Board of Trustees Actions  

Major actions taken by the Board of Trustees on Oct. 17 include:

1. Acceptance of the Audited Financial Statements for FY 2015-2016.
2. Approval of the 2016-2017 Operating Budget. 
3. Approval of tenure for Mike Behan, associate professor, Dahl School of Business, Vickie Holtz-Wodzak, associate professor, School of Humanities, and Susie Hughes, associate professor, School of Education. Please join me in congratulating our colleagues on this accomplishment.
4. Approval of the goal of 100 percent trustee participation and $200,000 for the 2016–17 Annual Trustees Opportunity Fund.
5. Approved the naming of the Fine Arts Center Recital Hall for trustee emerita and alumna Nola Jo Starling Ratliff-Cobb ’74. A generous gift has been pledged to name the recital hall the Nola Starling Recital Hall. This gift will also qualify to meet a challenge gift from the FSPA to establish diversity scholarships for undergraduate students. The result is a combined commitment for $550,000 creating two scholarship funds. One scholarship fund will be named the “FSPA Diversity Scholarship for the Helping Professions” and awards will begin for fall 2017. The other is an endowed scholarship to be named the Sr. Thea Bowman Scholarship in honor of Starling Ratliff-Cobb.

Service Saturdays

Fifty students, faculty, administration, staff, (and their children), and alumni participated in the Service Saturday program Oct. 15. This was Viterbo’s contribution to the national day of service sponsored by the Association of Franciscan Colleges and Universities (AFCU). The local agencies benefiting from our volunteers on Service Saturdays are truly grateful for so much help. Join us for the next Service Saturday, Nov. 19. Special thanks to Kirsten Gabriel for coordinating this program, which is an important component in advancing two initiatives in the strategic plan—enriching and engaging our community and high impact experiences for students.

TEK Conference

Kudos to Michael Alfieri, Dorothy Lenard, and the biology department, Rick Kyte and Nicole Van Ert of the D.B. Reinhart Institute, and others who planned and supported the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Conference on Oct. 14. 

Rick Artman

President