HOUSE BILL NO. 10 "An Act relating to the Board of Regents of the University of Alaska." 3:22:08 PM REPRESENTATIVE ASHLEY CARRICK, SPONSOR, gave a brief overview of HB 10. She informed that the legislation simply added an additional faculty member seat to the UA Board of Regents. She requested that her intern provide an answer to a question that was asked previously. 3:22:41 PM CADENCE CONNER, STAFF, REPRESENTATIVE ASHLEY CARRICK, responded to a question from an earlier meeting. The question related to the qualifications that were needed to be appointed to the UA Board of Regents. According to AS 14.40.13(a), each regent shall be a resident of the United States and of the state. The requirement was the only qualification needed. Co-Chair Foster relayed that the committee would hear invited testimony. 3:23:30 PM ABEL BULT-ITO, FACULTY, UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS, FAIRBANKS (via teleconference), relayed that he was President of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Faculty Senate, a member of the UA Faculty Alliance, and was a Professor of Neurobiology and Neurophysiology at UAF. He spoke in strong support of the bill. He thanked the sponsors. He asserted that adding a faculty member to the board was vital for providing meaningful context for diverse student experiences, potential ramifications of poor decisions, and to help the educational environment at the university. He thought most members were decades removed from college experiences and lacked understanding and experience in the modern and often highly technical educational environment. Mr. Bult-Ito emphasized that faculty taught students and knew what issues were important to students. He noted that faculty lacked the ability to communicate insights and experiences to the board in a meaningful manner without a seat at the table. He noted that faculty also provided students with research experiences, which were life- changing for students. He discussed research funding obtained by faculty and the knowledge necessary to achieve the funding. He thought faculty needed to communicate research intricacies to the board in order to provide context for making informed policy decisions. He stressed that having a faculty presence would build trust between the board and faculty and would benefit all students. 3:27:09 PM Co-Chair Foster OPENED public testimony. Co-Chair Foster CLOSED public testimony. 3:27:52 PM Representative Bynum hoped for more insight related to why adding a faculty member to the board would be good for UA as a whole. He noted that the sponsor statement referred to stakeholder groups, and he understood that the Board of Regents was to give direction to UA as a whole and guide its mission. He was trying to understand how it would be positive to have a faculty member on the board, which was supposed to give direction to faculty. Representative Carrick responded that the legislation came at the request of many years of UA faculty members having limited opportunities to provide testimony or input to the board. Faculty desired to have a seat at the table as part of UA's mission. She relayed that in researching the legislation she found there were several state university systems that had a voting member that was a tenured faculty member. She had heard board members at other universities be supportive of the idea and agree with the same concepts expressed by Professor Bult-Ito. She relayed that the idea was to offer the real dialogue with the board of regents, in the same form that the student member did, and provide parity in the two groups that formed the backbone of the system. Representative Bynum understood that the bill proposed to add a seat onto the board, which would make it a 12-member board. He asked if there was an idea about how the board would perform if a seat were to be added rather than substituted. Representative Carrick thought the question would be a good policy call for the House Finance Committee or another committee. She wanted to see the stakeholder group represented. She thought substituting a seat would be diluting the power of the current regents that were not the student or faculty regent. She was not necessarily opposed to the idea but clarified that the way the bill was structured was to add a stakeholder while not diluting any current members power. Representative Bynum asked if there was consideration to adding the seat as a non-voting member. Representative Carrick relayed that the idea had been discussed in the past. She noted that a full voting member of the board had access to executive sessions and to travel with the board, which were conferred currently on the student regent. She reiterated the idea of parity. She noted that there was a student regent that had to occasionally recuse themselves from difficult votes. 3:32:39 PM Representative Allard asked about the faculty alliance, which she thought was for faculty advocacy. She thought the board was more for oversight rather than operations. She would prefer a faculty member to be non-voting and thought there was conflict of interest with unions and other issues. She asked the sponsor if the faculty board member would give operational input. Representative Carrick responded that the mission statement of the university was to inspire learning; advance and disseminate knowledge through teaching, research, and public service; and to emphasize the North and its diverse peoples. When she considered who guided the overall culture of the campuses and learning community and university system, it was both the student and faculty populations. Representative Carrick acknowledged that here were some operational decisions made by the board, but even more so an advisory capacity over system operations and governance. She thought faculty had a strong voice to add to the conversation. She stressed that the faculty seat was not to substitute or infringe on the rights of current regents or their experience. She knew many regents were very experienced and had a lot to offer. The additional seat was meant to add to the decision-making process. She thought if every member of the board was asked, the addition of a student regent had offered a deeper perspective. Representative Allard understood the mission statement. She emphasized that the faculty members already had a faculty alliance and could already bring issues to the board. Representative Carrick emphasized that there was currently no slated opportunity for faculty to speak to the board of regents. The faculty alliance was allowed to make one very brief report at certain board meetings. The board only offered one hour of public testimony at the beginning of some meetings. The board did not take public testimony on agenda items. She shared that often times the public testimony would be completely filled up before the meeting had even begun, and faculty were included in the public testimony. She thought faculty would agree with the statement that it did not have enough opportunities to connect with the board and to make its constituency issues known. Representative Allard asked if it was possible for faculty to send an email for written testimony. Representative Carrick responded that she would ask the committee to consider the weight of in-person spoken testimony versus written testimony. Representative Allard understood where the sponsor was coming from. She thought there could be things that could not pass with a board membership of 12. Co-Chair Foster set an amendment deadline for March 28 at 5:00pm. HB 10 was HEARD and HELD in committee for further consideration.