UNM’s Health Sciences Center Board racked up a nearly $12,000 bill at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort and Spa during a May training session, leaving some faculty questioning the use of funds.
The Bank of America corporate purchasing card statement for the HSC Board reflects $11,543.38 spent on a two-day training session for inaugurated board members and HSC leadership.
HSC spokesman Billy Sparks said the board is a complex organization that demands its leadership to have a thorough understanding of its functions.
“How do you explain and be available for exchange on a $1.2 billion organization that is going to be your responsibility to govern in the least amount of time in the most effective way?” he said. “Having a two-day training session is considered very efficient and very worthwhile.”
Board members and HSC leadership decided to hold the retreat at the Tamaya, Sparks said. He said he didn’t know why the training session could not have been held in a free meeting room on campus, but he said holding off-campus meetings is nothing new.
“We’ve had a long partnership with the pueblos over the past 50 years,” he said. “It’s a local operation owned by the pueblos, and there has been other meetings there by many different departments in the University over the last several years. … It was strictly a business meeting conducted in a single room for that time period.”
After reading an Albuquerque Journal article about the high-dollar meeting, University professor Sherman Wilcox wrote a letter to the editors at the Daily Lobo and Albuquerque Journal.
Wilcox said he was upset because his department had recently rejected several talented students because of lack of funding.
Sparks said money the HSC Board spends is mostly generated by the HSC, which means it would not be spent on anything outside the HSC.
Still, Wilcox said the wealth disparity between University operations is disheartening, a sentiment he said is shared among many faculty members.
“It may be entirely true that this is money that only could be spent on meetings, but faculty at UNM have heard this so much, and very often it’s true, so it’s not that it’s factually inaccurate,” he said. “It’s the perception and the feeling when programs are suffering so much. It’s the sense of despair that strikes you so much when you see something like this.”
HSC Board chairperson Carolyn Abeita said an off-campus venue best fit the board’s needs but future routine meetings should be held on campus.
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“This was not a typical Board of Directors meeting,” she said.
“It was the board’s first opportunity to meet as an established body with new board members, some of whom have not had experience serving on a board for a major health science center.”
