About 50 students rallied around the Board of Trustees’ buses to protest its recent decisions, including the president’s salary increase and tuition hikes.
The board responded and will meet with three representatives from the group.
It wasn’t immediately clear when they would be meeting or for how long by press time.
The board also began discussion in the governance committee, without talking specifics, on changing the board’s policy on the presidential evaluation. Typically the president is evaluated, during which a pay increase or bonus is typically determined.
The policy was last amended in 2008, according Trustee Chairwoman Sandra Anderson.
“The policy was created in the beginning to be attentive to the OU way, and it’s time to look at it again,” Anderson said.
Trustees Kevin Lake, Anderson, Janelle Simmons and OU President Roderick McDavis will attend the Association of Governing Boards’ annual meeting later this year. It is the only national association that serves the interests and needs of academic governing boards, according to the association’s website.
The Board of Trustees typically spends a day in discussion talking about the topics it will vote on the day after. The trustees split into smaller groups Thursday to attend committee meetings on several categories — academics, resources, governance and audit. They will vote tomorrow.
The board focused on state support of instruction — public funding for higher education — and how OU will maintain its high appropriations from the state in its resources committee.
Stephen Golding, vice president for finance and administration, explained how state support of instruction is funded and why OU receives a large dividend.
“Because of all the change that have taken place within the state support for instruction line, we thought it was important for the board to have some sort of primer on state support for instruction,” Golding said.
SSI funding models have changed their funding formula to benefit not only course completion but also degree completion, putting OU as one of the top recipients of SSI, receiving a 1.51 percent increase in SSI last year.
During Thursday morning’s joint academics and resources committee meeting, Executive Vice President and Provost Pam Benoit and Vice President for Finance and Administration Stephen Golding gave trustees their first look into a new report compiled by a compensation task force that would boost OU to third in the state for faculty salary.
The university currently ranks eighth in the state for professors ($103,757) and associate professors’ ($77,460) average salaries and sixth for adjunct professors ($67,986).
OU retention rates have increased, also encouraging the success of learning communities, McDavis said, which has increased from a 72 percent first-year student participation in 2012 to 76 percent in 2013.
Investments in health and medical research have declined, Joe Shields, vice president for Research and Creative Activity and dean of the Graduate College, said in the academics committee.
“I would say, (acquiring funding) is all driven by our scholars, especially faculty, so the decisions that are made by deans … are going to be fundamental toward what happens with research,” Shields said.
—Seth Archer, Alex Felser, Dina Berliner, Will Gibbs and Danielle Keeton-Olsen contributed to this report
