The University of Nebraska Board of Regents will meet at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 13, in the board room at Varner Hall, 3835 Holdrege St., in Lincoln. The meeting is open to the public and will be livestreamed at www.nebraska.edu.
A detailed agenda for the meeting is available here.
During the meeting, the board will consider the 2027-29 biennial budget requests for the University of Nebraska System and the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture. The board will consider an inflation-based 4.25% increase to the base budgets of both the NU System and NCTA for each year of the biennium. The university has based its request on a multi-year rolling average of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), an approach that aims to help the university consistently keep pace with rising costs.
“Over the past decade, the University of Nebraska has worked hard to be a responsible steward of state resources,” said NU President Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D. “But in order to continue the teaching, research and engagement that Nebraskans depend on, we must keep up with the rising cost of doing business. An investment in the future of the university is an investment in the future vitality of Nebraska.”
In addition to the increase to the university’s base budget to offset inflation, the regents will also consider requests to fund several strategic initiatives:
- $1.5 million each year of the biennium to support the Presidential Scholars Program, which provides a full-ride scholarship, plus a $5,000 annual stipend, to each student who graduates from a Nebraska high school, receives a perfect score on the ACT, and elects to attend college at an NU campus;
- $5 million in the first year of the biennium to restore previous cuts to state biomedical research support;
- A reappropriation of $25 million originally appropriated in 2022 for the Ag Tech Incubator and Accelerator, as fundraising efforts for the matching $25 million are ongoing;
- $25 million in the first year of the biennium and $30 in the second year to update the Enterprise Resource Planning system used by both the university and the Nebraska State College System. This platform is used to manage a wide range of services including finance and accounting, facilities management, student services, payroll, procurement, and much more. The current system on-premises software is being phased out.
“Over the past decade, the University of Nebraska has responded to repeated budget reductions by making difficult decisions while protecting our core mission: exceptional teaching, life-changing research and meaningful engagement across Nebraska,” Dr. Gold said. “Our faculty and staff have consistently found innovative ways to do more with less. But after years of reductions, we have reached a point where additional cuts will inevitably diminish our ability to serve Nebraskans, strengthen our workforce and fuel the state's economic growth. At a time of economic uncertainty, investing in the University of Nebraska is an investment in the people, innovation and opportunities that will shape our state's future.”
The board will also recognize winners of the President’s Excellence Awards, the university’s most prestigious awards for teaching, research and engagement. Winners to be recognized during the meeting are:
Outstanding Research and Creativity Award:
- Sajda Qureshi, Ph.D., Department of Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis at the University of Nebraska at Omaha
- Jian Wang, Ph.D., Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award:
- Amy Duhacheck-Stapelman, M.D., MEHP, Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center
Faculty IP Innovation and Commercialization Award:
- Benson Edagwa, Ph.D., Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience at UNMC
Innovation in Student Success Award:
- Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UNK
University-wide Departmental Teaching Award:
- Department of Computer Science at the University of Nebraska at Omaha
In other business, the board will consider:
- Elimination of several low-enrollment degree programs;
- Approval of naming the UNO Training Facility the Howard L. Hawks Training Center;
- Recognition of five NU employees with Kudos awards for exemplary service.