I arrived six minutes late to the meeting because 30 minutes before it was to start, I received a text in my hotel room saying the meeting would be starting 15 minutes early.
The first thing I heard they were discussing was the procedure for promotion to Full Professor at UTK. India Lane talked for maybe three minutes and the motion to approve came with a second and the motion carried.
The next thing I heard them talking about was a statement of commitment to graduate medical education at UTHSI. My main thought is: what is the reason for having to make this statement? Has there been evidence of a lack of commitment? Clearly, I do not know the history too well.
Next was establishing a UTC honors college, moving from being merely a program. We heard from the Chancellor of UTC (Roger Brown) on this. It is interesting that I am now beginning to know a lot of these people by sight, maybe not always by their name.
As he talks about the proposed college, he is saying they have 10,000 UG students now with only 1 % of them being honors students, so the others are the 99%.
If I may remark on the facilities in which we are meeting, the room is cavernous, and the board members can seem even more inscrutable because they sit far from one another at black-clothed tables, far enough that it is tough to look anyone in the eye.
Chattanooga is apparently planning on turning the 1% into the 10%. They need to grow their endowment from 6 million to 21 million dollars. One graphic said they hope to be “exceptionally unique”, which was pointed out by a board member as redundant (or at least, I presume, unnecessarily repetitious). They will have a number of honors programs within the college, to include such things as environmental sustainability, global business and so on.
The creation of this new College is considered a necessary item on the BOT agenda because of new structure. Is this the first honors college, was asked by Trustee Murphy and apparently it will be the first in the US.
Much discussion ensued. It sounds like a good idea to me, especially the idea of having a Dean to advocate for the “college”.
Next was the Haslam Scholars program established in 2007, funded by former Mayor and current Governor, Bill Haslam and his family; and will graduate its inaugural seven students this year. First students came in 2008, only fifteen students are admitted in this program each year.
They get $4000 to travel abroad, a laptop computer worth $1500, research support of $5500 and the cost of being a UTK student of $17,300. Inspired by similar programs at Boston College, Virginia, UNC and others. They had over 5000 applicants and selected 15. The data of those selected is impressive to say the least, 34.4 ACT average, for example. They are also diverse. If they are arrogant, no one should be surprised, but in my experience, true greatness has a way of breeding humility. Aeron Glover has a website called: howstheliving.com
Richard Bayer spoke on the subject of admission at UTK, including recruitment.
Recruitment of diverse students, students from West Tennessee, transfer students and excellent students from in and out of state. Ninety percent of students at UTK are from Tennessee. This seems somewhat surprising to me, surprisingly high percent of in-state. I suspect Chapel Hill or Ann Arbor would see a good many more from out of state.
They get 14000 applications, 9500 or so are admitted, and 4200 actually enroll. That is called the yield.
Myth, don’t apply to UTK unless you have an ACT of 27.
My computer needs to be plugged in now, so I will let it charge a while.
