NC-SARA Board Meeting: November 3, 2017
Submitted by jshanika on Tue, 11/14/2017 - 10:36
The NC-SARA Board met in Minneapolis November 2-3, 2017. Fifteen of the 22 members attended in person; three participated by phone.
The agenda and Board Book for the meeting may be found HERE.
During the meeting, the Board heard reports on the progress of the SARA initiative and took numerous actions.
Forty-eight states (plus the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands) are now members of SARA. The Massachusetts Department of Higher Education is preparing the Commonwealth’s application to join SARA; it will be submitted to the New England Board of Higher Education for consideration and approval. Discussions about SARA membership continue in California. About 1,650 institutions now participate in SARA, and institutional renewal rates are above 99 percent.
The Board received and reviewed a draft of NC-SARA’s FY 2017 financial audit; that audit will be posted on the NC-SARA website when finalized.
The Board also reviewed a first-quarter FY 2018 finance report. The SARA initiative is on strong financial grounds.
The Board voted to keep institutions’ NC-SARA participation fees at the current level through FY 2021 (through June 30, 2020). Those fees have remained the same since institutions first began applying to participate in the SARA initiative in early 2014.
The Board approved additional policy language for the SARA Manual dealing with “provisional status” for institutions participating in SARA (see HERE) and a change to the NC-SARA Bylaws regarding the selection and committee term limits of compact presidents who serve on NC-SARA’s Executive Committee (see page 31 in board book).
Marshall Hill, NC-SARA Executive Director, made a presentation on spring 2017 enrollment reporting (available HERE).
The Board also elected officers and Finance and Executive Committee members to serve for calendar years 2018 and 2019. Paul E. Lingenfelter was re-elected to another two-year term as Chair, Teresa Lubbers was elected to a two-year term as Vice Chair, and Leroy Wade was similarly elected as Treasurer. Those three officers serve as ex-officio members of the Board’s Executive Committee; Chris Bustamante, Joe Garcia, Patricia O’Brien, Michael Thomas and Larry Tremblay were elected to join them on that committee
Kathryn Dodge, Larry Isaak and Leah Mathews were elected to serve on the Finance Committee, which Leroy Wade as Treasurer will chair.
NC-SARA meeting dates and locations for 2018 will be as follows: the NC-SARA Board will meet in Denver on May 2-3, 2018 and in Memphis on October 31-November 1, 2018. The SARA States’ meeting will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah, September 18-20, 2018.
Without taking related action, the Board discussed its current process for obtaining input on policy proposals and received updates on several information items, including an update on the current student and institution support project (see HERE).