 Hi, I am Dr. Farrell Birdman and I am a faculty member at the University of Vermont, and this is why you should choose UVM. There are universities out there that are doing a tremendous job, but I realized as a graduate student that there were few universities that were saying, this is where we stand. Regardless of the political implications, this is where we stand. We are going to support innovation. We're going to support productive discourse in our classroom, even if it invokes conflict. Because through these conversations, we better understand who we are and how we can be agents of change. My goal is to help students better understand who they are, so that when they leave, they have that set of core skills and values that they can imply in any setting. And I would say that at the University of Vermont, it is more than just the core knowledge education. It is allowing students to become humans in a way that they can adapt to multiple settings and multiple lines of employment, regardless of what their degree is. It is with full heart that I say, if you are here, this is your home and you belong here. This campus will help you become the person that you hope to be. The person that you might not know that you hope to be right now, but over the next four years together, it is our hope as your faculty partners that you will discover your internal compass and your guiding principles that will lead you forward. I think you have to listen to your heart and pick which place speaks to you, but going to the University of Vermont will create an identity, a grounding that wherever you go in the future, you will have this university as your network in your home with people who have similar values and similar desires to be agents of change that you can connect back to. And this is the place.