 Good morning, everyone. This is a meeting on April 8, 2021, at 9 o'clock in the morning. And this is a joint meeting between the Senate Agriculture Committee and the House Agriculture and Forestry Committees. And we are going to be talking about the Vermont Technical College, which we know is so important to agriculture, and the Revisioned Agriculture and Food Systems Program. So we have a number of wonderful guests today. And our first our first witness is Pat Moulton, who is the president of BTC. Pat, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us what's going on? We're really interested to hear. Great. Well, first of all, thank you so much, Representative Partridge and Senator Starr and committee members for agreeing to meet with us in a joint session today. It's very much appreciated. We know your time is valuable, so we appreciate you taking the time to hear us. And with me today are some names, hopefully many of you know, including Ellen Kaler, who is the Executive Director of the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund. And her organization is the author of the latest plan regarding Farm to Plate upon which we are building in terms of information. Also with us is Regina Beidler and Louise Calderwood. These are ladies who are co-chairing a completely voluntary effort for us here at Vermont Tech with Ellen providing expertise and facilitation and knowledge. And these ladies have been working for nine months with a group of 40 volunteers. You'll hear more about in a minute to really look at what can we, how can we revision the agriculture and food systems program here at Vermont Tech? We've been seeing declining enrollment in our dairy programs. We know there's a changing and structure of agriculture and not just dairy, but other aspects of agriculture in Vermont. And so we've spent the last nine months really trying to vision what is the niche for Vermont Tech? What is the niche that's going to help educate the next century of farm and ag-related and food service employees and managers in the state? So that's the effort. We have a PowerPoint we'd like to run through with you today to which Regina will kick off for us here in a minute between Regina and Louise. You'll dive into some of these details. We hope to have about a 25 minute to half hour presentation then open it up for questions. And if that's okay with you, Representative Partridge and Senator Starr, we'll take right off. Yup. Sounds good. Perfect. Okay. And I believe Regina, you have got ability to screen share. So Regina, I've not done you justice in terms of your work with Organic Valley, and I apologize for that. And Louise, your work. So go ahead and give yourself another brief introduction if you'd like. Thank you so much. I'll just introduce myself for a moment and then pass to Louise, who I'm sure is well known to many of you as well. My husband Brent and I live in Randolph Center. For many years, we were organic dairy producers for Organic Valley. And now I work for Organic Valley as their member program specialist working around education content from our cooperative. And I've been the co-chair in this process with Louise, which has been a pleasure. So Louise, do you want to say hello as well? I'm going to make it so that people can also see me in front of your committee as my role of the Director of Regulatory Affairs. Louise, we've got a lot of background noise when you're speaking. I don't know if there's... Okay. I'll take care of that when we get live for the presentation. Let's just play a role, and I'll take care of it. Okay. Great. Thanks, Louise. All right. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. As Pat said, we're going to start by having just a presentation to walk you through some of the pieces of what we've been working on. And just a moment, I've got to find the piece I'm looking for. So this morning, what we're going to be walking you through is a bit about why we are doing the work that we're doing at Vermont Technical College and the process that Pat was describing. A bit of our process to date and how we've gotten to where we are. Some final recommendations that have come out of this process, some identified interim steps, some suggestions of how you could possibly help, and also at that point then opening it back up for your questions and comments, which we really look forward to. So a question of why are we doing this? The impetus for the start of this project was the threatened closure of the VTC Randolph campus last year. However, declining enrollment over a number of years has been a significant threat to the long-term sustainability of this program. You'll see that it's not only 2020, which obviously during the pandemic year had a very significant impact on enrollment, but even in the years prior you'll see a marked decline coming down from 2016 to the present. We also are seeing that the Vermont State College's merger necessitates a really clear path forward in order for this program to survive. This slide shows the impact of those declining student numbers. At the top of this slide you'll see operational cost and that's all the costs related to the agriculture program, including the farm, which is the program laboratory. So the low number of students at this point, which are 27. Regina, you are off mute. I am off mute. Now you're okay. Okay. Just making sure. Okay, so just showing that the per-cost student is significantly higher than some of these others that are detailed beside it with right now the per-cost student being close to $13,000 per student. And the bottom slide shows the financial deficits on the campus farm taking into account the expenses after the sale of milk, maple syrup, and apples. And you're going to hear more specifics about this a little later from Louise in this presentation, but the most significant impact of these numbers isn't the function of herd management, but rather the reality of running a dairy farm using union labor. I'm sorry. My slides are not okay. There we go. What we're seeing is that this is contrasted against a rapidly growing local and regional food system with a wider expansive job opportunities and more specific training needs for the current and future labor force. And you certainly will be aware in your committees of these dynamics through the information that you've been hearing through farm to plate. So one of the questions that we asked during this process is with the understanding that the food system is bigger than production agriculture, is Vermont Tech going to focus solely on production ag education and training? Or can we also focus on other aspects of the food system? So we'll spend a few moments walking you through some of the people and the process that we went through to get to the recommendations that we'll show you. As Pat mentioned, we had more than 40 people volunteer to be subject matter experts and working together with the faculty and staff to identify the real strengths of this program as well as a path forward that's responsive to the changing food system that we've just mentioned. This included a significant number of listening sessions from a number of groups in the food system, including current and former faculty and staff and community members, and a number of value of different production groups within agriculture as well. You'll see some of them listed here in beef, goats, dairy heifer grazers, and some value added businesses. One specific listening session that I'll call out is we gathered a group of recent two plus two students who had just left VTC and are now at UVM. And we got to ask them about what drew them to Vermont Tech and the strengths and future opportunities that they saw in their agriculture program. And that was really interesting to have very recent students be able to reflect on that. We also had a specific team working in our group developing and sending out a survey that was sent out to a diverse group of stakeholders, including as you'll see alumni, community members, and food system people. And we had 109, 191 respondents. And this was really important to us because we didn't want this project to happen in a vacuum, but very much to be driven by the expertise and also the observations of those who are connected to the program at Vermont Tech. Pat and Louise and Ellen and I are what we are calling the leadership team. And that's some a group of us that have been meeting weekly since May of 2020. We meet for an hour and a half every Tuesday morning, both to keep an eye on the current process and to always be looking ahead to what the next steps are going to be. So that's been consistent through the course of this process since last spring. We've also been really very lucky to have a very diverse steering committee that draws from across a wide cross section of Vermont agriculture and education. And that meets monthly. So again, you'll probably see some very familiar names on that list. The survey that I just mentioned a few minutes ago was led by Erica Campbell from Bernie Sanders office. And again, was very important in getting that feedback from our stakeholders. And then we had four other teams that we've developed over the course of this process. The first one program model started their work last late last summer and then the early fall. And that group led by Philip Ackerman least was looking at serving other existing ag programs across the country for ideas of what other people were doing and then identifying flexible elements and delivery modalities that we think reflect the needs of current students and the food system. We also had a culture and curriculum team that started their work at the same time that was led by Mark Mahali, who's a former dean and president of Vermont Law School. And that team looked at identifying the knowledge and competencies that are needed for success in today's food system and then reviewing the current curriculum at Vermont Tech for gaps and coordinating with the program model team around delivery modalities. And a subgroup of that team is the dairy subcommittee. We felt like the long standing importance of dairy and future producer education, not only at Vermont Tech, but for the whole state was really important to call out. And so gathered a group of diverse dairy producers from across different sizes, different types, goat dairy and cow dairy to come together to have discussions. And that group focused very much on identifying what are the essential knowledge pieces that need to be in place for someone to succeed at dairy? Where does that education happen? Is it in the classroom? Is it on the campus farm? Is it on other people's farms? And how does that education support the needs of the food system? The business case team was led by Jed Davis from Cabot and arguably had the heaviest lift because they took the recommendations from the first two teams work and applied financial scrutiny to them. So in the course of their work, which began early this year, they have reviewed the existing conditions, financial conditions in the program, looked at current performance. They've proposed some transformation, have set some performance expectations and some expected results, as well as some identifiable gaps for long term financial viability of the program. And the final team will call out led by Kate Finley Woodruff, who is the dean up at the College for Ag and Life Sciences at UVM as a communication and outreach team. And this team is working on articulating what would be the promise and delivery of what students would receive from the program that's being recommended and developing clear messages for those who are hearing what this program is about that also aligns with the larger marketing and messaging from the college. So with that, we're going to walk you through the large recommendations that came out of this process, knowing that there'll be opportunities to answer more questions as we get to the end of this presentation. The first recommendation was to create a Center for Agriculture and Food Entrepreneurship. The sense behind the idea of a center is it's an easily identifiable and marketable portal for prospective students to see a variety of available learning options. And if you look at the center of this graphic, we've been able to place advising at the very center of the learning process. So as individual students come in, they're advised and being able to meet their individual learning and professional goals. And at the same time, having the center also allows the ability to have a close connection to the activity that's happening in the classroom and on the farm. And then on the right side of the graphic, also to work very closely with the continuing education and workforce development department at the college. And also with other majors and concentrations at the college. Because as we know, beyond production agriculture, there's lots of places in the food system that require business or manufacturing or technical skills that could be met by some of those other majors. We also felt like the center, I'll add one more piece to that before moving on, it would be able to strategically market, implement and assess and continually enhance a suite of programs. So the one thing that we heard very clearly was it would be really nice to have a champion who would be connected to that center, who could really be a clear communicator and a representative for what's being offered in the program. This slide is showing a recommendation showing that we know that there's a value in a core curriculum that allows flexibility in learning for those individual students that we were talking about. What we've discovered when we looked at the existing associates degrees, which right now the two associates degrees are agribusiness management and dairy herd management, that when you look at the specific courses that are offered in those two areas, there's significant overlap in those areas. So there was a recommendation to have one associates degree that would allow for additional focus areas that answer worker needs in the growing food system. So if you look at the sandwich board on the right, there would be a core curriculum for the associates allowing for either a continued dairy and animal science concentration, which is currently available, or also the opportunity for those interested in food entrepreneurship or some other piece of the food system to have an opportunity to get their associates as well. And we also see the value and the strength of maintaining the current bachelor's degree in diversified agriculture and the two plus two program, which is a really important part of Vermont Tech's offerings and their partnership with UVM. We wanted to go a step further and say, if that was the recommendation, what could that look like around the specifics? Would it still meet the educational requirements that the college has for every graduate? So this first slide shows that the top is the general education requirements that are required for every student that's at Vermont Technical College. And that adds up to the 20 credits below that on the bottom of the slide is what we see as core courses. No matter what your concentration, that would be a value to you if you are a college student in the agriculture degree program. And we're I'll point out the next to the last bullet in that bottom box is internships. And we'll talk about that more specifically in a couple of slides. But again, these are courses we think will be beneficial to everyone. Then there would be the opportunity to go into one of these two concentrations. And this is meant as really an example or a proposal. This is certainly nothing that's set in stone, but just showing away again that the needs of those particular students, depending on their concentration, could be met. And at the same time meet the graduation requirements that are in place for Vermont Technical College. And of course, something that we don't want to forget is that the existing program and curriculum in particular is really a very strong. So we're not looking at significant changes in the types of courses that would be offered. That there's already a lot of these pieces that we've identified that are already in the curriculum. So it just be a matter of looking at how those courses are offered and what they would be able to offer students and what their goals would be. And again, I'll just mention the including the two plus two program, the two plus two program, which is very important. We see the opportunity to expand the existing number of students and their learning styles by increasing the type and number of short courses, certificates, and also offering additional online and hybrid learning options. I think the kinds of options that are available is not just something that that Vermont Tech is thinking about, but all of education is looking at particularly after this pandemic year. We also see the opportunity for J term and summer programs to allow students the chance to learn in areas that aren't covered in the regular curriculum and could also take advantage of the growing season when a lot of agricultural activity happens. We're going to go back to looking at the internship that I mentioned a few minutes ago. Applied education has been a hallmark of Vermont Tech for many, many years. And what we would like to recommend is that this be reinforced by introducing 15 credits of internship experience spread over the four semesters of the associate's degree. So the first year would focus on growing basic farm and food production skills with the help of the campus farm and also resume and interview experience skills. And it's our understanding that this is already an important part of the curriculum that's offered at Vermont Tech. So that would be the focus for the first year. The second year would allow placement of students into internships with a focus on their area of interest, whether that's in production agriculture or in some part of manufacturing or the food system. And would recommend that include a project of interest that would be beneficial to the students mentor in the final semester. All of this learning described in these recommendations benefits from a more diverse array of on farm experiences at the campus farm. And this knowledge along with a significant annual financial deficits at the farm have led us to the recommendation of selling the dairy milking herd and substituting in six other enterprises, which we've called out in this slide. That would be a beef herd, some custom dairy heifer grazing, the deep bedded hogs, vegetable production and maintaining the current maple and apple orchard. And this doesn't mean that dairy education will disappear as both the coursework and the ability to work with non-lactating cows will continue to exist at the campus farm. But it would mean relying on partnerships with area farms that would help to fill in some of those additional skill development that wouldn't be able to happen around a milking herd. And I'll just say too that the two plus two focus groups spoke positively about the interactions that they were able to have with local farms because their comment was that it gave real life perspectives that were really hard to get on a campus farm. So already seeing the benefit of partnering with farms in the area. And if adopted, this new program would require some rebranding and an expansion of marketing approaches to significantly grow significantly grow student enrollment. So I just offer for this as a sample of what some of the marketing could look like. It calls out the Center for Agriculture and Food Entrepreneurship that I mentioned earlier and also shows a greater diversity of focus areas that a student might be able to learn if they come to Vermont Tech. And with that, I'm going to hand things over to Louise who's going to take you through some more of the numbers. So Regina laid out all of these wonderful ideas and vision for how can we reshape and tweak some things that Vermont Tech needs the future of agriculture in Vermont. But as we all know, in order to do that, the numbers have to work. So looking at this slide, starting in the bright yellow on the far left of your screen, let's see what we're calling scenario one. And this is the status quo. So if you go all the way over to the left, you'll see a revenue line. And that revenue line are all the sources of income for the ag program at Vermont Tech. So this is student enrollment. It's the sale of milk and beef and apples and maple. It's the Ag Institute, any source of revenue. Likewise, the expense line represents all of those expenses needed to maintain any of those either educational or operational components of the ag program. And you can see that today under the status quo and the current number of 22 enrolled students that the net revenue is in the red. Now the next line I want to really explain to you, that's the margin. And you can see here, the margin in the bright yellow column is minus 18%. What the margin represents is what does the student enrollment? What does the program in general contribute to the entire school? So we recognize we have the need for the academic, but there's also the need to keep the student health center going, student educational, our student athletic center going to keep, frankly, the president's office operational. And so in order to achieve all of those needs, the margin that's essential for an educational program to contribute to the entire college is 74%. So if you look at the margin line and move across each of those scenarios, you'll see that we have maintained a 74% margin for each of the scenarios that we are suggesting. So the next column in the bright orange shows the break even. That basically says if we were to keep the dairy herd, we would keep the existing number of faculty and staff, how many students would be needed to take this from a minus 18% for a 74% margin? And you can see it would require a growing student number from the current 22 students to 135 students. So then we, and quite frankly, the fact that there's 22 students there, and we have the dropping enrollment really speaks to the need for some changes. Well, and then you can, yes, Louise, the expense line does increase with 135 students to reflect the additional faculty needed to teach those 135 students. Thank you. Thank you, Pat. Yeah. Yeah, that is a good point is that there's the additional revenue from the students, but we're maintaining the same student to faculty ratio to bring that that faculty number up. So then we looked at a couple of different scenarios. We said, well, what happens if we revise the enterprises as Regina had suggested, but we didn't create the center? What would be needed then? What would be the break even in that case? Well, in that case, student enrollment would need to grow to 77 students to maintain the 74% margin. And that seemed like a difficult piece that if we're going to revise the enterprises and really need to grow the student enrollment, it seemed to us on the business case team that it was really essential to go ahead and create the center. Remember, the center is going to support those internships, the opportunity for students to have employment opportunities on farms that really reflect their choice of future enrollment, their future employment. Throughout the two plus two interviews, throughout all of the case studies that we've done, we've heard how important those internships are to the students. So scenario three includes the center includes a staff person for the center and marketing for the center. And you can see that for scenario three to maintain that 74% margin, it does require 125 students. If you can go ahead and move to the next slide for me, Regina. Just to give you an idea of what the new enterprises will look like from a financial perspective, we considered a feeder beef operation as Regina mentioned, the grazing, contract raise, dairy heifers, feeder pigs, potatoes, maple in the orchard. And you can see that when we look at these enterprises, including the labor needed to run the enterprises, this indeed still has an $86,000 draw at the bottom right hand corner of your screen that number in the bright yellow block. So this is essentially the cost of maintaining this lab for the campus, recognizing that through the dairy sub team, it became very clear to us that there is a need for students to gain some key skills on campus, and that these skills are essential for them as they move on into their internship opportunities in their second year of college. But this bright yellow box of minus 86,000 is in direct contrast to the current cost, which is about a $250,000 loss per year for the current dairy maple in orchards at the college. So what are some of the challenges? Well, in the big picture, we've got to focus on teaching out the current students and the current majors, but we've got the place to do that. The mechanisms are in place within the academic leadership at the college to address that. And we also know that we need to focus on fundraising. We've got some heavy lifting to do here, and we recognize not only is there the fundraising, but every step along the way, we need to be ready to make some decisions. Is this idea, is this proposal that's being rolled out truly going to meet the required steady state of return of 74% margin of enrollment from students who find the value to this and from meeting the future needs of Vermont agriculture? So what are some of the interim steps that we'll need to go through to reach this steady state? Well, we've got some short term pieces that we need to look towards for the next year. We're proposing of hiring some short term independent part time contractors. And this is to bring some additional staffing capacity. This capacity will focus on signing up farms and food systems. Those are for the semesters of off campus internship learning and also for additional hands on opportunity for students who have interest beyond the six production mechanisms that we're suggesting for on campus. These contractors would also assist with the existing continuing education workforce development offerings to help increase the number of short courses, enrollment in those courses. And very importantly, assuming that funding is recognized and available, would be to set up a neat cutting lab and a program. We know that there's job opportunities for that. And this would bring some additional capacity campus to help with that. These contractors would assist Molly Willard with the short course development. They would assist Dr. Crow, the current VTC faculty member in providing feedback as she moves to rework the curriculum and move it through the internal VTC process. Excuse me. These contractors would also be available to help Steph Nolte, the current farm manager, as she moves forward with the changes at the farm that will be needed to accommodate the new ag enterprises. We know that fundraising is a huge piece of this. So some additional contract employment to focus on the fundraising needs. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, is to really focus on increasing the enrollment and working on the rebranding and rebuilding of the overall program and marketing. This isn't the first time. Vermont Tech has been here before. Actually, in the late 1950s, it was proposed to close the campus. The governor's address actually stated that we still need trained young men, kind of the times, on our farms. But we also need trained workers in industry. And in the governor's address, he mentioned that the school of agriculture should be closed. Well, it didn't happen. The school of agriculture was rebranded, was revisioned, was rebuilt. It grew. I know many of you are graduates of this program as our other family members and other people you've worked with throughout your careers. We know how important the school of agriculture is in the state of Vermont. It's our job to rebrand, repurpose, and move it forward. So how can you help? What do we need? What are we asking for? Frankly, we're asking for you to advocate for this program's transformation overall. And that includes funding for the meat lab. It also means that recognizing that in any workforce related bills, Vermont Tech plays a key role in workforce development. Continued support for the overall transformation within the state college system is essential. We know you folks have been focused on this and we really appreciate that. And then the fact that you're engaged and active throughout your communities, that you know families who have juniors and seniors in high school that are considering their future employment, their future education, make certain to encourage Vermont Tech and enrollment at Vermont Tech. And then finally, if you have any questions after our question and answer period today, any of the four of us are more than willing to take those answers. And here we say go ahead and email, but obviously phone calls work as well. Just really feel comfortable to reach out for us for any additional ideas you have for any additional questions you have after today's presentation. So there we are at this point. We're ready to open it up for discussion and take your questions. Well, thank you all for a really clear, concise presentation. Really appreciate that. And committees, I'm wondering if you have any questions. Vicki, go ahead. Oh dear, I'm sorry to start us off, but I really get excited hearing about all this innovation. That's wonderful. Thank you so much, all of you. My question is, and Louise went at the end of the presentation, you said seniors and juniors reaching out. What about folks in their 30s, 40s? They're like, yeah, I really want to get into this new area. How do we help them? If they're living at home, they have a family, they have an hour commute or more. Will there be online things available or how are you innovating in that area for that kind of age group? Anyone older than, let's say 25, 30, 40, that kind of thing. Absolutely, Vicki. And that's something that we heard not just from you. We've heard it throughout the process. And so in all of the narrative that we are developing for this, we are realizing that for folks who might want to change their careers or even people who realize that they're already in business, but they need some additional education, there will be opportunities for that. And those will be provided a number of ways, certainly through the short courses, but then also as we're all learning, our hybrid methods of education will be adapted and available there as well. So we view the education here as not just the traditional age, but people of any age who recognize the value of education through the mottak. And Pat, my suspicion is that this past year you've learned a lot about that. Is that true? Yeah. I mean, I was just going to add that if there's a silver lining in COVID, it's that a lot of our faculty have come to recognize that the remote learning is an option and we can do it, and we can do it well. We're doing it better this year than we did it last spring. We're doing it better this spring, et cetera. And it is part of the entire transformation for Vermont Tech is to focus at continuing to provide a traditional residential experience, but opening up to more remote delivery options for low residency where students might come to campus a weekend, a week, whatever the case might be, so that our programming can get opened up to those working adults, the non-traditional student who cannot drop everything for two years or a year to come to campus and go to school. I mean, we're arguably a little bit behind the curve in that with some of our sisters even in the Vermont State College systems, but that's because in part of our intense applied hands-on aspect. So we need that lecture lab sequence, but there's lots of different ways to do that. But I think your point is right on, Representative Strong. And I think a lot of, well, young people, a lot younger than I, you know, 20, 30s, 40-somethings are start thinking, you know, I want to get into this field. I want to get into the food system, adding growing crops, et cetera, value added, and we need to provide those opportunities. So absolutely, that's an element of the programming going forward. That's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Bobby, go ahead. You're muted, Bobby. And probably I should have stayed that way, but anyways, thank you for your work you put in in regards to this. But I sort of have some serious problems with your with your end plan. And I don't know how much research you did in the dairy industry, but you know, we retain right now, we're retaining well over 50% of our milk right here in Vermont to be used here making cheeses, ice creams, yogurts, fluid milk. And I don't, you know, I haven't given up on the dairy industry and it sounds like you guys are kind of right on the verge. You know, UBM, UBM's sold their cows basically, they gave them away, and they've got the cream program left, but that's out of state students for the most part that take up the cream program and utilize their two or three million dollar barn that they've got. But your problem is lack of students and low pricing in milk. So how much effort did you put into trying to raise the price of milk and trying to raise your enrollment numbers by working with our high schools to try to get more students coming to VTC? So those are two, two big questions. And the other thing, if we lose the dairy industry, it isn't just the dairy industry that we lose, we lose all the infrastructure because Brian Carpenter isn't going to keep a bunch of tractors around to plow two or three acres of ground to plant carrots or potatoes or whatever in. And so then we're going to lose, unless we want to truck the milk in from New York, which I guess we don't mind doing, but we're going to lose our ice cream business, our cheese business and yogurt business. So I, I think we, you know, we've got an awful lot that we're going to lose to, you know, that couple hundred grand that you lose a year is a small price to pay for what we could lose if we lose the whole dairy industry. And at the rate we're going, you know, that's the way it's going to end up. Well, thank you for that. And first of all, I would, I would apologize if in any way we felt if we represented in a way that made it seem as if we were giving up as a dairy on the dairy industry and, you know, as somebody who has been a dairy farmer for many years, Louise also, you know, that's something that we were taking very, very seriously. So I will say that if you look at the curriculum, there's still going to be a very strong dairy program, an interesting conversation that happened in that dairy subgroup that we mentioned is they identified what are the essential skills and knowledge that you need to have in order to be a successful dairy producer. And then where do we learn those skills? And so if you look at the enterprises that we're suggesting take the place of the milking herd at VTC, there would still be the opportunity to learn a lot of those kinds of dairy or bovine handling and management skills, except for milking. And that's the piece that when we talked with that subgroup, they said, that's the piece that you can learn from other farmers or you can learn in other settings. But the base knowledge of what you need to be a producer or a dairy producer successfully would still come very strongly through the program. And the other thing I'll just put in as editorially a little bit as my husband was an adjunct for three of the last five years at the ag program at VTC. So we had a lot of chances to not only interact with students in the classroom but have them down to our farm for conversations. And what we're seeing in a lot of the traditional Vermont farms is farms that already have a number of family members relying on the dairy milk check to pay their salaries, not necessarily always a place for that next student to come back to the farm, even if they wish to. So there was a lot of conversations with that group about if we have to bring in some diversified income streams, what would it be like if we had a few beef animals? What would it be like if we had a flower enterprise? What would it be like if we did something else that would add to the income stream that might add to the sustainability of some of these dairy operations in the state who can't absorb all of the family members who want to come back? So I would offer that just as a perspective that we're not at all giving up on dairy that we see the importance to the state, but also see the ability to draw in a more diverse group of students if we offer additional ways that people can interact with the program and the food system. I would just also add also if I could add I'd like to get that back up here. But there's a lot to know and I've been away from Vermont for two years so I may not be familiar with some of you folks, but for eight years I was a regional dairy specialist with a pension, my husband and I owned a 300 head dairy farm, I was Vermont Deputy Secretary of Agriculture for eight years, my license plate was bovine. So dairy is my background, dairy is my blood, dairy is my love. When we revisioned the enterprises at Vermont Tech it specifically is to support dairy. Some of the feedback that we received from students was that the current facilities didn't meet with their needs for modern dairy operation. Also as Regina mentioned in the dairy subgroup, we have organic dairy, grass-based dairy, 2000 head dairy, we have so many different forms of dairy and that's why we're really focusing on the internships to give the students the opportunity to get the hands-on experiences at the dairy farms that are of interest to them for their ongoing career. As Regina mentioned, the enterprises were selected because they will give the students the skills they need and I'm going to go on mute. The enterprises that were selected are to give the students the hands-on skills that they need to then move on into their enterprise setting where they'll have two different opportunities to work with two different businesses that will be reflective of their future career goals. Thank you and Regina and certainly it's clearly not our intent nor plan to abandon the dairy program. Quite the opposite is to try to reinvigorate it in a different way in part because we do have to make a pretty major investment on our farm if we're going to continue to operate our dairy herd. Our farm is old, the barn needs significant work, we're looking at probably a three to five or plus million dollar investment into the facility itself to bring it up to speed. As Louise mentioned and Regina mentioned, we don't have many of the things that I mean students are coming off family farms that are in better shape, have robotics, have other factors that we don't have here. So we need to make that investment if we're going to maintain the milking herd. Second is exactly to Louise's and Regina's point is getting that experience of other farms through internship opportunities so that they have the exposure that they won't get here. And to your question about working with high schools, absolutely, we've been doing that forever and trying to build pathways from career centers from high schools. You know, there are fewer family farms in Vermont and family farm students have been our bread and butter and the bread and butter pool is shrinking. It's the demographic challenge we're all dealing with. So how can we add that diversity that's going to attract folks potentially from out of state continue to attract our dairy farm families, continue to attract others that want to go into dairy agriculture, but also provide a more diversified experience. And you know, I'm hearing you on the $200,000, but it's a lot to lose when you're trying to sustain facilities, labs, scholarships and everything. And you know, I won't add, but I, you know, we don't get a lot of support from the state. We this program is not subsidized by the state. We just can't afford to continue to operate programs that are losing this much money. So that the intent is to pivot to something that's going to be more financially sustainable and attractive to students, but not to lose the dairy. Right. Okay, Bobby, do you have a follow up? I have three hands up. So I want to we have about 15 minutes left. I want to get everybody in. Right. I've got my hand up and I still don't agree with what the responses were. There was no response on helping to get the price of milk up. Very little response on why our students are going over to New York to college down to New Hampshire to college and not coming to our own colleges. But anyways, and Pat, I really take offense to the state has not put money and we put millions and millions in just last year and another 50 odd million this year is coming. I think we're catching up to a great extent on helping out. Oh, no question. Absolutely. And no offense intended. But you know, it's it's been arguably, you know, decades to get to this, this point. So yes, extremely appreciative of what's been happening now. It's just the question of sustainability. And to your point on milk, you know, we're in the education business. You know, I don't know how we go about working to get milk prices up. So I'd be happy to go to school with you on that, Senator, on how does a high school, how does a college do that? Secondly, you know, I would say that why does students go out of school? Our tuition is not cheap. And our tuition is not cheap in part because of the historical lack of support for the state colleges. We, you know, when we have 17% of our budget become from the public, it forces everything onto the tuition. And for us to maintain this farm and maintain the program, we're essentially asking the other students at the college to subsidize the ag program. And I, you know, if that's the decision that the Board of Trustees chooses to make, then I support that. But but the pressure that I see from me and for this institution, particularly as we go forward with the transformation of the state colleges, is looking at these small, low enrolled programs that cost a lot of money and figuring out how we rework them or making them go away. And I, before we put a knife in this program, I want to have unturned every possible stone to figure out how we can make it successful and keep it. Because I believe in our 150 year history and dairy education and agriculture education, and I want to keep it. But I'm struggling with how to do that in the current environment, frankly. So I'd happily have a chat with you, Senator offline about what can we do on the milk price question? Because I will admit I'm ignorant in that area. All right. Thank you, Pat. I'm going to call on the folks who have their hands up. So Brian is first, and then John and then Chris Pearson. So Brian, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. So the presentation talked a lot about rebranding. And I'm curious what exactly might be in the works for that. I'll just mention that in my district, Castleton, which was a state college at one time, Castleton State College became the Castleton University when David Wach was the president, and has spent considerable effort, money and time in branding itself. There is a bill that's just been introduced in the Senate that will withhold funding for the state college system if each individual institution is not allowed to continue to market and brand themselves the way they are. So I'm curious how VTC is going to rebrand itself. Senator, you're referring to the college in its entirety, or are you referring to the ag program? Well, either way, I guess, Pat. Okay. Well, we haven't gotten there yet on how the college in its entirety. I mean, our brand is pretty sound now. We have a brand as a small, caring community that get the chief's results, hand-on applied learning, 99% placement. You can get a job when you graduate from Vermont Tech. That's our current brand, and we don't want to lose that. No more than Castleton wants to lose its brand. No more than NVU wants to lose its brand. So we're trying too to figure out how in this new university setting do we maintain those pieces that are critical to each individual campus yet put a value proposition out there that that's going to attract and maintain our current student enrollment and attract new ones. So the ag program, we have had a communications team that's been working on it, and I would defer to either Louise or Regina on that. But they too, I mean, the cafe concept, the Center for Agriculture and Food Entrepreneurship, really focused on entrepreneurship, focused on ag systems, focused on food systems is really the direction we're headed in, maintaining that Vermont Tech is the special brand of applied, hands-on, practical experience that leads you to a career where you can make a good living. So all the final branding yet to be determined. I don't know, Regina, Louise or Ellen, if you have anything more to add, but yeah, I'll just say that where we are in the process right now is that this is a proposal and a final report that's going to be handed to Pat, and that she and the Vermont State College's Board and others will make the decision of do we accept this proposal or not. If it does, I think the intention of branding for a new program would be to show we still have this dairy program, but we're also making a much wider doorway that if you're interested in working in the food system in any way, there's going to be a way for you to come and get the education you need from Vermont Tech, whether through the associates or through short courses or other offerings that are going to be responsive to the food system as a whole. Thank you. All right, John, you're up, and then Chris. Thank you, Carolyn, and thank you Team VTC for your great presentation. During your presentation, it made me reach for, of course, no one's big book here, and look through that, and I was just curious if there were discussions about, you know, when you look at that book and you look at however many product briefs there are, how you would pick things like deep bed of hogs, I don't even heard of that expression, as opposed to, say, you know, beer and spirits or hemp and maybe THC cannabis, agroforestry, some of these other very hot agricultural products, and even more so on the issue side of things, all these things that are coming that I think will be very important, like PES and agritourism, even farm succession and access to BIPOC farmers. I know that's not very sexy if you're 18-year-olds thinking about, you know, I'm going to get a degree in farm succession, but do you see VTC in the future being able to pivot to those sort of hot topics, because ultimately you're selling yourself and you want to draw, you know, from all over the country, especially from Vermont and northern New England, but when you look at, you know, what's working at Cornell, what's working in Durham and Orno, and using that to make VTC really the hot college. So I just wondered about your discussions on that. I'm really happy to speak to that, John. We addressed those large issues in two different ways. So I'm going to start with the transition, the being able to pivot to BIPOC, those sorts of things. So what we started with were subject matter area experts, and we listed every single skill or knowledge base that we thought someone would need to be engaged in any form of agricultural production, processing, or technical services, anything that you needed. We ended up with pages. I believe we had 13 pages of skills that we recognized as essential. And so then we went through the VTC curriculum and said, you know what, the current curriculum is needing those, and you're absolutely right, John. Trying to convince an 18-year-old that understanding depreciation is really cool is tough. But we realize that VTC, through many mechanisms, does have an opportunity to provide that to students. We feel that the curriculum not only has the timely technical for today, but is bringing the students those critical thinking and lifelong learning skills to continue to gain those. When they get to 30 years old and realize that, yeah, what they really wanted to know was indeed depreciation. On the production side of it, we actually had over 23 different enterprises that we started with for consideration. And they range from actual production straight through to processing. So many really interesting processing opportunities as well. And we ran those through a rubric. And the rubric included was it essential to teach these skills at an academic setting, at a farm? Is there more than one market access for these products in the case of actual products? Is there more than one buyer in the region? Is there a robust market? Would learning skills associated with this production enterprise be transferable to other production enterprises? So we ran the 23 enterprises through that rubric, and that's what brought us to the six that you see. Now, we did realize that there's some opportunities here that we need to grow for. You'll see that there's no value added processing. There's no innovative marketing included in any of these opportunities that we've laid out. And we realized that for the short term, the three to five years, that frankly, the capacity and the capital to address that probably does not exist. So that also came into our selection is what are the enterprises that can be addressed largely within the existing infrastructure at Vermont Tech, but will still provide students the essential skills? One that didn't make the list that we looked at every way from Sunday was how to keep dairy cows on the farm. We considered robotic milk and we considered value added processing. And for the next three to five years, which is what this plan is looking at is our next job. We just couldn't see a way to continue to include that. I'll just add briefly as well that another piece that we see as an opportunity is looking at short courses and some of the Institute offerings that are already there. One thing I'll call out as an example is the dairy grazing apprenticeship is a really well known national program that looks at the next generation of dairy producers. They have 160 people on a list that are offering themselves as apprentices, many who are not being chosen because they have absolutely zero skills in dairy farming. So we're talking with them right now about offering a boot camp in the summer where those potential people could come, spend two weeks on an operation at the college campus learning some very basic skills that would make them more marketable and also allow them to test out, is this the life I really want for myself? So I think looking beyond the associates to some of these other peripheral types of offerings that could also meet some of those diverse skills would also be possible. And I would just add that to your point, Representative O'Brien, we do a fair amount of that work now through our Ag Institute and more in the short course format that Regina is talking about. We've done brewing, we've done distilling, we've done hemp, we've done cannabis, a myriad. So in terms of can we pivot, the answer is yes. We can continue off to those short courses and see how many of those could have some stackable credential that could lead to certificate or potentially associate degree. But I think as Louise looked at it, it's where do you need that intensive college education? Where do you need to be on a farm or at a facility? And yes, I think it's currently our intent to continue to keep those operations open as capital enables itself for us to take capital. Thank you all for that answer. And we just have a few minutes left. I want to make sure that Chris Pearson gets his question or comment in. And Brian, I'm assuming that your hand is still up from before. That is the correct assumption, Madam Chair. I'll lower it now. Carol and we could run over a little if you need to to get all the questions answered. Sure. Absolutely. We don't have anything till 10.15. I just didn't know if you were booked right after this, Bobby. 10.15, so we're good. Okay, thanks. Go ahead, Chris. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. This has been a good conversation and I want to build off of some of the last comments. I'm struck in the afternoon, I serve in Senate Finance. We've been looking at broadband. I'm deeply interested in weatherization and food systems, you know, sort of what we talked about a lot in the morning in my life. In every instance, workforce is an enormous question mark. And everybody says, well, VTC is going to hail this, right? Now, you have a great track record of graduating and earning money, right? That's a selling point. We have a moment in time here where rural life is kind of interesting. And so I want to ask a couple of questions along those lines. What are you doing? Like, what is the New York City outreach plan? In addition to taking care of our kids, you know, I think there is a potential to lure people to rural parts of the country. And then, you know, a lot of people go, certainly I'm more familiar with a four-year program where I went to UVM. I didn't know what I was going to do when I enrolled. They made you pick a major. You know, that lasted for me a few weeks and it changed. And I feel like VTC is very programmed, like, you want to do this, come in here, we'll send you out here. And young people I don't think are there. And we have such a broad array of, you know, the next decades worth of workforce issues across whether it's, you know, stringing fiber optics, electricians, leatherization, you know, all of this stuff, including food systems. So I don't know quite what the question is, but how are you dealing with that? And is there kind of an open gate? Come here. If you want to be part of rural life and the workforce, you know, make a bunch of cash doing meaningful work in the next decade, come to VTC. Can you just talk about that sort of, it's not a very pinpointed question, but maybe it makes sense. Sure. I mean, we're constantly marketing out of state for that exact reason, Senator, of, you know, come to where it's clean and green. And, you know, there's no secret. I'm a UVM grad. And my first year in my English class, how many of you came here to ski and everybody but me raised their hand. And so, you know, there's that attraction as well as our reputation as a clean, healthy, progressive state. So that helps. We are hindered in large part by our cost of tuition. We have other states that surround us that are able to offer a lower tuition. And I mean no disrespect at all, but because they get greater state support and have continued to get greater state support through the years. So we compete on that front. And then often some of those rural students get here and they look around and go, wow, where's the mall? Where's the this? Where's the that? And so we may lose them on the flip side. We get students who go to larger institutions and say, no, no, no, I want a smaller, more rural, more homey community feeling and they'll transfer here. So we do capture them, but there's a lot that goes into whether they end up coming and staying here. But clearly that's the intent. And, you know, to your other point around broadband weatherization, et cetera, and, and, and well, let me go back for a minute. I mean, I'm also finding students that come to us, they're looking for a technical college experience. They're not, they're not like I was when I went to UVM where I wasn't sure, thought I'd be a lawyer, who knew. And, you know, and I, and so I wanted a liberal arts college that could give me some places to go. Students that come here like, yeah, I want to, I want to take mechanical engineering. Yes, I want to go into nursing. Having said that, we have a pretty large population of undeclared students that come every year and we help channel them in their, their correct direction. And, and our programs are pretty lockstep, you know, we cram a lot into a two and a four year degree here, but the results, the results show. So, and part of the new university will exactly give greater opportunity, if you will, for the students who might come in and say, maybe I do want to be a polysine major, like in my case, and then look over here and see these mechanical students or see these, these construction management students and say, ooh, ooh, you know, that, that kind of looks better to me. So, but, you know, we, we are a technical college, we offer the technical programs. And then we do our whole continuing ed and workforce development division is all around things like broadband, weatherization. I mean, we're doing that every day. We're currently in conversations with the CUDs about linemen education so we can get that broadband extension. We're constantly working with the CAPS and others on weatherization and other meaningful needs of the day in our workforce, but then also what needs to rise to that degree level, what could be certificate, what can be workshop, what can be certificate, what is associates, bachelor's, master's, and, and really, I mean, that's what we do. Vermont Tech's history is being responsive to the workforce needs. I mean, we built the engineering program on the interstate highway system. You know, we built the ag program as you saw in the presentation when the industrial revolution, the, the technical program when the industrial revolution took off. We built the ag program when there weren't enough ag degrees being awarded from the University of Vermont. So that's our, that's our gig, if you will. And yes, we'd love more out of state students because they come and they stay, a lot of them. But we're pretty happy to be educating our Vermonters too because 78% of those folks stay in Vermont. The other thing that I'll add to is that this is very much why we thought the center was really important. If you're a student of any kind or any age and you think, I kind of find food systems interesting, but I really don't know what I want to do. If you come in and you have somebody that meets you at the door to say, what do you find interesting? What do you like to do? What are your strengths and have them be able to help you pattern? This is a pathway forward towards some things you might find interesting that that's really a way to draw in all kinds of people who don't have the exact idea of where they're headed. And the other thing I found so interesting is Ellen shared a story during our process last summer with a pandemic raging and the inability to travel very far. Putney student travel made some alternative offerings to their usual international ones that you could send kids from high school age through early adult too. And so they had one for the Vermont food system that Castle has been hosted. And Ellen, would you be willing to share what you saw during that experience? Yeah, I was former governor, Peter Shumlin, joined the conversation and they invited me to come down and give a little talk about Vermont and our overall food system and production agriculture and just answer their questions because they were going around and having workshops at different area farms in the Rutland area. And, you know, all the kids, there was probably 20, 22 kids, they were all from downstate. They were all from outside New York City or from down or from New York City itself, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia area. And they all said we were interested in coming to this program program because we really are interested in these issues. And we know that Vermont is a place where that happens. And we were so excited to see all the farms that we would go to see. And they asked really, really good questions. Some of them, a few of them had been in farm to school programs in their schools, but most of them didn't have farm to school programs. So this was totally fresh for them. All right, thank you. I don't see any other hands. When I heard you say, and I'll just make this fairly quick because I know we are running out of time, but when I heard you say that you would be selling the dairy herd, it caused me a little agita. And I understand why Senator Star feels concerned about that. But I also, then when you said that you could do internships on local farms, that made me feel a little bit better. And I'm wondering if you could say what the availability, I mean, I know there's goat farming that's happening, which we know we need more of. Could you say a little bit about how that would work? Sure. And we did meet with a group of farms to ask them, hey, how would this work to get their input? And we realized there's some hurdles we need to overcome things as simple as housing and transportation for this. And so that would be part of the contracted position that we're discussing is to hammer out those details. Vermont Tech does have another, a number of other programs where they have paid internships for students, but they have the basic structure in place for this. We just need to dig in and figure out the details for the students for this particular program. In addition to the two paid internship opportunities, we're also looking to develop what we're considering units. And this would be an opportunity for students to work with a specific farm, for example, for three afternoons a week for a month to learn a specific skill. And that wouldn't be a paid, we would probably be paying the business for that, providing that service to the students. So we realized that we do have a lot of the nitty gritty details to figure out, but we're confident that Vermont Tech has the broad structure and that we'll have the staffing capability to really hammer that out over the next few years. Oh, go ahead, Pat. Sorry. And I share your concern, Representative Partridge, and it caused me a little agenda as well in terms of, before we make that decision to get rid of the milking herd or not keep a small milking herd or some iteration, I want to have confidence that there are those farms who are willing to host students for the long term and to understand what the issues that they may have, liability, I mean, one of the things we experienced at Norwich Farm was we had students who weren't necessarily the world's greatest artificial inseminators and they wanted the opportunity to learn more, but you had a private sector farmer who's paying the cost of the product to do the insemination wanting the best students to do that. So do we have to compensate them for some supplies, things of that nature, recognizing that they're not in the business of providing education, but as exactly as Louise said, that this contract to get moving over the summer, if we can get funding in place, we'll be able to suss all that out and really get a sense and sign folks up as well as other value-added producers and other opportunities for not just internships for the units, as Louise described. Yeah, the only piece I want to go ahead, Regina, sorry. Sure. Just no, no, thank you very much. Just to add that the one thing that we do know is that any internship will be will be closely monitored, that there will be educational content goals that are expected that we're not just going to stick them down there, hope they learn something and hope for the best, that there will be assignments connected to it. So it isn't going to be a loosely oriented internship, but rather one that has specific expectations. And I think one of the interesting challenges for us as well as everyone else as we talk about what we're seeing in this vision program is that we need to worry about internships for processing and manufacturing and logistics and social media and marketing as much as we need to figure out farm internships, because if we really see 120 plus students in this program to make it really work and thrive, it's going to be probably those that have interest beyond producing food of some kind and also looking to those other really essential pieces to add value to what's being produced here and then getting them to the marketplace. So it's going to be exciting and a big lift, but really feeling positively about the opportunities. All right, I'm watching the clock and I think that oh, Vicki has her hand up. This has got to be the last question or comment. And then I think we need to break because we need to move on. But I want to say thank you so much to everybody for all of your hard work on this in case I don't get a chance at the very end. Vicki, go ahead. Thank you. I don't think this will be too long. And I just get so excited hearing about how you guys are all working so hard and innovating and really complex sometimes. Tell me real quick, fundraising can be challenging. And you mentioned it several times in the presentation, is it a traditional send letters out to alumni kind of a thing or are there other ways that you're going to be fundraising? Well, yeah, I mean, it's alumni for sure, but it's also foundations, philanthropy grants. We'll probably be knocking on the legislature's door at some point. But it's really like any place we can go. I'm frankly hoping we could look at corporate sponsorship and be an equipment or something of that nature. We've toyed with that since I've been here. I don't know past attempts, but it's going to be combing the earth, if you will, for funding. But really starting with philanthropy grants, alumni. I mean, we've been talking with alumni and asking for giving a long time. And, you know, we do get some giving, but it's not always of a scale that like NBU and the three and a half million dollars from the president of Carhartt or things of that nature. But it's steady assistance in smaller amounts, which is great. But we're really going to have to step it up to really facilitate all this. And there are grants we're constantly going after. But yeah, that's what we're looking at. And I too just really want to thank you all very much for your time this morning, especially the extra time, your interest. And obviously lots to talk about as we move forward here, but really appreciate your feedback and your insights and we'll be following up. So thank you so much. Well, thank you all really appreciate it. And I'm sure Bobby, did you want to say a few last words? No, just that I want to thank the committee for their work. You know, you disagree and still not be disagreeable about it. So but it'll be interesting to analyze the proposal further and and thanks a lot for all the hours and days that you did spend putting this all together. Yeah. And I want to thank you too. And this has been fun to have a joint meeting with Senate Agriculture and the House Ag and Forestry Committee. And just in terms of directions, I think Senate Ag is going to hop off House Ag and Forestry is going to stay on this call. I'll give you all like a three minute break and our next witnesses here. So thank you. And yeah, Bobby. Senate Ag could come back at 20. We'll take a five minute extension on our comeback. Yeah, it's almost quarter after. All right.