Northwest Missouri State University’s Board of Regents during its regular meeting September 22 approved a policy concerning alcohol consumption on campus.

The Regents accepted the findings of a pilot program from Aramark at the Bearcat football opening game on September 7. The tailgating venue provided by Aramark at the Ray Courter Pavilion allows for beer and wine consumption along with a wide selection of food offerings that are growing. With this information, the Regents voted unamiously to set the policy to allow Aramark to serve on a regular basis.

The alcohol policy also was amended to allow the 10 residence hall directors to have alcohol in their dorm apartments. These Northwest employees would be prohibited to serve students in their apartments and the language stated that no kegs would be permitted.

The Regents approved the revival of the nursing program in the School of Health Science and Wellness by relaunching its registered nurse to Bachelor of Science in nursing program. The investment of two faculty positions will begin the program in the fall of 2018 with the plan to move forward with the possibility of a masters degree offering at a later date.

“Research was done to create projections and pro formas to determine the feasibility of offering nursing programs,” Interim Provost Dr. Jaime Hooyman told the Regents during her presentation of the proposal. “Extensive state and national trend data was used to identify student interest and to identify the long-term employment outlook for graduates. Through this analysis, it was determined there is a strong demand and a strong future job outlook at the state and national level.”

One of the faculty positions will serve as the director of Northwest’s nursing program with some teaching responsibilities, while the second position will carry a full teaching load.

Northwest will work with Academic Partnerships, a contracted vendor that provides support and services to help Northwest with its online enrollment, to build momentum and help grow its nursing programs.

In other business, the Regents approved university’s contract with the Northwest Regional Professional Development Center, which directly supports and provides professional development activities for K-12 educators in 59 school districts in the 15-county Northwest region. They also approved a series of policy revisions tied to curriculum approval authority, online learning, faculty credentialing and credit unit calculations. Updates to the university’s suicide awareness and prevention policy were also authorized.

Over 50 faculty appointments were accepted. To be incompliance with the state’s Coordinating Board for Higher Education, (CBHE) the Regents approved the delegation of authority to the president of the university to approve curriculum changes without the Regent’s approval.

Vice President of Finance Stacy Carrick proposed a miscellaneous fee for the new preferred name change of $25 to begin 2018. She also presented a slate of capital improvements that have been sent to the CBHE for approval to continue on to the Governor’s Budgeting and Planning Office concerning capital, $220.2 million; the 50/50 capital match of $1.083 million and operational costs of $37,083,954.

Reports were given by the student senate, faculty senate, and Northwest President Dr. John Jasinski.