Exponent Explains: Board of Regents

The Montana University System Board of Regents is an organization that governs and administers the Montana University System. The Board has full power, authority, and responsibility to supervise and manage the universities and other public educational institutes. The Board consists of seven members appointed by the governor of Montana and approved by the state senate. Of the seven, one of the Board members must be a current student at a Montana university. The student member serves a one-year term, whereas the other members serve seven-year terms. The Board is overseen by the governor of Montana, the commissioner of higher education, and the superintendent of public instruction.

Meetings of the Board of Regents take place for one or two days at a time and occur six times per year. The meetings typically are hosted at the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education in Helena, MT, or at one of the universities in the state. Many student leadership organizations from the universities are invited to speak at Board meetings to discuss specific issues relating to their organization or their university as a whole.

The Montana University System Board of Regents held a meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 14 at the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education. A large part of the meeting involved discussion of campus reports as well as a relay of the fall enrollment numbers from each university in the state. The most prominent universities in the system are Montana State University and the University of Montana, under which 11 smaller branch schools fall.

In addition to those reports talked about at the meeting, the Board also discussed budget and finance items as well as staff and compensation items. The budget items on the agenda included the continuation of partnership between MSU and its smaller branch schools, the replacement of the space lost from the MSU gym collapse, and the use of tuition money for temporary laboratories at MSU Billings. The staff items on the agenda included the approval of five labor agreements across the Montana University System and the acknowledgment of various faculty members for their work in this past fall semester.