The UNC Board of Trustees is changing as the terms of six trustees come to an end Thursday. Their replacements were chosen by the UNC System Board of Governors back in April.

The Board of Trustees held a special meeting on Wednesday to vote and grant tenure to journalism professor Nikole Hannah-Jones. The timing of that meeting was likely influenced by the terms of several trustees expiring the next day.

The outgoing members of the Board of Trustees are Jeff Brown, Haywood Cochrane, Chuck Duckett, Munroe Cobey, Kelly Matthews Hopkins and Chair Richard Stevens.

Brown, Cochrane, Duckett and Hopkins have all served on the board since 2013. Stevens has served since 2017. Cobey took over for Dwight Stone following Stone’s appointment to the UNC System Board of Governors in 2019.

The departure of trustee Duckett is especially noteworthy because it has been recently revealed he raised questions in January about the legitimacy of Nikole Hannah-Jones’ qualifications, which delayed her tenure vote.

The UNC Board of Trustees is appointed by the UNC System Board of Governors and the North Carolina General Assembly. The UNC student body president also serves on the board.

New members of the board appointed by university system leadership are Rob Bryan III, Perrin Jones, Malcom Turner, Ramsey White, Marty Kotis, and Vinay Patel.

Kotis, a real estate developer from Greensboro, and Patel, a hotel chain owner from Charlotte, were cleared by the General Assembly on Tuesday. Neither is currently on the board, but Kotis is finishing his second term on the UNC System Board of Governors.

The other members were approved in April.

Bryan is a former chair of the Mecklenburg Republican Party, two term-house member and NC state senator.

Jones is a current anesthesiologist and former state representative. He remained involved with the university by serving on the UNC Board of Visitors and the Student Recruitment Committee.

Turner currently works for the sports gambling site, DraftKings. Previously he worked as the athletics director at Vanderbilt University and president of the NBA G League.

White work as a business analyst for RBC Centura Bank in Raleigh and she is the assistant director of capital gifts for the Arts & Sciences Foundation at UNC.

The new UNC Board of Trustees members will not have to wait long before their first official meeting.  The next meeting is scheduled for July 15.

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