The chief purpose of a board is more to provide for good governance than it is for itself to govern in detail. It is more important for the board to provide for effective governance than - for it to govern; it should spend more time on governance and less time on governing ... The board should neither abdicate its responsibilities to external or internal forces, nor bog itself down in the details of administration. It should not run the college, but it should assure that it is well run.*
Size
The RIT Board of Trustees consists of 48 active trustees (including the President of the University and representatives of the RIT Alumni Association, the Women’s Council of RIT, and the National Advisory Group of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf) and 30 trustees of emeritus status. Currently, the total number of active and emeriti trustees is 78.
Alumni
There are 25 RIT alumni on the Board of Trustees.
Geographic Representation
Trustees residing in the Rochester area: 24
Trustees residing outside the Rochester area: 26
Other NY (6), California (2), Colorado (1), Connecticut (1), Delaware (1), Kentucky (1), Maryland (3), Pennsylvania (1), North Carolina (3), Utah (1) and Virginia/Washington, DC (3).
International: Mumbai, India (1).
Meetings
Three full board meetings are held annually each April, July, and November. The meetings usually convene early Thursday afternoon and adjourn by mid afternoon on Friday. Committee meetings are typically scheduled throughout Thursday morning prior to the board meetings.
Committees
In addition to the Executive Committee, which meets monthly, the board consists of five core committees, which meet throughout the year and at the time of the full board meetings. They are the Education, Enrollment Management, Finance, Student Life, and University Relations Committees.
Also, there are six subcommittees (Buildings & Grounds, Development, Endowment, Enterprise Risk Management, Executive Compensation, Government Relations, and Research/Graduate Programs) and five special function committees (Audit, Committee on Trustees, Conflicts of Interest, Diversity, Global Delivery Corporation, and Strategic Planning). Subcommittees and special function committees meet throughout the year as needed.
Each active trustee serves on one core committee and one or more subcommittees or special function committees. The president and other administrative officers provide staff support to each of the committees.
Terms of Office
Each trustee is assigned to one of four classes, which serve for four-year renewable terms. The Committee on Trustees reviews the activities and service of each trustee at the time his/her class is due for re-election. There is no limit to the number of terms to which trustees may be elected up to the age of 75, at which time they may be elected to emeritus status.
*Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, Governance of Higher Education: Six Priority Problems (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, April 1973), p.36