AGB Governance Topics

Academic and Student Affairs
A board’s responsibilities for academic affairs cover the gamut, from monitoring for accountability to containing academic costs, from the strategic structure of academic programs to ensuring sound budgets. Student welfare is another responsibility, as the board provides policy guidance to promote a safe and healthy environment that encourages academic success and ensures that students enjoy a high quality of life on campus.

Board Structure and Practice
Building a shared understanding about the essential work of the board, as well as standards of conduct, values and principles to guide individual board members in joint efforts, provides a solid foundation for a high-functioning board.

Ethics and Accountability
Expectations of trustees have undergone a dramatic change in the wake of the Enron debacle, the new strictures of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and several new state policies, laws, and executive actions. A “new ethic of trusteeship” continues the trend of expecting boards to be more deeply engaged in their governance role.

Finance and Endowment
Trustees have no greater responsibility than to ensure an institution’s financial health in support of its mission. Whether setting wise financial policies for generating, allocating, managing, and protecting resources, or determining sound endowment spending, asset allocation, portfolio structure, manager selection, and performance evaluation, boards should engage in strategic financial planning and budgeting.

Fundraising
Fund raising is one of a board’s most basic and important responsibilities, and it is pervasive throughout higher education. Trustees play a critical role in successful fund raising, including planning, establishing the legitimacy of a fund-raising program, ensuring an adequate budget, prospect identification, cultivation and solicitation, giving, and stewardship, among others.

Institutionally Related Foundations
College presidents are looking more and more to their foundation boards to become involved in such areas as advancement, advocacy with public policymakers, marketing and, in some instances, academic program review. A new paradigm may well be in order for foundation priorities: Funding the institution’s operations, public-policy advocacy, board-to-board collaboration, and joint planning initiatives are among the new or expanded priorities for foundation boards.

Leadership and Strategy
Integral leadership, a new style of collaborative but decisive leadership, is key to the partnership between boards and presidents. Integral leadership links the president, faculty and board together in a well-functioning partnership purposefully devoted to a well-defined, broadly affirmed institutional vision. Through integral leadership and strategic planning, institutional boards and leaders will develop the new strategies, tools, and modes of operation necessary to respond proactively and robustly to today's market realities.

Legal Issues and Compliance
Boards must understand and properly interpret the institution’s financial statements as well as see financial trends and the impact of economic events; they must employ strategic planning in the accreditation process and oversee regular audits of financial activities, adhere to laws and regulations, and monitor the institution’s conflict of interest policies; and they must practice their legal and fiduciary responsibilities to protect their institutions, limiting their exposure to potential personal liability if they do not exercise sufficient oversight of institutional affairs.

Public Policy
Governing boards must pay keen attention to the public policy environment and its critical implications for colleges and universities. They must help their institutions respond to policymakers’ concerns about costs, quality, and especially degree attainment, an issue around which a number of organizations, leaders, and policymakers have coalesced. They will be under pressure to become more engaged with all aspects of college and university performance.

The Presidency
Today’s higher education presidency is a constant mix of challenges that combines an expectation for exceptional executive leadership, academic innovation, fund-raising prowess, and a public profile. In its totality, the presidency tells the story of an institution: a respect for its mission and history, and a vision of its possibilities that lie ahead.