Board of Trustees

A regular meeting of the Board of Trustees of Bellevue College was held on Wednesday, May 7, 2014. The six trustees, president David Rule, assistant attorney general, presenters and public audience who were present in the meeting. Many sessions in the meeting, including two study sessions in the morning, the executive session at noon and business session in the afternoon featured the 2014-2015 International Student Contract. The study sessions started at 11.00 a.m.; one explaining the proposed operating budget and the second shared updates on the college’s strategic planning process. It covered the students’ budget, strategic master plan and student services master plan. The state operating budget for this year will be $62,409,000. The next session was the executive session which covered the discussion with legal counsel representing the agency litigation or potential litigation to which the agency, the governing body or a member acting in an official capacity is, or is likely to become a party, collective bargaining, consider the selection of a site or the acquisition of real estate and to discuss the evaluation of state employees.
The business session began at 2.45 p.m. in room B201 and it was presided over by Marie Gunn, the chair. The agenda for the meeting included the constituent report from faculty, classified stuff, student, foundation and the monitoring reports of student success, workforce and economic development, student services, equity and pluralism, foundation, capital facilities and enrollment report. Leslie Lum, one of the business faculty, said, “The faculty are here to advocate for a living wage. We have a lot of faculty looking for another job, we have a lot of difficulty with attracting the new faculty because the salaries are not competitive to the kind of the nationally rank college and we should be competing for the best faculty in the country, so we are here to let the board know that this is something that should be the goal of the whole college.”
The 2014-2015 International Student Contract and the 2014-2015 College Budget were read by the administrative Services VP Ray White. There will be no changes in the contract and it will not affect the international students. “We are simply required by the state to have our BOT affirm each year our intentions to serve our international students as a contract, self-support operation,” said White.
According to White’s description in the meeting packet, “five years ago, the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges provided colleges the option of counting international students as part of the college’s state-funded enrollment target or engaging in a contractual relationship with a community entity to offer the program. In addition, if a college chooses the second option, the SBCTC requires that the college’s board reaffirm annually that it is continuing this contractual arrangement because the college is unable to accommodate international student programs within the current state funded enrollment target.
Bellevue College has opted to offer the program through  contractual arrangement with the Bellevue College Foundation, since the college has been oversubscribed in meeting its state enrollment target in previous years, and intends to continue this option. The college continues to be overenrolled and cannot support International Student Program enrollment within the current state funded enrollment target.”
It was recommended that “the contractual relationship with the Bellevue College Foundation for International Student Programs for 2014-15 will be presented for action at the June 11 meeting.”