The Iowa Board of Regents will discuss topics  including public safety and spending at the state universities during its meeting this week.

Key presentations include the Fall 2018 Enrollment Report, the Comprehensive Fiscal Report for FY 2018 and the annual Clery Act Reports, which disclose crime statistics in and around university campuses. Thursday and Friday’s meeting is slated to be the Board of Regents’ last until January 2019.

The board’s November session will open with reports from the investment and finance committee at 11 a.m Thursday. This section will feature the report for Fiscal Year 2018, which covers “budgetary and financial matters,” in addition to a five-year history of revenues and expenditures for entities controlled by the Board of Regents.

Brad Berg, the Iowa Board of Regents’ policy and operations officer, said the report marks the end of the fiscal year and provides an overview of universities’ cashflow.

“The final thing to close the fiscal year 2018 period is reporting the actual revenues and expenditures of the institutions,” Berg said. “Since a portion of those budgets are comprised of taxpayer dollars, it promotes accountability of those funds.”

Following the meeting of that committee, the board is scheduled to enter open session at 12:30 p.m. with a 30-minute public comment section. The previous Board of Regents meeting in September was interrupted by faculty protestors, who opened their protest with a declaration that they were extending the public comment section because they believed the 30-minutes allotted per board meeting was not enough.

One of the key presentations during this session will be the campus safety reports for Iowa State, University of Iowa and University of Northern Iowa — Iowa’s regent universities. The annual reports, which are federally mandated by the Clery Act, detail crime statistics on and around campuses and compares them to recent years, with both general overviews and a categorical breakdown of violent and nonviolent crime.

Iowa State’s presentation on campus security will be given by Iowa State University Chief of Police Michael Newton, and the released report  details 2017’s campus security and fire safety.

During the open session, the board plans to discuss tuition, university resources and fall enrollment. All three regent universities saw a decline in their enrollment numbers from 2017, and their combined enrollment numbers have dropped to below those of fall 2015.

The resource and tuition discussion will predominantly cover funding for the regent universities, which primarily comes through tuition and appropriations.

Over time, the proportion of school funding has shifted away from state appropriations to a predominantly tuition-driven system— 2011 was the first year the school received more than 50 percent of its funding from student tuition, and it will account for more than 65 percent on the fiscal year 2019 budget. Berg said this is due significant funding cuts from the state legislature.

“With tuition and state appropriations being the primary revenue components of the universities, a large part in response to those cuts, we’ve seen tuition increase,” Berg said. “Another big factor in that is the changes in enrollment over the course of time. Our enrollment has significantly grown, as well, so that also contributes to the additional tuition revenue.”

Josh Lehman, senior communications director for the Board of Regents, said regardless of cuts in state funding, the board has attempted to keep Iowa’s higher education at the same level.

“The board’s primary mission is to maintain quality education to our students, the high quality education that they deserve and demand,” Lehman said. “There are revenue needs, so when state appropriations has gone down, tuition has had to increase to keep the funding level.”

Also on the docket for the open session is a presentation on the condition of higher education in Iowa as well as the potential sale of over $29.5 million of bonds in order to fund improvements and renovations to the University of Iowa’s athletic facilities. The Board of Regents will then look at 2018 reports covering audits performed on various facilities at regent institutions.

Before Friday’s session, the Regents will meet with students for an 8 a.m. “Breakfast with Student Leaders.” The board will then begin a series of committee meetings, including academic affairs, campus and student affairs, and property and facilities.

Included in this second session is Iowa State’s request to establish a new institute within the College of Veterinary Medicine: The National Institute of Antimicrobial Resistance Research and Education.

According to the filed request, Iowa State applied and was selected to operate this facility by the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities and the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges.

They will also be looking at various property and capital improvement requests from the regent universities, as well as a University of Northern Iowa request to hire emergency contractors to repair a dining hall that was damaged by flooding.

The board will convene Thursday and Friday, Nov. 15 and 16. Live streaming audio of the event will be available at www.iowaregents.edu, and the full meeting agenda can be viewed online.