Eastern’s Board of Trustees held their meeting in the Martin Luther King Jr. Grand Ballroom to discuss different approvals for the school. 

Julie Evertt was one of the newer members appointed to the Board of Trustees. She completed her masters at Eastern and works remotely for a company based out of Los Angeles. 

“Some passions of mine, both professionally and, you know, within my volunteering would be supporting the youth but then also creating opportunities for individuals who may be underserved or unseen,” Everett said. “So I feel very excited to be in this education space.” 

Austin Hill will be joining the Board of Trustees. He has been a member of the Board of Trustees for 4 days and he assisted in the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and was a general counsel member for 3 years. 

There was also a new partnership that was mentioned. As of April 20, Eastern and Lake Land College will be working together to help stoppage students finish their degrees. Students who have completed certificates but good academic standings will be contacted by either school to see if they would like to consider finishing their education. From there, the schools will work alongside the students to help them complete their education. 

The first action was to get approval of minutes for the meeting. The time set was for four minutes per discussion. 

Next on the agenda was to check the purchase approvals.

Campus printing services. Fine line printing, they hope to reduce the contact to do off campus printing. It cost $80,000. 

The motion passed. 

The group insurance reimbursement was next. 

The motion was approved. 

Telephone service agreement was next. 

The contract was to not exceed $350,000 with consolidated communications. 

The motion was approved. 

Then it was time to discuss the 2023-2024 tenure recommendations. 

The potential tenures are as follows:

• Jennifer Buchter, assistant professor of special education
• Ryan Burge, assistant professor of political science
• Lauri DeRuiter-Willems, assistant professor of public health and nutrition
• Rebecca Johnson, assistant professor of music
• Alexis Jones, assistant professor of teaching, learning and foundations
• Sanghoon Kang, assistant professor of biology
• Robert Klein, professor of teaching, learning and foundations
• Abidalrahman Moh’d, professor of mathematics and computer science
• Julie Park, assistant professor of music
• Anne Walk, assistant professor of psychology

After discussions, the motion for these individuals to be tenured passed. 

One of the newer agreements to be made was the decision of the water tower lease. 

“We would like to engage with the city of Chalreston for the lease to operate and maintain the city to be able to use the water tower during that time period, they will be responsible for all the makings of the tower,” said one of them members. “And that tower does not directly feed into the EIU system, but the system would feed into Chalreston systems, which would benefit everyone.” 

After voting, the motion passed. 

The meeting concluded with the president’s report. Eastern’s President David Glassman thanked the members for participation. 

Adriana Hernandez-Santana can be reached at 581-2812 or aihernandez@eiu.edu.