University of Louisville Board of Trustees minutes
Collection
Identifier: 1991_081-UA
Board of Trustees minutes, including subcommittee meeting minutes. Volume 13 (February 1909-16 March 1915) is missing; this period is covered by a typescript created by the Works Progress Administration in 1938, which addresses only the Medical School. From 1973 through 1979, substantial minutes of the executive sessions were created and maintained. From 1979 through 1982, there are a few sets of minutes of executive sessions which are missing from the holdings of the University Archives; those that are extant are quite brief. There are a few very brief sets of executive session minutes from 1983 and 1984. After 1984, there are no minutes of the Board of Trustees in executive session in the possession of the University Archives.
In some cases, recordings of meetings are retained as supporting documentation, as was the case for select meetings in 1970-1976.
University records more than 25 years old are generally open; however, some records may be restricted by statute or federal law.
36.61 linear feet (34 flat boxes, 31 manuscript boxes, 3 records center boxes, 1 half-manuscript box, and 2 A/V boxes.)
608 Megabytes (552 digital files)
The Board of Trustees of the University of Louisville was constituted in 1846 and has met regularly since then. Before 1970, the University of Louisville was a private institution. As such, the meetings of its Board of Trustees could be and were in fact closed to the public. UofL joined state university system in 1970, and in the fall of 1972, the Board acknowledged several requests to open its meetings to the public. After seeking an opinion from the Governor, the Board began conducting open meetings, beginning with the meeting conducted on January 15, 1973. To reconcile the need to conduct some business in private with the desire to hold most of the Board's meetings in public, the Board in 1973 began to utilize executive sessions. By law, public meetings are allowed to adjourn to closed executive sessions to discuss litigation, real estate transactions, personnel matters, and other narrowly defined matters.
Prior to 1998, the Board of Trustees met monthly. In 1998, the Board began meeting bi-monthly, with committees meeting in the intervening months. Thus, the Board met in February 1998, committees met in March 1998, and so forth. In 2018, the Board moved to quarterly meetings.
Part of the University of Louisville Archives and Special Collections Repository