Trustees approve budget, elect new members
Wake Forest University’s board of trustees have approved a total operating budget of $453 million for fiscal 1996, which begins July 1.
At its April 18-19 meeting on campus, the board also elected 12 trustees, including Wachovia Corp. chairman John G. Medlin Jr. of Winston-Salem, who will serve as the board’s vice chairman. The board is chaired by PepsiCo chairman Wayne Calloway of Greenwich, Conn.
In addition, the trustees authorized Wake Forest President Thomas K. Hearn Jr. to take action on several construction and renovation projects as firm costs and plans became available. The authorization applied, in part, to plans to build gatehouses at the university’s three entrances and a residence hall on the northern edge of the campus near Polo Road.
The fiscal 1996 budget includes $304.4 million for the Hawthorne campus, site of Bowman Gray School of Medicine. Another $148.6 million will fund the Reynolda campus, location of Wake Forest’s arts and sciences undergraduate college and graduate school, as well as law, MBA, and business and accountancy schools. The Hawthorne campus budget is up 7.7 percent from last year, while the Reynolda campus budget rose by 12.7 percent. The total budget increase is 9.3 percent.
Implementation of the university’s Plan for the Class of 2000 accounts for a portion of the Reynolda campus’s budget increase, Wake Forest officials said. Adopted by the board in April 1995, the plan, in part, provides additional faculty and more financial aid for students, as well as newly-created freshman seminars designed to sharpen critical and analytical thinking skills.
The plan also calls for taking greater academic advantage of innovations in information technology. For instance, next fall’s freshmen, and all succeeding classes, will be provided with IBM ThinkPad computers. By 1999, all Wake Forest Undergraduates will use the notebook computers. Meanwhile, many Wake Forest faculty members are receiving ThinkPads or powerful desktop computers.
In addition to Medlin, those elected to four-year terms on the board were: Libba C. Evans of Winston-Salem, a businesswoman and chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party; Victor I. Flow Jr. of Winston-Salem, chairman of Flow Automotive Companies; Murray C. Greason Jr. of Winston-Salem, an attorney with Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice; Dr. Lawrence D. Hopkins of Winston-Salem, a physician; and James W. Johnston of Winston-Salem, chairman and chief executive officer of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Worldwide.
Also elected were: W. Louis Bissette Jr. of Asheville, an attorney and partner with McGuire, Wood & Bissette; Harvey R. Holding of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., retired vice chairman of BellSouth; K. Wayne Smith of Dublin, Ohio, president and chief executive officer of Online Computer Library Center; and Frances P. Pugh or Raleigh, owner and operator of Tara Morgan Horse Farm.
Elected for three years was Deborah D. Lambert of Bethesda, Md., a partner with Johnson, Lambert & Capron, an accounting firm.
Joy Vermillion, a sophomore from Wake Forest, N.C., was elected to a one-year term as a student trustee.
Bissette, Evans and Lambert have not served previously on the board.
