Nine seats on the Auburn Board of Trustees will be up for grabs this year, which could mean big changes for Auburn.
The Board of Trustees is made up of one person from each Alabama district (as they were designated in 1961), an additional person from Lee County and two at-large trustees who must be members of the continental United States.
Grant Davis, secretary to the Board of Trustees, said seven trustees' terms are coming up this year.
In addition, seats for districts 1 and 6 are already vacant.
Of the trustees whose terms are expiring, only one, Dwight Carlisle from District 4, is ineligible to be reappointed.
The rules governing the board have changed in recent years.
"In the previous process, the people had 12-year terms," Davis said. "The governor would nominate a person, it went to confirmation committee, then to the full Senate, then the person had a 12-year term."
That changed with Amendment 670 to the 1901 constitution. The new amendment stipulates that trustees may serve two seven-year terms and may continue to occupy their seats for an additional year.
The District 6 seat opened when Paul J. Spina's term and additional year were completed in September of 2010.
The District 1 seat became available when John C.H. Miller Jr. died in July of 2009.
According to the amendment, a person who wants to be on the Board of Trustees must be a resident of the district or the continental United States, cannot be a member of the selection committee, cannot be an Auburn University employee and must be under 70 on date of confirmation.
The selection committee is made up of two members of the Board, two members of the Alumni Association and the governor of Alabama, who serves as the chair.
"In the past, the committee would meet and interview people that were interested," Davis said. "The governor would then, if they select someone, would forward that name to the confirmations committee."
The confirmations committee is made up of 11 members of the Alabama Senate. Tom Whatley, Alabama Senator for the 27th district, said he is looking forward to serving on the confirmations committee.
The Alabama Legislature will be in session from March 3 until mid-June.
The selection committee can submit a name before the confirmations committee at any point during that session.
"We either have the option of voting to confirm those people or not confirm them, or another vote is to not bring it up at all," Whatley said.
Each member of the confirmations committee has a say about who to choose, and Whatley said he hopes his say will be given careful consideration.
"I hope that me being the senator from Auburn and me being an Auburn graduate, that I will be able to take the nominating committee's nominees, and I will be given some deference in the committee," Whatley said. "I hope the fellow members will give me that."
Whatley said he has a preference for the career background of one of the new trustees.
"I would like for one of these trustees to have some agricultural background, be it in production agriculture or agribusiness," Whatley said.
The basis for choosing to confirm someone includes a resume and biographical information, but the biggest guiding principle is the selection committee's recommendation.
"Their recommendation is going to be given a lot of priority," Whatley said.
The governor sets the process for selecting new trustees, but those specifics have not yet been defined since Gov. Robert Bentley came into office.
"The governor chairs the committee, and he calls it together at his discretion and from that point the committee can decide how it wishes to proceed," said Sherri Fulford, executive director of governmental affairs. "It can do interviews, or it could accept nominations.
"There are any number of approaches it could take, and that would just depend on how Gov. Bentley wants to proceed with it."
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