinson all right we can do the other set of minutes if you like and then your phone whoops there she is should we go ahead with the oath since she's here that's that if you like that's fine okay great judge read thank you we hear you loud and clearly perfect i'm sorry i don't know our internet is not that great here so i called in hopefully this is okay this is great thank you okay so i think we uh we're starting with um trustee coakland correct all right i'm sorry that there i think was bad connection on my end too so i apologize hey as long as we're together that's fine if you will raise your right hand and repeat after me i state your name hi james coakland do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support and maintain that i will support and maintain the constitution and laws of the united states the constitution and laws of the united states and the constitution and laws of north carolina and the constitution and laws of north carolina not inconsistent there with not inconsistent there with and that i will faithfully discharge and then i will faithfully discharge the duties of my office the duties of my office as a member of the board of trustees as a member of the board of trustees of Elizabeth City State University of Elizabeth City State University I do furtherly solemnly and sincerely swear I do further solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance but I'll be faithful and bear true allegiance to the state of North Carolina to the state of North Carolina and to the constitutional powers and authorities and to the constitutional powers and authorities which are or may be which are or may be established for the government thereof established for the government thereof and that I will endeavor to support and that I will endeavor to support maintain and defend maintain and defend the Constitution of said state Constitution of said state not inconsistent with not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the United States to the best of my knowledge and ability to the best of my knowledge and ability so help me God so help me God congratulations next is Tiffany Jones Miss Jones yes are you can you hear me okay I can if you will raise your right hand I state your name I Tiffany Jones do solemnly swear do solemnly squint do follow me swear that I will support and maintain that I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States the Constitution and laws of the United States and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina the Constitution and laws of North Carolina not inconsistent therewith not inconsistent therewith and that I will faithfully discharge and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of my office the duties of my office as a member of the board of trustees as a member of the board of trustees of Elizabeth City State University of Elizabeth City State University further I do solemnly and sincerely swear further I do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance and bear true allegiance to the state of North Carolina to the state of North Carolina and to the constitutional powers and authorities and to the constitutional powers and authorities which are or may be which are or may be established for the government thereof established for the government thereof and that I will endeavor to support and that I will endeavor to support maintain and defend maintain and defend the Constitution of said state the Constitution of said state not inconsistent with not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the United States to the best of my knowledge and ability to the best of my knowledge and ability to help me God so help me God congratulations thank you next is Johnny tell it oh trustee tell it if you will repeat after me please raise your right hand I state your name I Johnny tell it do solemnly swear do saw me swear that I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States the Constitution and laws of United States and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina not inconsistent there with not inconsistent there with and that I will faithfully discharge and that and that I would faithfully discharge the duties of my office the duties of my office as a member of the Board of trustees as a member of the Board of Trustees of Elizabeth City State University of Elizabeth City State University. Further, I do solemnly and sincerely swear, Father, I do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful, that I would be faithful and bear true allegiance to the state of North Carolina to the state of North Carolina and to the constitutional powers and authorities, which are or may be established for the government thereof and that I will endeavor to support that I would and that I would endeavor to support maintain and defend maintain and defend the Constitution of said state the Constitution of said state not inconsistent with not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States the Constitutional United States to the best of my knowledge and ability to the best of my knowledge and ability to help me God so help me God congratulations and trustee Waddell yes ma'am if you erase your right hand and repeat after me I state your name I Justin Waddell do solemnly swear you that I will support and maintain you the Constitution and laws of the United States the Constitution and laws of the United States and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina and the constitution in laws of North Carolina not inconsistent there with not inconsistent there with and that I faithfully discharge and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of my office the duties of my office as a member of the board of trustees as a member of the board of trustees of Elizabeth City State University of Elizabeth City State University further I do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful that I will be faith and bear true allegiance and bear true allegiance to the state of North Carolina to the state of North Carolina and to the constitutional powers and authorities and to the constitutional powers and authorities which are or may be which are or may be established for the government there in there of the government there of and that I will endeavor to support and that I will endeavor to support maintain and again the Constitution of said state Constitution of said state not excuse me not inconsistent with not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the United States to the best of my knowledge and ability to the best of my knowledge and ability to help me God so help me God congratulations congratulations to all the trustees and thank you for allowing me to do this thank you for always being there for us judge have a wonderful day thank you you too enjoy your meeting all right thank you congratulations newly minted trustees do you feel different keep hanging with us all righty so the matter on the floor right now is the July 30th 2021 special meeting minutes and if I may have a motion for approval so moved stephanie Jackson thank you may have a second thank you very much great before we move to our next matter I just want to take a moment of privilege to congratulate us trustee Chris Evans we understand you have a promotion the new I believe VP of public affairs for Blue Cross Blue Shield did I get that right you got it exactly right thank you congratulations that's wonderful I know that's a lot of relations trustee Evans thank you wonderful chair we need to do a roll call vote for those we're just oh okay it's another roll call all right great thank you keeping us honest yes I will turn to trustee Johnson to do that actually I did be happy to do it for the approval of the special meeting minutes and I if I can ask all trustees to please unmute at this time okay roll call vote thank you trustee bosom word yes trustee Brown yes trustee chambers yes trustee Copeland yes trustee co-pepper yes trustee Evans yes trustee Friedrich trustee Friedrich trustee Johnson offered the motion trustee Jones yes trustee Robinson yes trustee Tillett offered the second trustee Tyne yes and trustee Wade yes okay thank you thank you thank you all for keeping me honest all right we are now ready for trustee bosom word the chair of our nominating committee to bring us a report thank you good afternoon I want to thank trustee Jimmy Chambers and trustee Andy Culpepper for serving with me on the nominating committee the report from the nominating committee is as follows the nominations we have received via email for chair or trustee Stephanie Johnson for vice chair trustee Tiffany Jones for secretary trustee Chris Evans we are free to take at this time nominations from the floor for chair of the Elizabeth City State University trustees are there any nominations from the floor okay we will I don't hear any so I'm now going to ask for nominations for vice chair for Elizabeth City State University trustees are there any nominations from the floor for vice chair hearing none I will ask if there are any nominations for secretary for Elizabeth City State University trustees from the floor okay the nominations are now closed you will be asked you'll be prompted to cast your vote a little bit later in the meeting so just stand by and we'll have our vote in a little while thank you thank you trustee Boswell and Chambers and Culpepper for your work on this project all righty we're now moving to our consent agenda we have approval of the FY 22 general fund budget VC Goodson do I need I can take this all three at one time right since it's consent yep you approve the consent agenda okay and then endowment for distributions for FY 21 to 22 and approval for design firm ECSU campus master plan mad motion to approve this agenda these agenda items all time second okay I did the who made the motion okay thank you great me we have roll call please yes and if trustees could please unmute for the roll call vote for the consent agenda trustee Boswell yes trustee Brown made the motion trustee Chambers yes trustee Copeland yes trustee Culpepper yes trustee Evans yes trustee Friedrich trustee Friedrich trustee Johnson yes trustee Jones yes trustee Robinson yes trustee Tillett yes trustee Tyne all for the second and trustee Waddell yes thank you thank you we now move to our committee on academic excellence and strategic go growth trustee Stephanie Johnson for the report the academic excellence and strategic growth had no action items as information the committee received an update on the SAC CLC reaffirmation timeline including the response to the on site visit which was submitted on August 18 2021 the final reaffirmation decision will be announced at the annual SAC CLC meeting in the on December 7 2021 the provost office provided online training for 33 faculty participants and two micro credentials focusing on promoting active learning online and designing student Senate courses provost Ward advise the university has received advanced level accreditation from the council for the accreditation of educator preparation Cape for the masters of the master of school administration and master elementary education with no recommendations ECSU has partnered with the North Carolina Foundation for public school children through the National Education Association Greater Public Schools Grant and hosted the first teacher cadet training this summer provost Ward provided additional information regarding the COVID-19 mitigation grant to include the university receiving an additional 280,000 from the North Carolina Collaboratory for genomic sequencing of SARS COVID-2 variant as a statewide partnership with North Carolina DHS. Dr. Ward provided information regarding increased enrollment for the fall 2021 the information on the retention and persistence rates as well as the increase in transfer and stopout if enrollment was also shared provost Ward shared that admissions is conducting impressive recruiting events this semester and began with the downies classics on two doubt on on September 3rd as this was the first time in schools in 18 months since the pandemic began fall open house will be conducted face-to-face on October 30th and visits with schools in college will be conducted face-to-face and virtually this year last lastly the information regarding the 2021-22 strategic goals for goal one academic excellence and goal three sustainable growth was provided this concludes the report on the academic excellence and growth and strategic growth thank you very much trustee we'll now move to the committee on student excellence trustee chair Kim Brown good afternoon there were no action items from the committee on student excellence during the committee on student excellence we received information updates from the vice chancellor for student affairs dr. Gary Brown our athletics department director mr. George bright and student government association president mr. Jimmy chambers vice chancellor Gary Brown providing an overview to include the following summer recap which he gave us information and direction relative to all of the activities that had taken place during the summertime several straight truth and accountability moments mental health first aid training customer service he also gave us direction on the fall reopening from health and wellness to housing capacity which we are excited to announce is that 90 occupancy or 947 residents and a variety of programs that have already taken place earlier during the fall he also updated us on special initiatives like my further north Carolina in power in e n c um trio educational opportunities center um lumina foundation grants the potential for those resource development and reminded us of the 2021 homecoming activities and then finally he um gave us information relative to year two goals for the strategic plan specifically goals 2.1.2 and goals 2.3.2 athletic director George bright provided an overview of the department of athletics progress and highlights including introducing us to new staff giving us direction on winter sports schedules um nc double a requirements or cdc um requirements for return to action for universities and also informed us on the pros and cons or the positives and negatives of boosters and what is alive allowable and not allowable he also updated us on strategic plans that impact athletics such as 2.5.2 and 2.5.3 2.5.7 and then finally he um shared with us spring 2021 athletic honors and academic honors of averaging a gpa of 3.34 and discuss the men's and women's basketball schedule for this fall and um other covid protocols related to uh athletics finally um sga president jimmy chambers provided an update on behalf of student government association he highlighted the 2020 2021 goals for sga um the 22 initiatives to include civic and community enhancement advocacy for better relationships with community businesses mental health issues and the unc asg initiatives trustee chambers also highlighted the down east classic and donations that were made available and how they were used from links incorporated and made us aware that sga will be hosting it um has hosted a meet and greet for the candidates and encourage more civic engagement activities across the campus this concludes the report from the student excellence committee thank you trustee brown i think it is time now to move to the election officers you have the four trustee bosomworth and miss sanders okay um i believe um attorney good we're going into closed session is that correct we are not actually yes we're going to move um everyone except the trustees and of course our chancellor and and bc goods and into the waiting room and then we will begin the election process so we could just hold on one moment and i believe that um that bc wilkins will be assisting with helping to move into chair robinson we are ready thank you ma'am appreciate it all righty we're going to move on now to the report from our committee on operational excellence trustee jimmy chambers you have the floor sir yes ma'am uh good afternoon during the committee on operational excellence we received progress on infrastructure update from bc goodson who informed us on the uh forms from uh the funds from dorian which was 5.2 million phase one already completed was the university tower lower roof and progress are currently viking village jimmy rg in science building miriam d thorp exterior walls repairs phase two which are set to start late fall 2021 would be the stem exterior walls repairs mclendon riffin the ity c building robert l bond center hl trig and disson hall um we are using multiple vendors to complete these projects when it comes to the h vac uh torrent will be the single vendor that will manage all of the h vacs needs um control upgrades for phase one already completed is griffin hall mclendon hall lane hall fine arts building the student center and k u white um completion expected for summer 2021 would be the stem building miriam d thork itc building bedel hall and ariel von center phase two which is a sped day completion of fall 2021 would be more haul and biking tower system upgrades for the chiller upgrade updates would be the uh phase one which is four million would be university towers and they are waiting on the parts to arrive for phase two which is for william's hall jimkin science building and university suites they are also waiting for the parts to arrive um for the unmanned aircraft system facility construction will begin in october it will be located near the k e white center in front of the water tower and there will also be a building that is designated for a classroom space when it comes to the campus master plan uh we heard a proposal from five vendors that may uh approve the following action item that the recommended designer for the campus master plan was approved um interim cio eric zhar gimme reported that dti updates are the dit completed the third party cyber maturity assessments and submitted the risk review board uh character to the system office pursuant to the board of governor's policy one four zero zero point one on it governance by the direction of transfer disson the it review risk review board will provide key review um associated with governance risk tolerance risk assesses and compliance it risk review board consists of the cio deputy cio the iso the vice chancellor and chief of staff the vice chancellor of operational and general counsel and vice chancellor of business and finance communications and marketing update which was provided by vc wilkins reported and updated for communications and marketing work that on saturday w tk r out of norfolk virginia will conduct a live remote broadcast from the elizabeth city original airport airport that will showcase our aviation program chancellor disson will be featured on abc 11 out of raleigh on september 28th at 5 30 elizabeth city state university will be a part of the pbs nor canana series in partnership with the unc system and the board of governors historically minority serving institution committee and this concludes the report of committee on operational assistance thank you jimmy appreciate that all righty we're going to move now to our committee on finance audit and university advancement and the endowment committee report and we call on trustee andy culpeper you have the floor sir during the committee on finance audit and university advancement on september 14 2021 the vice chancellor for business and finance leasing a clinic presenting one action item approval of the proposed fiscal year 22 general fund budget the proposal based budget was 39 million seven hundred eighty thousand five hundred and thirty dollars which is an increase of 286 seven hundred thirty nine dollars over last year's fiscal year 21 approved budget presentation included discussion about the budgets of some individual operational areas committee approved the item and we've already approved it in the uh in the budget vice chancellor clinic then indicated that the state budget may include some additional recurring funds bcsu if it passes excuse me if that happens she will come back to the board for approval of the revised budget vice chancellor clinic then gave updates on the fiscal year 21 general fund and trust and auxiliary budgets general fund three-year budget plan the outcome in fiscal year 23 all funds budget and the fiscal year 23 tuition and fees preview general fund expenditures and revenues as of 6 30 21 for 99.6 percent of the total budget with the remaining four point four percent one point seven million dollars carried forward into fiscal year 22 by r and r and some school use the 6 30 21 trust and auxiliary fund balances were 20.3 million with 15 million of that attributed to the recent the kinsley scott gift which also noted that 13.4 million of the trust and auxiliary fund balance was unrestricted which is important since these funds can be used university-wide and will help with our moody's rate goes with a three-year budget plan represented along with the discussion of the all funds budget the will be brought before the board in march 2022 for approval before it is sent to the board of governors in may 2022 in the fiscal year 33 tuition and fees discussion she indicated that the expected guidance from the board of governors on in-state tuition is that it will remain flat for fiscal year 23 finally vice chancellor can answer some questions regarding ecsu debt service vice chancellor anita walton presenting information items only which are an update update on year-end fundraising for fiscal year 21 fundraising goals and metrics for fiscal year 22 strategic plan priority and new ecsu foundation board members total dollars received as of june 30 of 2021 was a million cm 85 98 985 this exceeded the fiscal year 21 fundraising goal of 1.4 million there were a total of 1493 donors steady trends for donor participation were reflected across various constituencies the fiscal year 22 fundraising goal is a million 801443 this amount is based on the three-year average plus 10 percent fiscal year 22 fundraising goals including new partnerships and increasing ecsu alumni participation numbers by 20 vice vice chancellor walton shared the fiscal year 22 events and priorities which include increasing and tracking engagement and financial support developing and implementing stewardship plan and developing policies and procedures to increase operational efficiencies it is a priority to have leadership given of 100 minimum giving a man for trustees it's $3,000 new excuse me i just went blind new and fringes were introduced it'll be one in for a graphic to represent each university priority finally to new foundation board of directors were introduced chancellor's appointee mr elson howell and dr satie johnson carter chief audit officer shanita parker presenting two action items the renaming of both audit charters in the annual audit plan two audit charters the internal audit charter and the audit committee charter currently referenced the previous audit committee name and finance audit strategic planning it was requested that the charter be updated to include the current committee's name which is the committee on finance audit and university advancement the annual audit plan consists of various and internal audit plans on reviewing during the physical year the committee approved both items mr parker then pertaining one informational item one report was completed this quarter which was a statewide federal compliance audit this report contained two findings where one region resolved and one was not resolved follow-up on the remaining findings will be conducted in the fall this concludes your report of committee on finance audit and university advance thank you trustee colpepper i'll give the report on the endowment committee during the endowment committee meeting on september 13th 2021 the committee received updates from vc lisa mcflinton on the endowments she had one action item endowment distribution for fy 21 22 every year the distributions must be approved the amounts were provided to the committee and given in the presentation totaling 253 977 dollars the motion to draw down the endowment distributions was made by trustee paul tine trustee andy colpepper second the mode the motion and the motion carried unanimously vc mcflinton mentioned the total market value for the overall breakdown of investments as of june 30th 2021 nine million seven hundred and seven thousand three hundred seventy four dollars and 41 cents this concludes the report of the committee on the endowment i'd like now like to call on the committee on regional development uh chair trustee paul tine thank you madam chair during the committee on regional development we received an update on strategic initiative six secure our position as a catalyst and regional economic social and environmental development and facilitate collaboration with industry and government to improve our region the first 11 ecsu board of visitors have been announced the regional economic summit will be held on october 14th featuring the north carolina department of commerce secretary michelle sanders the announcement is now available and there are great speakers for each topic data was also shared on the small business and technology development center with 267 businesses served 1578 business counseling hours 11777181 of capital formation created 165 jobs created and retained and or retained 13 new business starts seven training slash events and 160 event participants the sb tdc participated in the 10th annual back to school bash and food rod and the sixth annual n c high school football media day which aligns with the strategic initiative six dot three dot two that concludes the report for the regional development committee thank you trustee tine and i will bring the report 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 the board discussed protocol regarding subcommittee roles and that concludes the report for the committee on university governance and we have a drum roll now for our chancellor's report chance dixon you are on thank you madam chair good afternoon chair robinson members of the ecsu board of trustees administrative staff and guests thank you for joining us today it's always a great day to be a viking and today is no exception as you have seen and heard from members of the chancellor's cabinet this morning we are foraging our future each day we continue to make strides towards our strategic initiatives and i am fortunate to have such a dynamic and capable leadership team along with a dedicated faculty and staff thank you to the ecsu team for your accountability commitment and excellence i also acknowledge the members of the ecsu board of trustees and your collective service to this great university this university is fortunate to have such an engaged and dedicated board thank you all for your service chair robinson you have been a phenomenal leader and i know you may not have wanted to bring this to everyone's attention but today being your last meeting as chair we are so delighted to honor you and thank you for your role of serving as chair of this board for the last two years i have valued your insight and your perspectives along with your advice both personal and professional and we will not forget that you are a trailblazer the first woman to serve as chair of the ecsu board of trustees you have served well thank you chair robinson for your service please join me in giving her a hand i'd like to welcome the new members of the board those who were sworn in at the june meeting and today trustees james copeland uh dr tiffany jones john johnny tillett and jessen wide deal thank you so much for your interest in ecsu and your willingness to serve on the board of trustees and in june i know we recognize trustee freedrick and was it only trustee freedrick i think so i didn't miss anybody did that but thank you all for answering the call and serving as trustees of this great university welcome to the board of trustees and i look forward to your service on the board and your support and advocacy of ecsu i am happy to report that elizabeth city state university had a safe reopening of campus this past august you heard from vc brown but i have to emphasize it took a it took a lot of work and planning over the summer but vc brown and his team thank you thank you for a very structured and organized reopening to our campus move in was awesome and we heard that feedback from our students and their families so thank you after careful preparations and transparent communications ecsu faculty staff and students are back on campus we had virtual town halls over the summer prior to return to campus for employees for students and parents so we wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page with the clear expectations for return to campus and to assure the campus community that we are taking the necessary precautions as recommended by the cdc and other health officials we are minimizing the spread of covet within our campus community i am so proud that we've been able to keep our numbers low and i hope and pray that our students and faculty and staff continue to do so as we take on this semester by creating a culture of expectation and holding each other accountable we are stressing this as a personal accountability effort at this time masks are required in all indoor campus facilities effective september 15 all ecsu students faculties and staff are required to present proof of receiving a covet 19 vaccination or they must participate in weekly covet 19 testing on campus the north carolina state legislature is currently in the midst of finalizing the budget for the 2021-22 biennium we expect to see a final budget in the coming weeks hopefully by the first or second week of october is what we're hearing this process takes time and although we wouldn't like to see a budget finalized sooner rather than later this is a process with many moving parts and it's going to take some time and i tell you trustees we have no problem being patient we know our elected officials in raleigh are working hard and we appreciate all that they do to look out for our great state its citizens and of course ecsu and this special corner of north carolina i cannot say enough about how thankful i am for the support that we have already received from the north carolina general assembly nc promise is paramount to our continued growth and overall progress as an institution and we have our legislators legislators to thank for allowing us to be a part of it but looking ahead it is anticipated that the budget for the 2021-22 biennium will not only have nc promise funding but additional funding for many other key capital projects and infrastructure upgrades that are specific to ecsu this is why we don't mind being patient in total this budget will have more than 150 million dollars for ecsu wait a minute let me say that one more time because i didn't get the reaction i was looking for this budget may have more than 150 million dollars of funding for ecsu this is how critical critical this budget is for our great university and a portion of those funds will be used towards a new residence hall new dining hall a state-of-the-art aviation school and a sky bridge to keep our students staff faculty and community members safe when crossing we still roll so this is big for us it will be a historic event for this budget to pass and this amount of funding to be in there for ecsu so we are quite quite grateful to the senate and to the house for including these capital projects and infrastructure projects in the budget and we're looking to see this budget pass right trustees yes right yes wonderful although we may not have this budget until october we are still hopeful and this is going to make a positive impact on ecsu and northeastern north carolina so again thank you to our trustees for continuous advocacy on behalf of our great institution and thank you to the north carolina general assembly for their support and of course our very own elected officials that carry biking prod all the way to rile and recognition for senator bob steinberg and representative power hunter thank you both for all you're doing on behalf of ecsu we are foraging our future at ecsu and the future continues to be bright july 1st mark the beginning of year two of our 2020 2025 strategic plan we made tremendous strides in year one and we are extremely optimistic for year two over the coming months you will hear from my executive cabinet and they will provide updates on our progress one of our strategic goals is to host high-profile visitors to our campus to share ecsu story and experience since our last meeting in june we have hosted several special visits we hosted new board of governors unc board of governor members joel ford and sonia nipples we were happy to host president satune day and his executive team from blue cross blue shield of north carolina a special thanks to trusty evans for helping us make this happen the blue cross blue shield have been visiting campuses across the state and we're honored we were so honored that they chose to come visit ecsu and learn more about our campus and the needs of northeastern north carolina we also hosted a delegation from united airlines as we launched our partnership ecsu united airlines av8 program a very exciting event great things are happening at ecsu in the remaining time that i have i want to show you just a few slides so please be patient with me a few slides of our campus improvements events and partnerships so first let's talk about some points of pride because you know i always want to make sure you all are well equipped to tell our story so um as provost mentioned we saw the highest enrollment in eight years over 2000 students we grew once again in a global pandemic grant funding you may have read an ecsu news 25 million dollars for the fifth full year we are continuing to grow with our grant funding and a special shout out to our fam our faculty and staff who work so hard to bring these grants to the institution rank four in best colleges 2021 top 10 hbcu's in the nation this is huge we haven't seen rain things like this in a long time at ecsu with ever so this is big for us that visibility is growing one of the great things that we're doing on this campus and also with our relationship and an mou with the military we have rotc army on our campus and we have the coast guard airspace base right up the street so people are taking notice of our relationship to build stronger um articulation agreements and other opportunities for adult learners who may be in the military veterans or in the coast guard and then for uh for top public schools in the south we just heard about this yesterday so this is hot off the press these are great points of pride for you all to help us share and campus enhancements uh we had trustees come our chair trustee time was there to help us celebrate campus enhancements you know we always or i always say i'm committed to building a campus community where students love where they live and learn and part of that is making sure they have things to do we'll have classes conducted here in the pool as well as continue our relationship with the coast guard and having them train in our pool so uh and and also we'll do some fun things there too but the academic piece is critical uh for the usage of the pool and our partnership with the military and then our students also being able to have a little fun in the pool area so if you recall the pool looked like this before the renovations and now this is what it looks like what a huge improvement this is what i mean by progress uh we have to do what we have what we can with what we have and that's one thing that that we are definitely uh we have a testimony about is doing more with little and it's those key things that make a difference for our campus community my next slide is another um is actually the building uh that we had renovated we had gr little renovated when mc connect bond money as well as uh we had more hall uh renovated and earlier in june you saw our uh renovations to bias hall so i want to show a just a quick video uh so you can see some of the enhancements in gr little and more hall team has been hard at work over the summer and i have to preface um well i have to say with the video just so you'll know it was videotape prior to the cdc requirements of mass being uh worn on inside buildings so just to let you know that we are still following protocol but that video was taken prior to that um that mandate uh another thing i want to bring to your attention and vc brown talked about it is new student induction and pinning ceremony uh we decided under the direction of vc brown to be more inclusive uh prior to it was just freshman pinning now it's all new students and you see i have to give um i have to come in vc brown and his team you see how great the students look they came in with their ecsu shirts on they actually walked under the arch at the main entrance of the campus and that's part of the tradition i started uh where they come in under that arch and then later after graduation they walked back out under that arch and so uh they looked wonderful as you can see and so it was a great program trusty time attended and trusty time i think you enjoyed it did you very much yes it was a great time yes wonderful and then some of our hand our campus enhancement around food and dining and vc mclinton and vc brown um definitely helped to identify and also trusty chambers identify um our new food vendor that we have on campus so here's some of the enhancements you heard vc brown vc mclinton talk about greens to go and then also tlc um and then one other enhancement i know you haven't seen yet this is the pod and so here's a place where students can come pick up a snack uh you know when they get hungry in between classes or at night they can come pick up a snack here we didn't have this before so this is offering another sense of convenience for our students faculty and staff while they're going from class to class and they just need a boost they can come to the pod and pick up a snack and uh and carry on throughout their day next slide i i clicked it it's not coming up all right hold on there we go and uh the other enhancement you've heard us talk about the track the track is also a community partnership that we have uh with open access to the community of elizabeth city this is something that we were committed to doing we also were able to do this in order to have physical education courses outside our provost um have classes scheduled for the track as well and so this is a place where our students will both join enjoy this on the academic side of them taking their classes some of the physical education classes outside but also in the evenings and early morning hours we see our community members out there community members within elizabeth city and so this is what we were concerned about the the condition of the track so now this is our before picture now i have to say um if parson can move to the it should become coming in yeah okay our new track isn't that dynamic yes and so we no longer have that liability i was scared about with those cracks in the in the track uh this is a new track and it is as i mentioned um being in place there for students for their classes as well as for the community in the evenings to come and walk or run the track as they see fit so this is really the important piece of our partnership with the community and and knowing how important it is that the university continues to thrive in all aspects because our community depends on us and i also just bring to your attention rotc last summer we were unable to host the rotc air force on our campus due to the pandemic this past summer we did it eight weeks 14 cadets they flew our airplanes for eight weeks during the summer and it was a great event very successful event very dynamic young people in high school one as young as 16 years old getting his driver's license and flight license at the same time so this was a phenomenal event and we're going to continue to partner with the air force over the summer to bring this program to ecsu and then lastly our new partnership with united airlines as i mentioned this was something i wanted to see happen when i stepped foot here on ecsu's campus that we needed a partnership with a commercial airline a major commercial airline and it has come to fruition and we were delighted to have united airlines on campus to launch the av8 program with us but more importantly they made a good point about they're not only looking for students who fly or flight students they're looking for students they can hire who major in accounting and business and finance and uh hr and you know all aspects of their corporation their business so this is going to be a win win for both us at ecsu and united because our students are going to benefit from these opportunities and what united has told us is they are they are expecting to hire at least 5000 people in various aspects within the company so this is a great partnership uh that we're going to that we have now with united airlines so i just wanted to make sure that it was clear that it's not only for flight students it's for all of our students and they can uh you know be marketable based on the needs of the company but trustees i say thank you thank you thank you for your continued advocacy and support of elizabeth city state university and me and i also uh hope that you will continue to tweet retweet post repost all the great things that are happening at ecsu as you heard vice chancellor wilkin say we don't have a large marketing budget it's it's i can't even tell you how low it is compared to some of the uh schools that are close to us but we do the best we can and we leverage that social media and we leverage the opportunity to tell our story anytime and we hope that you are doing the same on our behalf so thank you for this time i greatly appreciate it thank you chancellor i i don't know about the rest of the board but you're like a shot in the arm after lunch that's wonderful and as many as and as many times as i hear the stories or see them firsthand there's nothing like you showing us the whole panoramic view it's really so encouraging uh it's just fabulous so thank you uh so we have trusty bosom with your final report nominating committee yes thank you um the election outcomes are as follows by majority vote trusty stephanie johnson for chair of our board trusty tiffany jones for vice chair and trusty christ evans for secretary congratulations to our new leadership we are looking forward to and excited about it thank you very much you congratulations thank you very much trusty to you and your team for conducting this and congratulations miss johnson dr johnson dr jones and miss evans we are so excited we are here to support you i will just take a few moments of personal privilege we do not have a closed session today to thank you all and i will say to our new uh leaders that there's not one trustee that will not step forward or hasn't already stepped forward everyone stands ready to support i would just like to say a personal thank you for the support you all have given me over the past few years and also for your humor and patience but both of those i can't put one before the other because i really have appreciated it i would like to say also a special shout out to Gwen sanders who just had my back my shoulder the top of my head it was just a real privilege Gwen thank you so much and because i started on the board with both trusty kim brown and trusty cold pepper we're the last of the mohekins i want to say a personal thank you to both kim and andy because honest to goodness anytime i made a call both of these brothers said yes and i just can't tell you how much i appreciated being able to call on you and i will say for all of the rest of members of board and our new trustees as well everybody is prone to step forward work and i serve this is how i can serve and chancellor it really is a pleasure to have to pull people back then to fan the fire so you got a crew of folks that are on fire to join you in this incredible mission and privilege to serve the students in the future generations of the viking family so i thank you all and unless we have any other announcements we are going to adjourn into a beautiful rest of the day any other announcements chair can i just share one thing as a former chair i just want to say congratulations to the three lovely ladies who will be assisting the chancellor and serving our our community and to trusty stephanie i'm sure the former football player and great elizabeth city state university alum is really proud of his wife that's right keeping in his memory the legacy of the family being full of viking pride so i'm sure he's smiling down today very nice i'm sure he is any other comments before we adjourn chair robinson um if i may i did send an email but i'm i'm not certain that the trustees have seen that seen the email yet uh it was a save the date um vc goodson did mention earlier about the discussion on delegation of authority and so we will have a special meeting to kind of dive deep into that on september 27th at 11 a.m so i sent an email but i'm going to be sending a meeting invite so that it gets on your calendar on this evening thank you so much thank you any other comments thank you all so very much and we look forward to seeing you at our next meetings have a great day bye bye