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K-State Today

June 14, 2017

Kansas Board of Regents June meeting agenda items

Submitted by Cindy Bontrager

Dear campus community,

The Kansas Board of Regents will meet June 14-15 at the Curtis State Office Building in Topeka. The board will consider the following agenda items during the meeting.

The Regents will approve university academic calendars for the 2019-2020, 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years. Academic calendars are approved on a three-year cycle.

Four current members of the Retirement Plan Committee will be reappointed for three-year terms. The committee oversees the Mandatory Retirement Plan, including its administration and investments, creates and reviews plan documents and investment provider agreements, implements an investment policy with performance standards and reviews the investment performance on a semiannual basis.

State universities submitted fee proposals for first reading in May. The Regents will receive full tuition and fee proposals on June 14 for first reading and take final action on June 15. President Richard Myers and Student Body President Jack Ayres will present the tuition and fee proposal to the Board of Regents. K-State Manhattan, Polytechnic and Olathe campuses request a 3 percent tuition increase while the College of Veterinary Medicine maintains a flat tuition rate increase. Proposals will be posted on the Regents website.

The facilities section of the board policy manual has been updated to strengthen the Regent's oversight of university projects done in partnership with private companies. The Regents will approve policy changes to clarify that universities will advise the board's facilities director of pending projects and establish when approval is required for leases to organizations related to the university and subsequent subleases by the related organization to third parties.

K-State requests the Regents adopt a resolution for the issuance of bonds by the Kansas Development Finance Authority for $8 million over eight years to finance the electrical system conversion project on the Manhattan campus. Authority to initiate and complete the project and to issue revenue bonds is contingent upon the Governor's approval of the appropriation budget that was recently passed by the legislature.

Information will be presented to the Regents on the state universities' fee structures. The Regents will consider reformatting the comprehensive state university fee schedule to promote greater transparency of fees.

A Regent's attainment goal was to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of developing a common online undergraduate admissions application for state universities. The analysis found that a centralized, common online application can provide potential benefits and increased costs to both applicants and institutions, but the increased costs exceed the potential benefits.

The Regents will act on Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR, proposals. The federal program encourages university partnerships with industry and is designed to stimulate sustainable science and technology infrastructure improvements in states that historically have received a disproportionately lower per-capita average of federal research dollars.

President Myers will present K-State's campus master plan for Regents approval. K-State began a comprehensive update of its campus master plan in fall 2011. One of the K-State 2025 themes, Facilities and Infrastructure, focuses on the goal of providing facilities and infrastructure that meet the evolving needs at a competitive level with benchmark institutions and are an asset to recruit and retain quality students, faculty, researchers and staff.

The Regents will act on CEO compensation for fiscal year 2018.

The Midwest Student Exchange Program, or MSEP, was established by the Midwestern Higher Education Commission with the goal of increasing access and affordability for students in Midwestern universities. The Regents will act on amendments to the MSEP policy to streamline reporting.

The ICE3 pilot initiative was created by the Department of Commerce and the Kansas Board of Regents to encourage employment of postsecondary students by Kansas employers. The Regents will receive information on phase one of the pilot program.

The Regents will review and discuss fiscal year 2019 unified state budget requests. K-State's top request is the restoration of $4 million for Global Food System support.

The Regents will approve the fiscal year 2018 board meeting schedule. The Regents will visit K-State in October 2017.

If you have any questions about these agenda items, please contact me at cab@k-state.edu or 785-532-6226. The meeting may be streamed live online. For live updates on all Kansas Board of Regents meetings follow @ksregents on Twitter. Agendas and complete meeting minutes also are available online.

Sincerely,

Cindy Bontrager
Vice president for administration and finance