Six new members have been appointed to the Johns Hopkins Board of Trustees, the group that runs major University affairs.
Among the most notable are Robert L. Johnson who founded Black Entertainment Television (BET) and who now owns a National Basketball Association franchise, and David M. Rubenstein, cofounder of the Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm.
The new inductees join a Board composed of forty-nine members. Their role includes approving the budget and five year financial plan, overseeing the appointment of full-time professors and deans, setting tuition and reviewing all capital projects.
Their terms began on July 1 and continue for four to six years depending on their position, and most have the ability to be renewed upon completion.
Johnson is widely regarded as a visionary in the world of cable television. He started BET in 1980, and despite widespread doubts about he cable channel's ability to garner a significant audience share, it now reaches 65 million U.S. homes. He is still the chairman and CEO of the company, which he sold to corporate giant Viacom, Inc. in 2000.
He was a major partner in United Airlines' failed attempt to acquire U.S. Airways in 2000. Johnson's stake in the deal, had it been approved, would have been to acquire U.S. Airways' Washington business and run it under the company name D.C. Air.
Johnson is also no stranger to serving on boards like the one he now joins at Hopkins. He is on the board of U.S. Airways, Hilton Hotels International and the Brookings Institution.
Before Rubenstein started the Carlyle group, he was a political appointee, serving as Deputy Domestic Policy Assistant to the President of the United States. He held the position in 1981. After becoming partner of a Washington, D.C. law firm, he started the Carlyle group in 1987.
Alexander H. Levi is a clinical psychologist with his own private practice in New York.
Robert A. Seder is one of the alumni trustees on the board. Out of the 49 members, twelve are always alumnus of Hopkins. Mr. Seder is the chief of the cellular immunology section of the Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. He graduated from Hopkins in 1981.
Marjorie M. Fisher, the other alumni trustee on the board, is an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich. In 1984, she received a master of arts from Johns Hopkins.
Elizabeth Owens is the newest young trustee on the board. There are four young trustees on the board who are recent graduates of Hopkins.
They are elected by an original nomination from the student body, and their terms last for four years without the chance for renewal.
The trustees have meetings in October, December, March, and June, which are lead by Raymond Mason, the chairman of the board.
Julie Morgan, assistant secretary to the Board of Trustees explained, "I want to stress how important the board is to the University, putting countless volunteer hours in and also typically making large financial contributions. The University owes a lot to their leadership."
