Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Continuing our presentations from our state universities, we move on now to the state college system, and we welcome the chancellor. Welcome and the floor is yours.

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you all for having me today. I appreciate being able to be here and give you an update on the State College's system. And thank you, Chair Conlon, for this opportunity for me to present to you today. I always like to start my presentations grounding us in what I think is most important, and that is that the Vermont Psychology System was established by the legislature for the benefit of Vermont. And to me, that has always meant that we serve Vermont, that we want to ensure that Vermont and Vermonters have access to high quality, higher education, regardless of their income or their location, and that we have to be that trusted partner with them throughout their lives as their need for education flows. And I have just been so proud to be here and serving in this capacity for the last two years. It really has been an honorable lifetime to be able to meet the needs of the state while we're simultaneously meeting the needs of Vermonters in their higher ed needs. Just a little bit of background on what the Vermont State College system is. So we are now comprised of two institutions, Vermont State University, which several years ago was made from the five legacy institutions at Castleton, Linden, Johnson, Randolph, and Williston. Randolph and Williston being the former Vermont Technical College. We have two presidents, President Joyce Judy at Community College of Vermont and currently President Dave Berg at Vermont State University. We are actively involved in a search as the president wants to retire at the end of this year. So we should in the next couple of months be able to make an announcement on a new president for Vermont State University. I come here today with continued good news about the Vermont State College's system. I'm very proud of the fact that 83% of our students are Vermonters. And many of those students, a very high percentage of them actually do go on to stay here in Vermont and be active in their communities. One good example I usually can give is our nursing program, which has been very successful over the last couple of years. We know very well where those folks go because there's an NCLEX exam at the end of it. And, in excess of 90% of our students are taking the NCLEX exam for Vermont. So we know they're staying in Vermont. And in addition, the pass rate on the NCLEX has been fantastic over these last couple of years, nearly one hundred percent for some students, but in the high 90s for all of students who pass that exam on their first try. In addition, as more part of the good news is that we have seen a very slight enrollment increase last year. Well, this year that we're sitting in starting in the fall of a 1.4% And our distance education offerings and students who are choosing to be completely remote increased last year by 10%. So we're seeing a real desire for Vermonters to come and participate in higher education in a fully online environment. One of the reasons for that is that we know that Vermonters are older than you might think who are going back to school. They already have lives and they really are looking for education to fit around their life. Not that they go have education and then come back for that. So we're seeing that as well. And those students really do have different needs. So they have different housing needs a lot of the time. They have different needs in how courses are being offered. They have different needs in how rapidly we've got to be developing the programs that we're forming around them. And that has certainly been something that we have been working on how it is we can meet the needs of all Vermonters and meet them in ways that they really need that will help them to get to their career goals the quickest. Now, in addition to our students, we also are partners in our community. So in particular with Vermont State University, but also the Community College of Vermont, in those five campuses locations, they are sitting in communities in Vermont, as well as the 12 centers at CCV. And one of the other pieces I'm very excited to say is that around 80% of employees are in our local campuses and in very rural areas and contributing to those areas. Some of the pieces that we've been doing. So one of the legislative mandates as we were at how to as we were forming Vermont State University was that we really wanted to ensure that every one of the campuses for Vermont State University remain vibrant. And one of the questions we've had over the last several years is how are we going to do that with these changing student demographics? And I'm really excited to be here today to talk to you about a couple programs that have started to take effect in that. So we are going to be bringing senior housing up to the Johnson campus in the McClellan Building. Downstream was successful in getting a community development block grant for disaster relief to put that building in, along with some funding from Senator Sanders. In addition, on the Johnson campus, while we did not get our own disaster relief grant, it did start conversations. And so this spring, the Johnson Health Center is planning to come up onto our campus to start offering their services up there. And so broadly, what we know is that since the town of Johnson has flooded so often, looking at how we can maybe relocate some of those services up to our campus will be important. And just think about the opportunities of having a health center up on the campus. Not only does that mean that it's closer for our students to go to, but it also means that our students will have potentially internship opportunities right there on campus. And so we are continuing to have conversations with folks in the Johnson area to see how they might utilize some of our businesses in areas that really match the mission of the institution. In addition, we are looking at an apartment building on the Johnson campus. We already have something called the Johnson student apartments. And we're looking to say, Okay, that actually is something that is completely full, those apartments. And so we're looking to say, Okay, how can we maybe create more of these that could be not only our apartment buildings for our students, but also maybe can meet the needs of the community. I can tell you that with that disaster relief grant, it has been really exciting to see all of the opportunities that have come forth from the community of needs that they have with that. I'm very excited about that. In addition, on the Linden campus, we are in conversations with a regional education partner who is interested in moving some of their services to our campus in that area as well. So as I said, as some of these opportunities have come available, other folks are calling us up and saying, maybe we can also come there. And I really see this as one of the key ways that we will continue to keep the vibrancy of the five campuses as we are meeting the changing needs of our students and our student demographics. In addition, we also are very happy to be partners with businesses around the state of Vermont. So one program that I always like to highlight when I come is the Career Pathway Entry Program or CPAP. A lot of times folks might not know exactly what it is they want to do. So they're interested in some kind of a career, but they would like to maybe try a few things out. What CPAP allows students to do is to try out a number of different internship opportunities at the same time that they're taking college level credit. And what happens out of that is they typically in one of those internships will then eventually become employed at the institution. Right now, we are working with 21 different employers, and we're really proud of the way CCV has developed that program. In addition, we saw a significant increase in the number of plumbers and electricians that we trained last year. And we are really looking to say, what are some other types of micro credentials that we could start to work on that would help folks have a job while it is their training for a position? And then we had an English for health care program, which really looks at there are some new Americans who might come in and be very interested in becoming a health care professional, but maybe don't have all the English skills. And so we've started a course for that. So really just looking at what are the needs of Vermont and businesses in Vermont and how it is we can meet those needs. Next, I'd like to go to our budget request for FY 'twenty seven. So this year, we did request a 3% increase from the governor on our budget, and he has recommended that we get that 3% increase. In addition, we did ask for some other funds. We did ask for one time funds for a micro credential certificate, which really is a workforce driver. And I'll talk about that in just a few minutes. But he did not put that in his recommend. And then we have an allied health request put in. We had asked for $4,000,000 We've gotten the same 1.5 that we've always gotten. One of the things that I think all of you know is that I was talking about we train nurses and we really have to ensure that the nursing salaries that we have are competitive so that nurses would want to go into the position. And these funds would help us with that or clinical placements and those kinds of programs. So we're very excited about getting that. We did receive 1,500,000.0 and we really could use up to $4,000,000 And then, as I also mentioned, we have a capital request of $1,000,000 for that apartment building where we can in Johnson, where we can potentially do some site work, some development work, get some additional plans together so that we can make that ready for a partner to help us to build that program that the public office. Just to go back to the workforce and micro credential certificates that we're talking about. So I wanted to come with a couple of examples. So as I said, the plumbing and electrician programs are really good examples of this where a person can go in, they can apprentice at an electrician or a plumber, and they can then go on and become certified and become a plumber or an electrician themselves. We are looking to expand those programs. But one program that we've been working on that I'm very excited about, and we've been working on it as a system is for teacher preparation. So what we know is that we will need about 7,000 teachers in the next ten years. And our current way of thinking about how we prepare them will not be able to meet that need. Because as I said, students typically are older and they are looking for different ways of education. So we are looking at something that would be a stackable credential. Students could actually start with a certificate in paraeducator training, and they would then be able to work in a school district and be a highly qualified paraprofessional. While they are continuing to get education classes, that paraprofessional certificate would then stack to a liberal studies degree, associate's degree, would then stack to a VTSU elementary education degree. And again, how that is extending the program. We've been working very closely with the agency of education and the Department of Labor on this program is it would allow us to start someone in the program then who is already working in a school. And what they could do then is take classes while they're actually working in the school. It will be a fully online asynchronous program. And I can tell you that our plan is to have this ready for the 2026, and we already have seen demand for this program. So we're very excited about that. And then in addition, I do wanna support the VSAC proposal for Freedom and Unity scholarships for Vermont State University. So we know right now that the eight zero two program at the Community College of Vermont, which pays for students tuition for any family that's making $100,000 or less in the state of Vermont, has been extremely successful. The Community College of Vermont has seen upticks and increases in their enrollment. We know that there has been an uptick in how students are using this program, and we know it's been very successful, not only in recruiting students, but also retaining them through to a degree, which a lot of times is very important. One of the things that don't always think about is a person may get into college. And then the one thing that usually trips them and why they aren't retained is because they realize they don't have enough money to continue to pay for the degree that they are seeking. And so what this will allow us to do is it allows us to help them to pay their bill and allows us to keep them in college. We had one time funding last year for $1,500,000 for actually this academic year. And we are already seeing an uptick in students taking us up on this program at Vermont State University. And we think that this is a really good workforce driver. You may be asking, well, everybody can get it then that's in Vermont as long as they meet certain income eligibility levels. And that is true. The one thing that a program like this does is because a lot of times we talk about the fact that we need nurses and we need teachers and we need plumbers. But when we're talking about a person who's out and thinking about, can I go to college? They're first thinking, can I afford college before they're even thinking about what might I want to do? And so this program paired with other programs that might also provide some specific funding for specific programs really allows us to get people in, let them have some success in college, see what they can do, and then continue on into some of these very high need programs that we need in Vermont. And I know that VSAC has requested $2,300,000 for that, and we would really strongly support that to help students in Vermont for Vermont State University.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And I think their goal with the additional funding is to raise the income level to 100,000 or 75,000.

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: I think for this year, said 80,000. But ultimately, we would like to get it so that both CCV and VTSU will have the same income levels to it. But I think the

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: CCV is currently $100,000

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: CCV is currently at $100,000 And as I said, are seeing even in the spring, they're seeing increased enrollment. And we know that a lot of this is due to the eight zero two opportunity grants that they're getting. Also, because we are now doing more with online education, which we do enroll students all during the year at VTSU, we have seen upticks in the number of students who are choosing to go and do online courses and start at all these different times that we have where you can start college. And so we know that that is also due in part to the Freedom and Unity scholarship. So we know we're having more students who are taking us up on the offer of college. And then I just wanted to talk a little bit about the flexible pathways. So early college dual enrollment. And I know that the legislation was passed really to address a need for a high quality experience for students. So they'd be able to successfully transition either to a college or to be career ready. I know that this has helped to address the longstanding inequities for rural students in their senior year of college. I've been really focusing on those rural students. What I do know also, I know that this committee has heard testimony about the one bill about especially early colleges and some of its unintended consequences. And I certainly welcome those discussions about ensuring that we are being responsible stewards of all the state's funds, especially for this program. But I just wanted to also acknowledge the fact that this program really has helped to really crack open the door for a lot of Vermonters who might not have otherwise thought about college or been able to go to college in high school. And it creates pathways that really simply don't exist before this program. So I know it's done a lot of good, but I really am welcoming all the conversations that I know will have this term about early college. And then just to end, I wanted to point out stop her. So this young woman graduated from Johnson in the spring, and I saw her walk across the stage and she caught my eye. She was so, so excited. And she had her child with her to walk across the stage. And this woman here cracked the door open and said, yes, I'm going to do this. And this really, for me, is why I do the job that I do. We do create opportunities that are so very important to folks, and that when they have made this accomplishment and they've graduated from college, what we're seeing is that they're so proud of what they've done. They want to make sure that their children see this so that upfront so that they can see that this is something that I did and that this is something that you can do as well. This woman in particular caught my eye, but at every graduation that I went to, there was at least one parent walking their child across the stage. And I just always want us to remember that what we are really doing here is transforming lives. And as those lives get transformed, we know that we are meeting the needs of folks here in Vermont. Thank you.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: very I don't think any questions.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: While Representative Hunter asked a question, if we could just pull up the page that had the budget request. Two quick questions. One, so with all of your certificates and staffing, I was very interested in the advisor. Do you have an advisory role, counselor role? How does that work where somebody comes in and says, Well, I think I'd like to do this, but how would they guide it through?

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: So as a student comes in, typically what happens is they'll apply to college, then we will get them admitted. And then we do have advisors both at the Community College of Vermont and Vermont State University who will help to walk them through the process of what are my options out there. And then as we put them into a certificate program, they do get a specific advisor who is not only looking at whatever certificate they want, but then also how that can stack on to future pieces. What we are seeing a lot of is that folks come in, they'll get a certificate, they'll say, Okay, now I can go out and get a job. And so what we've really started to do is look at, Okay, what is the ecosystem we have to set up so that when they come back to us, we're ensuring that what they've done here will actually continue to meet their needs. But we've set up specific advisors at Vermont State University. They have a specific student advisor that will help them with a lot of these programs. And we're looking right now at the teacher apprenticeship program to say, how can we even maybe catch them beforehand? So as they're thinking about it, how do my transfer credits apply to this and that? So we're looking at having a hub of folks that are an advisor and a financial aid person and an admissions person really looking at, Okay, how can we walk them into this program?

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: And sort of maximize their time there. The second question actually came in from a constituent. What do two vouchers per student cost per month in the dual enrollment? Don't ask me because I actually don't understand the dual enrollment financing part of things as opposed to early college.

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: That's great. Yes. We can find that out for you.

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: Okay. Great. Thank you. I don't think we know that off

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: the top of our heads. No. So

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: the budget request page here, I wanted to bring up. So FY twenty six marks the end of the five year funding and frankly, a loss of $5,000,000 in what has been rolling into the state well, in this case, the the the university. And then there's some additional requests that you have here totaling 1 and a half million plus. I don't know, $5.11. What's sort of the total additional dollars being asked for that

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: I think it's another 6,000,000. Okay.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So the bridge funding was to get to a point where that level of financial support from the state was no longer needed. But what I see here is a large request above and beyond sort of the 3% increase that the government's recommended. It's gonna be a hard slog to imagine that even half of that would be funded. So to what level does it What I think the state would like to avoid is putting the stakeholders back on a dire situation. Good question, thank you.

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: So the largest part of that request for the extra funds really does come from the allied health request. So there are funds that allow us to meet the needs of the

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: state's health care workforce through this allied health fund. We had asked for $1,500,000 for several years and have received that. This request would allow us to, first of all, meet some of the needs that we are already using anyway. So we have already been in excess of what it is we've been getting from the state. But also in addition to look and see if we can't find a way to fund our nursing faculty at a level that would allow them to say, oh, I don't have to just be on the floor and continue to be a nurse. I actually can have a life where I become a college faculty member. We have not enacted those increases yet. So the largest part of this would be we will make these increases to the funds if we can get those funds from the state. The micro credential certificate, to me, I think the next part of this really is how are we going to look forward and say, how can we reimagine some of the things that the state is doing? So I look at that as a trial kind of let's see what we can do with micro credentials to really start to reach the wheels for the state. But one of the things we have done, so we are looking at this is the last year of the extra $5,000,000 What I've really been looking at is, okay, how can we make the state go from just surviving to thriving? And what are some of the things that we've got to be doing to do that? So one of the things we've been working on is looking at really ramping up our online opportunities, like as we're seeing already, that there's just been an increase of students interested in being online. And we are hoping that we can really ramp that up. I have something right now called an online acceleration project going on, where we're looking at trying to increase the number of distance offerings we have, but really increasing and thinking about that operational machine that we need in order to actually make this work. So as we were talking about even the advisors, what we're recognizing is that we've got to advertise differently for online students, and we've got to make sure that we are serving them in a little bit of a different way than we've been serving our traditional age students. So, looking at advisors from the very beginning of when they're even applying to make sure that the students would make sense for them to come in. So we are seeing that this distance education offering as a real key way that we can continue to. And we think that that will be a net contributor to the institution. In addition, as I said, with the micro credential, really looking at how are we going to ramp up our workforce offering so that we can meet the needs of the state in a way that when the state realizes they have a need or try to even predict when the state will have a need, that we're going to be able to predict that as well. So we are really looking at reimagining how it is we are meeting the needs of the state. And we think that those funds will then allow us to increase our enrollment, which will allow us to continue and not need that extra support from the state.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So we had Marlene Trump in here before you came in. Talked about sort of the demographic cliff that all the, especially in the Northeast, that the higher ed is facing. And I guess, how do you, how do our, you know, CCV, state colleges or State University and UBM, despite sort of like really wanting to work together, how do you keep yourselves from fighting over a shrinking pool of students?

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: I would say that, again, one of the things that we always have to realize is that for Vermont State University, we are serving a while we both serve traditional age students who are interested in the kinds of offerings that we have in coming to our campus, what we are seeing is our biggest opportunity for increasing our population of students is going to be in students who are returning back to college after they have started a job. And so what we know right now is that the average age of our students is much older than you might think. And they are just looking for different things. So we see the biggest increase in students, not at this demographic cliff of just looking at 18 year olds, but really looking at this need of folks for higher education throughout their lives. And that is what we think is for us the future and how we're going to look at this. Actually, the future is already here. I mean, the average age of our students is almost 30 for part time students. And while that may not be what you're seeing on our campuses, it's just because they're then taking online courses. But the one thing that we know is that we've got to meet the needs of both of those demographics, because we do have students who would still like to come and have a traditional experience. And so we've been looking at how can we ensure that the students who are interested in that get that experience, but that students who are in a career, they would like college to work around their life, how do we meet those needs as well? And trying to make sure that we're balancing that as we're moving forward.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Any other questions, committee members?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Have a question about the 7,000 teachers that needed over the next ten years. Is that statistic based on the current state of our schools, the number of districts and the number

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: of schools and not on anything that we might do in the education transformation? That is correct. So the 7,000, I think it's actually 7,400. I'm getting that from Vermont's most Promising Jobs, which is a collaboration between the Department of Labor and the McClure Foundation. And it is assuming that we're at the state that we're in right now. The only thing I'd like to add to that is even if we only needed half that, let's say, Okay, we don't need 7,000, we only need 3,500. That is a tremendous number of teachers that we will need over the next ten years. And it is in such excess to any other component that we have in the state. So when we look at Vermont's most promising jobs, you need 7,400 teachers. I think it says around 5,000 nurses and nursing type positions. And construction workers is another big one. And then cashiers in that for some of the retail that we have around here. But after those four, the numbers just are dwarfed in what kind of need we have. So there is going to be a tremendous need for the number of teachers in the next ten years, even if we do make changes to how it is we're district districting students. Can I ask one more question?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: My other question is on a different topic. You said that the early college program cracks open the door for many students who otherwise wouldn't have thought of going to school. Where are you getting the statistics about which kids would have gone to college if they had not been exposed to it first through early college and which ones would

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: have gone anyway? I would just say that it's just opening, it's cracking open a door. What we do know about early college is many of the students who are in early college then do go on to college. They go on to college at higher rates. I couldn't tell if it's you or it's you. It's just opening up opportunities. And really, that's what I've always been all about is opening up opportunities for as many students as we possibly can.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Great. Thank you very much for your time.

[Sophie Zdatny (Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges System)]: Thank you.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Beth Quimby, I hope you took copious notes as sort of compiling our list of budget requests. Great. I'm always writing it. I can see Rob doing much, so I'm just kind of writing it. So we will reconvene back here at 01:15. During that time, we're gonna meet with legislative council to it's it's gonna be a little bit of a free for all just to get some questions answered that we might have. And then we will talk as a committee, sort of compile a list up here, maybe of sort of those other than Act 73 stuff, like those things we just don't want to let slip through the cracks. Education. It's PCVs, you know, and whatnot. That's kind of what we need from those for testimony. Alright. We