Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Hello.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Hey, we're Senate Education Committee on February 5. We're back after a break. And the last door of this for the day is to hear from our kind of annual reporting from the University of Milwaukee, but maybe more or equally important, meet meet the new president. The whole committee has not done that yet. So

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Thank you. I'm so pleased to be here. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to share information with you. And I understand that you all have my slide deck. Excellent. Thank you very much. So, I'd love to walk through all the slides with you. It's the one that's 16 pages. So, the second image that you see has information about art.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Actually, first thing you do is introduce yourself.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Oh, pardon me. I'm Marley Trump, the president of the University of Vermont for the record. Thank you so much.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Actually, don't you just take a minute and give the committee, because have you met everybody in the committee at this point?

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: I would love to have a chance

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: to ask you Why don't you

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: just look into this? So just take a few minutes and we met in Bennington.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Wonderful, yes.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And just tell us a little about yourself, because that's part of what we wanna do today.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: I am glad to. Thank you for that opportunity. I grew up in Wyoming, and I actually have been really struck by how much Wyoming has come Vermont with some very obvious differences right now at this particular time. Very independent minded people, very hardworking and humble people, a sense that of independence, a sense of of the specialness of the community. And when I was doing an alumni event in Stowe last spring, I had Christina Von Trapp standing behind me, and I said, I do think there is something about the hard winter that makes people think about community differently, and she left up and said, yes. It does. It makes people think differently about community. And and what I said was, you you have to think differently about community when you've grown up in a place where your care for your neighbor could make a difference in life and death. So, which doesn't mean people don't care about community in other places, but I think it's fundamental to a place like. I've served at universities across the country. I was a dean at Arizona State. I was the provost at UC Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California. I was the president for six years at Boise State University in Idaho, and I am now so proud to be in state of Maryland. You started your first job in In July, July 1. So it was my official start date. Okay. I arrived in May. I came with my family, and I have I had the privilege of of moving into the president's home right across the street from the university where they had not appointed an interim president after the president left, so I was in the office every day beginning in May. But my decision started date was July 1.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Okay. Do you want me to tag in?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think that's anybody else any background questions for anybody?

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: Thank you.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Yeah, thank you.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Thank you so much. Thank you for that opportunity. So, in the slide deck, the second slide that I have for you just gives some facts on our enrollment. And most people know we are the flagship land grant university in the state. But what I think is worth mentioning is that land grant universities, the idea was conceived by Justin Morell, our own senator from Vermont in the nineteenth century. And it what a lot of people don't know is that Lincoln signed the Land Grant Act into law during the civil war Because when the nation was being torn apart, what Justin Morell saw was you have to invest in education because that helps the the state and the country thrive. So at a time of crisis, he said, this is where we have to put our energy. And as we live in another moment of national crisis, I think that's something I think about every day is what are land grant issues. Is. And so, land grant universities were founded across the country to serve their states. And the language of the act says that it will serve the sons and daughters of farmers and mechanics. And it was meant the most privileged people in every state were imagined to go to all the privates, the elite privates that had existed for hundreds of years. And UVM was 234 years old, But these are the elite privates that just took the wealthiest and the most privileged. The Land Grant University System was meant to serve the state. So my vision for the university is that we not be the college on the hill that feels far removed from people across the state, but that we serve all Vermonters of the state of Vermont in everything that we do. So a lot of the figures that I share with you as we go through this step will explain how we're doing that and what I hope to do more. So on the next page, you'll see a list of our program offerings. We have hundreds of different academic programs from bachelor's degrees to PhDs and certificates that allow people to up credential in their place of work. And so, that gives you the full range of comprehensive research university, whether you want to study medicine or English, whether you want to study social work or nursing, there's a whole range of options for people to study. On the next image, you'll see that some details on our Vermont students. We have nearly 4,000 Vermont students at the University of Vermont. What a lot of people don't know is that a third of those students are Pell eligible and what that means is that they federally qualify for Pell Grants, which is free aid from the federal government, that they're socioeconomically disadvantaged enough, that the federal government's not giving them a loan, but money they don't have to pay back to attend college. So 32% of those for vouchers are Cal eligible. And 18% of them first generation, like I was, where the entire trajectory of your family's future can be transformed by that college graduate. So, my dad was a coal miner and charter miner, and my son has had a very different life and will have a very different future than most of the people that were the second generation from my fathers will have. The next image tells you a little bit about what we're doing to help those Vermonters come to school. I had the privilege of being at a higher ed conference recently. We have one of the most generous programs in the country for students in terms of in state students getting tuition support. So if your family makes less than a $100,000 a year, you can, and you're in Vermont, you can come to UVM tuition free. That's one of the most generous programs in the country. Even places like Yale, historically, have only had 50,000 for their families. So, family incomes less than 100,000 paying no tuition at UVM. 48% of those students get direct financial support from the university in order to do that. And more than half of the state appropriation funding that we get goes directly to those students for their support so they can come to school at UPM.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Just to be sure I'm clear about it. When you say tuition, sounds like they still pay for the board.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: It does, but we have other programs that help support students who have financial need for those. So the tuition is guaranteed, and then we can help students with funding for all those other parts of the program. I'm really proud, and I learned this after I got here, that for every Vermont student graduate, two out of state students live and work in Vermont after they graduate. And that's an extraordinary impact on the state with an upside down demographic. So as you all probably know, because of the impacts on things like education, health care that you all are wrangling with right now, we have what's called an upside down demographic. Typically or historically, there'd be fewer older people and more younger people in a state, but our demographic has flipped and we have more older people and fewer young people. So this impact in the state is tremendous. Having those young people with their energy, their ideas, their ability to serve as our teachers and our healthcare workers in the state is critical to the well-being of our workforce, but also of the well-being of our people in the state. And what we see is most Can I

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: ask a question there? How many take, like, do you know how many go to private industry and how many take, like, a government job? Don't know the answer

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: but to that we can see if we have that data. Wendy, can we

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: I will follow-up.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Thank you very And a part of what you'll see here too on the next slide is that over, right now we have over 35,000 alumni that are working in the state. So, that's making a tremendous impact on the workforce state. On the next slide, you'll see a data point that a lot of people don't understand the meaning of when they first see it, because it tends to be served as esoteric higher ed phenomenon. We have been recently designated an R1 university, and the Carnegie Foundation evaluates research universities based on the strength, breadth and impact of their research. Only 3% of institutions in the entire country are designated R1s and UBM is now in that ranking because of the expansiveness of our research and the impact of our research. And I'm going to talk to you in just a moment about what that research does for the state of Vermont. But this designation will help us recruit top faculty. It will help us attract top students because students want the opportunity of being able to do engage with research while they're there. Does this mean that there's

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: a fire? The house and

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: the call to the floor.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: I didn't even explain the bell, but I didn't know what the sound was. Yeah.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: The bell's labeled it.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: And she showed me the the color.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yeah. You could see it. Put it up here on the wall.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Oh, okay, thank

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you. So, R1 designation came because of the quality of the programs?

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: The quality and expansiveness of our research program. And and you'll see on the next slide, we were named by the Princeton Review number one in best schools for making a social impact. So our students come to UVM because of its commitment to making social positive impact in the world, it's often why people that are out of state choose us because they know that's a part of the beyond. And our MBA program was named number one in The US, number two in the world for MBAs that are making a social impact. So we graduate students who want to make the world a better place, and that's why they come to Vermont, and it's why they come to UPM. So we're very proud of that alignment with our state and that students choose us for that reason. Then you'll see on the next two images, I'll talk a little bit about the work that we're doing in research. The first image doesn't it tells you that we have in the last fiscal year, we brought $225,000,000 into the state for that research. And that research there's an image on this slide of research that's happening out on Lake Champlain. We had the first ever purpose built electric research vessel in the world, the Marcel Melocera, and that vessel does research that's changing what we understand about lake ecology and about the environment around lakes. In fact, we just had a researcher discover something that it's intellectually fascinating. It sounds like a great premise for terrifying movie, that amongst fish, cancers are actually transmissible, communicable. Her research is going through final reviews right now to be published. So, you're hearing about the fever before it's published. But understanding that biology and that biochemistry will help us avoid that possibility in humans. So, it's really path breaking research that's happening right here on Lake Shapley. I used to go out on the the much smaller one. Yeah. That's a little bit scary. I'm It's amazing the kind of work that's happening on that research vessel and on the lake. Other you will probably know about the Vegan Tech Hub because the legislature generously gave support for the Vegan Tech Hub. And I'll tell you a little bit about my experience and history with the semiconductor industry. When I was president in Idaho, we were in the home of Micron Industries, which is one of the largest semiconductor producers in the world. And during the pandemic, you may recall how difficult it was to get technology. It's hard to get a phone, a computer, but it was also hard to get appliances. Like, if if you needed a new refrigerator, that was hard to get because all of this technology now has semiconductors in it. And Part of the reason that the Chips and Science Act was signed, and I had the privilege of being at the G7 Summit for that signing because of my partnership around the semiconductor industry, part of the reason that act was built federally was to ensure that we were producing semiconductors in The US, so we weren't dependent on our foreign supply chain to make technology in The US. This path breaking work in gallium nitride semiconductors will make those semiconductors lighter and smaller so that the space shuttle will weigh less, so that your phone won't weigh less, so that the technology in a vehicle will add less weight and be more flexible. So it's really path breaking technology, and we're gonna be able to produce the students who are gonna work in that industry, but also help make discoveries in that industry. And you may recall that over a little over a year ago, we were awarded $20,000,000 by the federal government, and that was a part of the federal government's funding that was frozen in the federal freeze of research funding. And they pulled back on that grant, which shocked me a little bit because that's about American economic development and independence. And so I was surprised that was one of the things that was cut, that they've reinitiated that grant process and we've been through three layers of review and our all five parts of our grant now gone forward. So keep watching the news for that began tech hub because it could bring tens of millions of dollars more into the state for this work that the legislature has already helped support that will help this industry thrive in the state. On the next page, you'll see bio labs. So it would be drawing

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: tens of million dollars in because industry will want to support the work.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Because the federal government will help fund it because it will be so transformative. Yeah. So it's federal funding. Okay. Biolabs is an entity that helps take medical research and scientific research from universities and brings it to application out in the world. So you may have a great finding, but if you're a research professor that's coming up with the technology, you may not know how to bring it out into the world beyond the university. So BioLabs is an entity that helps train, it's called translation, translate that research out into the real world so it gets out to the healthcare community, to consumers. And BioLabs partnered with UVM to create the first ever rural bio labs in The United States, right in Burlington. So they're helping us take all of those medical findings, all those scientific findings and get that research into the hands of people who can use it. And so we've helped partner to bring that forward so we can make an impact on the state. And on the next slide, I'll give you one specific example of how you're doing it. And if you're looking at it right now, you'll see a very creepy picture of a tick. One of the things that our research team is working on in healthcare is a vaccine against tick borne illnesses, tick borne diseases. And people often, when they get bit by ticks, aren't even aware that they're carrying tick borne illnesses, and it can cause very serious health effects down the road. This vaccine could transform the care for people in areas that have tick borne illness like Lyme disease. And it's the same research lead who developed the RSV vaccine. You may have heard of RSV. Cold viruses, COVID vaccines, you may hear that that's often mentioned in the same breath of RSV vaccine. For most people who are young like you are, I'm so young anymore. RSV might seem like a cold. But for people who are my age and older, or people who are very young, like children and infants, it can be deadly. And the RSV vaccine has reduced infant hospitalizations since it was developed five years ago by eighty percent worldwide. So, it's had a huge impact on health and well-being across the world. And it's that same research that's working on this tick borne illness vaccine. And then you'll see in the next slide, it's not just about the research findings, it's also about that helping our workforce. We want to produce more nurses, more folks who are working in social work, more folks who are working in phlebotomy, in cancer care, across the state, across the region. And I'm very proud to share with you that we just got a $16,000,000 gift to help reduce the costs to students who wanna study nursing at UBM. So we're hoping that it will really reduce the financial barriers for those nursing students. On the next slide, you'll see, and I'm trying to talk fast so I leave time for questions, are, fiscal year requests. These mirror precisely the ones that were in the governor's budget, but I wanna take just a moment to explain them. So the first thing we pass for is a three percent inflationary increase for the general fund appropriation. That's gonna do three things. It will allow us to continue to maintain levels of need based aid for Vermont students. It will fund the ongoing discounting for Vermonters at the Larner College of Medicine and many of our medical college graduates stay and practice medicine in Vermont. And it will allow us to continue support for our extension branch so that programs can continue to thrive across all 14 counties. And I have made it a point since I came here, within a month and a half, had set foot in every county in the state of Texas. And I've met with people from across the state. I want the entire university, the power of the whole research university, to reach out across the state, not just Extension. The second item is a million dollars a year for five years to support the UVM Cancer Center's expansion of programs in rural communities. My sister is being treated for cancer in our UVM healthcare right now. And when we go to have fur infusions, we often meet people who have traveled two hours, two and a half hours to come and get their treatment in Burlington. And what we want to do is reach out with that cancer care that we're touching more parts of the state and we can reduce the number of times and the impact on families when they have to get their car and drive to get health care. And then a $15,000,000 investment in our multipurpose center. And I'm happy to explain the history of that if you would like to understand more about that. The idea behind that multipurpose center, the governor's sensibility of that was we needed to ensure that our state had an appropriate indoor venue for events, for programs, for concerts, entertainment, for athletics. And it would be one of the largest of its kind in the state. It would allow us to welcome Vermonters from across the state. It would also provide wellness facilities for our students. And historically, and there are people in the room who've lived through this. In 2019, that project was funded and approved by our board of trustees. The work began on the project. The foundations were poured. The steel was purchased and and fashioned, and then the pandemic hit. And in the time we had all the funding assembled, we were ready to finish that project. When the pandemic hit and the governor halted all construction, the project costs escalated so much by the time that we were able to resume work that we couldn't afford the project. And so the governor wanted to stimulate the return to the project. Our student government has come to us with a resolution asking us to complete the project. And in part because of the governor's willingness to support the project from the state, We've had two donors come forward who are very generously committed to the project. You may be aware that Rich Terry recently passed away, and he had made a request to the project. His sons have committed at least 15 and perhaps perhaps as much when they stayed as settled as $20,000,000 towards that project. And Chuck Davis, in honor of Rich Terrence's memory, has committed to match that. In total with the if if the legislature's fit, that would bring us to 55. The total cost of the project, it was originally a $100,000,000. Well, in 2008, it was even less than that and then the recession put it on hold. It's been a long time. It's been a long time. There were a lot of people who invested lot of time and energy making this project for the body for a long time. And we invested over 70,000,000 in the project, and then the project stalled. And in that cost escalation now, the new money which would have been 30,000,000 if we've been able to finish is now a 100,000,000. This would bring us more than halfway with all of these commitments And I have already met with and discussed some other very generous gifts. And even next week, I'm getting on a plane to go meet with other donors to ask them for commitments to this project. And my hope is to philanthropically fund the entire project so that we can preserve our debt capacity for our academic facilities on campus. So I'd be happy to stand for any questions that can be asked.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Did you say that ground was broken on that project before COVID-nineteen?

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: In 2019, and the foundations were poured

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: and Okay, steel so

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: foundations were poured and steel and sitting

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: on It was manufactured and fabricated, and the pieces are sitting in a storage facility right next to campus, right now.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, so you have to go, you have Yeah.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: Senator Hirschen. Thank you. So, promise I'm not the negative person on the committee, but

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: my initial

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: reaction during the governor's budget to address. And also, I'm very happy to keep an open mind and learn more But, as you know, my had a very visceral reaction in hearing the governors wanted to address MD money for the stadium or a multipurpose center. And, you know, for example, earlier today we were hearing about health insurance, healthcare costs for folks, school construction costs as well, and so it's, initially it's tough pill to swallow the idea of 50,000,000 when we're also dealing with all these other, you know, essential factors like healthcare and school construction and housing and so on. But I'm fully supportive of all the other tasks that you have here, and, but that's just my initial gut reaction, but again, happy to keep an open mind.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Thank you for that. I think that's an extraordinary thing. People are looking to hear from Wendy. And if I may, I would love to have Wendy talk a little bit about the the way that the governor had envisioned the blanket security.

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: Yeah. So I so you know that it's For coming the record. For the record, I'm Wendy Cohen. I I worked for president Trump doing government relations for EVM. So I think that one of the reasons that he chose this money coming from the higher ed trust funds so that it would impact the general fund, and that the trust fund had quite a windfall of new money to it this year. And so using that money to support higher education would be appropriate.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: And it's a Senate government operations decision how the higher ed trust fund gets used. And it's a one time win call, so I it's went around with Bennington too, and I wrote, you know, part of the report on creating this facility almost twenty years ago, but it it it does feel like a lot of money, and at the same time, it'd be hard to spend that one time money on something that people were counting on in the future from the higher ed customers. So, come around.

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: It more than sounds aglow in his pocket.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: It is aglow, I mean, and we've asked for someone to come in and talk to Senate Economic Development about it because we had just come to some culmination of a advisory group on having a multipurpose center near the airport. It's something that is an economic detractor all the time for conferences and large events is that we don't have anything of that scale anywhere in the state, but particularly, just at your point.

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: So this one time money, it's up, like you said, it

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: would windfall from the federal government?

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: No. It's an estate tax. So the Higher

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: Ed Trust Fund has been around since the year 2000, and it's funded when the state projects how much they'll get in in a state tax every year. If they meet 125% of their estimate, then the overage goes into the higher interest fund. And so this year, there was someone, whose estate is quite large, and there was a large amount of money that went into the trust fund because of audit.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: And it otherwise gets divided between the the three institutions, VSAC, state colleges, and UVM.

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: So it's an endowment that spins off money from what it earns every year. If the earnings are appropriate, then UVM, the Vermont State College System, VSAC are able to take a portion of up to 5%.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: How much went into the, higher ed trust fund? Does anybody

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: This year was 26,000,000 Additional. Thank

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: you. That makes sense. That's what we have on.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: In fact, some of our faculty asked about this, and one of the things I shared with them was just this. It's not general fund money, So it's not impacting the kind of budget that would you know, that people would be using to solve health care or k 12 issues. And because the idea behind it stimulating the economy and state and and, Wendy, I believe that you explained that we were just invited to come to that committee. Is that correct?

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: Yeah. So we tried to come come today. This morning? Okay. But the schedule wouldn't accommodate it. So the community assistant told me that she would reach back out to me with another time, but I haven't heard about it yet.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: And when you have a facility that already has so many of the parts, you know, we've got this foundation, we've got this deal, we're Right. And when it has the added benefit of bringing young people onto a college campus so they can imagine a future at university, that's something you can't get in another kind of facility. And we I mean, this is a bit of an aside. It's not a critical need. But when when we started this campus life task force too, the first one was the student center at UVM, and this was the second. Even then, it was embarrassing to see the facilities that our our division one athletic students operate in. I mean and I don't think it's changed very much. Oh, it's I I often say that we have the most beautiful high school gym in Yeah. The Yeah. Maybe not even the most beautiful high school gym. I think that's what we said at the time, and that was twenty years ago. So it's it is getting to the point where you can't have swimming competitions in a natatorium of that. Our school is not regulated. Regulation size. So, we can't host state competitions at So, is

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: that gonna change with this?

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: That won't change, but a lot of the other elements of the disability research. Should have brought it up then. Do you know what the hope, the desired capacity would be of the largest event space? Think it's about 5,000. So that is that would be one of the largest indoor venues in the entire state. Yeah. What's larger?

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: I think the capacity is similar at the indoor spaces at the expo, but they're Oh, right. Sort of divided.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Yes. Point.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yes. Thank you for coming to brief us. It's a pleasure to meet you.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Thank you.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I have two questions. So the same questions I asked Vermont State University assistant president or chancellor when she came in. One is, can you just give us an overview of your student population trend over the past decade or so? Stable, whatever, whatever. So the student population and the applications, just to give us a sense of how.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Sure, so right now we have chosen to remain stable in our student populations. We're not trying to grow. We recognize that housing is a critical issue, not just in Burlington, but across the state. And so we're trying to think creatively about those challenges as well. And and so we're not aiming to grow that undergraduate population and we are stable. As a what we are seeing across the country is that flagship universities continue to do well while regional state schools are really struggling. So we've seen that pattern. It's not just in Oberlin. It's everywhere across the country. Community colleges tend to do a little better. It's the it's the state originals that tend to struggle. So, land grants tend to do better. And that's partly because we attract a broader range of students from around the country, people who are coming for the research that's happening there, for the experience of the public librarian. So, our demographic trends are in terms of our student population. We did increase over time, and that was in part to manage the holding tuition flat for five years, which the university did for five years. It had to incrementally go to cover the incremental costs. So when health care costs went up, people's salaries had, you know, had to increase with inflation. There had to be additional revenue coming in if you're holding tuition flat. Now, if your tuition goes up incrementally, just like inflationary costs do, then you don't have to grow your population. So, we did grow the student population, but now we feel we're right sized. And so, our aim is not to grow like a behemoth, like Arizona State, which now has a complete 170,000 students. Oh my gosh. I thought it was like 50. We don't have any aspiration to be a behemoth like that. What we aim to do is to ensure that we're giving Vermonters access, that we have a stable population of students, and that we're finding those right students for the right fit for Vermont and could be out no matter where they are. True. So that's the story of our demographics.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Thank you. I appreciate it. Applications? They're stable. See?

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Yep, and that's actually, I will say, that's pretty extraordinary because most places are not stable, they're steep and decline.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Second question is, in your presentation you highlighted that roughly 50% of Vermont undergrads are tuition free. Yes. Which is great. I want to dovetail this into, I'm sure you're aware, McClure Foundation's analysis of jobs in the state, in the state where we have the greatest need, it highlights salaries, number of openings over the next period of time. And I just wanted to get your comment on the fact that we're providing half of our students tuition free. We identified the needs, the labor, higher skilled labor, needs of the state, but there's no dovetailing between the two. There's no obligation for those receiving tuition free to either stay in the state or the state treasury that we dedicate to these scholarships are focused on those job openings which we clear foundations highlighted. Can you react to that?

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Yeah, I think what what we've seen nationally that has made an impact on things like that is access to housing and workforce for our partners and family. And so what we see with our VSAT just did a study of this with UVM grads to see how long they stayed in the state after they came. And what they found is when you hit about that twelve or fifteen year mark, when people's families start growing and they're trying to buy a house, and that's when people start to ask, should we

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: go? Mhmm.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: And so what we know as a university is that we have to be a part of solving this partnership with our municipalities, state government, with nonprofits, with industry partners around the state. We have to take as one of our fundamental responsibilities, how do we support those efforts to ensure that there's affordable, available housing? And when in my last role, one of the things that I did is I I was in partnership with the city to help create low cost housing in the city. So, we actually were in the process of preparing to build a shared project that would allow us to take some of the pressure off housing market because when you take some pressure off, it has a ripple effect across the housing. And so, in partnership with Vermont State College, I've talked with Beth Knop about this, the chancellor, and I just met with Joyce Judy about this at CCB. What we'd like to do is think about how we can help our students get internships or co ops around the state and utilize some of, for example, the Vermont State College's available housing and house people across the state so that they're bringing their talents to other places in the state, imagining other possibilities about where they could live and raise a family. And that we're taking some more pressure off the housing market locally. So, those issues of who stays and how long they remain and in what careers are being tremendously impacted by things like available housing and cost of healthcare insurance is one of the other issues too. So, the more we help work on those pressures, the more those people I think will stay. Now, in terms of workforce development, I am really excited if our plan gets approved, which it will go if you look at our strategic plan, and if you Google UVM strategic plan, it'll be the first thing that comes up, you can see a draft plan. That goes before our trustees this week. If they approve that plan, we will develop metrics that will ask about our workforce commitment, and we'll actually begin to measure the impact we're making on producing people who could live in industries that have high need around the state. That's part of the reason, for example, that that $16,000,000 gift in nursing was so important because we need to train those nurses to have available nurses around the state. We don't have enough nurses. There's a nursing shortage. We also know that for new industries where we don't have the demand yet, but if we wanna help support the growth of the economy, we'll need more engineers graduating to go work in that gallium nitride semiconductor industry. And that's not a need yet, but we know that's going to be an economic stimulus. And so we want to ensure that we're training those students to get out into the workforce too. So what we'll do, should our board approve this, and I suspect they will, they've already seen several drafts and worked with us on it. If they approve this, we'll begin to develop metrics I will bring those before you next year when we come to look at the match between what we're producing and how that's impacting your workforce.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Thank you. Yes. So we started weeks on, we participated in a forum at the Kansas City University, and they're talking about the need for nurses. It was a couple of years ago now. One of the problems they were having was for the nursing program was coming up with a instructor that was for the master program. So there any way you can help them with that? Have you?

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Well this, the partnership that we have talked about, the the biggest bottleneck in nursing is clinical placements. So nursing accreditation requires that nurses go out on, lab rotations out so you can work on a in a sim lab, which is where you have a human model, right? And you get to experience doing blood pressure and things like that. But you need to have real life experiences and be in a healthcare system in a hospital. That nursing accreditation nationally requires that there be a certain number of students only with an instructor and that is a huge bottleneck because when you have a nursing shortage, it means you also have a shortage of people who can be supervisors to those nursing students. Which means you would love to admit every student who wants to be a nurse, but you have to have clinical placements for them to get them through the curriculum. So, if we are able to produce those nurses and get them to stay in the state, that will help us grow the number of clinical placements. And what I've said to the chancellor is the more we partner on nursing production, the more we help each other. So we are committed to building a partnership on that front, but it's gonna be a challenge. And we may actually have to partner regionally. We already do in the south of the state partner regionally across states, but especially in rural communities, this is an enormous challenge. So, we know we're going to need to increase our partnerships and look for ways that we can, if we send someone to a clinical placement in New York, we want them to come back. And so part of the question is what are the incentives that help them to come back? And I would be willing to bet when we do our research on this, what we will discover is that it's about housing and care. Not about a desire. I bumped in the cafeteria, I bumped into a group of legislative engineers that are all current EBM students. And I had one of the young women in that group tell me so they were telling me what they were majoring in, what you know, where they came from. And one of the young

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: women were from New York.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: And she said, when she told her family that she was gonna go to Vietnam, they threw up their arms and said, you'll never come back with it alone. Everybody wants to live in the home. And our students do. We want to stay. We have to help solve problems that are making it difficult and that are disturbing.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: One more. Do you do you offer, housing for married students?

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Do you know they have I don't

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: know St. Mike's does.

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: I think that that is something that no longer exists.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: I think do have Catamount. Yeah,

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: we have housing that we have recently developed in South Bronx. That's new. That's targeted at graduate students, faculty, and staff. So many of those students who are graduate students may be married or have families, and there's one, two, or three bedroom apartments in that development.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Thank you.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: That's a new facility that we just opened this year.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So talk talk a little bit more about the what you're doing to help with housing because then you talked about utilizing, like, facilities at some of the state colleges and other use, but how does that help the student who's going to the campus? So how

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: It takes pressure off of our housing program. Oh, no.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I get that part, but how do they that drive back in?

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: What we would do is what we are envisioning right now, and we have to get our plan approved before we can act on these things, but we're so close now. We've been going through a long process for this. And I'll just mention as an aside, we had 54 listening sessions, a thousand people participated in shaping that plan on campus. And we reached out to municipalities across the state, partners in industry, partners in nonprofits, all of our alumni, and made a huge open frame on the plan. We got feedback online too, so we had a lot of participation in the plan. But if that plan gets approved, what we will begin to do is each unit will build metrics around what they're trying to achieve and how we're gonna achieve these things. And a co op program would send students away for four to six months. And so, it would vacate their housing on campus for that period. And what a co op is designed to do is be more expansive and broaden an internship. And we I showed up at this gorgeous campus in the summer, and it was like a ghost town. There was almost nobody there. And if we build a robust co op program, what that will allow us to do is offer some summer classes for students and especially if we're efficient about how we do it. Like, for example, if we say you're going to go on a co op in your sophomore year, and we send those students out, then we only have to offer those sophomore year classes the summer and not every single part of the curriculum and every single major during the summer. And if we send students out, they get that professional work experience. The number one complaint nationally that employers have about college graduates is they've never been in the workplace before. And so if we give them that professional experience, it also changes how they understand what they're learning in the classroom. You get a different perspective on what you're studying, how it can be applied. And so if we can build a co op program, that'll take enormous pressure off our housing. Imagine a huge number of students being out located all across the state for six months out of the year, giving in those economies in that part of the state, but we have to build something that's robust and it will take us a little time and we have to have the cooperation of our faculty to make this happen. But I really think their enthusiasm and excitement about this prospect suggests to me that we'll be able to do it in short. And didn't the Trinity campus project get restarted or no? We weren't for not to, but that was

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: dependent on city of Burlington.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Really? It's still dependent on Burlington. Let me know. I can help. I can help. Thank you. That was that was a frustration to not have 400 units filled. We had intended to fill the former Trinity College campus that is now one of our campuses, and it has residential buildings and also some classrooms. The buildings were dilapidated to cover that campus, and we wanted to renew those buildings and create more housing for our students. And we were prevented by the city from doing so they wouldn't give us the permitting to do for them. Was three years ago, maybe.

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: It's been an ongoing if you're poor.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Yeah. I feel for some reason, I thought I could track, but I'm happy to try and help because that would alleviate a lot of housing pressure in Maryland too.

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: Yeah. And, actually, the last plan was to build about a thousand units. Sorry. Really? There would be graduate housing here underground.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: There you go. Okay.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Since you said it, what the reasoning was? We

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: need zoning amendments in order to build it, and we were not given those zoning permissions from the city.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So going back to the co op model, is now that I understand what you're actually talking about, you're really talking about the beginning to, I'm sure it's already going on to some extent but changing the traditional arrive in August and then have it be an element of year round but with some other things going on it keeps me busy. Yeah, I mean, I know what's going on. It's so fashionable already, but it's still interesting.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: And one of the things that just recently happened is one of our generous philanthropic donors funded in the Grossman School of Business a co op program for the college so that students can go and do their co op with the support of this fund that this donor created so that it reduces their costs and expenses and they flourish costs they're able to go out and get that professional work experience. So, have a lot of enthusiasm and support for making it a reality. And there are some interesting models out there. Northeastern has co ops for every student, Northeastern College. And Western University in Ontario has three co ops for every student before they graduate. And they have one of the highest job placement rates in the world for graduates. Now ours is pretty darn good. Ninety six percent of students this right, Wendy. Ninety six percent are working in an area that they've chosen Mhmm. Six months after graduation. Ninety six percent. It's a very high placement rate. And as you may have heard in the national news that there are a lot of students that are struggling to find jobs right now. So that makes that placement rate even more impressive. I just, I mean, besides just saying, I think we're so lucky to have you. Thank you, for having him out. I'm really excited about the mobile healthcare unit. You know, we're a rural state. Maine has a lot of mobile healthcare, visits farm workers, people who 25% of our state, according to the UVM Transportation Research Center, they cannot get to a doctor's appointment on time. So I've wanted mobile health care for so long, and this is very exciting to me. So thank you to you and the Cancer Center. It's full of amazing people. You.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. That's one more question. Was fine. You understand about the most one thing I was wondering about when you talked about it was don't people often just go to other hospitals for, you working with a physician, but some of them fix it, they've done on a regular basis at another hospital? So it's just too, so why is the global ban not duplicative of that?

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: It depends on their needs. So some facilities can offer what people need, and people are in what we'll call their deserts, where they're physically so far from any facility that they end up either not going, not treating their illnesses or the barrier of getting, like, if you're working.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So you can't really, you're likely to be about that. Was using the van to go to areas where, like, you know, very often in my area people go to either go maybe working with a physician at medical center, they then go for part of what's going on to me, Bennington enrollment. You're talking about places where even not possible. Yes. Yeah. That's what you're talking about.

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: And so one of the things that the mobile unit does is, I think we've talked in here before about the fact that Vermont has an unusually high rate of skin cancer of melanoma. And so, one of the things that Mobileyeva does is do screenings out in rural areas. So, if you go to primary care and say, Can you do a skin cancer screening? Answer is no. They're not a dermatologist. They don't have the necessary qualifications to want to do that from a liability standpoint, but physicians and practitioners can use the mobile unit to do those screenings in rural areas so people don't have to drive a long way or wait a long period of time necessarily for a specialty appointment. So it's not like a mobile unit can deliver chemotherapy to people. It can't do that. But it can do other things. We've also got a grant that we've been working on for a number of years with Mississippi State that's about rural health care and delivery with things like drones. Can you deliver an iPad to someone and have a telehealth visit with someone by using a drone? There's there's things like that as well. So interesting information. Yeah.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Yeah. Oh, important. And a very rural. Yeah.

[Wendy Koenig, Vice President for Government and Community Relations, UVM]: Well, sometimes people have transportation challenges or childcare challenges. Yeah. It can possibly get something. So

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: if your roads are possible, maybe we can get you an iPad. You should be able to do that, you know, that telehealth appointment and you can get the consultation. My sister and I met with her oncologist over telehealth just yesterday. Even when you're right there, sometimes that's the most convenient thing, especially if somebody's ill. Yep.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming in. Thank you for

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: the privilege of having me here.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Several of Ronny from our sales comment that we're we're lucky to have him. Thank you very much. Thank you

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: for coming.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: so much.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: You. Yes,

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: one more. And if you haven't figured it out by this point, you're also very lucky to have Wendy.

[Marlene Tromp, President, University of Vermont]: Oh, I know. Know. Do I know it? I show through that all the time. I thank my lucky stars. See you next second. Thank you so much, everyone. Good to see you

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: all.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Thanks. Yep.