The entire UT Board of Trustees will meet today at 1 p.m. for their Fall Meeting.

Both yesterday and today, members of the board met in separate committee meetings including the Health Affairs Committee, the Executive and Compensation Committee, the Finance and Administration Committee and the Academic Affairs and Student Success Committee.

The 1 p.m. meeting will be the only meeting to include the full Board of Trustees, including UT Chancellor Jimmy Cheek, UT Systems President Joe DiPietro and Governor Bill Haslam, just to name a few.

Any student, faculty, staff or member of the general public can attend. There is no registration required. All of the meetings are being held in the Hollingsworth Auditorium in the Ellington Plant Sciences building on the Agriculture Campus.

This has been the location for almost all of the board meetings on the Knoxville campus for nearly a decade. Gina Stafford, assistant vice–president and director of communications, said that the location is mainly one of convenience.

“That location has most to do with the ease of logistics for that site,” Stafford said. “Parking is something that’s not difficult to provide. The meeting room itself is large enough to accommodate the setup for the board meeting and additional space for staff and media.”

The Fall Meeting will be webcast live and will be simultaneously recorded to be viewed and archived immediately after the meeting has been adjourned. The full board meeting will be the only one broadcasted or recorded.

A link to the webcast and the recording can be found at www.tennessee.edu.

According to the Fall Meeting agenda, there are several upcoming topics that are directly linked to the Knoxville branch of UT.

One of the discussions will include a Top 25 Update from Cheek.

There will also be a motion to give a merit increase to DiPietro’s salary from $430,500 to $445,567.50. During the previous summer meeting, the Board agreed to give DiPietro’s base salary a raise increase of 2.5 percent, from $420,000 to $430,500. However, that increase was across-the-board to all employees. This newly proposed increase would be strictly for DiPietro as a means of rewarding DiPietro’s performance and to encourage his retention.

There will also be a proposal to modify the Administrative Provisions of the Caesar and Edith Stair Music Education Endowment. Currently, the endowment can only fund scholarships to seniors and juniors and one freshman enrolled in the School of Music. The modification would allow for funding to be given to all undergraduates in the School of Music.

The Stair family, the School of Music and DiPietro have all approved of this modification.

This is the first of three meetings that will occur throughout this school year. There will be a Winter Meeting from Feb. 28 – March 1 in Chattanooga.

Stafford said that while the Fall and Annual Meetings always occur in Knoxville, the Winter Meeting rotates between the other branches of UT.

“Years ago there were some trustees who asked about the possibility of getting more exposure to the various other UT campuses,” Stafford explained. “So at that time the practice was established to have the meeting in February go either to Martin, Memphis or Chattanooga.”

She added, “That enables all of the trustees to get exposure to all of the other campuses.”

The Board will meet a third time from June 19 to 20 in Knoxville. The June meeting is considered the Annual Meeting and is held on the eve of the fiscal year’s end. This is the time that the Board will handle some of its most important issues including a vote on the proposed budget for the next fiscal year.

It’s during the Annual Meeting that groups such as the Graduate Student Senate will take an active participation. Amanda Sanford, president of the Graduate Student Senate, said that this is mainly because that’s the best time to discuss GSS legislation.

“Most of what we have on our agenda is likely going to come up in the summer meeting,” Sanford said. “Most of the policy work that we’re doing won’t be ready to be presented, if it needs to be, until then.”

GSS senators are non-voting members, but the meeting does provide opportunities for them and others that attend.

“It’s basically just for us to see what the board is doing and be able to communicate that back to the graduate students,” Sanford explained.