The Board of Trustees approved two purchase items totaling $1,998,369 at the March 9 meeting before Spring Break.

The larger purchase item of $1.5 million was approved for fire sprinkler systems and installation in Andrews and Lawson halls.

“This is part of our plan to put sprinklers in all the university resident halls,” said President Lou Hencken.

Sprinklers are already installed in Carman and Pemberton halls and Greek and University courts. Hencken said the sprinklers will be installed in Andrews this summer and in Lawson during summer 2008.

The lowest bids came from Automatic Fire Sprinkler in Normal and Anderson Electric in Mattoon. Both companies have previously done work for Eastern.

“We’re very fortunate that the companies that we’ve worked with are the lowest bids,” Hencken said. “We were very pleased with the work that they’ve done.”

The other purchase item was a $465,850 design contract with Moorhead-Gruber Architects of Champaign to design renovations of the bathrooms and installation of kitchenettes in Douglas Hall.

Hencken said Douglas Hall will be the first of the residence halls to have renovated bathrooms in the university’s plan to update the halls. The contract will be paid for with the increase in room and board fees, Hencken said. He expects the plans to be finished by March 2008.

After about 10 minutes in open session, Leo Welch, chair of the Board of Trustees, called for an executive session for the board to discuss personnel issues and an acquisition of land.