Board of Trustees meeting recap – October 28, 2013

The Northwestern Michigan College Board of Trustees met in regular session Monday, October 28. Here is an informal account of that meeting. Official minutes will be available once approved by the Board, usually after the subsequent meeting. Official minutes are posted at www.nmc.edu and are available through the President’s Office.

Details on the actions items and reports are contained in the Board Packet available online at https://www.nmc.edu/about/board-of-trustees/agendas/2013/092313-regular.pdf

On Monday, October 28, 2013, the NMC Board of Trustees

• Aaron Beach, Director of Human Resources and Rebecca Teahen, Executive Director of Resource Development and the NMC Foundation presented Lisa Cooper, Administrative Assistant, Resource Development with the award for Employee of the Semester for Summer 2013.  Teahen said it was especially timely, given the significant amount of work Lisa did to make the 2013 NMC Foundation Scholarship Open such a big success.
• Kennard Weaver, Board Representative to the Audit Committee reported that the auditors were pleased to report that the college’s financial records were in such good shape that they could complete the audit without issue.  Steve Peacock of the Rehmann Group, said his firm was able to give the audit a clean, “unmodified” opinion.
• Ed Bailey, Engineering Technology Chair, presented on Career Preparation in Engineering Technology.  He said that they are changing the curriculum to prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow.  The curriculum is designed to put an even greater emphasis than ever before on the “soft skills” employers are looking for to complement the technical skills.  Bailey said that Hans Van Sumeren, Director of the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute; Aaron Cook, Director of Aviation and himself were taking a group of 16 students to the Michigan Advanced Aerial System Consortium (MIAASC) national conference in Ann Arbor this week.
• Trustees Doug Bishop, Ross Childs and Bill Myers  presented a report on the American Community College Trustees Leadership Congress.  Bishop said that the event always is a good opportunity for trustees to validate what they are doing and learn more about things that they could be doing.
• Chris Weber, Vice President of Enrollment and Student Services presented her enrollment report and noted that registration for Spring 2014 is underway.
• Vicki Cook, Vice President for Finance and Administration presented a Financial Report and noted the general fund ended the month with an excess of revenue over expenses in the amount of $1,436,261. The increase in net revenue is primarily related to property tax. Revenue increased by 4% and expenses increased by 3% when comparing September 2013 to September 2012.
• Cheryl Gore Follette, Chair of the Board Policy Committee reported that the policy committee met in October to take an initial look at potential options for video and/or audio recording of Board of Trustees meetings and that they asked for additional study and will meet again in November.
• Doug Bishop, Board Representative to the NMC Foundation gave an update and it reported that Greg LaCross will replace Garyn Roberts as a faculty representative on the Foundation Board. Derek Roush will join us as a Student Representative. The board is also pleased to welcome Kennard Weaver as a Board of Trustees Representative replacing Cheryl Gore Follette and thanks Cheryl for her years of service.
• President Timothy J. Nelson gave a Health Benefits Plan Update and reported that last year, after changes in Michigan law regarding health care expenditures for college employees, the board adopted the position of requiring our expenditures to be below the established state caps and to target an 80%-20% college-employee mix as the starting point. As described in the report, our prior implementation of this was based on a percent of employee salary that varied by plan option. This was done in part because of the pending implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and because our internal Benefits Advisory Committee believed it in the best interest of the college. The college no longer believes this to be the case and are moving to a straight percentage of the estimated premiums for our two plans. Those are 20% for the high deductible and 25% for the core plan and shifts an additional $99,000 of plan cost to the employees. In both plans NMC well below the caps set by the State of Michigan.
• In his Legislative Update, President Nelson said that there has been no recent movement in the state legislature’s discussion of offering all veterans in-district tuition to any community college in Michigan, but that there was a chance something could be done in conjunction with Veterans Day.
• In his Board Chair Update, Trustee Bishop said that he attended both a lunch and dinner as part of the visit to Traverse City by the Weiming Education Group, and found the visit to be very valuable.  He also said the board is looking at dates for a potential board retreat in January.
• Trustee Ross Childs presented information on the August 6 millage election.  He solicited feedback from the Friends of NMC committee and pulled voting data from each of the voting districts in Grand Traverse County.
• In his President’s Update, President Nelson introduced Todd Niebauer who is serving as the head of the technology operations of both TCAPS and NMC in an effort to look for potential ways to consolidate some of the technology resources utilized by the two entities.  The Mariners’ Memorial is Friday, November 8 at noon at the Great Lakes Campus.  He said that the Chinese visit was productive and that the Weiming group is interested in building a global learning center in Traverse City and that NMC is part of those discussions.  The first NMC public tour is scheduled for Thursday, November 14 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and begins and ends at the Great Lakes Campus.  David Milarch, co-founder of of the Archangel Tree Archive has given NMC, through Trustee Bob Brick, a sequoia tree from the Sierras.  The cutting is about a year old and will be planted somewhere on the NMC campus.  Nelson then read a State of Michigan tribute to NMC’s nursing program for 50 years of excellence.  The tribute was the result of work by State Senator Howard Walker and State Representative Wayne Schmidt.  Nursing alumni Barbara Griner Mikowski and Mary Pat Randall were in attendance at the meeting and Mikowski gave a brief statement in which she thanked the board and the college for their many years of support for the nursing program, and detailed some of the activities that have done on through the year to celebrate the anniversary.  They also brought with them a cardboard cutout made from a photo of a mannequin that modeled the original NMC nursing uniform.  The cutout has been nicknamed “Lifesaving Livia” and Mikowski noted that in the photo, the mannequin is wearing the nursing shoes of NMC Fellow Hettie Molvang.

The next regular meeting of the NMC Board of Trustees is scheduled for November 25, 2013 at the Oleson Center at 5 p.m.