Members of the community who are interested in the students who are in the audience. Can you hear me? I need to start over. A? So I want to recognize our newly firmed true is today. Here we go. Thank you. Thanks for joining and serving on Okay. Fog I'd like to begin our meeting with taking a moment of silence. So those friends and members of the University community who recently passed away. I'd also like to say a few words about the University's 25th, President David Rose. President Emeritus Rozel's tenure at the University of Dala was marked by thoughtful leadership and strategic advancements. 1990-2007, he guided the university through important developments in academia and infrastructure, which included growth in the endowment and improvements in academic rankings. His commitment notably enhanced the University's cultural and educational environment. Today, as we reflect on his profound impact, we honor his legacy and the thoughtful path he charted for the future. Please join me in a moment of silence. Thank you. I will now ask miss Hawkins, our Secretary Treasurer to present the report on attendance. Madam Chair, we have 20 trustees in attendance today, which is a majority of the voting members of the board, and constitutes a quorum for today's meeting. Those members who are unable to be here today have all been asked to be excused. Thank you. So we're going to move to the approval of the minutes of our meeting of March 24. The minutes of our last meeting on March 19 are provided in the meeting materials on page three. If there are no revisions for the minutes, may I have a motion to approve them as presented. So I moved. Do you have a second? Second. Okay. All in favor? Thank you. So today, we're going to move to public comments. Today. We're going to hear from individuals who wish to make public comments. Each speaker will be called to the microphone. And miss Brand, will each have 2 minutes to present their comments. Thank you. Today, we have four individuals registered for public comment. First, I from Emma Abrams to the podium. As a reminder, you'll have 2 minutes to address the board. Hello. My name is Emma Abrams, and I'm a sophomore majoring in environmental and Resource Economics. I am the president of Sunrise, Newark and the co chair of Y DSA at UD here on campus. I do research about coastal home buyback programs at the Center for Experimental and Applied Economics right across the street where we have learned that 13 million Americans will be displaced by sea level rise in the next 70 years. Myself and my family. While there is limited publicly available information about the UD endowment. What we do know is that as of 2023, UD has $37 million invested in oil and gas. We have reached the point economically where any profits made from fossil fuels today will never balance out the trillion dollars of damages per year, climate change will cost us. Continuing to invest in fossil fuels, as well as companies invested in weapons manufacturing and Israel apartheid is entirely antithetical to the mission of this university and economically disastrous. I am here today as a representative of my RSOs and the student body to request the following of the board and the administration. Full transparency about the endowment, the implementation of a human rights based investment policy, the creation of a financial committee dedicated to sustainable and ethical investment, full dvestment from fossil fuels, weapons manufacturing, and Israel companies. Luckily, the financial field is evolving to meet the demands of an increasingly sustainable minded society. There are index funds already available that would meet these specific needs. We as students are happy and willing to work with administration and the board of trustees to ensure that how we spend our money properly reflects who we are as university and our proposed values. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next, I'd like to welcome Hava Goldman to board from the podium. Hello. My name is Hava Goldman, and I'm the president of student leadership at HillL. On October 6, I was seen in my wholeness as a student here. On October 7, I became the other. My identity has been hijacked by people who have used the horrific and barbaric attack of October 7 in order to achieve their own goals. The deaths and capture of our friends and family, one of whom is among the hostages in Gaza has become a political tool to push their anti ionist agenda. Here, as well as on other college campuses, this has been revealed to be a thinly veiled attempt to hide their anti semitic rhetoric. Sadly, this has happened far too often in the history of my people, and it is happening here at our own university. Over the course of this year, Jewish students like me have gone from focusing on pursuing their interests and passions to instead becoming advocates who need to justify their existence. All of this is occurring at a place that prides itself on diversity and inclusion. Students like us have been harassed online, denied their sense of identity in personhood, actively excluded from certain university spaces, had our identities rejected from others and called white colonizers by a senior member of the administration whose primary job is to uphold diversity and equity. All of this is in an era in which we recognize that those in positions of power and privilege are not to explain, justify and dictate the identity of the minority. Hatred, as you know, does not exist in a vacuum, nor does it end with a few waves of a pen. Combating anti Semitism, just like many other forms of hatred takes a sense of willingness and concerted effort to achieve. An effort which few within our university have been willing to undertake. I ask the board, if we wish to create an environment which is pluralistic and representative of the world's diversity. It should not stop at Jewish students and staff because of their personal beliefs, opinions, or ties to Israel. Such action toes a dangerous line of thinking, one which is justified much worse than what we speak of today. I'm proud to be Jewish. I'm proud of the Jewish community which we've built here, and I hope to one day continue being a proud blue hen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next, I'd like to welcome John Morgan to the podium. Yeah. Hopefully. Thank you. I'm speaking to you today as a member of University Faculty Senate's Budget Committee. As President Asana stated at the Delaware Legislature's GFC hearing for UT's operating budget on February 1, and since then in other public venues, UD is now facing some severe bulgetary challenges caused largely by sharp increases in the costs of UDs continuing to participate in the state's group health insurance plan in future fiscal years. Specifically, there was an increase of $11.6 million in August and another increase of 9.4 million in November 2023, yielding a total increase of 21 million. Many faculty members are wondering why the information about these increases did not begin circulating until late January and arly February, rather than in a more timely manner last fall semester. Since one of UDs trustees is a co chair of the state Employee Benefits Committee which decided upon these increases, it prompts the question of whether this information was communicated in a timely manner to the members of the Trustees Committee on Finance and to all the other trustees who have both collectively and individually a fiduciary duty to UD. In recent years, it has sometimes been asserted by some of UDS trustees that their communications among themselves are hindered by Delaware's foia, since at most eight trustees can attend a committee meeting. But that is true only if the committee meeting is not a public meeting, which could then be attended by an unlimited number of trustees and other interested members of the campus community. Hence, I urge that to reduce the chances of more nasty surprises in UDs budget in the future, UDS trustees should routinely conduct the meetings of their committees in public, as is the case at the state supported universities in almost every other state of the USA, such as Penn State. Thank you. Next, I welcome Matt Robinson to address the podium. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the board today. My name is doctor Matthew Robinson. For those who don't know me, I'm a full professor at the Larner College of Business and Economics and completed my 20 23rd year at the University. I serve as a faculty Senator and I've served as faculty Senate president, and I'm currently member of both Faculty Senate Academic priorities and Presidential Avisy Committee and the Budget Committee. I'm what you call a senior faculty member. I've consciously chosen to make my career at this institution. I invested in seeing it succeed not only now, but beyond my time and into the future. It was in this role that several members of the campus community asked if I would provide public comment and I obliged. The financial state of the university was shared with the campus community earlier in the spring semester. Based on my experiences and the roles I mentioned, I can say that I was not surprised when the dire budget financial situation was communicated. Yes, the issues related to increased healthcare costs cannot be denied. Yes, higher education, landscape is changing on multiple levels. But my lack of surprise was from my experience as Senate president and a member of the budget committee where in meeting discussions, concerns were raised over financial decisions by individuals who I respected and that resonated with me. Now, the university community is asking questions and wondering why we as a university have been impacted more than other institutions. They've communicated that they expected better from its leadership through a survey that was administered by the faculty Union to the faculty, a college listening tour that was hosted by the administration for both faculty and staff and on the floor of the faculty Senate. The community has genuine concerns about the direction of the university and what the future means to them and to the experience we are accustomed to delivering to our students. On behalf of that community, I ask that as we're moving forward, the reasons that got us into the situation be identified and remedied, so that we get better that we spend, save and cut wisely as we navigate this new higher education landscape so that we do not compromise our academic mission and that it's aligned with the future needs of our students. Finally, that we prioritize spending that is aligned in a manner that the university faculty and staff can do what they do well for the betterment of the students both in the classroom and on the campus today for years to come. I was proud to see at the Senate meeting in May that a resolution was passed at the Faculty Senate Budget Committee will have an active participant in working with the administration and reviewing and preparing budgets and moving forward. The faculty would like to take an active part as we move into the future and remedy the situation. Thank you for this time. And I'd like to recognize real quickly. I think I saw Jim Buckowitz here who served as chair of our faculty Budget Committee for past several years. He's retiring this year, has devoted his career to this institution, and Jim job well done, my friend. Thank you. Madam Chair, that concludes our public comment section of today's agenda. Okay. So I hope this works this time. Thank you for your comments and your time today for bringing these items to our attention. We're going to turn now to the report of our president. I'd like to introduce President Dennis sons and welcome him to provide a report to the Board. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the semi annual Board of Trustee meeting. I to start with this slide, it's a picture of pictures, and it continually inspires me as the president of our university. It really speaks volumes about the amazing students that we have, the fantastic and dedicated faculty and staff. So without them, we wouldn't be the great universe we are. And so a big thank you to all of you, really. And just to narrate this a bit, you know, what we do for our students, you know, from greenhouse labs to underwater robotic laboratories, from wonderful activities that really build commaradi like the order of the engineer, where the engineers proudly receive a ring to commit to the profession, to the gwik and everything else. We're really giving students the opportunity to discover themselves, to hone on their creativity and imagination and do fantastic things. And so that's what the University of Delaware is all about. So This is the proudest moment of the year. We're celebrating the class of 2024. It is a class made of 62 33 graduates. Obviously, the biggest chunk of that is our bachelor's, over 4,200. And then we have lots of masters and doctoral studs. This might be one of our largest, if not the largest doctoral class. I don't know what Lou is, but you can do a fact check with Lou. Uh, we also have a lot of associate in arts and certificates and other people. And of course, special call out to the honors bachelors, 417. Those are truly amazing students. And when you look at our students, obviously, they're inspired by people like those that we're going to have at commencement, receiving it degrees. We have an outstanding class. Doctor Don Parks is the founding director of Denning, the Delaware Environmental Institute. He received an doctor of science, he's retiring, Is here as Professor of Plant and Soil Science. He's done amazing things. Tamika Montgomery Reeves from the Circuit Judge, US Court of Appeals, and former associate justice in the Delaware Supreme Court will receive an Doctor of Laws, doctor Kerr Strider is the CEO of Blue Energy and will receive an already Doctor of science. And last but not least our guest speaker who give the address is Joe Flacco who really needs no introduction. Everybody who has been a student here or Delaware or perhaps the community knows Joe as an NFL quarterback in the Super Bowl MVP. So he'll get an doctor of humane letters. It is on 9:30 A.M. May 25, I hope I'll see a lot of you and it'll be sunny and nice day, 75 degrees. I want to give a special call out to many, many of our students, but I don't have enough time. So what I'm going to give you is this collage of students receiving outstanding honors, whether Goldwater scholars, Buren scholars, Gilman scholars, Truman scholars, Fulbright scholars, NSF graduate fellows or receiving the Warner and Taylor award, as you see the two ladies to the very right, two outstanding seniors of the year. Those are amazing students. Let's give a hand to all those amazing students. And of course, student athletes represent UD Excellence as well at multiple fronts and dimensions. I want to mention that this year, the women's golf team, as well as the volleyball team, we won the CA championships for the women's golf the third time in the program history. We have many individual champions in uh, streaming, both women's and men's. The name that stood out from this list is Maya Tasako must be Greek. So also, I want to say that two for 20 consecutive semesters, our student athletes have posted an average of 3.0 GPA or better, this semester in particular has been 3.27. So that's what I'm most impressed about that. And, I would be remissed if I did not mention our spirit teams. So the cheer team won for the sixth straight time, the national title, and the dance team one for the third time the national title three in a row. Pretty amazing. Last but not least, the 302 tour happening in just a bit here in early June. It's the second time do the event. It's the opportunity for our student athlete ambassadors, travel the state, learn more about the state, and for the state to learn more about us, including our athletics and our academic programs and build partnerships with the community. Another amazing group I want to call out as the student advisors, as I've shared with you before. I have a student advisory council, which is made of 17 members, 13 undergraduates and four graduates. Those are unbelievably smart students with multiple interests and multiple degrees and minors and majors they're receiving. They've been providing to Jose and me insights and feedback on important student center topics. We really care about our students. We're here for those students. And clearly we work together with them to develop workable solutions to address their concerns. This semester, we have spent extra time on a deep dive into artificial intelligence and last semester. We spent the time of the year on civil discourse. And that was time extremely well spent because this became the year of civil discourse and civic engagement, and it's needless for me to tell everybody what a very strong impact the Israel Gaza War has had on our community, and so obviously our hearts go out with all the innocent victims and I would say that throughout this time, what we have done to the best of our ability is to uphold the principles of protecting free expression while at the same time, demonstrating peacefully and preserving the safety of everybody involved. Now, it's my real pleasure and honor to introduce some of the most distinguished professors for the year. The Also Professor is the highest honor that we bestow, and this year, which is the year of Heliophysics, this award is going to Bill Matthews, Department of physics and astronomy Professor. Bill, will you please stand up and be recognized. If you want to say what this award means to you please feel free. Thank you very much Your Honor. Humon this way. But I always want to call out my post doctoral students and my PhD students and undergraduate students over 3.5 decades who have made a lot of this work possible. So thanks to them. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. And we have the Mangon Scholars very prestigious award for junior faculty who are developing Allison's one day. I'd like to always say, and Kyle Davis and Kenneth Shores from Geography and School of Education have been recognized with this award this year, and I believe Kyle is here. Kyle, where are you? Could you please stand up to be recognized. Thank you. Thank you for all you're doing. Numerous other professors have received awards just to give you a taste, Food bright recipients induction into the National Academy of Inventors Joe Fox. Now we have 14 inducted since 2012, Danny Galileo for receiving the UPD National Award for representing the faculty in collective bargaining and two fellows inducted in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Of course, with those amazing faculty students and staff, we have impressive accomplishments in every college. So just wanted to give you this mosaic to give you a taste of everything that is happening. So I'll start by saying if you look at a number of the schools, they're seeing outstanding success for our students like aner the pre vet people there are truly amazing. They are admitted at 89% at the most prestigious university here and abroad, England, other countries with about an 89% success rate. It's twice the national average, and I don't know where doctor Poker is, but to get into the that school, it's hard to get to a medical school. So, you know, this is something for everybody to realize and celebrate. At cast, they've introduced a placement exam for the first year students, which reduces the drop and fail rates by 57%. At Lerner, they're working on diversity programs with great success. I should say that in both the college of arthocan Environment and in Biden, people are working on offshore wind energy, so important for a transition to renewable energy and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, Many of our schools are recognized for their excellence in research. In particular, the College of Engineering now is celebrating the Clean Hyden Center, and we hosted here a regional meeting of the National Academy of Engineering. It doesn't get any more prestigious than that. And the College of Health Science is seeing a 44% increase in active research awards. Last but not least two. The Honors College. 11 of the students I showed you in the previous page that were Fullbright, they're all honor students as well. Michael, you're doing a good job. You should know that. And also, in terms of our graduate programs, the Cege of education has a highly ranked graduate program, the top 13% in the US, and overall, US News ranked 11 of our programs among the best in the country. Just to give you a round up of various accolades and metrics, our sustainability program has been ranked this year, number 33 in the US, out of many very highly admired institutions, and 240 globally out of 1,400 institutions, we're up nearly 200 spots in our global ranking. So certainly the creation of the Office of sustainability, has helped with our deliberate actions in this field in Fulbright Awards. We've been getting many awards every single year, and we have been recognized by the Department of State as a top producer of Fulbright Awards. Our entrepreneurship program is 31st nationally, and third in the Mid Atlantic, which is a very competitive place as recognized by the Princeton Review. I already talked about the graduate education, and I would be de mess if I didn't talk about R&D activities. We are now ranked 47 up 27 spots for non medical R&D out of 626 institutions, as ranked by NSF, which are very a very scientific study. Resarch indeed, so tremendous breadth and depth. We're bursting through the Sims. Just to give you a taste. Tin gegu is doing work on materials to create reliable, less energy intensive forms of computer memory, and it has to do with memory chips, and all that in the world of AI is going to be so important. Speaking of AI, Za Fang and Mz are starting bias in AI Cato huge issue. We know bias. We have people that are doing amazing work with psychology or developmental delays in babies or how black and Latinx boys view the future after high school. And last, Ben Maruca, I'm not going to introduce anything about his research than the fact that he's going to be the guest speaker today again in the year of Heliophysics. This is only fitting. So Of course, with this great research. The next frontier is to convert research and all these discoveries to innovation and useful technologies and products that can help humanity. So one of our most product accomplishments is in 2017, which was one year after I arrived, we formed a partnership with Dupont and the state of Delaware, the so called Delaware innovation space. And the idea was to translate the best of those discoveries into innovations and products at one space. So we have a building. It's 200,000 square foot building with great science labs, And I wanted to show you what kind of impact we've had on that and on the entrepreneurial economy in Delaware. So 27 UD affiliated start ups have been supported. We have created more than 275 UD affiliated jobs. The companies that we've cited and eventually migrated to the incubator, and some of them have already graduated from the Incubator have raised more than $680 million of subsequent rounds of financing. 14 UD grads are actually leading. Innovation space start ups. More than ten of those folks, you know, our recent UD hires. There are three UD graduates on the management team of the innovation space, and we have more than six inters just this semester over there, huge phenomenal success story for us, and I think for the state of Delaware. Another way that we're showing the impact to the world, and obviously we bring the world to us is by inviting distinguished visitors to come to campus. I can't even begin to tell you how many of them have come just in the month of April, you know, every single day, almost we've had somebody. So take me half an hour to go through all of them, taste here, Nikki Fox, the associate administrator of NASA in the year of Heliophysics. We brought it here, and I have to tell you I really enjoyed my firesz chat with her, talking about Star Trek and everything, how to go to Marsh, Bill and everything else. So it was pretty amazing. And of course, doctor Tony Fauci with a great fireside chat with obviously Valerie Biden Owens and talking about hydroloquen, you know, and whether this or not can you know, save the planet. You know the answer. So this is all fantastic. All these accomplishments. Our job is always to make sure that we keep accomplishing. We keep moving forward. So I want to tell you what is the environment, what are the headwinds that we are facing in the horizon. So indeed, the high rate environment is challenging. You see all over the news. Today, there was another announcement from Penn State trying to cut half million dollars from their budget through essentially voluntary separation staff. Temple has lost about a quarter of the enrollment from 40,000 30,000 after the pandemic. Many others are facing budget cuts from the states as well as enrollment challenges. We're not immune, although sometimes we feel we are, UD has stable enrollment and strong demand. We're not facing a challenge with respect to our application volume. We're close to 40,000 that volume has been increasing year after year. Now it is a record and 50% increase since fall 2016, that I joined the institution. We have maintained the total enrollment in the institution constant. Plus or manage, very few people. So haven't really packed the institution with students in spite of the huge demand from the applications, and so obviously we become more selective and the quality of the students is increasing. So what is our challenge. Our challenge is that COVID continues to have an impact on our budget. So as you can see here in this slide, blue is revenue and red is expense. Every single year before COVID, the revenues were higher than the expenses. During COVID, we lost some money was very tough here, as you remember, when we declared the campus, we have lost more money if we didn't get about $100 million in various bailouts. Right after the COVID, we rebound nicely, in fact, too nice by fiscal 2022. We really look like we're leading the pack, like so many other institutions, we're really having a very healthy recovery. And the reason for this is because just like so many others, we attrition staff, lots of positions like 400 position during COVID. And then we're starting to go back in the market and hire people and slowly, but surely these people show up, and by this year, obviously, our payroll costs are higher because we've hired many of those staff back, and we had some additional challenges with inflation, cost of goods and services, healthcare cost increase, and so on. So we ended up projecting a deficit in the 20 to $40,000,000 range, as I mentioned. To deal with this. Can you help me advance the slide for some reason, it doesn't advance. Okay. We need to work together to chart our path forward, and this needs both unity and perseverance. Our commitment to sustaining the excellence of our top ranked institution in education, research and service and student experience is non negotiable. This defines UD is going to be here forever. So we are all committed and we need to be working together. To protect what we have in addition to enhance what we have in advance from where we are towards the future, leap into the future. So let me give you a taste of the future. So first, I'll start with how our applications look. I already said we have 39,600. We have lots of out of state applicants, 90% and 10% in light blue is the Delawarian pool. We also have very good diversity in the group of applicants as represented by the non white applications. So what's the challenge? Well, the challenge is if you're reading the newspapers, it's all about the rollout of the free application for federal student aid, FAFSA. Typically, a student goes in the portal, the FAFSA portal as soon as it opens around October and basically puts in the financial data of their families. And then, by December, they get a scoring back, which is sent to institutions where they're applying, which essentially demonstrates the need that will be met by the federal government. Then we package them to the full need or whatever we want to give them considering that amount, and we send offer letters in January, and we have a deadline of May for deposits. That's on the typical year. This year, FAFSA opened in January, when normally we would be sending out packages to students. And by the time they rolled it out and sent the data that was in March and the data was flawed and then they sent it back and they flawed again and then they sent it, and then we had to send it to a third party vendor to patch it up. It was well into April that we could send offer letters to students. Now, to be clear, many of our competitors pair universities send the offers out last week. So we're at least three weeks ahead of them. And, you know, clearly, May 1 has come and gone. You know, we are already extending the deadline to May 15, and quietly, we'll probably accept applications till later. All the peer big publics in the area have now extended it to June 1. When you look at the numbers, mind you to yield the class of about 40 to 50 students, we need for thousand 600 deposits pre melt. So, if you ask me what keeps you up at night, it's right here. As of today, we have 3,688 deposits. That's about 1,000 less than what we had at this point last year. Um Clearly, it's a challenge. At the same time, you should recognize that about 80 to 100 deposits keep putting in every day. If we transpose and time shift the data as what's happening, like, a little bit before the deadline. If we look at May 9, which was one week before our May 15 deadline this year, we had 3,356. And last year, one week before the end, we had 3,317 because there was a sudden influx of deposits on May 15. I don't predict this year. I hope I'm wrong. I think they'd be slightly what we call a slow pouring of applicants who deposit about 100 day because they're also comparing what they're going to receive from the Penn States and the Rutgers in the Marylands who have just pacly been able to get out packages to them. So as you can imagine, This has a huge implication on what our budget for next year is going to be. It's too early to call. We'll have to wait till at least mid June, if not July 1 to call the budget. On the graduate side, in terms of applications and yield, the same growing interest in UD is evident. In terms of applications, we have a 73% increase in master's applications since 2020, and we have a similar 67% increase in doctorals. So we get close to 4,000 for doctorals. Both are very good. Fosters certainly are revenue generating, for the most part, and doctoral absolutely critical for the explosion of our research activity. Also, our yield is terrific. It's nothing like what happens with undergraduate applications. When a graduate applies and is admitted, you have about a 50% chance or better for doctoral st 65% to yield them. So we feel extremely good about where our graduate program is heading, and certainly the investment in the graduate college is already paying off big dividends. So let me try to use my crystal ball and project a little bit into the parameters that affect our 25 fiscal 25 revenues and expenses in a minute. So as you'll hear today, we're proposing the trustees a 4% increase in tuition, trying to be mindful to keep up with inflation, but also make the university and keep the university affordable with the financial aid that we give. We're managing very carefully though that financial aid and the internal tuition discount rate. We're supplementing this with philanthropy. We could have a slight increase in the entering class. We could have a significant drop in the entering class. We could have a significant upswing in the entering class. It's too difficult to call. But what I do know is that we have managed to hit our targets to get about 600 transfer students. That was a population that were not active in before, 75% of those come from either states. So this is going to be a really nice bump on our revenue. But again, we need to be very careful because the effects of FAFSA on tuition and size of class are very significant. I talked about the master's programs and the external support of doctoral students, very optimistic about those, the continued growth in research. The state allocations, both operating and capital are not finalized till July 1, so we need to be patient. Currently our deferred maintenance budget, and we're in dire need of that has been set at $10 million by the governor's recommended budget, that's $10 million less than what we received last year. We're trying to inch it up. We'll have to see how the bond committee decides to do that. And finally, while the payout from the endowment, you know, at the same rate, it's actually giving us more dollars. Probably another $6 million is year to spend, which is wonderful. The operating gifts is unknown every single year. You never know what's the intention of the donors, how much would be bequest, how much would be current use and so on. In terms of expenditures, compensation obviously is projected to increase. We're committed to providing living and structural and medt increases for all faculty and staff. The total benefits that we provide to our employees are going to increase by $36 million. That's a new hike a new bump. 24 million out of this is for 11/12 of the health premium insurance cost. So obviously, it's it's hard to absorb it. It's a 27% increase in that premium from the previous year and accumulative increase in the health premiums of $33 million for us over two years. There is also an uncertain impact of the Fair Labor Standards Act that basically determines the threshold under which the employees are eligible for overtime. We still have some uncertainties in terms of how many faculty we're actually going to hire. There are still searches that have not been concluded. This brings the challenge of projecting. What's the final number? What's the final compensation? What's the final start up packages, depending on the success. And finally, the non salary expenditures are challenged by the continued inflation. Although it is slowing down, it's still higher than it used to be. So the message here is we need to be very strategic about planning our budget and to plan our future for budget resilience. We had lots of measures and guidelines that the Provost and I recommended to the unit directors, the colleges, and the college deans recommended to their chairs in this current year. Obviously, when you do that, there can be differences in interpretation and implementation that challenge the original scope. So moving into the next year, we're going to graduate from that environment completely. We're going to make the budget transparent to the unit levels to empower decision discretion at the local level. This will enable incentives and trade offs to be made at the right level to best fulfill mission. So that's fundamental. And obviously, along with that goes the fact that we need to ensure a budget discipline, adherence to what your budget is, what your gaps are, what your targets for revenue growth are, and do that in a proactive consultation matter and with collaboration across all levels to create sustainable solutions. Another part of creating sustainable solutions is we need to take charge of our future when it comes to the health insurance plan options that we have. So we have engaged now in an exploration of different options other than the state plan, in which we're a voluntary participant. We're looking at alternatives. We have a committee which is jointly set up by the University of Delaware and the AUP on benefits and cost containment. So there's going to be more during this year, but we do hope these strategies are going to really help us not only Close the gap that we have, but nicely rebound into positive territory in the fiscal 26. So as I said from the beginning back last February, fiscal 24 and fiscal 25 tough years made tougher by FAFSA and other external factors, but we remain extremely optimistic about the future. And the reason I'm saying this is because of the conversations that are happening right now that have been positioning us for success all along, and they're intensifying now in partnership, with the deans of all the colleges. So I'm going to give you a taste of the avenues we are pursuing to improve efficiency and also what we're doing to grow revenue. So in terms of the efficiency, what you'll see a common theme here, is that we are many of the colleges like, COE CAS. They're dealing with what I would call real estate or facility issues. You'll see a lot of the words streamlining, streamlining the approval and management of processes for capital projects and workflows, and also looking at our space and use the space efficiently and trim down the leases, you know, I mean, for example, CAS is using 60 buildings across campus and beyond, and just imagine if they can trim down six or seven of those this year. Thank you, Debbie. Amazing work. I mean, that's really money in the bank. When we look at what CHS is doing and the owners college, they're looking at integrating positions, whether it is sharing across clinics or perhaps search service for HR and IT between the Owners college and others, is appropriate. Those are great ways to move into the future. Um, automation, like the graduate college, automating degree audits in Salic are probably going to talk about Salic. We're so optimistic because Talk is going to completely integrate student success at the graduate and graduate level, four plus one, and so on, very exciting. And then a number of the other colleges, learner and COE as well as Biden are looking at how to deliver success to the students by revisiting our programs. Thinking about how many we need to have How many undergraduate? How many graduate programs? How we can bolster advising for freshman and sophomores, how we can revise graduate assistants and so on. So just to give you a sense, this slide. It's worth somewhere $1-3 million for basically doing things that are semi obvious. So we can certainly do that. But I'm even more excited about this slide, which is realizing opportunities for revenue growth. So again, in this one, you'll see some common themes. Every single college is working on revitalizing an associated NHS program or on offering a certificate program, or offering a four plus one combined bachelors and masters or introducing a new master's program or marketing better the programs that we have. So imagine if we do all those things. And I'm not going to take you through each one of those. Hopefully, you're enjoying the view. But you know, I can tell you these are degree programs in very cool areas like epidemiology. GeneratI everybody in this room should want to take the generative VI. I want to take that class yesterday, right? Every one of us. So I'm thinking about the opportunities here. They're in the multiples of the tens of millions of dollars. And when it comes to the graduate school, I want to highlight in particular that some of our best students receive graduate fellowships from NSF. And, you know, every time we get one, I say, congratulations, Lou, and we save $55,000. So, you know, the more graduate fellows, the more we help and write essays, the more it is better for us. So In summary, I will close by saying, Yes, we're facing challenges. We're facing challenges just like so many other high institutions. We are positioned better than most of those institutions and we are totally poised for growth and success in the future, and I hope we'll see that very soon. Now, thank you. Thank you for doing all of that together. I want now to introduce our Provost who is going to have the companion presentation. Talk about why we need resources, you know, but we need resources for one reason to lead students to success. So our Provost is going to tell you what are all the programs that we're doing to enhance student success, Laura. Hi, everybody. So, yeah, it's my pleasure to talk to you about the why that's behind all of the efforts that you heard Dennis talk about, which is our students, our students and their success. And so I want to brag for a minute. So evidence of that success. So D's first year retention rate that's retention from first fall to second fall averages 91%. That's in comparison to a national average of 76%. Six year graduation rate is 83% compared to a national average of 60%. I want to brag a little bit about our associated arts program is such an important program as a pathway to UD. 56% of our associate students complete their two year degree. That's in comparison to 35% nationally for an associate's degree, and even more impressive is of those who graduate with the associate and arts degree. 89% of them come to transition to UD for their full four year degree. So today, I want to talk a little bit about how we accomplish this success. And we start with this premise. You've heard me say before, I really believe that admission to UD is a promise. It's a promise to students that they will learn, that they will master a field, that they will find their career, that they will combine their skills and their passions, that they will build a lifelong network, and that they will be able to create change. This is the North Star, I think that we're all guided by And I want to recognize that we spent a lot of time talking about admissions. But really, that's just the first step in the college journey. And so I think our commitment to our students means that we are committed to supporting them all along the way as students find their path as they hit their milestones and as they move into careers that are fulfilling and impactful. So I want to talk to you about a little bit about the tools and services we have on each of these. And I always like to start with the principles. The first principle is that every student path is different. And I'm so appreciative of to the UNI Del Foundation for funding this program Salic. It's hard to get excited about sort of software and tech. This is transformational, right? So I show you some features there. The first one is that it empowers students to plan their academic careers from start to finish. That's important. I just told you that 83% of our students complete in six years. We want that to be 100%. I'm really excited that this summer, we're starting a degree completion program where we're reaching out to students who have earned credits at UD, but left without their degree. And so we can use Salic to map a path for them so that they can continue to finish. We have something like 5,000 plus students who are either juniors or seniors or super seniors. They have more than 130 credits. And so it's sort of a call campaign to say, come back to UD, let's help plot your course so that you can get your degree. The second feature I really like about Salic is this, it allows exploration of what if scenarios? Because I think we need to recognize that these paths are not always linear. Absolutely the case for me as an undergraduate. I went into college thinking I would be a political science major. I love the idea of being a foreign attache, and I forgot the fact that I get home sick. So a life abroad was probably really not in my cards. And then I took philosophy, which I liked. I took Latin, I took German, and then I absolutely fell in love with a cognitive psychology class. And now I'm a professor in Psychological and Brain Sciences. So allowing that exploration of finding your passion, that is my dream for every student that they find the thing that they really love to do, and I think this program really helps them chart that course. It provides one platform before students had to navigate four different tools. It enables intentional planning for winter and summer classes. I think that that's really important. You've heard me talk about wanting to break the calendar. These winter and summer sessions are really a special unique feature of UD. Students can get ahead. They can explore a class if they can't fit it into their regular schedule. There's so many reasons to take advantage of it. A lot of opportunity for experiential learning, and it's a really good way to build that explicitly and proactively into their academic path. It's designed for all students. What we were using before was only for undergraduates, and you saw on Dennis's slide, the graduate school has really leaned into using Salic to help do grad degree audits, which is really critical. And I think it also importantly allows advisors to focus on their conversations. It's a really easy way for them to pull up data for a student. So when they sit across the table from a student, they actually can talk about what the questions that the student has. I think the second principle that I want to focus on is individualized commitment to all students. Again, I'll thank the NADL foundation here for funding a pilot program that we call Thrive, which is a way to support limited resource students to ensure their success at UD. It has these components. There's individualized coaching, working on things like time management, test taking, note taking, organizational skills. It includes sessions of free individual tutoring, weekly, study group sessions. Um, really nice liaison with undergraduate research, our Center for Global programs and Studies, career center so that they can have international opportunities and internship opportunities. It also allows them to access funding to support them during winter and summer. And that's really, really important. I think we're committed to all students, we're committed to all experiences for all students. And so we want to make sure we find ways where students instead of if they have to work over in winter and summer and have to choose between working or signing up for a course or going on study abroad, that we can provide the funds so that they don't have to work and they take advantage of that kind of experience. So we're really appreciative of this program as well. And I just have two testimonials from thrive participants. We've had 641 students participate since the fall of 2023, and we have a 93% retention rate of those students who have worked with a success coach, which is part of that program. These are really just compelling testimonials to the importance of study abroad. In my mind, it's also a compelling testimonial to the importance of experiential learning and our commitment to make sure that these experiences are available for all. We're really looking at ways to expand this program beyond the pilot that we have for students. The last principle is thinking about beyond UD, right? I think that we don't just want to support students while we're here, but we want to launch them into a career that makes use of their interests and their passions and where they see that they can really make a difference in the world. And so a big shout out to a lot of the work out of the career center. Um. In this past year, for example, we've had 11,000 employers who have recruited undergrad and grad students for 125,000 unique jobs, internships, volunteer opportunities, and fellowships. That's pretty impressive. I really like this next statistic, which I think is really important. So instead of the career center saying, students find time in your busy schedules come talk to us. They've reached out to faculty and staff and said, Are there ways that you can think about career opportunities within your course and talk about those in the context of the course? And so we've seen incredible increase in that. So, for example, in academic year 202-20-3803 faculty and staff integrated those kinds of themes into their courses in 23 24, 264 faculty have, and I expect that that will continue. Part of that is that it leverages Canvas, which is a software program that students use for their coursework. And on that, they have gone in and embedded some self paced tutorials and so on for students to become more aware of their career opportunities. And then, of course, there's the classic career fairs, 20 typically across the university in any given year, both general and focus on departments. They've connected 700 employers with over 6,000 students. Right. And since we're sitting in the Audion and Star Tower, I'll talk about the Med scholars program, which is two professional advisors who see maybe over 300 appointments with students. These are students who are pre med who are seeking to navigate the pathway into med school. Last thing I'll brag about is sort of across all of the colleges, if you look at how many of their students are able to either continue their education in some kind of degree program or have gainful employment. Every single college is over 91%. Right? So that matters. It matters that we're not only caring about the students while we're here, but we're committed to launching them once they leave and go beyond UD. And so that's where I want to close. I want to close by thanking the deans. All the work that Dennis talked about that's in front of us. The deans are taking the lead on that. All of the new and creative ideas, that's the work of the moment. The deans are taking the lead on that with their chairs and their faculty, but that leadership comes from the deans, and I'm so appreciative of them in that role. Okay. And we need to do that while always staying steadfastly committed to our students, our students and their success. Thank you. Okay. Laura. Stay there. Maybe there are a few questions for either of us. Sure. Yeah. So I think just before we get to our speaker, it might be interesting just if anyone has any questions or comments. Chair? I have a question for our provo. Thank you for your presentation. In your projection, how long do you think it will take to get particularly the winter session back to where it was when some of us were at UD to more popularity and more students participating in it. So I'm so proud of our faculty and department chairs and our leadership group of the provost office. We have this summer already hit our targets and made up for whatever we had a gap for last winter. So our enrollments and our headcounts are growing and growing. I know that as people are developing new programs, they are strategically thinking about opportunities in winter that they're building into that kind of program pathway. Um, I also know that faculty chairs are having conversations with faculty and some programs about doing some of their teaching onload during winter or during summer. So we are in a moment where we're sort of going up on the trajectory. I think we might be about even at the end of this summer with where we were before. Don't quote me on that. That's a projection at this point, but we're getting close. But I really feel like that's not the goal. The goal is just to take off. I really do believe that we are in a place where we can break the calendar and really think about using all of the months in the year in a really interesting way. Thank you. I had a comment and a question, Lar one I love the focus on students keeps us grounded on what is the output and the outcome that we need. And I think particularly as we are constrained, it's another kind of focusing way to kind of think about how we set priorities and just keep that top of mind. And I think that was a key theme. I went to a conference focused on governing boards in a higher ed and that was clearly a drumbeat of not losing that focus. I'm really happy you focus your talk on that. Question on stuff. And I know we talked about, it's not a software tool. It's all the other stuff you have to wrap around it in terms of processes and resources. Where are we on that? It sounds like it has great potential. Where are we on that journe we're going to pilot it in certain areas. I just don't have a calibration. Is it pretty rolled out fully? And are we on the maturity curve of that? Yeah, no, thanks. I think it's implemented, and I think I'm looking at Lou with respect to the grad college. I think you're actively using it. Okay. Close. Close. Close. On the cuss. I don't know if Avon, someone from undergrad is here, but yeah, we're like this. It really will change things. Perfect. Any other questions, comments from the trustees. Thank you. Both. Thank you. I want to say a big thank you to all of the members of our leadership team for doing amazing work from academics, to budget facilities to steel life Athletics, anything in between, we're doing fantastic work. Thank you, guys. So I'm now having the great pleasure to introduce one of our amazing 1,400 faculty members. I'm not going to introduce all of them, because we'll be here all week. But let me tell you these people really moving the needle. They're doing fascinating projects. And every time, obviously, we would like to bring to the board of trustees, one of them to share one of the new discoveries, accomplishments and so on. So today, we're very excited to hear from associate Professor Ben Marca. So let me tell you a little bit about Ben Marca. First and foremost. He's another heliophysics type of faculty member. It's the year. So we have to celebrate that. Ben was actually one of my first hires. He joined UD in the fall of 2016. So we came at the same time. And he developed. He exceeded my expectations. I have to say that, you know, They were already very high. Why were they very high? Because Ben studied at Harvard. Got his first degree at Harvard in astronomy and astrophysics, and then did his postc work at the University of California, Berkeley at the space science lab there. His research focuses on solar solar wind in particular, space plasma, high altitude balloons. I'd like to know what that is. Sounding rockets, space instrumentation, and other topics, including tube sats, which is what we're going to hear about today. So he's leading a research team that is creating Delaware's first orbital spacecraft, which was chosen by NASA for launch in 2026 as part of its CuST launch initiative. He said he was attracted here because of the famous Bill Matthews, by the way, Bill, you should know that. And you know, when he was a postdoc, and here he is, he's carving his own path into the future. So This project with CubeSat. These are small, inexpensive satellites that carry scientific experiments or technology demonstrations. His project is known as the Delaware atmospheric plasma probe experiment or Daper. So if you wonder what is the Daper thing that you have, you know this is where it is. So we're eager. I'm not going to give you whole talk. So please come here and tell us about CubeSats. Thank you so much. So thank you so much, President Dons for that very generous introduction. Thank you all for coming. I promised President Desans and the organizers at the meeting no equations. I'm sorry, Bill. We could do some differential equations at the reception, you know, make you feel a little better. So the Dapper mission is dedicated to exploring Earth's ionosphere, which is part of Earth's upper atmosphere. Down here in the lower atmosphere the gas is largely neutral. But in the upper atmosphere, it's what we call a plasma. There's free moving charged particles. This includes positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons moving around, creating electric currents, and this creates a whole host of electromagnetic phenomena. The ionosphere really is the edge of outer space. It's the boundary layer between the terrestrial environment and the space environment. And it's the home of space weather, which has certainly been in the news a lot lately with the solar activity back at the sun last week, and then over the weekend, the geomagnetic storm that resulted from it. Perhaps the most beautiful manifestation of geomagnetic activity in the ionosphere is the auroras, the Northern and Southern lights, and as beautiful as they are, they also cause problems, for example, with air travel, interfering with navigation and communication systems and also exposing people on those aircraft to higher rates of background radiation. Down here on Earth, geomagnetic activity has over the years caused millions of dollars of damage to power grids across the world, blowing out transformers and causing power outages. And then also Geomagnetic activity has damaged and even destroyed entire spacecraft in space. This is of particular concern when you're talking about communication satellites and also navigation satellites like the GPS satellites that we've all just gotten used to carrying around in our pocket. Even if you're not planning on a trip into space anytime soon, you're using space every day every time you take a photo and it's geotagged or you punch into your favorite navigation app, your destination. So we truly have become a space faring nation. The structure of the ionosphere is extremely complex and highly dynamic. It's divided up into these primary bands that change over the course of night and day and in response to solar activity. But even within those bands, you have sub bands and flows. You have waves and you have Eddies constantly forming and reforming. It's an extraordinarily dynamic and complex system that we're still have so much to learn about. So there's a lot for us to explore. One of the ways that we can explore that is through what are known as sounding rockets. These are relatively small rockets. Some of them are only 30 or 40 feet long. They launch from Earth, go through the upper atmosphere, and then come back to Earth without actually entering orbit, and they come back with all sorts of information about among other things the ionosphere. Unique sounding rocket program that we've been involved with that I've been involved with since 2019 is Rock at C. This is run out of NASA Wallops Flight facility, 3 hours south of us. And the University of Delaware's participation in Rock at C has been funded by the Delaware Space Grant Consortium. Thank you, Bill, for signing those checks. Um It's a tremendous program. Undergraduate, student teams from across the country spend nine months, one school year designing, building testing experiments that then in June, they bring to NASA Wallops, they integrate into the rocket, and then they watch it fly off into space and get their payloads back with all this amazing data. It's really quite an experience. Perhaps the best part, certainly the most fun is getting to Ratch the rocket launch. I'll give you a little taste of that. F21. Imagine getting to see that from about 1,000 feet away. You get to be quite close and you do definitely feel it. So the students that I've been mentoring over the years have developed now we're on our fourth version of what we call the University of Delaware ionospheric probe UDP. This is a type of probe called Lanmre probe. It's a type of plasma instrument that measures the electrical properties of the plasma. It's relatively simple in terms of the probe itself. It's just an electrode that measures those electrical properties. So this is the first version of UDP shown here on the rocket right after they fished it out of the ocean. This is the flight spare from that first version. So I'm going to pass that around. Thank you so much. And the idea is it's measuring those electrical properties, and the reason you care about those is because if you're clever, you can use those electrical measurements to work out what the properties of the plasma are. For example, in this case, we have here the electron density as a function of altitude of the rocket. So the rocket is ascending. It starts out measuring very little electrons. There really aren't any there. And then as it enters the ionosphere, you see it spike up. That's the lower part of the ionosphere. The rocket reaches its maximum altitude of 73 miles. And then it exits the ionosphere as it comes back down on the descent. And you'll notice within that, all these little peaks are individual layers and sub layers within the ionosphere revealing just how complex the ionosphere can get. This is truly a student led mission, student led, designed, built. UDP one is really near and dear to my heart, not only because it was the first group of students that I mentored, but also because it was the pandemic. We started work in the fall of 2019. These students were incredibly dedicated working on this experiment at first in their basements at home, and then with social distancing once university facilities opened up again. They really met the challenge. I'll also say as an instructor teaching students how to do electrical soldering over Zoom is a unique pedagogical challenge. But they did great. Sounding rockets are amazing tools, but they do have their limitations. First, they're relatively short missions. Rocket at C is only about 20 minutes from launch to splash down. And then also they're limited in the altitude. So if you want to look at long term trends, especially in the upper upper ionosphere, you really need to turn to orbiting spacecraft to satellites and in particular, cube sats. As President Dasans said, cube sats are small, highly standardized spacecraft. Some are only about 4 " on a side. I have a scale plastic model right here. That's it. But think about how much you can pack into your smartphone these days. So there's a lot of potential here. The specification for cube sets was developed about 25 years ago. And since then, there's been a bit of a boon in the aerospace industry developing components for these spacecraft. And that's the beauty of it, right? Because it's so standardized, you can get solar panels from company A. You can get power supplies from company B. You can get a flight computer from company C. Pick out the components that work best for your mission. You don't you don't have to go through designing everything yourself, so you get a much faster, cheaper mission. That you can get into space more easily because, again, standardization. Most cube sets are launched from the international space station. You can see in this photo here, we have a pair of three cube sets that have just been deployed from this deployer on the international space station into Low Earth orbit. So, our mission, our upset mission is Dapper, the Delaware atmospheric Plasma probe experiment. And as I said, it's going into space to explore Earth's ionosphere. But our primary objective is actually education. This is our student team last month when Nikki Fox came to visit. We were privileged to give her a tour of our laboratory. And to meet with her, the students had a chance to ask her questions and get some advice from her. And, in fact, they're going to be seeing her again because she's invited the entire team to NASA headquarters this fall to give a seminar presentation. And it's not just me going. It's the whole team that was invited because this is a truly student led mission, you know, again, learning by doing. They're designing, building, leading, filling out paperwork. There's a lot of paperwork involved if you want to send something to space. And three of my fellow team members are here, and so I'm going to invite them to stand. So Jared Dagon, my former student and current lab manager and co mentor, T J Tomasevski in the Red removed before flight tie, our current student lead, and Sam Arbach who is our mechanical lead. So please join me in thanking them for their tireless work. So, just a quick overview of the dapper mission design. These are the latest CAD renderings of what the chassis looks like when it's fully deployed in orbit. You'll notice that there are a pair of booms, each are 18 " long. They're made out of a metal ribbon that has on the end a spherical mere probe, one probe on each boom. And the electronics for those probes come directly from those sounding rocket flights. So we're building on what we've already learned with those three and soon to be four sounding rocket missions. This is what it'll look like in orbit. Before it gets there, those booms will be tightly coiled up inside the chassis, and the probe is safely tucked away so that it complies with the four inch by four inch by 13 inch form factor specified in the cube set requirement. It'll be sent up onto the up to the international space station and deployed from there into a roughly circular orbit at an altitude of about 265 miles above the surface. If you're going to have a cube sat in orbit, you're going to want to get data from it. And the way that you do that is through radio communications because, you know, 1,000 mile long USB cables are hard to come by. Fortunately, since 2017, I've been working with more students on developing the UD CubeSat ground station. Our ten foot satellite dish is hosted out at the Mount Cuba astronomical observatory just up in Greenville. You can see the students working on that satellite dish and installing our feet antenna over in these photos. What you're not seeing is all the electronics work, developing all the electronics to drive and power the ground station and all the software to control it. You also need a place to build your cube sat, and fortunately, through a collaboration that began about two years ago, we have the Delaware Space Observation Center, which is a partnership with Delaware State University. Our Despac laboratory is located right here on UT's campus in the Harker Ice laboratory. We have electrical assembly areas, mechanical assembly areas, lots of tools, meeting space, and my pride and joy this thermal vacuum chamber. It's like a vacuum chamber. But in addition, it has also temperature control, so you can simulate not only the low pressure of space, but also the extreme temperature conditions hot and cold. And so we'll be able to put the entire dapper cube sat in here prior to flight and do all our own thermal vacuum testing. So where do we stand with Dapper? Well, I'd like to start back in the winter of 2023 when our uSTGround station first successfully received data from an orbiting spacecraft, so that made it an actual operational ground station for the first time. In August of 2023, we secured funding for the Dapper uSat mission through a congressionally directed spending. I do want to give a huge shout out, and big thank you to our congressional delegation, especially Senator Chris Coons and his amazing staff. They've been tremendous supporters of space science research and education here in the first state. Once we received that funding, we began preparing our launch proposal to NASA's CubeSat launch Initiative, and I'm happy to report that in March of this year, they officially selected our mission for launch. We are now officially at NASA supported mission. Just last month, we went out to California to participate in the CubeSat developers workshop at San Luis A Biz Po. We took a little detour after that meeting to head up to UC Berkeley to meet with some of our collaborators that we've been working with at the Space Sciences Laboratory there. That's a photo of some of the students who went and the people we met with at SSL. Yeah, they have a really nice view. That's San Francisco Bay area back there. We go on a sense of context and comedy of universities have been selected. This NASA program. Sure. It varies from year to year. I believe in our year it was ten. So there have been over 2000 cube sets launched in the 25 years that the program has been in existence. That covers educational cube sets, industrial cube sets, research cube sets, and there's a lot of overlap in those categories. This is though the first to come out of Delaware from any institution in Delaware and also the first satellite orbital spacecraft of any kind to come out of Delaware though we've collaborated on others, especially larger missions in the past. In terms of what comes next for us, I mentioned that we're still involved in the sounding rocket program. So we're now on UDP four, our fourth mission on a sounding rocket. That's our electronics undergoing testing in the DSpachab over in Slab. That's our completely revised electronic stack. We're using this as a test flight for the new Dapper mission. So all the electronics have been fully revised. We have a new power system, entirely student design flight computer and science Board. We'll take the information from that flight and continue procuring parts, building, testing. We expect to deliver our completed cube set to NASA completed and tested by the end of 2025 in time to launch to the International Space Station sometime in 2026 and deploy from there. I want to say it's really I can't understand how excited I am to be part of this, to be helping these students build Delaware's first satellite. But I would encourage you all to help make sure that this is not our last satellite. This is a beginning for us. There is so much amazing research on space sciences and engineering happening right here at UD. And much of it depends on access to space. In the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and mechanical engineering, we have professors like Ting ku, Yuping Zang, and Tyler Van Buren and their students building experiments that are heading up to the International Space Station for testing there. We also have a long history of involvement in larger missions led by other institutions, Parker Solar Probe, wind, MMS, and the upcoming helio swarm and punch missions. We also have a long history of high altitude ballooning just this past winter, a Spight launched from McMurdo Station Antarctica. And just last month, a group of our undergraduates went to Texas to launch a smaller high altitude balloon to observe the solar eclipse from there from the stratosphere. You may notice a theme of student involvement in this work. The student excitement is really breathtaking and amazing. I invite you go out on campus sometime. Maybe not today it's starting to rain. But when it's nice out, look at what the students are wearing. It's not going to take you very long to notice somebody walking around in a NASA T shirt. These students are really excited. And if you don't believe me, come and talk to some of our students here, you can recognize us we're wearing our dapper pins. So feel free to ask us questions about the mission. So I would really encourage all of us in the Blue Hen community to lean into this identity of seeing space science as part of what we do because literally, the sky is the limit. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ben for this exciting presentation. If anybody has questions. Thank you. So, Ben, I just want to make comments. I felt that enthusiasm when we had doctor Nicky Fach on campus. And it was the grounds fall. I have a question. I think Carol has one, too. So the event that happened a week ago where, you know, we saw it more in the northern lights. Obviously often, I don't have a calibrations it happening more frequently? Is it more intense course of Yeah, it's a Space weather events are incredibly hard to predict the sun goes through a cycle of 11 years of activity and inactivity. And we're now approaching solar maximum. So it was kind of but within solar maxim, some solar maxima are not particularly strong. This one seems to be on course to be a relatively strong one. And it's hard to predict because even if you can you know it's hard to predict when will a particular family of sun spots let out a flare and what direction will the material that it ejects be heading in and how will the magnetic field be oriented. These are all really important pieces. This was, I believe the statistic that I read was that it's the largest geomagnetic storm in nearly two decades. So this was a significant event. There doesn't seem to have been a huge amount of damage thankfully. I know I was reading that some power grid operators had satellite operators had some sleepless nights over the weekend. Once the impact that I heard that I was a little surprised by, but then it made total sense. High tech tractors. You know, most tractors, these days, if you buy a new one, they're highly electronically driven and have very sensitive GPS devices for controlling where the tractor goes in the field, where it plants the crops, where it applies fertilizer and water, you know, and apparently some farmers right in the middle of planting season, their tractors wouldn't start up because they couldn't get a solid GPS signal. You know, we've come a long way since the days of hand pitch forks and working the land by hand and beast. You know, this Agriculture has gone entered the space age. Carol, do you have a question? Yeah. I got to speak to some of doctor Murk's students before, and I really do encourage you to speak to them. The enthusiasm that you've created is overwhelming and congrats on your program. I'm just curious. Are you able to determine through development of swap of information you want to get back? And then how do you process that information? Okay, very good question. So we're going to be using our Lang Mere probes to measure the electron density and temperature. And one of the things is we chose this orbit that we had requested specifically so that we can map it out. The idea will be to get as much information as we can to try to map out what the typical ranges are of the electron density and temperature as a function of time of day and also latitude because those are very important factors there. And this is a heavily utilized orbit. So it's useful to understand sort of what are we looking at within here. So, again, our primary objective is education, you know, our Whenever you have a NASA mission, with every objective, there is a specific deliverable. Our students are the deliverable that we're giving to NASA. But we also have scientific and technological targets surrounding making those measurements. Thank you. No problem. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you Okay. Now really up our committee. I'm going to start with Donna Fontana from Academic Affairs. Chair The regular spring meeting the Academic Affairs on April 10, four. The Committee welcome to administration representatives representatives lively discussion. Our agenda focused on four key topics aligned with the committees sights. Oversight of admissions. It doesn't sound like it's working. If you're wondering what's going on with the microphone. That's the problem. Good. Space. The four key topics that are aligned with our committee responsibilities, Oversight of admissions, effectiveness of academic programs, faculty development, and curriculum updates. So I'll go over these four topics. So oversight of admissions, discussions centered around the updates on FSPA as you've heard and the difficulty and challenges that affected all higher education institutions. The provost reviewed multiple pathways into the university. And we focused on two components, expanding associate programs to other colleges besides arts and science and really educating Delawarians as how to pursue an associate's degree at UD, using SD money and then continuing their degree at the university. The The provost did acknowledge that we do need to do a better education of Delaware students. Additionally, a more comprehensive international strategy, including potentially TFL score reevaluation and eliminating housing barriers for these students was discussed. Secondly, effectiveness of our academic programs. The committee reviewed the process of program assessments, which has recently undergone an evolution. The process has been redesigned to be more mutually beneficial to the units, utilizing a cohort model, allowing peers to collaborate and benefit from each other's processes. We learned that recognition of these reviews for formalizing and documenting improvement processes is critical as we go through re accreditation renewals. So the conclusion of the committee was that the program assessment oversight was deemed robust and comprehensive in ensuring effectiveness of the university's academic programs. Thirdly, faculty development. Faculty development had been identified as a university wide need in the coach survey, and it is being addressed with the launch of the faculty Leadership Academy. This was met with enthusiasm from the committee, as we recognize the importance of building bench strength within the departments and colleges to meet key performance indicators. One additional suggestion was to include budgeting and fund raising skills in their leadership competencies. Fourth, curriculum updates. We were provided an update on artificial intelligence and the continuing process to incorporate it into the curriculum to properly prepare students for how to use the technology for efficiency as a sounding board and to meet the expectation of potential employers. This was a follow up to a robust discussion, educational overview that we had at the October board meeting board retreat. In keeping with proper guidance, I would like to give attribution to Chat GPT, which I did use to help create the summary of our committee discussion. Finally, we approved a series of academic resolutions, including name changes, degree dis establishments. Dual degree and four plus one establishments, and most importantly, faculty personnel actions, including promotions and tenure. All of which are in the consent agenda, beginning on page 56. The committee wishes to congratulate the faculty who are listed in the consent agenda. Our draft meetings of the meeting begin on page seven. And before I conclude my report, I welcome any additional comments from other committee members or any questions from the trustees. Thank you, Madam Chair. Nisha Can you I just want to reiterate the importance of expanding the Associates program. Using the Delawarians can start education Iocate program and eventually end with a four year degree here on Thank you. The value is this expansion creates yet another pathway for obtaining a four year degree. And as the provost just said, it's our promise. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. And I think we'll be interested to hear more of how we successfully market that. I think there's just a lot of untapped opportunity. I know Laura is chomping at the bit. All right to do that. And I just want the leadership academy, and I think it ties really directly Dennis with your comments around empowering the colleges and the unit level and really building new muscle in terms of the things that are going to be accountable for, and I think the leadership program is going to be timely for that. Okay. So we're going to move on to our next standing committee, Student Life and Athletics. Bill. Thank you, Madam Chair. Student Life and Athletics committee met on April 10, 2024. Our meeting began with a report from President Asanas. That report focused on a number of topics. It covered a broad array of topics including campus events, upcoming campus events, US News and World Report rankings, and it particularly focused on the president's work with the leadership Advisory Council, including exploring topics like civil discourse and artificial intelligence. He talked about and administration's recent conversations with student groups over some very difficult topics, including the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza. He invited the students who were present at the meeting and doctor Rira as well to speak to their perceptions of the current campus climate on this particular topic, including other recent campus events that involved one of which involved an IDF soldier that came to speak at an event on campus. Uh We then heard a report from athletic director Chrissy awak regarding the athletics programs. She provided us a budget update, which included ways in which the department has been acting to mitigate budget challenges, finding savings and efficiencies. She also updated us on UDs conference transition to Conference USA and the progress towards fundraising to fulfill the FBS reclassification fee, which is due on June 1, and I haven't gotten the current report, but we were just a little shy at that meeting. I'm going to guess that they're on target to make that. No pressure, Chrissy, if you're here, somewhere in the audience. She also noted that men's soccer has joined the Summit League. The Women's New Women's hockey program has joined College hockey America. She also obviously focused on the hiring of the new Women's hockey Ice hockey coach and the partnership between the University of Delaware and the Philadelphia Flyers. We also had a very robust discussion on the ever changing college athletics landscape, including name image likeness issues and the potential for government intervention. We then received a report from doctor Rierra which reviewed a number of issues including regarding the student life strategic plan and the administration's work over the past year to modernize and update, fees charged to students. We then receive reports from the student student athletic Advisory Committee, Student Government Association and the graduate student government, all of which are covered in the minutes that were circulated. And Madam Chair, that concludes my report. Obviously, any questions, I'd be happy to try to address them. Any questions? The one question I had is, I think there was a lot of work and detail to kind of come up with where the student fees need to be. And no one likes to see increases, but they were very thought through in terms of kind of where we have the demand and have the need. And I'm curious, are we looking at other areas? Maybe this is a question for Denis because I know at one point we talked about lab charges and other things just because it goes with the usage, whether it be stem fields and maybe target rich areas that it won't be well received, but might be very timely. Lab charges and stuff. I know we do that in engineering. I mean, what I would say is the following that at this point, we're looking at everything that's under the sun. We're looking at the space. We're looking at every single building that we had, how we utilized it, for example, before the pandemic. And, you know, where are vacancies. And you know, how can we deploy them in a different way? How can we create place for students to learn, interact, enjoy each other, work on the kinds of things that build skills like entrepreneurship and so on, in environments that we don't have. And you know, Jose, he's somewhere there, you know, oftentimes talks about the arc and talks about, you know, it's not just the student center. It's not just Perkins and it's not just a band, but it's everything else. How can we use the motorist library in a different way? You know, how can we take advantage of o Hall, which is centered right on the green and provide better services. You know, how can we kind of lead the students along the path of learning discovery experience. So I think that's important for us. Yeah. Okay. We're going to move to grounds and buildings, Guy. Do you want to kick this off? Yes. Thank you. Fair. The Committee on Grounds and Buildings met on April 11, 2024. Is my microphone working or I need this other one? No. I think I'm okay. Some highlights from the meeting include an update from President of Santa Mensan and the development of the incoming class, a review of congressionally directed funding and the administration measures to manage the current budget challenges. The committee also talked about reviewing the capital expenditures and capital projects for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, including how we can defer projects where possible and prioritizing projects and safety. I'll switch. Can you hear me now better? Yeah. Thank you. The committee reviewed capital expenditures and capital projects for fiscal years, 2024 and 2025, including looking to see where we could defer projects where possible, and prioritizing the projects that support health and safety and projects funded with external resources. The committee also had a considerable discussion on deferred maintenance, noting that it continues to accumulate and deferred maintenance presents a significant challenge for the university going forward. Ultimately, the committee recommends two projects for approval by the Board, the Central utility plant cooling Tower replacement for $10,500,000 with state funds, and the Women's softball Stadium upgrades for $7,500,000 with $1 million from Athletics Reserve due to a previous commitment to matching funds for this project. These resolutions are recommended are included in today's consent agenda for the board approval. That concludes the grounds and buildings report, and I open it up to any other committee members or questions for comments. Any comments, questions for Guy? I have one that really kind of hit home I think is the creative use of external partnerships, if we really want to achieve some of our capital expansion plans. And I think the other trade off is coming as an engineer of the older buildings and trying to avoid putting a lot of money in deferred maintenance when what we really need is a new building, which I think really puts a point on the philanthropic efforts we need to be driving, right? All those options are on the table. We talked about them. I don't think we're at a point where we have a specific plan, but I think Dennis has encouraged us to think about how we can do things differently. And I think the facility staff here is working actively towards that. Thank you. Good example I could say is building X because along with its construction, everything else, when it's finally done, we are retiring $43 million of deferred maintenance with the previous facility before the fire. So I mean, that's kind of the logic you'd like to see need a fire to be able to plan the facility. That's not our strategy. Thank you. Okay. We're going to keep moving along and go to public affairs and advancement, Clara let's give you the mic. Thank you, Madam Chair. The Public Affairs and Advancement Committee met on April 15, and we, of course, started with the President's update. Same updates that you've heard from other committee chairs, including the graduate college rankings and our featured campus speakers. President Asanas really focused on academics and research and student success, and we heard an update on how our applications are continue to increase and of course, the impact of the financial aid reform issues. We started with an update from Guy on the Southern Delaware visiting Committee that committee has really gained some traction. On Friday, April 12, President and Eleni Asanas hosted the committee at Bay Health, and our own Vice Chair, Terry Murphy was kind enough to host the group, and they really focused on the Health Sciences and UDs nursing initiatives to address our nursing shortages in our state and across the country. We next turn to government affairs, and Rett Evan and Lauren provided an update, a really thorough update on not only what's happening in the General Assembly this session and the session ends June 30, but also gave us a primer on the September primary races, and a lot of the races in Delaware will be decided during that primary versus the November 5 general election. Rett and team gave an in depth discussion on our FY 25 budget and bond bill requests and the status of these requests. Okay. Lauren also gave us updates on the City of New ark. We've all read in the paper, some of the proposals the City of Newark is pursuing to help close its budget deficit, and it looks like the university has successfully worked with the City of Newark to put some of the more onerous proposals on hold so we can work together as we have done throughout the years to help the City of Newark. And we understand it has a budget deficit, but to help with some proposals that aren't as onerous on the university. We next turn to research and innovation and federal issues. And again, research and innovation is a relatively new charge of this committee. Doctor Lee gave us an update on the National Science Foundation rankings and University of Delaware ranks 47th, which is a significant increase. We ranked 47th among the National Science Foundation and universities that do not have a medical school, and University of Delaware is in the top 8% for research and development in that category. And that's really a kudos to the quality of our faculty and the grants that our faculty are receiving. We talked about the Midlantic clean hydrogen hub, Um, which is known as the MC two and the updates there. Angela gave us a thorough update on the federal appropriations. Her and her team have been wildly successful in achieving federal appropriations. For this fiscal year, we have $18 million in federal appropriations, and we rank ninth among some among universities, according to one measure, which is truly significant. Jim Dicker and his team gave us an update on the Post Delaware First Capital campaign, and we're on target for the first year following that big campaign. Jim has been really good about managing our expectations that the year after a big campaign like that, you're not going to have the same number of big numbers in terms of campaign fund raising, but we're certainly on track, particularly with the scholarships, the money that we're raising for scholarships and on some of our capital projects. We also had a really good review of the alumni attitude survey. Dana Long and others have really been focused on enhancing alumni loyalty and, of course, alumni giving. Okay. We had an in depth discussion with Glen Carter on the guidelines for when the university should comment on world events or local events. And Glenn drilled down for us three bullet points that I think guide all of us into when we can expect that President Asanas or somebody from the university would comment. And those three bullet points are one that the issue directly impacts members of the UD community. Second, that if it impedes the university's operational ability to fulfill its mission. And third, if it disturbs the university and its community members at a level so significant that it is necessary for a university leader to reaffirm our position on safety and shared values. Finally, we approve the resolution recognizing our donors over $100,000 that this body will approve later in the consent agenda. And that concludes my report. All right. Thank you. Any questions? Discussion. I think that statement on statements, the discipline we talked about is going to be really critical because I think there is always going to be pressure on Dennis to comment on everything because there's something going on every day. So I think that really is the right direction that we need to be heading. All right. Moving along, we're going to have John give an update on honorary degrees and award. Yes. Committee on Honorary Degrees and awards met April 17. Dennis has really highlighted my full report, but I never happen quickly. The approval of the class of 2024 honorary degree class, I think is a very strong class coming in, Joe Flacco, NFL quarterback, 2008 alumnus, and I think Joe will do a terrific job this year as our commencement speaker, and I'm sure he'll be received well by the students as well as the attendees. Tamika Montgomery Reeves, Judge, a very highly respected judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Don Sparks, long term retired faculty member in the plant and soil sciences and KR Shredard the CEO of Bloom Energy here on campus. We had a brief discussion, Beth Fanta gave us an review for the commencement 24 strategies and the convocations that are planned, and they will be kicked off. I'm sure in a matter of eight days, and those plans are well in place. We did a recent review, an award of medal distinction recipients. Two of them already mentioned here today, doctor Anthony Funti with the fireside chat with Valerie Biden through through the Biden Center and doctor Nikki Fox, the associate, Assistant of NASA and an amazing career and what she's done in directing over 100 NASA flights to space. And I know it sounds like Professor Marcua a great relationship with her going forward. So that's very good. We did approve ten additional individuals to receive medical distinctions in the very near future, and they were very near. And finally, we did have a discussion for a new award outside of the medal of distinction to recognize a student in excellence performed an impact on campus, and I think that may be coming forth quickly. So with that, that was three port 480 degrees. Any questions discussion? All right, Don, it's up to you, you're going to give us a very compelling update on finance. We can do without this. All right. Mike The Committee on Finance met on April 19. The minutes of that meeting are found at pages 37 to 43 of the meeting materials. We had an update on the investment portfolio at March 31, 2024. The investment portfolio, the pooled investment portfolio was $2.07 billion consisting of 1.84 billion of permanent endowment and 228 million in operating surplus invested as endowment. For calendar year 2023, the portfolio returned 10.8%, which was a slight underperformance versus its custom benchmark. Longer term performance has been better than the benchmark, both on an absolute and on a risk adjusted basis. Over the last three to five year periods, the performance of the pooled investment portfolio ranked in the top third of all large endowment piers. We discussed the asset allocation of the pooled investment portfolio and noted that each sector of the asset allocation is within the allowed ranges. We had an update on the fiscal year 2024, operating performance of the university on an all funds basis. The numbers were really very consistent with what we had discussed at the March special meeting of this board. The operating deficit is projected to be approximately $40 million. The overall change in fund balances at a negative $66 million. If I drill down a little bit more than that, the operating deficit of $40 million, may be compared to the projected $22 million surplus that this board approved in the 2024 budget at its May 2023 meeting. The major negative variances were the net tuition and fees, which was an $11 million unfavorable variance due largely to undergraduate, financial aid, exceeding budget, and total compensation, which exceeded budget by $43 million. We also then discuss the fiscal year 2025 operating and capital budget, and those have to be approved today by this board. The issue of transparency has come up a number of times, including some of the comments made earlier in this meeting. I'd like to point out that at each meeting of the Finance Committee, there are representatives of both the student government and the faculty, and they are encouraged and they do participate in the meetings. And at the last meeting of the Finance Committee, The entire Senate Budget Committee was invited, not necessarily to participate, but to attend. This is something we continue to do and equally as important, all of what we're discussing here today, as well as all of our budget information is available online for anybody who wants to see it. No. The key assumptions going into the 2000245 fiscal budget include a freshman class of approximately for and 300 students, undergraduate tuition increase of 4%, undergraduate discount rates slightly in excess of 31% Net grad revenue increase of 13%, housing rate increase of 4% increases in the dining at 6%, that's part of our mark contractual requirement, a compensation increase of 4% and a number of student fee increases. And those fees have been frozen for a number of years, so it's increasing and at this point, we still have the uncertainty of the state funding, of course, and doctor Asanas discussed the healthcare cost increase. If we put all of these items together, we have a budgeted revenue of $1.355 billion. We have a budgeted operating condition of a $54 million deficit and non operating expenses of $59 million and operating margin of -4.2%. Doctor Asana is quite correctly pointed out all the uncertainties behind this year's budget. I think when we get to the end of the year and compare actual to budget, we may see the largest variances that we have ever seen at this university. And I don't know if at this point if they're going to be negative variances or positive variances. There's just an awful lot of uncertainty, which I think doctor Asana very well explained to everybody here. We had extensive discussion of sensitivities, that is the impact of changes in any of the key variables on the estimated financial results. We also had discussion of ways to mitigate the losses through both revenue increases and cost containment. There's no silver bullet, but the administration is actively examining alternative ways to bring UD back to a more stable and sustainable financial position. And I think it's quite realistic. Doctor Asanas statement that we hope for a turnaround in fiscal year 20206. Resolutions pertaining to the budget were presented to the members of the board. There's detailed information in Exhibit A to that resolution so that you can see what the specific cost and revenue generating items are. We had a discussion of the operating fund liquidity. As you can expect, if we're going to have negative operating performance, there's going to be pressure on our liquidity. The administration is examining alternatives to reduce that pressure. No decision has been made as to which of the alternative or alternatives will be chosen. To provide flexibility for potential debt financing proceeds on a tax exempt bond financing. And again, there's no assurance we're going to do a tax exempt bond. But if we plan on doing so, there is a resolution in your materials that gives us the flexibility to be able to issue tax exempt bonds sometime in the future. The endowment spending policy was the other item that we considered. Our endowment spending policy is based on the principles of preservation of capital, intergenerational equity and stability. For fiscal year 2024, the distribution was $4.70 $0.75 per unit, which was 4% of the 12312022. 12 trailing quarter average market value. Based on input from the investment visiting committee concerning projected intermediate term portfolio returns, inflation, and expenses, the finance committee believes that a 4% draw on the endowment continues to be prudent and justified. Thus, in your materials for consideration by vote, the recommendation is for a distribution of 4% of the 12 31, 2023, 12 trailing quarter average market value, that turns out to be $5.02 per unit. A distribution of approximately $70.5 million, which is a 3.7 million dollar increase over the prior year. We also had resolutions brought forth from grounds and buildings. Guy talked about those resolutions. They are included in our board materials. That is my report, Madam Chair. Great. Thank you. Any questions, discussion? You know, one thing Don we've talked about is that timing is unfortunate when we have to see all the budget material on all the moving parts. It's never going to be perfect till the end of the year. Yeah, we talked a bit about. Can we at least extend that or maybe rethink when we actually make the final approval when we've got obviously the state budget, we've got the issue with enrollment. There's so many moving parts that isn't helping in that right. But we have to pass a budget. Bind on that. Yes. I think more the timing of our meetings at a we can we can adjust the timing and get more up to date information and we do consider the budget for approval. Yeah. Thanks. Okay. Moving along on again because I think Terry Murphy had to step out unexpectedly. So he's the chair of our nomine committe but Don has so kindly that he'll report out. That's because I have the microphone so I guess I can just continue. The nominating committee is pleased to present the reports on page 44 of the meeting materials. We have recommend the re election of the following individuals for a term of six years. Miss Kathleen Hawkins, Mr. John Pardee, and doctor Sean Wang. Madam Chair, on behalf of the nominating committee, I'd like to move the election of these individuals as recommended. Okay. Great Thank you, Don. Do we have a second second. Any questions? Discussion. All in favor? Any opposed? Abstain? I want to personally thank our trustees for continuing to serve and I've done a great job. So thank you much. Okay. So I think Don I've done such a great job. Wait. I'd like to ask our board officer candidates to be excused for a few moments. Please don't go far. Okay. I always seems so silly to men have to leave. Good. The nominating committee is pleased to present the following slate of officers for 2024, 2025, Terry L Kelly as chair, Terrance M Murphy as Vice Chair, William M Lafferty as Vice Chair and Kathleen V Hawkins as Secretary of Treasury. Do we have a motion to approve. Do we have a second. Second. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed and abstain. The ayes have it. The officers have been elected, they may come back in. Okay. The door locked. Congratulations, to your officers, Madam Chair, that concludes the report of the nominating committee. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate the support and also the support of my fellow officers and doing some of the heavy lift there. Thank you. We're going to move on now to the executive committee report out, and the executive committee met on April 19, and the minutes begin on page 48 of the materials. We received detailed reports from chairs of all the standing committees of the board and also received an update from doctor Asanas, much of which we've already covered. We obviously had an extensive discussion around the major contributors to the projected FY 25 budget deficit, including the increase in healthcare premiums, escalating payroll expenses, and other inflationary increases. And the committee reviewed concerns and input from the faculty and student representatives, which we always have at our committee related to the impact of the budget constraints. And throughout the meeting, the discussions, I think reflected the important balance we need to strike between achieving our vision and its strategic priorities, while at the same time addressing our fiscal realities. The meeting underscored our desire and commitment to maintaining academic excellence, student success, while staying true to our values and mission, which you heard a lot about today. I think it also reinforces our responsibilities, overall, as fiduciaries and trustees of the university to strike this important balance, which I know we all take very seriously. So I want to take this opportunity to personally thank all of the trustees who continue to devote considerable amount of time and commitment to fulfilling these fiduciary responsibilities and supporting the long term success of the university. I'd like to switch gears a bit and provide an update on our diversity equity inclusion ad hoc committee who met on April 16. The committee received updates from President sans, including the favorable ranking we received from the Anti Defamation League. For efforts on campus to Cat Semitism. And this further highlights, I think the productive efforts of the leadership team to encourage dialogue and support across the campus community to prevent instances of discrimination of all kinds. And I know the administration has done a lot of work to create that climate. The committee discussed the involving philosophy on University statements, which was referenced in the public affairs and advancement report, as well as the changing state and federal landscape related to diversity equity and inclusion efforts in hid, which I'm sure you all read about. I think this also prompted a discussion that will be timely for us to review and refine our stated commitment to diversity equity inclusion and the values we want to continue to reinforce and bring that front and center. The Ad Hoc Committee then discussed the significant efforts to continue to strengthen inclusion and belonging across campus and the timing and process for the implementation of a campus climate survey. And a continued discussion put in the committee is how best to we embed this work of the Ad Hoc Committee into our ongoing work of the standing committee. So we'll continue to figure out the best way to integrate that effort. And a final topic we discussed with the evolution of all of our DNI efforts across the university over the past several years. It's a good time to assess all the initiatives and programs underway and look for potential synergies as well as opportunities for these communities to come together and share their work. So that was the main points of that committee. And I'm going to move back to the executive committee report. And before we approve the resolutions and go to the consent agenda, I did want to take this moment to just provide a few comments regarding the current fiscal plan and budget challenges. I don't think any of us are happy with the current and projected budget deficit for the upcoming academic year. And I think as President sons has outlined, we're not alone with some of the broader challenges and headwinds being faced across. Higher education. And personally, I think the proactive actions taken by the leadership have already positioned the university better than many other institutions, and I'm encouraged by the creative efforts to identify new revenue sources, new ways of operating and other efforts to mitigate cost escalation, which you heard about through the presentations with President Asanas Provost Carlson. And I think we take the collective commitment from all of us and the required vigilance and attention. And as Dennis and I've discussed, these actions are not one and done. The new word of the day is resilience that we talk about and really position a university for anything in the future because there will be new stuffs ahead that we don't know today, but are clearly out there. So I think we want to obviously build that cushion as you've talked about. And I think we have a unique opportunity not only to turn the situation but be a model for other institutions in higher ed. And I really believe that. And so I'm confident we're on the right path, and the president and the broader team are taking the appropriate actions to position the university for long term success. And really, this is building off of the momentum that has been created over the past five years, not just the past year. And so before continuing my report, I would like to invite John Cochran, chair of the Compensation Committee which we normally don't get a report on to provide an update on the external review of President isonus. Thank you. Madam Chairperson. During our fall Compensation Committee meeting, it was discussed and agreed to implement an external moderated comprehensive review of the precedent. Doctor sons receives feedback at the end of each academic year. But since the last comprehensive review was in 2019, five years ago, the Compensation Committee agreed to proceed with an in depth review this spring. Our major responsibility is trustees is the selection of the precedent of the university and then to provide support and counsel in the achievement of mission and the strategic outlok of the institution. Evaluating performance and giving feedback is required, and this in depth review will provide to doctor Sons that information. We are taking a similar approach as we did in 2019. We've hired an experienced presidential assessor, doctor Stephen Porsche, Chancellor Emeritus of the University System of Georgia. He has facilitated over 25 presidential assessments and did doctor Asanas review in 2019. You received his full bio in your requested assessment survey of doctor Aon. The board has received the presidential assessment survey, campus interviews. There will be 70 individuals who have been invited to meet directly with doctor Porch starting tomorrow afternoon and throughout the day on Thursday for direct feedback. That will include the ten deans of each of the colleges, 16 members of the student Advisory Council, representation of faculty members, direct reports of the president, including the provost, the EVP, and the SVP, representation of the president's leadership council, the trustee executive committee members, and the faculty in the last to meet will be the faculty Senate Committee members. So it's pretty inclusive throughout for the review. At the conclusion of the review, the executive committee will receive a report back from doctor Porsche. Key themes will subsequently be shared with the full board, and that will probably take place sometime in the fall. As with personnel performance reviews and the sensitivity of nature of content, this information will not be shared broadly but appropriate documentation in the process and pertinent details will be included as part of doctor sons' personnel file. Doctor sons, I know you're fully aware of this process, that it's underway, and that you're very supportive. Again, we appreciate your cooperation. Most importantly, we appreciate your leadership of the University of Delaware. Thank you, John. And before I go to the consent agenda, I do want to welcome one last time for questions or discussion from the board. I know we've had a lot of extensive discussion leading up to this meeting, which is probably not well understood, but a lot of work. Anything? Okay. Terry, your remarks about the challenges and the opportunities that we have had, and what is on the plate with doctor Asanas and the leadership team. We're behind you 100%. I think you're going in the right direction. Thank you. You're here. Okay. So now the fun stuff, we're going to get to the consent agenda, which begins on page 56 of the media materials. And with the approval of the Executive Committee, the resolutions in the Board's consent agenda are now brought forward for the Board's approval. May I have a motion to approve all the resolutions contained in the consent agenda? Second. All in favor? A. Any opposed? Abstaining Okay. All resolutions of the consent agenda are hereby approved as presented. Thank you very much. Okay. Stuff. I'm bringing this one just in case. I'm going to take it home with me. Okay try. I'd like to stand over here. Can you hear me? Okay. So before we conclude today, we have a few more pieces of business to bring before the board. This is really the fun stuff. And as chair of the Board of Trustees, it's my pleasure to recognize members of the University community for their exemplary service. And today, it's my distinct pleasure to recognize one of our students for their dedication to the work of the University and the service to the Board of Trustees. I'd like to ask Julia um outgoing student body president and member of the class of 24 to join me at the podium. Julia better be here. Where is she? Nice outfit. I knew she'd be here. She's everywhere. She's everywhere. Come on over here. So I got to get my glasses back on. Now I'm showing my here. So over the past several years, Julia has been a constant present at the board's many committee meetings. I think she's been to as many meetings as I and President sons have been to providing input and perspective on behalf of the student government Association and the undergraduate on campus. Julia engaged early with the SGA, serving throughout her undergrad career as senator and in leadership roles including chief of staff, Vice President for University Affairs and student body president. I'm not done. I've got a couple more pages here. When not in class or attending board meetings, Julia serves as a resident assistant accessibility scholar, controller of UDS allocations Board and participate in summer research projects. Later this month, get this one. Julia will be graduating with an honors chemical engineering degree with minors in chemistry, material science engineering, and civil engineering. That's a full plate. That's unbelievable. And so in recognition of your service, I'd like to read the following resolution into the minutes of our meeting and we'll entertain a motion to approve. Whereas, Julie Hatum has served the University of Delaware as a student body president and whereas misses Htum's undergraduate career at the University has been focused on service to the Student Government Association and other service initiatives, and whereas misses Htum's participation as a student representative of the committee meetings of the Board TCs has resulted in thoughtful insights, perspectives, and advocacy for the best interests of the undergraduate student body. And Now, therefore, be it resolved that the board of trustees of the University of Dear thanks and recognizes Julia Hutu for her participation and impact to the work of the board. May I have a motion of approval? Carol, Thank you. A second. All in favor. A. Everyone, please join me in thanking Julia. Okay. You want to say a few words? I'm so honored. Thank you so much. I guess the impact of the work that I've done over the past four years could have been done without the rest of the student government and administrative support and also the board. So thank you so much. I'm so appreciative and so honored. We're honored to have you and we're going to miss you and hopeful you'll come back and visit us again. Thank you. Isn't that a great honor that we now have started awesome, Julia. I can't think of a better participant recipient. Okay. We have several other members. Am I right place here? Yeah, of the community that we wish to recognize at this afternoon's meeting. I'd like to ask President, well, you're here. John Cochran, to come on up as chair of our honorary degrees and awards. And we're going to talk about the medal of distinction, and this is where the University recognizes exemplary individuals through this medal, which is among the highest honors that the university bestows First, I'd like to recognize someone who cannot be with us personally today, but is watching virtually. Do we have her on the screen? We don't have. Okay. So those of you hopefully you know Kristiick who I know personally, recently retired from UD as a blue and gold distinguished professor of Mateial Science and Engineering and Chair of Department of Biomedical Engineering. Christie is an internationally recognized inventor and an expert in the design and synthis of biologically inspired and produced materials, developing materials for treating wounds. I think that's Arthritis. Arthritis, surgically manipulated blood vessels. A fellow of the American Chemical Society and a member of the National Academy of Inventors. So she's one of published nearly 175 articles, book chapters, and patents, and has delivered over 200 invited and award lectures. In addition, Christie has received numerous awards, including a Fulbright Award. Christie received her BS in chemistry from UD as a Dupont distinguished scholar where she graduated Suma mata. Thank you. She then received an MS in chemistry as an NSF graduate fellow at the University of Georgia, followed by Masters and doctor degrees in Polymer Science and Engineering at UMass Amherst, as a recipient of a National Defense Science and Engineering graduate fellowship. Christie had the opportunity to I got to know her serving on the College of Engineering Advisory Council. And I think your enthusiasm and love for UD is evident in all you do, and we are so grateful for your service. So I'm delighted along with President Asanas and Mr. Cochran, to present the medal of distinction to Christie for recognition of your years of service and leadership at UD. I hope you're watching with incredible pride and your esteemed career and accomplishments. So with that, can we give Christy a round of applause? You say? Christie, congratulations, wherever you are. We hope you are watching and we'll think of you all the time. Thank you. Congratulations. Yes. Thank you. Okay. So now, do we have Calvin Killer that can come to the podium. Hello, Calvin. Come join us. So Calvin, most recently started as Interim Dean of the University's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, a member of the faculty since 1988. Calvin holds joint appointments in UDs Departments of entomology and Wildlife Ecology and of Biological Sciences, and he's a director of the Avian Biosciences Center at the University. He's also affiliated with the Deware Biotechnology Institute and UD Center for Boformatics and Computational Biology. Calvin's research and outreach activities focused on avian genomics in molecular immunology. You guys are really challenging me. And respiratory viruses of poultry and birds. He coordinated the Avian disease diagnostic activities at the University on the Newark and Georgetown campuses and worked closely with the agricultural sector and government agencies in the state of Delaware, the DMarvaRgion, and across the country. Calvin holds three patents and is the author of more than 40 articles in reference professional journals, a graduate of Tuffs University. He earned his master's degree in microbiology from the Medical College of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University and has doctorate in Biological Sciences from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Before becoming to UD, Calvin was a visiting scientist in EI Deonte Moors. I didn't know that. And before that, a senior scientist and co founder of IG Inc, a biotechnology firm located in Columbia, Maryland. I'm delighted to present you with the medal of distinction, Calvin in recognition of your years of service and leadership at UD. And on behalf of the Board of Trustees, thank you for your tremendous service and service and best wishes. Okay. And I understand you're retiring. So best wishes on retirement as well. Calvin, would you like to say a few words? Well, Madam Chair, thank you very much. It's been an amazing 37 years. I've said this before. I said it 3.5 years ago before I was interim dean, and it still true is that I have the best job at i in the world is being a professor at the University of Delaware. And primarily as we've heard today, that's because of the students, whether they're undergraduates or the graduates or the postcs in my lad, they've been incredible. But also it's because of the faculty and staff who, especially in our college, really epitomized the mission of teaching, scholarship, and outreach, and it's been incredible opportunity to work with the citizens of Delaware and with the people at the University. And it's really but it's all ultimately really due to my family. And my wife who's here, Sharon and my father. And when I say I had the best job in the world, that's been the problem because she has wanted my job for me. She says she should have my job. So anyway, thank you very much. Kalvin. I'll say what's Kalvin doing after retirement? Okay. We want to welcome Scott Stevens to the podium. Scott here. Hey, Scott. Scott began his career in ESL in 1981. You received your bachelor's degree from Bucknell University, a master and doctorate from the University of Delaware. As an instructor, you've taught all skill levels, but have specialized in the application of drama techniques to improve improvement of oral al intelligibility. I had to say that a couple of times. Oral intelligibility. Which is comprehension of the language. Director of the ELI since 1984, Scott is overseeing the development of more than a dozen English for specific purpose programs. He has conducted teacher training, both here and abroad, working on numerous federally funded projects. In 1988, he established a partnership that continues today with Da's largest school district, Christina to provide onsite ESL instruction for English language learners. Scott has a joint faculty appointment with the School of Education. We've been coordinating the masters teaching English as a second language program since 2003. More. I'm delighted to present you with a medal distinction and recognition for your many years of service and leadership at UD. And on behalf of the Board of Trustees, thank you for your tremendous service for UD and best wishes also on your retirement. Okay. Glad save your word. Just very briefly. It's been a privilege over these four decades to be part of this amazing blue hen community and be a small part of seeing how the University of Delaware has grown and admitting and welcoming and supporting the success of international students and scholars, you know, heeding that Biblical verse I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. So thank you very much. Okay. Okay. Last but not least. Do we have Levi Thompson to the podium? Where is Levi? He's hiding. Levi. Hello, Levi. Stand right here. Behave yourself. Good. So this summer, Levi is going to step down from his position as Dean and return to the UD faculty. So you're not going too far. Not retiring. He's not retiring. Levi is Dean of the College of Engineering and Elizabeth Az, Kelly, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware. Levi earned his bachelor in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware and your master's in engineering and chemical engineering and nuclear engineering. What's that at Michigan. At Michigan course. Michigan. He was a faculty member of the University of Michigan where he served as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, Director of the Hydrogen Energy Technology Laboratory, and the director of the Michigan Lewis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation. Your scholarly research on nanostructure materials for catalytic and energy storage applications is described in more than 150 publications and more than ten patents. Levi is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. We're at the club right here. A few. All three of us. Yes. A few of the recipients of the awards, including the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, McBride Distinguished Lecturesip Union Carbide Innovation Recognition Award, and then you say, Michiganan Michigan. I don't go to Michigan enough. Michigan of the Year Award for your research entrepreneurship and teaching. You co founded the TJ technologies, a developer of nanomaterials for advanced batteries that was acquired by A 123 systems, and I tech, a developer of low cost, high energy density, supercapacitors for automotive and military applications. I'm sure there's more I miss there. But we're delighted to present you with this medal of distinction in recognition of your years of service. I've also had the great pleasure to work with Levin I know a couple of others as part of the engineering Advisory Council. So I will miss you in that capacity. So on behalf of the Board of Trustees, we wish you the best and your continued service to the university for a number of years to come. Do you want to say a few words? You're never speechless. Yeah. I mean, what a surprise. Really just thank you for the opportunity to serve. And I thought you would want to make me reach higher. But it's been an honor serving the University of Delaware and working with my colleagues in the College of Engineering and look forward to a year of sabbatical thank you very much. I understand. We. Okay. Home stretch, everyone. So before we conclude today's meeting, I'd like to take a moment to celebrate our excellent faculty and recognize those who have recently received promotion or tenure. The names of these faculties were included in today's consent agenda, but I understand we have some of the faculty members and their guests here with us today. And I would like to ask you to stand to be recognized. There's a few of you? Yes. Awesome. Great. This is awesome. And what a great accomplishment. And we're going to have you if you don't mind come up on stage. We're going to take a photo with Provost Carlson. And I think with that, our formal meeting is done, and we have the reception outside. Hopefully, everyone can stick around. And thanks again to everyone for your participation in this meeting and certainly my fellow ttees. So thanks everyone. And come on, faculty. Let's go. I
05-14-2024-Recording
From Jason Kramer May 16, 2024
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