Responsibilities of the Board of Trustees

1. Setting mission and purposes. What a college or university says about itself in published statements of institutional mission and purposes guide the faculty, administration, and board in their work. The Board of Trustees should approve (determine, reaffirm, or change) the institution's statement of mission after consultation with appropriate internal and external constituencies.

2. Appointing the president. Most people acknowledge that this is the paramount board responsibility – and for good reason. The Board of Trustees will appoint, and terminate, if necessary, the chief executive (president or chancellor).

3. Supporting the president. Effective leaders are often controversial; willing to engage difficult issues openly, consistent in recommending what is best for the long-term interest of the institution (often to the chagrin of affected interest groups), and willing to take their share of “the heat.” But they also expect and need the board and individual trustees to support them publicly. The Board of Trustees will need to support their president in any number of ways, beginning with conditions of employment appropriate to the vulnerabilities of the presidency.

4. Monitoring the president’s performance. The Board has an especially delicate responsibility to monitor the president’s performance. At stake is the integrity of the presidency and its incumbent, as well as the institution’s and board’s reputation. A formal review process can be enormously helpful to the president and educational for the board.

5. Assessing board performance. Every board has a responsibility to assess its effectiveness as part of its mandate to ensure that the president and the institution are performing adequately. The board of trustees must periodically review the appropriateness and consequences of all major institutional policies. These include decisions concerning the addition or discontinuation of major academic programs and major services consistent with the institution's mission or financial capacity.

6. Insist on strategic planning. The conventional wisdom is still valid: Governing boards are responsible for ensuring that the administration and faculty engage in sound planning, assess the quality of the results, and implement new priorities goals and objectives. The Board of Trustees should ensure that good planning is done periodically by management and faculty, participate in the process, assess the quality of the outcomes, approve final plans, and monitor progress against goals.

7. Reviewing educational and public-service programs. Reviewing the institution’s academic program is intimately linked to the board’s responsibilities to (1) insist on effective strategic planning and (2) to approve annual budgets. The Board of Trustees should have a good sense of the strengths and weaknesses of the academic programs. With regard to public-service programs, independent colleges and universities have proved to be capable of maintaining good “town-gown” relationships-although there are issues and situations when the institution must hold its ground. The Board of Trustees can serve as ambassadors for the college in regards to strengthening the relationship with the local community.

8. Ensuring adequate resources. The Board of Trustees is responsible for helping to ensure that the institution has adequate resources to do its job well and that it lives within its means. Trustees are expected to provide annual gifts and to support capital campaigns in proportion to their capacity to give. They are also expected to give an annual fund gift of at least $10,000 and help raise money through “friend raising” and cultivation strategies.

9. Ensuring good management. One mark of “good management’ is that revenues balance with expenditures. What also matters includes the quality of the faculty and their commitment to their disciplines, their departments, and to the institution; the need for good risk-management policies and practices, the quality of the management team behind the chief executive; the adequacy and adherence to student and faculty due-process policies and procedures; adherence to laws and regulations; the condition of the physical plant; the endowment’s performance-and much more.

10. Preserving institutional independence. Independent colleges and universities are chartered by state governments; they are properly expected to operate as a public good and serve the public interest. Boards of Trustees bear a civic responsibility to represent the public and to ensure that their institutions continue to earn the right to maximum freedom from governmental intrusion. Voluntary institutional accreditation and volunteer governing boards are the only mechanisms devised that provide a measure of healthy distance between the campus and the capitol.

11. Relating campus to community and community to campus. Trustees are institutional ambassadors, and they are public representatives; on both scores they exercise important civic responsibilities. There are times when the board and its leaders must defend policies and explain institutional actions to their communities, and times when the faculty and administration benefit from occasional doses of reality that trustees bring to their campuses. The Board of Trustees will at times find themselves serving as both “buffers” and “bridges” to their communities.

12. Serving occasionally as a court of appeal. Student, faculty and staff grievances should be settled through institutional policies and procedures at the lowest possible and appropriate administrative level. Lawsuits against colleges and universities are commonplace; trustees increasingly are named with their presidents as codefendants in frivolous and substantive cases alike. The Board of Trustees must be alert to their own and their institution’s vulnerabilities.

Source: Association of Governing Boards