Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon]: And this is House Education on 02/04/2026. We are switching gears and moving into the higher ed realm this morning with both UVM and state colleges. Beginning with an introduction from the new president of the University of Vermont. Welcome, very happy to have you here and really look forward to learning more about your work and how UVM is doing.

[Marlene Tromp]: Thank you so much. For the record, I'm Marlene Trump and I am the president of UVM and I'm so honored to be here. Thank you so much to all of you for your service and for your work on the complex landscape of education right now, not just in the state, but in the nation. Thank you so much. So, I'm really excited to be here today. And I've got this slide deck to talk through some basics, but I'm happy to answer any questions you all have. The primary theme you'll see in this presentation is my focus as the president on the impact that we make on Vermonters in the state of Vermont. Our aim is to serve as the public plan grant, the flagship public land grant, if you could hit the next slide for me, Matt. We're really proud of the number of people that we serve across the state and the number of people that we bring here to become a part of Vermont. This is just our numbers at a glance. But the thing that I'm most proud of and what drew me here was the opportunity to be in the state of Vermont, a place where people cared about community and care about education and where I had the privilege of being at a land grant university, which is about service to the state. Our own Justin Morell, as many of you will know, was the one who conceived of the idea of the land grant university. And it became a pattern across the country for the state to support the creation of research universities. And the language of the Morrill Act says that land grant universities should educate the sons and daughters of farmers and mechanics. And it was designed to be an alternative to elite public schools that weren't available or private schools that weren't available to people across the state and to change the future of the state by investing in education. And one of the things that strikes me as significant about that in this moment is the Morrill Act was actually passed and signed by President Lincoln during the Civil War. And so it was another time of great cultural strife and that commitment to education is fundamental to the future well-being of the country and of the state. The next slide, please. We have an incredible range, breadth and depth of program offerings at the university because we are a comprehensive university. So the land grant is meant to serve in any way conceivable. And that's everything from the huge range of bachelor's degrees, master's and doctorates to certificates so that people can up credential in specific areas. I just came in on the tail end of hearing me talk about AI. And one of the things we're developing, or at least I thought that's what the conversation was about, one of the things we're developing is opportunities for people to understand and navigate AI in the world around. So we're designed to be here for the health and well-being in the future of the state. And next slide, please. And we're very proud of the numbers of Vermonters that we serve. As you see on this slide, we have nearly 4,000 Vermont students and 32% of our Vermonters in their first year are Pell eligible. Now, that language may not mean much to you, but in this committee, there may be folks who do know Pell eligible meets the federal government's definition of socioeconomically disadvantaged. So we serve so many students who are like I was. I was the daughter of a coal miner and a Toronto miner. And my parents had aspirations for me to go to college. And Pell was one of the opportunities that made that possible for me. So we can change people's lives and change their families' futures by making college accessible to them. 18% of our Vermont undergrads are first generation college students. So the transformation that's possible, I think very often about the difference in my life and what my son's life will be given what we've been able to do in our family over the course of just one generation with access to education. Next slide, please. But what I am perhaps most proud of is the fact that for a family that makes less than $100,000 a year, that family student can attend UVM for $0 in tuition. We cover from our own corpus of funding the costs of that student's expenses for education. So they pay no tuition at all. And 48% of our students benefit from that direct support. So you all are aware that there are scholarship funds available for students from the state going to CCD and Vermont State, and that's really important to the well-being of the future of the state. These funds come from our own budget to ensure that Vermonters have access to UVM. And more than half of UVM's state funding goes directly to supporting Vermont students. Next slide, please. This was the figure that most surprised me when I arrived and that I'm so proud of, which is that for every Vermonter that we graduate at UVM, two of their out of state peers stay and work in Vermont. So our upside down demographic in the state, which is the reverse of how it had been historically, where your greatest population were young people that were growing up and giving back to the economy and working in the workforce, And your smallest population were the elderly who were retired and utilizing health care infrastructure and utilizing social support services. Our demographic is the reverse of that funnel. And you all deal with these questions all the time as legislature in terms of the health care costs and the way that it's impacting education. One of the things that we know is that we need that energy, those young people who are working and paying taxes and giving in to the state and who are bringing their ideas and innovation and who are serving as our nurses and serving as our teachers to help our communities thrive. I just met a group of UVM interns that are down in the cafeteria before we came up to this committee meeting. And I had a young woman say to me, I'm from New York. And my friends all told me, If you go to Vermont, you'll never come back. And she said, I'm going to stay. I've never been happier any place in my life. And so we know that when we bring in those students, it really makes a difference in the future of the state. And I'm proud so many of them do stay and give back.

[Peter Conlon]: How far up do you track that? In other words, does this just represent students who might stay a year or do you track it further than that?

[Marlene Tromp]: I went to a VSAT presentation just a few months ago, and they have tracked it long term for the entrepreneurial activity. And what they've found is that twelve years out, we still have people who are staying. It's when people's family starts to grow that they worry about not being able to afford health care and they worry about not being able to afford a house. And that's when some of them leave. So we're seeing people stay for quite some time. But as their family matures, they get anxious about being able to afford things. So one of the things I'm very concerned about as president of UVM is finding ways to help us help solve the challenges that you all are taking on too, to utilize the universities of brain trust to serve the state. I don't want us to be a university on a hill. I want us to be serving our legislators that are making policy and thinking about the future. I want us to serve our nonprofits. I want us to serve school districts and our health care systems and to really think about how we can make an impact. And I don't want those young people to leave. I want to solve problems. They want to stay, to help them stay and afford their first home and afford that health care insurance. So, can we have the next slide, please?

[Peter Conlon]: By the way, if you have solutions to those problems, I will

[Marlene Tromp]: tell you, I've got Wendy working on this. We have I've built a series of tiger teams and I've set grand challenges for our leadership team to work on with our constituents across the state and other stakeholders to put the brainpower of the university behind these thorny challenges. And I don't think anything has easy solutions, of course. I mean, we all know that. But by gosh, we have to have that as a part of our primary responsibility as the land grant university in the state. So what is that? For every Vermont or two out of state students now to, that means we have over 35,000 new year loans who live and work and get back in Vermont. Next slide, please. I'm really proud of the fact that we've earned our one research university status, and this is a Carnegie classification. And I'll just say a word about that because most people have never heard of this. Academics all know what it is, but most people outside of the academy don't. So the Carnegie system classifies all universities based on their research. And only 3% of institutions in the country, just 3% qualify as R1, Research one universities, which means they have very high research activity. And it's a measure of the quality, the extensiveness, and the impact of that research across the country and across the globe. And I'm going to talk about some of the ways that we some of the things we're working on that have helped us achieve that. But one of the things that's important, I think, for you to know is it does attract students to us, and it attracts high quality faculty who want to be here at an R1. And so it helps us bring the best students and the best faculty to serve the state. Next slide, please, Matt. I am extremely proud in alignment with the values of our state and the long time values of UVM. One of the stories I'm really proud to tell is that President Marsh, who was our president in 1826, actually made a decision to change the way that the university was teaching so that values would be incorporated in everything they did. He saw that as fundamental, not just learning the math, not just learning the Latin or Greek, but understanding values as being a part of the way you govern, you lead business, you raise your family. And it was so transformative that it's actually in a pamphlet he wrote in universities all over the country, and it changed the curriculum that was offered all over the country. So we have a deep history, just like the state does, in thinking about values. And we were named by the Princeton Review the number one university in the country for making a social impact, which I'm really proud of. And our MBA program was named the number one MBA program in the country for MBAs who do social good. Next slide, please, Matt. You may wonder what all that research is about. What you see pictured here is a group of researchers out on Lake Champlain, and they've made incredible discoveries there about the health and well-being of lakes in a time of changing climate. They made a discovery, and this blows my mind. I think about this all the time. They've discovered that fish can give cancer to each other. And understanding those mechanisms, which we're now beginning to study, could help us avoid the same things in human populations. It's a communicable disease in fish. So we're doing research that could change the future of health care and help us keep healthy. We last year, in the last fiscal year, brought in over $225,000,000 of money into the state to do fundamental research for the state and for the future. That number will increase. When I come to see you next year, you'll hear an even bigger number for that. Next slide, please. Some of you will know about the Vegan Tech Hub. This is one of our proudest initiatives. I came here from being president of a university in Boise, Idaho, where Micron Corporation is based. And it's one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world. In fact, I represented just a handful of universities that was at the G7 summit under the previous presidency on the CHIPS Act, the International Semiconductor Initiative. So I have a lot of experience in this industry and in working towards helping economies thrive by partnering with industry to make a difference in the state. So this tech hub is a new material that's designed to make semiconductors lighter and more flexible and smaller, which if there's a semiconductor, basically in any kind of electronics, so your phone, your TV, but also things like your refrigerator or your dishwasher or your stove. In fact, part of the reason you may remember during the pandemic that there was a supply chain issue with appliances, that's because we couldn't get semiconductors. So this innovative new material that's being pioneered with work here in Vermont through Global Foundries and their partnership with UVM is training students to be a part of that industry and partnering with that industry to help it thrive so that we're producing these technological innovations in the state to make a difference in the future of the world. And we were awarded $3,400,000 And you may have heard last year that we were given a grant from the federal government for $20,000,000 to advance this industry because it's so important to the future of our country and to not being dependent on external supply chains to produce technology in The US. That funding was cut during the federal funding cuts when everything was frozen. So it was a part of that frozen funding. It made no rational sense to me that when you're trying to think about global competitiveness, that you would cut something that could make The US stronger, more independent, more competitive. But it was in that sweep of things that was cut. But they've renewed the call for that funding. And now all five parts of our proposal, which would be for tens of millions of dollars, have been approved to the final stage of review. So keep watching the news for that Vegan Tech Hub and the work we're doing on that. Next slide, please. Are very proud that we were the first ever bio labs in a rural community in the entire country. So this is a biotech accelerator that helps take scientific and medical discovery and translate it so it can actually be in the health care system in the hands of consumers. So it's designed to be an entity that helps people take medical and scientific breakthroughs and make them available to the public. They've never founded one of their facilities in a rural area before. So we were their first partnership, and we're up and running and helping to translate those discoveries across the state and across the world right now. Next slide, please. And in this slide, you see a rather alarming and creepy picture of a tick because our researchers are working on a vaccine to protect against tick borne illness, which would be transformative for people in a state like Vermont, but all over the country. So this groundbreaking, pathbreaking innovation is happening in our medical schools, in the science labs at UVM right now, making a difference in our lives. Next slide, please, ma'am. I'm also very proud that we're working really hard to help address the health care shortage in the state and to ensure that we have sufficient health care workers to serve our population. And I'm so happy to share with you that we just received a $16,000,000 estate gift to help defray the costs of students to study nursing at UVM. So it will make an enormous difference for young people. And I already mentioned the reduction in costs for there's no tuition for a student whose family makes under 100,000. This scholarship will help anyone who wants to study nursing in the state of Vermont at UVM. Thank you very much. Next slide, please. Finally, our requests. We have requested in alignment with the governor's budget proposal, a 3% inflationary increase, and that will do three things. It will allow us to continue to give that need based aid that's so fundamental to Vermont students attending the school. The tuition discount for students, Vermonters who come to the Lerner College of Medicine, many of whom stay in Vermont to practice. And it will support our extension programs to make sure we can reach all 14 counties with the full robust effort of the university. And I'm very proud to say that in our new strategic plan, which goes before the board in just a couple of days, in our new strategic plan. The third pillar of four is to ensure that the entire university serves the state the same way that extension has. Number two, we've requested a million dollars per year for five years to support our cancer center to ensure that it can provide services in rural communities. My sister is doing cancer treatment at the UVM health care system right now. And a part of what we have discovered as we're doing her infusions in the facility is how many people are driving two and a half hours to come and get their treatments. And we want to really ensure that we're providing as much care as we can out in rural communities to ease the strain on families who are seeking cancer care. And finally, we are requesting the $15,000,000 proposed by the governor for our multipurpose center. And I want to say a word about that multipurpose center. When I was president at my last institution, we had a facility much like this one that we hoped to complete at UVM, and it was designed to serve the entire state. So we had folks that traveled from all across the state. And for many young people, it would be the first time they set foot on a college campus to come for a state championship, to come for a performance, to come for a show, to provide a venue in one of the largest, what will be one of the largest indoor venues in the state of Vermont, to make a difference for the future of the state and to let people feel that UVM is their public university. And so I had the privilege of overseeing a facility like this. For many young people, the first time they set foot on our campus in Idaho was when they came for Disney on Ice, and they began to think of that campus as their community. And that's important to me because if we're going to recruit more of those talented first gen students and give more Vermonters opportunity to come to UVM, we need to help them feel like it's their space. I'm really proud that the governor's institutes are hosting two of their programs in at UVM now. And I would love for us to have a more robust offering because I think every time a student gets a chance to be on a college campus, a student like I was, who was first gen, My dad was a coal miner and a Truman miner. And for him, the idea of college was the dream for me. But for me to get to do an upward bound program really helped me imagine a future in college. So we want that multi service purpose center to serve the entire state. Finally, I would invite you to take a look at our strategic plan, which is readily available on our website, and you'll see the commitments that we're making to ensure that in every way possible, we are serving the state of the world. So I'm happy to stand for any questions.

[Peter Conlon]: Thanks very much, I appreciate it. Ross, just wondering at this point, what your retention is?

[Marlene Tromp]: What our retention rate is? Of students? Do you know the exact figure? Can tell you, can tell you-

[Peter Conlon]: Sorry, I should've start off with something. My daughter graduated from you. I love the numbers. I love the presentation. I was just wondering.

[Wendy Koenig]: But is in the high eighties. 86, I think.

[Marlene Tromp]: We actually have a better retention rate for Vermonters than for out of state students.

[Wendy Koenig]: And interestingly, our best retention rate comes from students that come to us from CCB.

[Peter Conlon]: Level. So

[Marlene Tromp]: it's in it's in I think it's 86. And one of the things that we'll work on with our strategic plan is developing a data driven metrics based plan that helps us measure the impact of our strategies on students' well-being and success. So everybody's doing good things right now, but we don't have uniform measures across the university, and that's what we're going to build.

[Peter Conlon]: I think that's good.

[Marlene Tromp]: Thank you.

[Peter Conlon]: Within the strategic plan, what's kind of the vision for extension? Not sure it's been sort of refreshed and modernized in a while. Yes. And I will tell

[Marlene Tromp]: you that if you'll pardon me for something for me to drink because I'm starting to lose my voice. We have we have four primary goals in our strategic plan, student access and success, advancing that path breaking research and ensuring that the entire university reaches out, touches the state in the same way that extension and health care do. And I met with the dean that we just have hired a new dean for the College of Ag and Life Sciences, and we're really looking at how we can help our extension services become more robust. It shouldn't just be about 4H. It shouldn't just be serving a particular farm that we've had a long term relationship with. But we should be thinking about Extension and the history of Extension as a model for how every part of the university is brought to bear on serving the entire state. So we're really thinking that's what that third pillar is all about, is how do we ensure that we continue to? Make extension increasingly robust and fund it well and support its efforts, but not just that. So, for example, every dean I interviewed for the new dean of College of Nursing, which we just announced in the College of Business, which we just announced, we had a wave of retirements. And those two new deans, every single one that I interviewed, I said, how will you serve not just the students that land here, but the entire state of Vermont? And I wouldn't talk about a candidate who didn't have a vision for how they were going to serve the whole state. So I think we need to make extension more robust, and I think it needs to be a model for how we think about service to the state.

[Peter Conlon]: 11,600 undergraduates, are we trending up, trending down, holding steady?

[Marlene Tromp]: Holding steady.

[Peter Conlon]: And I assume that there is a capacity issue.

[Marlene Tromp]: Yes. And I think we've really right sized the university in terms of ensuring that we've got robust student populations that allow them to work with each other. I have talked with Beth about us utilizing one of the things I'm really excited about is the prospect of our students doing co op programs, which are like extended internships around the state. And I've talked with Beth about the prospect of us housing students, for example, on other campuses across the state to make sure that they're getting out around the state and bringing those talents to bear around the state. So instead of just thinking about, well, we've got this university here in Burlington, I want to think about how those young people are getting out to bring their talents up around the state.

[Peter Conlon]: Representative Brady and I went to a presentation a couple of years ago about both largely focused on the demographic cliff that is hitting higher ed in the Northeast, in particular, and around the Western country. How does UVM sort of prepare for that?

[Marlene Tromp]: It's a great question. And that demographic cliff is not just going to be national. It will be more significant in the New England area than in any other part of the country. And what that means for folks who aren't familiar with that language is this class that entered this year is the last class where we've seen an increase in students coming through the K-twelve pipeline. So there are fewer and fewer and fewer students that will be coming to college. And in a state that already has an upside down demographic, this is serious. So I see that challenge as one that's not just about our enrollment numbers or budget, but about the future and well-being of the state. So when I interviewed with the board, one of the things I told them is we have to think differently about how we communicate to prospective students and how we bring students into Vermont to help the state continue to thrive. And so the two concepts that we're really focusing on is the kind of innovative students, the innovation that we need to help the state thrive, and people who are values driven, who admire and respect the values of the state of Vermont and UVM. So those are the two areas that we're really thinking about. And when I meet students who are from out of state, I ask them, why did you choose UVM? And almost universally, they say because of its values. Because of its values. And so what we need to do is think about how we communicate much more broadly. We need to communicate around the state to make sure every Vermonter who wants access gets access to the university. And then to ensure that we're not, as a state, deleteriously affected by that demographic clip, we need to be feeding in students who want to be a part of what Vermont stands for. And that means finding those students who match our ideals wherever they are. And that's why a communications campaign is very, very important to me. So in the wake of the approval of our strategic plan, we'll build a communications campaign. And then from that communications campaign, we'll build a philanthropic campaign and we'll focus on student scholarships. We'll focus on resources for that fundamental research, and we'll focus on ensuring that we're providing top tier facilities for our people of our state, our students and faculty. So we have a very clear plan how we're going to march forward. But we're going to have to keep adapting because everybody is thinking about this right now, particularly institutions in the Northeast. And part of the reason scholarship funding is so important is that we need for finances not to be a barrier, first and foremost for Vermonters and then for students from out of state who want to be a part of what Vermont has to offer.

[Peter Conlon]: In the request, 1,000,000 per year for five years to support the UVM Cancer Center, I realize you're new, this has been previously proposed. This is the third year. And I think we have failed to come up with funding it each year. Right. Representative Brady.

[Erin Brady]: You already hinted at this a little bit, but I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about what's happening behind the scenes relationships with Vermont State University and the CCB and sort of collaboration. We're a small state, but obviously we have no There's no statewide governance of higher ed organization of it. It's the very Vermont way. Local, do your thing. But we have these silos. And so it's refreshing to hear, and this has been a theme more in the last few years, that there seems to be more work organically happening across the whole higher ed spectrum in Vermont. And I wonder if you can just shed a little bit more light on that, especially when you say the students who are coming from CCB and then staying at a very high success rate at UVM. Is that students who did the which programs? Have the kind of wraparound services been? But trying to see, UBM obviously is the premier institution here, but the holistic higher ed scene, and I'll ask the same thing of the chancellor we have up next too. But it's exciting to hear that because I know we lack state vision and cohesion around higher ed, and we can't afford that to be growing together here. I will tell you

[Marlene Tromp]: that I came from a state where when I arrived, the state institutions, even though there was governance for the whole system, the state institutions were absolutely at each other's throats and were in pitched competition. And we sat down together as presidents and said no, because it's in the best interest of the state for our institutions to work together. And I'm very fortunate that both Joyce Judy and Beth Quimby feel the same way. So upon my arrival, they were two of the first people I met with. In fact, I just met with Joyce again because my aim is to go to every campus and see every campus. So we meet at different places around the state. And I want to understand what the facilities are. I want to understand what the student needs are. I want to ensure that we provide not just articulation agreements that make it here's the curriculum pathway, but that we're rolling out a red carpet for students to walk across that bridge. And if students are getting educated at Vermont State and they want to come to us for a graduate program, we make that simple and that transition nice and easy. And the same thing for any CCB students. So I think we are healthier as a state when our institutions collaborate. And one of the things I've talked with Beth about is because there's been and this is not atypical. Nationally, in the wake of COVID, there were enrollment declines in regional state institutions. Because we've seen that decline, how can we partner so that we both thrive? And so we're looking at all the ways we can do that work. And in some ways, activities that we need to do have to were paused until we could get the strategic plan approved because that's my board's go ahead for our direction. But this is so much a part of what we look forward to doing. And that partnership to me serves the state and serves our students better. So I'm very excited to work with my colleagues to figure out how we help all those students thrive and help students as a first gen student myself who went to school in a place with so many talented people, such a small percentage of whom went to college, I want to make sure students understand that wherever they're going to feel like they can thrive, wherever they're going to fit, whatever program they want, the three of us together are going to be able to find a way to offer that for them and make sure they can get through that degree program.

[Peter Conlon]: There was an article, I think it was Dickard this morning, about the new federal rules in terms of borrowing, especially borrowing at the graduate level. What kind of impact do you see that happening on UVM's operations?

[Marlene Tromp]: You know, it's There was some good Most of this federal student loan debt was held by graduate students, which a lot of people didn't understand before this new regulation came out. And part of the concern on the part of the government, it was too much based on dollars and not enough on meaning and the richer context. So, for example, an MSW student who gets a master's degree in social work is not going to earn what somebody who gets an MBA earns. But that doesn't mean they've made the wrong choice. It doesn't mean that that wasn't a worthwhile investment in their future and the career. It will take them longer to pay back their student loans. So it was a very narrowly conceived change in the funding for graduate students. So in that philanthropic campaign that I will have follow our strategic plan, so strategic plan, communications plan, philanthropic campaign. In that philanthropic campaign, we'll seek funding to help try to fill the gap for students for the funding that's no longer available to them. And it reduced as well the kinds of programs that were considered appropriate for funding. And so right now, there remain fights that are going on because many states have said, woah, woah, woah, you're going to affect our workforce if you don't think of nursing as a professional degree, for example, which is that it's shocking. So there's been a lot of effort to push back on that end, but also to think about how we provide additional funding on our end to support those programs continuing to grow. Wendy?

[Wendy Koenig]: Do you mind if I answer that? Please. So I want to just also give a shout out to because they really support us for this and would be first learned about some limits, particularly from professional degrees like medicine. We've gladly talked to their leadership team. They've created a new product for us that helps students fill that gap. It's a loan product, which is maybe not ideal, but it helps people to get degree. And because it's visa, the interest rate is the lowest it can possibly be.

[Peter Conlon]: They can speak to that.

[Wendy Koenig]: Yeah, they've been a great work. It

[Marlene Tromp]: will discourage students who won't necessarily people won't even apply. So that's a part of our communications effort to to make sure students I. When I met with Senator Sanders. He said to me, what can I do for you? And I said, would you please share the message about this $100,000 tuition free? And he tweeted about it. And in that one moment, more Vermonters probably learned about that than many of our efforts to date. So it was a way to really get that message out. We've got to do more to make sure that students understand about the financial support we have available to them so we don't have a decline.

[Peter Conlon]: Other questions? Wendy, anything that you need to add?

[Wendy Koenig]: Just if you need anything helpful, additional questions over

[Peter Conlon]: the country. I guess I do have one follow-up. The $15,000,000 proposed by the governor, I fully understand that you are in strong support of that. Can you give a little bit of like, if that money doesn't come through, where does it put the project? Because it's been a long ongoing fundraising odyssey.

[Marlene Tromp]: Yes. So maybe I can give a little bit of background so people understand the context. The project was approved by the board and funded in 2019. The pandemic hit and and by necessity, the project stopped. The cost escalations after the project was stopped were so significant that the university no longer had the funding to complete the project. And then the president made the decision that it wasn't where he wanted to turn with resources and the money was no longer there. So when I arrived, I traveled around the country and met alumni donors who said, we need you to support this project because otherwise it's hard for us to have faith that when we give money to the university, you're going to follow through. Now, it wasn't his fault that the project was stopped and that the costs escalated. But it did break faith with people. And so we are very fortunate. Many of you will have known Rich Tarrant and know that he passed away. His sons have honored the bequest that he made and are willing to give us $15,000,000 towards the cost of that project, potentially more when the estate is liquidated and they've dispersed all the funds. Chuck Davis has generously agreed to match whatever funding comes out of the Tarrant estate. And so we've got two very large gifts that will help us cross the distance to that $101,000,000 But it will still require enormous effort on my part to fundraise because in an ideal world, I would not use university resources for that. I would direct those towards our academic facilities and our students. And I'm hopeful that in our generous donor base, I'll be able to find people who will fill that gap. But it would be a much, much higher hill to climb without the governor's commitment. And in understanding the governor's motive behind that, when I heard his budget remarks and he talked about it in the portion of his speech where he talked about the state's economy, that's when I really began to understand what his investment was. He sees it as a way for the state's economy to continue to thrive. And I know that to be true from my experience at my last institution, but I will do everything in my power to fundraise as much of this project as possible. All

[Peter Conlon]: right. Thank you.