The Penn State Board of Trustees will meet today to review final plans for University Park's Dickinson School of Law building, vote on a proposed property acquisition and discuss the 2007-2008 academic year state appropriation request.

The meeting will begin at 8:30 a.m. with Penn State President Graham Spanier's State of the University Address and Report.

In past years, Spanier's address was delivered live each September at Eisenhower Auditorium. This year, the speech will be pre-taped and Spanier will talk to the camera while visual effects complement his presentation. It will be broadcast at the meeting and available on the Penn State Live Web site, live.psu.edu.

"The video allows us to go into greater detail on the different things that are going on at the university and have taken place over the past year," Penn State spokesman Tysen Kendig said. "It's not always easy to sum that up with the spoken word."

The Committee on Finance and Physical Plant will also take the floor today to present a host of agenda items, including the proposed acquisition of the North Atherton property, the capital budget request for 2007-2008 and a status report on major construction programs.

The university intends to purchase 1.5 acres of land along North Atherton Street that is currently owned by H.O. Smith & Sons. The trustees will vote whether to approve the acquisition of the land today. The university has no immediate plans for the land.

The budget request, a staple of the meeting, will be voted on by the trustees to confirm the amount of money the school will ask the state government to provide for 2007-2008. After the request is reviewed by the state, Spanier will travel to Harrisburg to testify in front of the state appropriations committees in support of it.

One of the most notable of the currently proposed construction plans is the creation of the new Dickinson School of Law building at University Park. The committee will present the proposed final plans for the project and request authorization for obtaining bids and contracts, according to the meeting's agenda.

The new Dickinson School of Law building, intended to replace the law school's temporary home in the Beam building, would be located at the East Park Avenue entrance to the university.

Kendig said plans for the new building and possibly a scale model of the facility will be revealed to the board.

Following the State of the University address, Vicky Triponey, vice president for student affairs, will present an informational report on Penn State's Greek Pride Initiative. Afterward, the Committee on Educational Policy will present a report featuring a section devoted to Education for Environmental Sustainability.

Environmental sustainability issues at Penn State are handled by the University Environmental Strategy, a group consisting of various components from the finance and business department, said Paul Ruskin, Office of Physical Plant spokesman. The group examines the way business practices at Penn State relate to energy and water conservation and the use of recycled materials.

Today's Board of Trustees meeting is in the boardroom at the Nittany Lion Inn, 200 W. Park Ave., and is open to the general public.