Lincoln University curators will be meeting in three different capacities Tuesday and are expected to take action on funding for student laptops.
The Board of Curators legislative affairs committee will host a closed session starting at 10 a.m. Tuesday, and the budget and finance committee will meet half an hour later to discuss laptops for remote learning.
The full Board of Curators will then meet at 11 a.m., with the issue of remote learning laptops the only agenda item before moving to a closed session.
University administration pitched the idea of buying 2,000 new computers for full-time students, faculty and staff to the board earlier this month while discussing potential uses for federal COVID-19 relief funds.
Sandy Koetting, vice president of administration and finance, said the laptops would ensure the university could continue a semester remotely if COVID-19 were to shut down campus again.
Interim President John Moseley said it's one avenue for how the university could spend the money earmarked for addressing specific institutional needs.
"We're going to continue to explore the possibility of being able to provide laptops for our students so that they have access to technology that would be needed in the event that the university or some of its classes have to go remote," Moseley said. "We just want to remove the barrier, the technology barrier, for some that to this point, it could have been or would have been a problem."
Preliminary quotes estimate the laptops equipped with Microsoft Office and a multi-year warranty will cost $1,300-1,400 each, Koetting said, so the university would be looking to spend $2.87 million on computers.
Koetting said 1,500 laptops should cover the university's full-time student population and the additional laptops could go to faculty and staff.
Curator President Victor Pasley said the board will need to consider how sustainable providing laptops to students would be in the long term.