The USC Board of Trustees officially convened on Friday to discuss several academic, athletic and financial university matters at the Alumni Center. The board meeting was broken down into four separate meetings by committee.
The first meeting was that of the Academic Affairs and Faculty Liaison Committee. During this meeting, University Provost Joan Gabel spoke to the board about new programs to be implemented such as the Master of Science in Information Security and the Dual Degree Program with USC's Darla Moore School of Business and Aalto University's School of Business in Helsinki, Finland. The Finnish university has a distinct expertise in the field of "design thinking," according to Gabel.
"This particular dual degree program allows students to earn degrees from both schools and then get the minor in design thinking that's being offered in Helsinki, which is a distinct asset and wonderful for us to be able to plug into," Gabel said before the committee. "So far, only Stanford and UVA have similar curricula in their business schools, so it puts us in very good company."
Gabel offered to the committee the notion that pairing a degree the already nationally renowned Darla Moore School of Business with one from the also esteemed Helsinki university opens a window of opportunities for students to enter exceptionally innovative career fields.
"The intent behind this program is for the Darla Moore school to be able to selectively recruit students graduating from specific aligned scholarship programs, and then they can prepare these students for careers targeted in South Carolina creative industries," Gabel said. "The impact on our reputation should be extremely high."
Following the Academic Affairs and Faculty Liaison Committee meeting was the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee meeting. The meeting began with Athletic Director Ray Tanner giving a presentation on the academics, budget and achievement of the athletics department and student athletes.
In USC's 2015-2016 academic year, the average grade point average among student athletes for the fall semester was 3.17, with 15 out of 18 sports teams earning a GPA of 3.0 or better. In the spring semester, that average jumped to a 3.278, the highest departmental GPA in program history according to Tanner.
"We led the SEC in the Fall Academic Honor Roll for the tenth consecutive fall," Tanner said.
Shattering more records, USC's student athletes lead the SEC in community service hours by over 4,000 with a total of 11,153 hours. Many of the hours came from student athletes helping with flood relief in the fall.
Tanner went on to present the Athletics Department's budget, transfer and support, and the debt summaries for the 2016-2017 academic year.
"Our proposed revenues are going to be $112,728,000, the expenditure is $97,484,000, proposed transfer is $14,619,000, which will give us a net increase to our reserve of $624,696,000 projected at the end of June in 2017," Tanner said with the figures presented on a slide show.
The Board addressed some concerns with television viewing of Gamecock sports in terms of the amount of people paying money to tune in with cable when digital and Internet television is increasing in popularity. However, Tanner and University President Harris Pastides believe that this will not be a major problem for at least several years' time.
"If I were budgeting a decade down the road, I'd be nervous," Pastides said.
After the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee, the Buildings and Grounds Committee met shortly to discuss gift naming opportunities, and the Audit and Compliance Committee followed behind for budget updates and reviews of internal audits.