Hall attends first Board of Trustees meeting, talks of experience so far
President Kermit L. Hall attended his first Board of Trustees meeting Friday. Hall highlighted the meeting by announcing his selection of Stan Albrecht as the new provost and Craig Petersen, interim provost, as the new chief of staff. He also spoke about his recent visit to the Utah State Legislature, where he lobbied for increased funding for the university.
“Our current system of funding is unsatisfactory,” Hall said. “We are literally spending ourselves into poverty by increasing our student numbers and not having the funding to provide an adequate educational experience for them.”
A number of people present who had witnessed Hall’s presentation to the state legislature commented on his skill and effectiveness.
Hall also spoke about his recent marathon round of meetings with the heads of every academic department at USU.
“If you could have been where I was, you would see that the real strength of this university lies in its faculty,” he said. “They employ great enthusiasm and creativity to bring about some wonderful [educational] outcomes for the students here.”
One of those outcomes was presented to the trustees earlier in the meeting by the head of the Biological and Irrigation Engineering department, Wynn Walker. Walker described to the trustees an irrigation project which students in his department had completed in the Dominican Republic. The project eventually drew the attention of the president of the Dominican Republic, who visited the students and was, in Walker’s words, “amazed that we had undergraduate and graduate students who could do practical, state-of-the-art irrigation engineering.”
The board also heard presentations from a number of other departments, including an animated one from Rance Pugmire, director of athletics. Pugmire discussed the positive impact stemming from ESPN’s recent coverage of the basketball team’s game against Long Beach State University.
“[ESPN commentator] Jimmy Dykes had so many good things to say about USU, our community, our quality of life, our programs – it was like a two-hour foot massage,” Pugmire said.
The board heard appeals for and approved four new master’s degree programs, one each for the departments of Management and Human Services, Biometeorology, Physics and Nutrition and Food Sciences. The trustees also gave reports on the budget, as well as a report that contracts and grants received by USU are up 22 percent from last year.