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Iowa’s Board of Regents, which governs the state’s three public universities, has been understaffed for seven months spanning five meetings — with its student-regent seat sitting unfilled for the longest stretch since the Legislature in 1988 required a student to fill one of the nine unpaid spots.

The governor is charged with appointing the regents to six-year terms — pending Iowa Senate confirmation — with eight of the board members “selected from the state at large solely with regard to their qualifications and fitness to discharge the duties of the office.”

“The ninth member shall be a student enrolled on a full-time basis in good standing at either the graduate or undergraduate level at one of the institutions,” according to Iowa Code.

Student regent appointments traditionally have rotated between the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and University of Northern Iowa — with the last student regent, Abby Crow from the UI, on the board from June 2021 to June 2024. Students regents, since they’re students, typically don’t serve full six-year-terms.

Since Crow’s final meeting, the board has held four meetings and one retreat without a full complement of voting members. Regent Nancy Dunkel — the sole Democrat on the board — recently aired her frustration with the open seat during a discussion on the universities’ efforts to comply with a state law barring diversity, equity and inclusion-related spending and staff.

“We're missing a student representative on our board,” Dunkel said at the regents’ November meeting while making a point about the importance of getting a student perspective on how DEI changes are impacting their experience on campus. “When they were on the board, they gave us that input. So we really need to put our efforts into getting that seat filled so we can hear that perspective as well.

“Because that's the process that we hear what the students are saying.”

No other regents mentioned the missing student regent at that meeting, and Gov. Kim Reynolds’ office hasn’t responded to weeks of questions about the vacancy from The Gazette.

“As the governor appoints regents, any question about that should be directed to the governor's office,” regents spokesman Josh Lehman said.

Before Crow’s time on the board, ISU student Zack Leist served from June 2019 to April 2021 — meaning that UNI would be up next for a regent representative. When asked whether UNI has submitted any recommendations or nominations to the governor’s office, UNI spokesman Pete Moris said, “We do have a number of UNI students who would be excellent choices to serve in this role.”

“I know UNI Student Government leaders are anxiously awaiting for a decision to be made so our UNI representative can begin participating in Board of Regents matters,” he said. “In terms of the specifics of the selection process, we will respectfully allow Gov. Reynolds and her staff to address those questions.”

Demand a seat

The state created the Board of Regents — originally called the State Board of Education — in 1909 to coordinate and govern Iowa’s public universities, which until that time had been governed by separate boards of trustees.

The concept of a student regent emerged decades later in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when opposition to the Vietnam War and the military draft were sparking protest and debate across college campuses nationally.

At the UI, specifically, thousands of students clad in fake blood and Grim Reaper get-ups gathered on the Pentacrest and sprawled themselves on the university president’s lawn in May 1970 to protest the Vietnam War and a National Guard killing of four Kent State University students opposing President Richard Nixon’s plans to invade Cambodia.

“There was rebellion everywhere,” said 1971 ISU student body president Steven Zumbach, according to a Board of Regents history of the student regent position. “It was a very unsettling time. Everywhere I went, it seemed like the world was becoming unzipped.”

Amid the unrest, students began to demand a seat at the oversight table. And then-Gov. Robert Ray responded in March 1973 by appointing Zumbach to serve as the first student regent.

Zumbach served until 1977, but lawmakers decided to make permanent the student seat a decade later by passing legislation in 1988 requiring one of the nine members to be a full-time student.

Since that time, 12 students have served as regents — 11 of whom have been female. Apart from Zumbach’s original stint, ISU’s Leist has been the only male student regent since the law was passed.

And, in most cases, new student regents began their service at the meeting immediately following their predecessor’s final meeting.

It wasn’t until 2004 that the board went even one regular meeting without a new student regent at the table. In 2008, the board went three months and two regular meetings before a new one joined.

But in the four student-regent transitions that followed, no meetings passed without a student at the table — including when the most recent student regent Crow first joined the board in 2021 at the meeting immediately succeeding Leist’s last appearance.

“Not a lot of states have a voting member that’s a student, and I really think that voice matters,” former student regent Jenny Connolly told The Gazette on Friday about her time on the board from 2004 to 2008.

‘A little reality check’

As a resident assistant her junior year at UNI, Connolly said she received a “random email” from the student affairs office informing her she had been nominated to apply for a “leadership position.”

She responded and followed through, interviewing with UNI’s president, the regents executive director and the board president.

“And then I got the call from the governor,” Connolly said about the moment in her dorm room two decades ago when then-Gov. Tom Vilsack let her know she was his nominee for student regent — but still would need to receive Senate confirmation. “I don’t really know how my name got thrown into the pool.”

Although Connolly was excited for her new role, she said her tenure started a little rocky — as she was tasked in one of her first meetings to cast the deciding vote in a contentious contest for the next Board of Regents president.

“That was pretty rough,” she said. “I ended up crying at the meeting because I had no idea what to do. I didn’t even know these people.”

The board suspended the vote, letting Connolly off the hook.

“It was a little reality check for 20-year-old me from small-town Iowa,” Connolly said.

But she matured into the role, asking questions and posing novel ideas and perspectives from the key constituents she represented.

“I got on the board right after some really hard budget things,” Connolly said. “I saw double digit tuition increase votes. I was on the board when there was a lot of leadership changes with the presidents. … And that was the part of higher ed where schools were really grappling over what to do with some of the sexual assault things.”

Given she represented the typical undergraduate — born and raised in Iowa, the daughter of a teacher and a John Deere worker — Connolly said she brought an important voice to the regent conversation, one that remains relevant today.

“I think higher ed now more than ever has the power to really help and change a student’s economic mobility,” she said.

“I just feel like that voice is really, really important for people who are making policy changes and rules to hear,” Connolly said.

Connolly said her time as a regent opened doors for her, broadening her academic and professional experience, introducing her to leaders and allowing her a perspective on higher ed that she wouldn’t have had otherwise.

“I'm forever thankful for whoever nominated me all those years ago … that they took a chance on this small-town kid.”