Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam is starting to announce the new board members of six public universities, marking the next step in a historic power shift in the state’s higher education system.

So far, his office has announced the board members for East Tennessee State University and Austin Peay University. The governor’s office says the boards for the other four schools in the Tennessee Board of Regents will be made public by the end of the week. 

These announcements follow the state’s decision to implement the FOCUS Act, a change to the way Tennessee’s largest higher education system is governed. Once the change is complete, the Tennessee Board of Regents will continue to oversee community and technical colleges, but its six universities will become largely autonomous. Part of that autonomy means each school gets its own governing board.

This was a somewhat divisive idea at first — Tennessee State University, for example, worried that the change would unfairly favor the state’s larger schools. But East Tennessee State University president Brian Noland was supportive of the idea from the beginning, and he echoed the same sentiment in a phone interview Tuesday. 

“With the advent of our board of trustees, they’ll have a laser-sharp focus on the needs of our universities and the needs of the region that we call home,” he said.

More concretely, the board at each school will have
extensive administrative powers. It will oversee hiring and tenure, prescribe academic curricula, establish campus policies and approve the school’s operating budget (although the Tennessee Board of Regents will still have some control).

Noland says he and others at ETSU were consulted about who they wanted to see on the board, but the final decision came from the governor. Each board is required by law to include at least three alumni and six Tennessee residents.

ETSU’s board includes philanthropist Janet Ayers, former Tennessee education official James Powell, and one prominent elected official — Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, an ETSU alumnus. 

The boards will have to secure approval from the Tennessee legislature before they start convening in the spring.