News > April 17, 2008

By CeCe Brooks | Life editor

On April 3 the university Board of Trustees elected and re-elected officers and members. The 2008-2009 board is made up of a number of individuals from different occupations and locations.

University Professor and former White House Senior Staff member K. Wayne Smith was re-elected as chair and attorney James T. Williams Jr. of Greensboro was re-elected as vice chair.

Junior Lauren K. Hubbard from Georgia was elected to be the 2008-2009 student trustee.

In the past, Hubbard has served on Student Government, LEAD and other university groups.

“Sophomore year I served as chief of staff, which is an executive position. Other things I’ve done on campus have included different university committees. I’ve been on the Visual Identity Committee, which just re-evaluates the way we present ourselves graphically … I am co-chair of the Traditions Council,” Hubbard said.

These past leadership experiences led her to apply for the Student Trustee position.

“I was really evaluating all the different leadership opportunities there were for senior year and I think that my past experience has best prepared me to serve as student trustee. I just really love the school and really love contributing a student voice to the administration,” Hubbard said.

The Student Trustee was chosen after a lengthy process starting in February when applicants applied to the student life committee.

Then a select number of students were chosen to be interviewed by the committees.

From these interviews the committee chose three students.

These students were judged by a student referendum and from those who passed the referendum (in this case all three) the committee made a final decision to present to the Board of Trustees for a vote.

Hubbard sees the duty of student trustee as being a bridge between the student body and the board.

“We get to serve as a full member of the board and hear all the different decisions that they are trying to make through the school and through the student body and my role is going to be to represent the student opinion to the board if they need to know student perspective then communicating back from the board to the student body,” Hubbard said.

This year the activities board of trustees has become the center of much more attention than in the past because of their recent decisions regarding change in the university.

Because of these changes, Hubbard is setting goals regarding keeping the student body informed.

“It’s a huge time of change for the university. The biggest that we’ve seen in awhile. What I really hope to do is to continue to work with Student Government, which started two years ago. So I really want to continue that, to communicate with the student body much better than has been done in the past,” Hubbard said.

“I think there’s really interesting ways like forums and a media/trustee Web site, just lots of different ways to use campus media that will help me better communicate with the student body.”