At 12:34 p.m. Friday, the Board of Trustees meeting was adjourned, resulting in a handful of passed resolutions, one of which will cost the university millions of dollars.
Trustees gave the go-ahead for five Ohio University capital projects, which have an estimated combined budget of $24.36 million.
The approved projects include “Phase 1” of the Housing Development Plan, the replacement of Peden Stadium’s turf, the renovation of the third floor of the Hudson Health Building, an electrical upgrade at the Computer Service Center and the renovation of OU’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Dublin extension campus.
“I think the highlight of these two days have been continued discussion about moving forward,” chairwoman Gene Harris said. “We had robust conversation about the capital plan and how it supports the academic mission of the intuition.”
Guaranteed tuition was one of the main focuses of Thursday and Friday’s meetings, something that trustees will continue to discuss at future meetings.
“The administration has not brought forward any recommendations (for guaranteed tuition) at this time; we are just at the conversation stage,” OU President Roderick McDavis said. “There would have to be action at the state legislative level by the General Assembly for us to go forward.”
McDavis said administration has not discussed increasing tuition but instead discussed “conceptual ideas around tuition.”
“We haven’t approached it as we have traditionally with a percent increase; we talked about the guaranteed tuition program instead,” he said. “We are trying to come up with ideas for affordability, which I think is in the best interest of our students and their families.”
Guaranteed tuition could be one way that the university can think about affordability, accessibility and manage student debt, Vice President for Finance and Administration Stephen Golding said.
“We tried to demonstrate to the trustees that we can set the rates lower than others and still generate sufficient revenues and protect the quality of an Ohio education,” Golding said.
As the meeting closed, Harris posed a rhetorical question.
“How can we efficiently balance state dollars and not over-commit, or find ourselves issuing too much debt in an ever-changing environment?” she said. “That is a challenging set of ideas to balance.”
Check thepost.ohiou.edu for more Board of Trustees coverage and to see what OU President Roderick McDavis said about Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s proposed budget.
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