LITTLE ROCK—The Univer-sity of Central Arkansas Board of Trustees will meet today to discuss the future of embattled president Lu Hardin, who has faced questions after he was awarded a $300,000 bonus in secret last spring.

Rush F. Harding III, vice chairman of the board, said Wednesday that the panel would meet at 11 a.m. on the UCA campus at Conway to discuss Hardin’s future. Harding suggested that resigning may be one of Hardin’s options.

“I’m confident the president has the votes to stay, if he would choose,” Harding said. “However, I know the president cares deeply about the institution and he’s assured me that he wants some resolution to this issue and he will put the interest of the university above his own.”

Hardin, who has repaid the bonus money, has served as head of UCA since 2002. Neither he nor board chairman Randy Sims returned calls Wednesday afternoon.

“This whole situation has been a huge distraction,” Harding said. “The board is having a meeting in the morning to sit down with the president and figure out how to get this behind us.”

Hardin has faced criticism from faculty at the campus who were angry to learn that Hardin informed the board that compensation he would receive under a deferred compensation package did not have to be voted on in public. Hardin put that information in a memo bearing the typed names of three UCA vice presidents.

Hardin has a five-year contract that annually rolls over and adds another year, unless the board in September decides otherwise. He is paid $253,000 a year.

By law, the college cannot use public funds to supplement Hardin’s pay beyond 25 percent of state-mandated salary caps. Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said in an advisory opinion issued in July that the funding source the board planned to use for Hardin’s bonus was public money.

Hardin, a former director of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education under then-Gov. Mike Huckabee, became UCA’s president in September 2002. A Republican and former state senator, Hardin is viewed as a potential candidate for governor in the 2014 election.

Hardin recently had surgery for cancer in his right eye and doctors placed a radioactive plate behind the eye in the hopes of shrinking a malignant tumor. The plate was removed last week, and Hardin’s office has said it will take several months to determine whether the surgery was successful.