 Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. And we are here this afternoon to talk to our state colleges and to our private colleges on workforce development, what they're seeing out there. I know that we were able to get some, put some money in from the CARES Act into workforce development and running that through our state college system, which was hugely successful. And so we can let, like to hear a little bit more of some thoughts on that, how we might be able to replicate that and how our private college system also works and helps with our workforce. So with that, I'd like to have Catherine, if you would start us off. Thank you for coming. It's great to see you again in a different capacity, but it's always good to see you. Thank you so much, Chair Marquette, and thank you for having us today. I'm going to start by sharing my screen I have a couple slides for you all. Let me just a moment to set that up. So I appreciate the opportunity to come in front of the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee today to give you an update on the Vermont State Colleges System. As you all may know, we have a new leadership team, and I am Catherine Lavasser, Director of External and Governmental Affairs. I do apologize that our new Chancellor, Sophie Sadatni, was unable to join us today. She is actually in the middle of our January Board of Trustees meeting, like Representative Dickinson, and since her regards, but with me today is Maureen Hebert, who is the Associate Dean of Industrial Relations and Workforce Education at Vermont Technical College, as well as Tiffany Walker, who is the Associate Dean of Workforce Education at the Community College of Vermont. Recognizing you may have some specific questions about the programs at these two schools, they've joined me today to speak with you all. Good evening. I'd like to take just a few minutes to share who we are with you, as well as an update on our ongoing system-wide transformation. I would like to touch on the CRF Workforce Initiative that the legislature generously funded this fall, as well as our ongoing workforce development efforts. We have three key points that we'd like you to take away today. The first being that the Vermont State Colleges are essential to Vermonter's success. The second, we are in the middle of a significant system-wide transformation, which is guided by the work of the legislature's committee on the future of public higher education in Vermont. And third, we do know that Vermonter's need more from the Vermont State Colleges. They need better access to continuing their education, more flexible and affordable options, and more high quality opportunities that will help them succeed in life. And we want you all to know that we are working hard to do better and deliver more to the Vermonters that we serve. The Vermont State Colleges system has served Vermonters for over 200 years, and our system is made up of Castleton University, the Community College of Vermont, Northern Vermont University, and Vermont Technical College. As we are all aware, the COVID-19 pandemic has created both a public health crisis and an economic one across the state, and that's amplified the Vermont State Colleges' significant structural budget deficit. And we do want you to know that even though we're facing significant challenges this year, we are committed to continuing to deliver for Vermonters. Our mission starts with for the benefit of Vermont, and we have facilities and academic centers within 25 miles of nearly every Vermonter. This heat map shows you our student population and where they're concentrated throughout the state. I would say it's very easy to fall into the trap of assuming that every college student comes from a stable middle income family, that every student has a home to go to when a residence hall shuts down due to the pandemic, that every student can afford a residential four-year experience. And while we do serve many of these students, the reality is, is that the Vermont State Colleges serve all Vermonters. It includes several student stories in these slides provided to you that tell the story of the students that we serve, and we would encourage you to take a look at those when you have a moment. Educating over 10,000 students every year, our campuses are centers of academic excellence, culture, and community. And most importantly, 83% of our student body is Vermonters. We educate more Vermonters annually than all other institutions of higher education in the state combined, and two thirds of our alumni live and work in Vermont. This past year, more than 1800 Vermonters graduated from our schools with certificates and degrees and entered the workforce. And this fall, we have almost 3300 first generation students enrolled. Currently, we are educating almost 3000 low income undergraduate students as defined by Pell eligibility. We create pathways to affordable certificates, degrees and credentials, and we provide economic stability in rural regions of the state where our colleges and universities are large employers and economic anchors. As a system, we employ nearly 3800 people, and our employees live in every county of the state, including the communities that you all serve. We are among the largest employers in the state as a system next to the state of Vermont University of Vermont, the larger hospitals and a few of the largest businesses. Regionally, our colleges stack up as large employers as well, and they employ hundreds of Vermonters in our anchor communities. We offer competitive wages and benefits and are a significant employer for Vermonters of all educational attainment levels. Additionally, our top enrolled programs align with Vermont's workforce needs for mental healthcare professionals, childcare providers, educators, healthcare professionals and entrepreneurs. While the importance of the VSC to Vermont is undeniable, we do face significant challenges. We are affected by the same demographic and market challenges that are affecting colleges across the system. These have been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, and with several campuses operating online only this fall, a drop in enrollment and increased operating costs, we are in a challenging financial position. We did receive significant bridge funding and CRF dollars this year from the legislature, and for that we are incredibly grateful. With the bridge funding, the state also established the select committee on the future of public higher education in Vermont. That committee is charged with assisting the state in addressing the urgent needs of the VSC, and they are also charged with developing an integrated vision and plan for a high quality, affordable and workforce connected future for public higher education. On December 4, the select committee released their initial report, which contains several recommendations that our board is carefully considering. The main ones are a common accreditation for the three residential colleges, Vermont Tech, Northern Vermont University and Castleton University, administrative consolidation of services such as financial aid marketing and admissions, as well as a temporary structuring of our budget, which includes steps on the VSC side to reduce our structural deficit, coupled with an increase in the base appropriation from the state. We are in the process of mapping out what these would look like for the VSC, and we expect our board to further consider these in the coming months. The next select committee report is due to the legislature mid February and the final report is coming mid April. We have taken initial needed action in the chancellor's office, and we are continuing to work, both on initiatives to contain costs and operate more as a system and less as a federation. This work is ongoing and essential as we do our part to transform, and we are looking to partner with the legislature, the governor's office, the select committee and our board of directors for direction in the months to come. With this transformation in mind, the board did recently adopt a set of strategic priorities for the system, which include affordability, accessibility, quality of academic programs and relevance of programs, and embedded within each of these as it is an intentional focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. We're looking to partner with the legislature as we work to collectively stabilize the system and build a better stronger and more sustainable future for the state. We want to thank you, our legislators for the encouragement and ongoing support you've shown the system over the years, and we especially want to thank you for the bridge funding we received in the FY 21 budget, as well as the CRF funding that we received, especially the $2.3 million workforce initiative. We are incredibly passionate about keeping our students at the center of our work, and this initiative enabled nearly 1000 Vermonters to upskill at a time of great uncertainty and need. Specifically, 971 Vermonters took 1398 courses across all four institutions, thanks to the initiative. We were able to serve students in all 14 counties whose employment was impacted by the pandemic. We did a soft rollout of the program on a Friday, and we actually had to close enrollment the next week because interest was so tremendously high. We've heard incredible stories from our students about this initiative, how it came at exactly the right time, how it helped them change careers or upscale, and specifically how the wraparound services such as the technology assistance, textbook childcare and transportation assistance removed barriers that they had as they were seeking to access education. We have put out a survey to participants this week, and we're looking forward to reporting back to you as we gather more data from our students. There was a first enrollment in the CRF programs fit into a couple categories. One was accounting courses and these included classes such as accounting fundamentals accounting certification fundamentals of QuickBooks, there were a couple of finance classes that fell here. There was also a business and project management category that we saw high enrollment in that was agile project management, business project management, supervisor skill development. There was IT and web development services such as computer applications, computer fundamentals, web analytics, Java fundamentals, Python programming and website development also saw high enrollment. Courses that were relevant to early childhood education providers such as an introductory class and a curriculum development class also had high enrollment. Healthcare courses, there was a human growth and development course introduction to health information systems and a medical terminology course that also had significant enrollment. And there were upskilling courses in technical areas such as AutoCAD, AWS welding and HVAC that we saw high enrollment in as well. We spent 1.5 million of the allotted 2.3 in CRF. And the reason for that is the wraparound services were key to this program success. So those wraparound services being the childcare technology assistance textbooks but that also meant that on the system level we had to really carefully enroll students so that we didn't over promise and under deliver. And if you remember in the fall, we were operating on an incredibly tight timeline once the budget was signed to get the CRF dollars out the door to the students and roll the students get them in the classes get the classes complete all by the time that we had to do the report back in mid November. So, all of that contributed to us spending a little bit less than anticipated, and we closed enrollment after exceeded all expectations and then worked backwards to fulfill the student requests for wraparound services. We were thrilled to receive this funding from the state for the program and our students were ecstatic to have the opportunity to learn. We would be over the moon to pursue something like this again if the funds were available to do so. So in terms of our system priorities and workforce priorities I just wanted to touch on a couple things. One being that our top system priority is to work with the governor and with the legislature to define the transformation that we need to ensure that we can successfully continue to fill our education and serve for monitors for years to come. Our top workforce development priority across the system is to continue building a continuum so that people can come in up skill and leave their Vermont State College institution with a job. We are working hard to embed certificates within associates degrees and associates degrees within bachelor's degrees to give for monitors maximum flexibility. These bridges are both being built both within institutions and across institutions in the system. And one really excellent example of this is these how the CCV Allied Health Certificate feeds directly into the BTC nursing program. The CCV courses meet the general education requirements so that when students get to BTC they take the nursing courses specific to getting their RN. If a student chooses to leave with the Allied Health Certificate they're qualified for certain technician and medical assisting jobs and can work in that profession or choose to pursue their LPN at a later date. We have a couple of great workforce examples of this and I'd like to turn it over to Tiffany and Maureen for a moment to talk about those. Thank you and thank you for inviting us today. I'll let Tiffany jump in here as well but we recently developed a program in partnership with Central Vermont Medical Center and Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. We're in partnership with CCV to offer an LPN apprenticeship program. We currently have 18 students enrolled in that program across the two hospitals and have a second cohort that will be starting again in the fall. So efforts by the hospitals themselves to really be flexible about offering their employees time away so they could complete their studies and continue to work and earn an income has been really critical to that program. I think the only thing I would add to that is Maureen and I work very closely on trying to find these very distinct pathways and Catherine mentioned the Allied Health Prep Certificate and the way that this is a little different is we developed a pre-apprenticeship to apprenticeship model where students can sign up for an apprenticeship and at CVMC all current employees who are LNAs who really want to up skill and stay with the company are able to enroll as a pre-apprentice, take the coursework they need at CCV and go on to Vermont Tech as an apprentice in nursing which is a really new model of apprenticeship that we're really excited about. And what's excellent about the LPN program it's really three semesters so students are learning and earning and then they can complete the program in the late spring will June and can get to work as an LPN within the facility. Thank you. Another piece of the nursing opportunities that are available with at the Vermont State Colleges that I would like to touch on is, I think it's important to understand that Vermont Technical College has a one plus one plus two nursing program. And that is different than the traditional four year BSN that's offered at Casselton and at other colleges in the state. Having these two options in the system give students incredible flexibility. And it also means that BSC nursing programs are available in Bennington, Linden, Williston, Randolph, as well as online. The one plus one plus two means that after the first year a student achieves a practical nursing certificate and then can continue their education or take that credential into the field. After year two they earn their associates in nursing. And in the third and fourth year they work towards their BA, which is offered online. The VTC nursing program is co located with CCV and Northern Vermont University, and we are currently in the process of setting up a program in partnership between NVU and VTC to provide additional collaboration across the system. Further we do have opportunities available in the Masters of Science and Nursing program at Casselton. Our workforce example I'd like to share with you today is the work that we do with childcare providers. At CCV we have the Northern Lights contract with the state where we offer a certificate associates degree, and we also do professional development courses for providers. We have an online accelerated certificate that can be completed in four semesters and NVU Northern Vermont University has a program for an online bachelor's degree that was actually developed in sync with the CCV program. They have a traditional in person program as well, and having these two options give students maximum flexibility to choose the program that best suits their needs, and also gives us the opportunity to enroll students that in a profession where we have a great need in the state. This was designed in partnership with the state, and to address the need that providers should have a certificate or a degree. We would love to expand this because of the incredibly high demand. Currently it's operating in a cohort model, which means that there's one start date a year, we're talking about opportunities to offer it in multiple cohorts and multiple start dates throughout the year. And the CCV associates degree does feed into that NVU program, making the NVU program two years. In order to do it online you do have to have a CCV program or equivalent. It's five semesters with that CCV and the partnership or you can do a traditional four years bachelor program at NVU. And one other thing I wanted to touch on as a great program to bring your attention to today is the learning and working community currently under development at Northern Vermont University. In this model, formal partnerships between NVU and local businesses, public entities and nonprofits will be developed with some organizations co-locating on NVU's campus. Academic degree and certificate programs will align with these partnerships to meet current and future workforce needs, which is a benefit to all stakeholders. Other partnerships will physically or virtually collaborate in the classroom and outside of the classroom on mutually beneficial work experiences, research projects and other professional development for mid-career professionals. As I said, this program is currently under development, but it's really being primed to provide some really exciting opportunities for local businesses, organizations as well as NVU students. And I'd like to now turn it over to Tiffany and Maureen again, who can share some specifics from Vermont Technical College and from CCV. Thank you, Catherine. And Tiffany, I'll let you go first this time if you want. The only things that I would add, thank you Catherine for such a great piece there. Some of the materials that I sent over are based on in our apprenticeships. I've been working in tandem with VTC on developing apprenticeships and non-traditional career paths for the past couple of years, and CCV has developed apprenticeships in healthcare and in manufacturing and working on bookkeeping and things like that. And so I just wanted to bring attention to the fact that we really are working hard on making sure that our business community is a part of the educational opportunities that we're developing and that we work in partnership to make those things happen. Those apprenticeship opportunities have on-the-job training competencies that are outlined along with classroom learning, so they work together on those pieces. So things like pharmacy tech and medical assisting and production technician and bookkeeping all have those very clearly outlined on the job training competencies. So those are the RAC cards that I had added to your website are based on those apprenticeships. And at Vermont Tech, we offer quite a few apprenticeship programs as well besides the LPN program. We do several manufacturing programs with big employers like GE, GW Plastics, GS Precision, and we started recently a new program with Global Foundries. It actually has a cohort model with incumbent employers, employees, and high school students, recent graduates. Okay, we have about 800 to 900 apprentices that go through our programs. We actually serve about 60 to 70 companies through those programs and we have a credit bearing enrollment of about 797 students per year, and a non-credit bearing enrollment of about 2,400 students per year. We were fortunate to receive a grant through the U.S. Department of Labor called the Strengthening Working Families Initiative that was focused specifically on manufacturing development for working parents. And through that program we've served about 300 working adults with children under the age of 12. We also receive wraparound services so it's similar to the workforce grant or initiative that we recently rolled out. Through that program they're earning credentials, industry recognized certificates, and on a pathway to receive their associates degree. Additionally, through the GE program, we have added recently a master's robotics program. In addition to the toolmaker and maintenance technician program that we offer, and that program is actually growing so we're adding a new cohort this year, and we're going to be expanding to new sectors including additive manufacturing through a recent Department of Defense contract that we received at Vermont Tech. So we know you may have some questions for us about some of these initiatives or about some of the things that we do for workforce development or the system as a whole, and if the chair is amenable we would be open to answering as well as we can. Great. Any questions for Catherine, Maureen, or Tiffany? Emma. Thank you. A little while ago you mentioned the workplace development incentive. I'm just wondering if there's any, you mentioned a reporter too out there, I'm a new legislator. So I'm just curious if that is something that you could share with those of us who are new or at least for me to read about because it seems like that is of great value, especially around the piece of removing barriers for folks like childcare and transportation in order to even up their skills, up their game, up their, you know, degree work, and I would just love to read a little bit more about that. So we are in the process of surveying the students that participated. This was a CRF initiative. So it was an initiative that was completed in the fall to enroll students. We are in the process of completing an evaluation and collecting feedback from the students. So when that is fully compiled, we're getting more and more feedback coming in by the day. So when that's fully compiled, we would be thrilled to share it with the committee. Catherine, are you able to, in that report, break down by gender? How many people, you know, how many male, how many female, and even in ethnicity in the community, so that we can see, we just, we just heard a report this morning about that women are, have been receiving more UI now than ever before, way, way above what we expected. And I'd be interested to see if, if in the women category, if we see a lot of women taking those courses while they were unemployed, and also one benefit that one thing that did benefit them to be able to take those was that we had, we had put a hold on their need to have to go out and job search so that they, it actually I think would help anyone that's unemployed to go through and get those, get that added education that they need to, you know, upscale their jobs, their employment abilities, making them more successful in the long run. So, I think we would certainly be happy to gather whatever demographic data that we can to support that I might ask Tiffany and Maureen were more intimately involved in crafting the survey that went out to participants and might know a little bit more about that specifically so I might ask if they had anything to add. So the original CRF data, we can absolutely pull that the survey doesn't ask that question and in fact allows them to be anonymous if they would like to. So the survey really is about, you know, were you able to enroll the course fit your needs, all of those kinds of things and so but absolutely for the original data of people enrolling we can, we can pull that those types of demographic pieces. That would be very helpful I think. Charlie. Yeah, thank you. I just have a few questions Catherine when you showed the map of the state and employees. Is that where the employees work or where they're from. Home address, home address. Okay. So that's fairly evenly distributed but obviously they work in different campuses. Okay. Thank you. Maureen you had mentioned the nursing program of Central Vermont and Brattleboro Hospital that program already existed right that's not new. It's new as of this fall it's now an apprenticeship program and it's delivered right on site at Central Vermont Medical Center. In the past students would have to do a full time program at one of the Vermont tech sites which are in partnership with CCV and some of the tech centers across the state. This is actually being delivered at CVMC and they have a flexible schedule so they can continue to work while they're taking classes. So what was the program was it at Brattleboro before was it CCV was operating the program in Brattleboro. We had a medical assisting program at Brattleboro that's in its fifth or sixth cohort on the college to career program where people could take. People who did not work for Brattleboro they were coming from the community and really wanted to get into healthcare. They would take one semester intensive five courses a full time and then start working immediately upon finishing those courses. The LPN program at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital is also new. So there are fewer students in that program than at CVMC but they're hoping to grow that and they recently received a grant from Thompson's Trust to help with that. We also offer through Vermont Tech and LNA program license nursing assistant program. Okay, thank you. And then, Tiffany, I remember a lot of discussion about a certain piece of robotic equipment for Rutland's CCV site. Did that end up going with the adult tech education center or what happened with that. That is a great question. Peter Fagans might across the street neighbor so I'm just going to see if he's looking in. I think that we never, you know, CCB was not able to. So we are not eligible for the funding source that that discussion ended up flowing into those are tech center specific funds so no we were not able to. We would still love to do it I think teaching people robotics would be really, really important to us into our advanced manufacturing pieces and getting them interested in those kinds of careers and going on to Vermont Tech. We were not able to get that funding at CCB. Okay. Just the last question I had was in terms of the trends is you're talking about the number of apprenticeships and it's a pretty impressive number I'm just wondering about where that trend line is in terms of where it has been over the past couple of years. It's definitely growing and new industry sectors are interested in getting on board with it, particularly manufacturing in the past it's mostly been the trades so our biggest programs right now are electrical and plumbing and those typically have about 700 students in those programs. So employers it is a commitment they have to hire an apprenticeship student and then work with them as a mentor as they take the related instruction. So it's, it's a little bit of a convincing and getting people on board and why it's a benefit there really is a high rate of retention with apprentices nationally so that's one really good statistic particularly for manufacturing and healthcare, people aren't going to jump ship if you've invested in them this way. So we've been adding new apprenticeship programs and it's it's over time I think you'll see quite a few across the nation there are thousands. Thank you I mean this this committee is always supported apprenticeships and it's just a matter of getting enough people to fill the slots. Yeah, we're actually working right now with the state and employer partners on a fiber optic installer program so more to come on that we're hoping that will become an apprenticeship program. Thank you very much. Just to piggyback on what Charlie was asking. We had taken testimony I think a couple years ago about the issue of licensure and the ability for hospitals to be able to have apprenticeships and for nursing, because of the credentialing that that needed to be done and the last OPR to take a look at that and has that lesson or made things a little easier. Well the LPN program that we're currently offering is actually a registered apprenticeship program so it was approved. The curriculum is still the accredited quality curriculum that Vermont tech has always offered. The particular program has been approved we are looking at other programs like phlebotomy and other licensed occupations for the apprenticeship model so that the nice thing about apprenticeship is you're actually working and learning at the same time most people don't want to quit their job and go to school full time, particularly in this day and age that allows participants more options and being able to support their family while they're learning a degree or earning a degree. Yeah I think trying to remember the whole issue but it seemed that there's there's a need for nurses while they're going to school to apprentice into into hospitals. And that there were not nurses eligible to be able to oversee them while they were in the hospital they because there were some changes in licensure. And we had asked that to be taken a look at to see if they could, if, if experience could be added to you know the licensure need for those people overseeing. Yes, we're fortunate we have a strong preceptor model at Central Vermont Medical Center they're actually one of their employees is overseeing that piece for our students. So they committed one of their staff members to help with that piece. So that was helpful I know some of the regulations around a mastered prepared nurse is the only one that could be the the preceptor that those have been relaxed a little bit you can have a BSN. That's good I think that's something that we were pushing hard on. Because it was, it is an issue of being able to get more more nurses into the field quickly. It seemed like we had plenty of people applying to for the courses, but we just couldn't get them get them through the courses fast enough, because of those restrictions. And we had with someone who might otherwise be a qualified instructor that had to quit a better paying job, go get their master's degree and then take on a lower paying job. Yep. Like why would you do that. It wasn't making a lot of sense. So it's glad to hear that. Any other questions for Catherine Maureen or Tiffany. Okay, thank you. Let's mention one more thing. We have a current and tech ed teacher licensure program so basically works like an apprenticeship model program, where the someone from the industry sector decides that they want to become a teacher at a tech center. So we oversee that program it's an accelerated program so those experts in the field can become teachers and get their licensure. And that's helped us develop a really close and strong relationship with the CTEs across the state. And through our program and Tiffany the same we offer many, many programs at the tech centers, including the apprenticeship programs for plumbing and electrical. This year we did not because of covert restrictions but we were able to move some of those courses online but that's been a really strong relationship with Vermont tech and the CTEs and CCV. What, what kind of courses would save an electrician a master electrician need to take in order to teach the apprentice program. They actually just need a terminal license so that would be the master's license to be able to teach. Nice. That's good. My son just became on a couple years ago after going through VTC and. Oh, great. Does he want to teach. You know, someday he'd like to like to give back so. Okay, I'll have him call me. Okay. Anything else. Well thank you all for joining us today. We really appreciate discussion. Appreciate what you do, especially in regards to our workforce. Very important work. And we thank you for that and thank you also for getting that that CARES Act money out and helping our, our unemployed from honors. We appreciate some needed education so that they can get a better job going forward. And you're more than happy. I'm more than happy to have you stay on and listen in and if there's, if you wish and you can continue to join the conversation as we go. Thank you for reaching out to us. I appreciate you joining us today and I think we don't, we don't hear enough from our private college system. So I think it's a, it's a great opportunity for us to hear from you and learn more about our private colleges. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and I appreciate the opportunity to be here just for the record, Susan Stitely with the Association of Vermont independent colleges. The acronym is AVIC. And I'm pleased to meet the new committee members and appreciate this opportunity to be here. I'm just going to give you a brief overview of AVIC and the private colleges to complete your picture of the higher education sector in the state. We have 11 private colleges, 11 private nonprofit accredited colleges, and those colleges, you know, extend throughout the state from the Northeast Kingdom to the southern borders and I'll just mention a few because they're very each is very different and unique. In the Northeast Kingdom, we have Sterling College, which only has 120 so on students. They are one of eight students in the entire eight colleges in the country that is a work study college so the students all have to work as part of their program. The focus is sustainable agriculture sustainable food systems outdoor education. They have a farm. So it's a very hands on opportunity in the southern part of the state. We have entirely different focus with the SIT the school for international training. Their main programs are now all abroad. So their students have an opportunity to experience life in different countries and bride and broaden their horizons also in the southern part of the state is Landmark College, which is only one of two in the country that focuses exclusively on students with learning difficulties. On the other side of the state we have Bennington College they have a unique January term where their students work for the entire month of January inside Vermont and outside Vermont, so that they have some real life experience. We also have the only law school in the state Vermont law school. We have the oldest private military college in the country, the founder of the ROTC that's at Norwich University. And we have Champlain College in Burlington they offer 80 different degrees they have a very strong online program and certificate program as well. And St. Mike's of course is in Colchester and they have were founded by the St. St. Society of St. Edmond, and they have a strong legacy of contributions and community involvement and giving back to the community. As you probably know, you know our higher education system is quite fragile. We've had four colleges close over recent years we've got currently you know the Vermont State colleges are looking at how to restructure. We're going to have two more higher education institutions close this year. Necky, the New England Culinary Institute, and the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Science are going to close at the end of the semester when they teach out their current students. Thank you so much for the legislature support for the CRF funding that was given to the private colleges. It was really valued and needed. We had over $144 million in loss. So that really helped to support the colleges, particularly through all the challenges of the pandemic and I just briefly like to talk about some of those challenges that we meant. But that was really key to helping move things forward. The private colleges took a strong leadership role in the state. AVIC helped develop the governor's restart guidelines. We brought both the public and the private colleges together weekly for conversations to discuss how to get students back safely and I think we were very successful in doing that. So during the pandemic, which of course is continuing, we didn't have any transmission of COVID from student to community so that was really a success. We did have unfortunately at St. Mike's there was an outbreak but that was from the community to the students and then it did spread quickly. We had a lot of lessons learned. We did a lot of testing. We also did get testing dollars from the legislature, which was key. We're going to be beefing up testing in the spring semester. Students are just starting to come back to campus now they'll be doing an on campus quarantine for 14 days, testing on arrival testing a day seven and most of the colleges are doing weekly testing throughout the spring semester. So as a preventative there's not going to be a spring break any of the colleges for this year, they're going to be doing, keeping the students here and finding people colleges are doing a variety of things having reading days a day off here and in order to keep the state and the students safe. So we don't want them going back out. The first spring break and returning so COVID has been, you know, a real impact on the students although enrollment has stayed fairly consistent with most of the colleges and some have even seen an increase. Vermont is really considered you know safe school reopening. So that is attracting more students to the state. One of our key contributions I think to the workforce is that 80% about 80% of our students are from out of state so we are bringing in a whole youthful population. And many of these students stay in Vermont many want to stay in Vermont so it's a captive youth group that is coming here to the state. And you know as a governor continually says we need more young people. So we need to find ways to keep this group here. They oftentimes they can't find jobs but many of them fall in love with Vermont. I'm sure some of you might have come here from out of state to go to college yourselves. And it really makes a difference and has provided strong leadership throughout government and, you know, the state. I did want to just mention because people have been curious about the distribution of the CRF money. And it was written so that a Vic could decide how to distribute the money amongst the colleges. And when it's a real example of the collaborative nature of the private colleges we work together to ensure that the smaller colleges got what they needed. They had had under $1 million of coven related expenses that they could claim under the cares act. They got 100% of their needs, the small the larger colleges, then divided the rest and middlebury college because they have an a fairly large endowment for Vermont They offered to take less money in support of the smaller colleges. So it was a really great collaboration of working together to keep our smaller colleges strong and alive. We also had a representative on the governor's restart economic team. He didn't originally designated anyone from higher ed onto the team higher ed with the public and the privates in the state is the third largest employer in terms of salary and wages. So, a petition the governor we got the former president of Norwich University on the team which Snyder. So we work closely with that team and making sure that the economic restart happens smoothly and with the support of higher education as well. I did want to say that it's really key that we do bring in and we also do you know 20% of our students are Vermonters so we reach out to Vermont students as well. The private colleges provide all these different opportunities for learning in the state and we continually you know give scholarships reduce our tuition and are working hard to reach out to everyone in the state. And I'll leave it, you know, open it up to questions that you might have on the general landscape of the private colleges. Okay, questions for Susan. Charlie. Sorry, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much for coming in and I just was wondering are Goddard and also just wrote it down Vermont College on the earth so they're also members. Yes, yes they are and you probably know that Goddard was on probation, they are now off of probation there. They've been reinstated for the next 10 years so that's been a big success for the Goddard is you know, getting more and more financially secure and Vermont College of Fine Arts is also a member. Let's see if I missed anybody else when I was talking. I think I think I covered everybody else. I think that's it. Yeah, I was just going down through the list of, of course it's been a tumultuous period of course when I was back at school UVM so many years ago Trinity College still existed in Burlington College did and it's just been a long transition that how's how's Vermont's industry versus New Hampshire in terms of private colleges I mean how is our trend any different than what's going on in terms of the number of institutions. I think we have more private institutions in New Hampshire, you know their state system is quite strong. The one New Hampshire University of New Hampshire is very strong and has a big online presence. But I think you know our colleges are more well known. And I don't know the difference in the student population between the two states but that's an interesting. I did want to mention this year we had three new college presidents who started in the middle of the pandemic, Champlain College, Bennington College, and Norwich all had new presidents who really had to scramble and have a different experience than they were expecting. Thank you. We do have we do have two presidents leaving Goddard College president Bernard bull is going to leave and he's he really successfully led the accreditation process and getting Goddard off of probation and Thomas McHenry at Vermont law school is also leaving. They're unmuted. Hi. As I was listening to you earlier you said you only mentioned a few of the colleges and you and you did you mentioned a good solid handful of them. I was sort of sitting and waiting to hear Middlebury colleges name. It wasn't mentioned in that earlier thing I thought could it be that they're not a member of this association of independent colleges so I quickly looked up your website and saw, oh good they are. And then of course, my own Vermont College of Fine Arts here in Montpelier. I was glad to see that they're a member as well. Just to comment because I've always considered Middlebury to be one of the finest colleges in Vermont. And when you didn't mention them like that, something must be wrong here. I didn't mention them because everybody knows Middlebury. Those people right away they think of Middlebury and the smaller colleges aren't as well known, but they are a member a very active member actually their president is on my executive committee for the next two years. And they're very supportive of the higher ed community community, they gave up part of their money to support the smaller schools from the money. I was glad to hear that too. Yep. Thank you. No big question behind that. Okay, Emma. Thank you. And Susan hi I'm a representative up in Burlington and I just want to it's more of a comment and a note of gratitude there was a lot, a lot, a lot of nervousness here in Burlington with the return of students in the fall around coven and how that would impact the Burlington community and UVM in particular but also Champlain and St. Mike's to some extent even though they're in Colchester, just sort of tremendous job of supporting students and not only, you know, in quarantine mode but testing and the constant testing because so many students also live in the community as well as on campus so I just wanted just to take a moment to say thank you and extend that on to the university because it really, it really mattered allowed us to reopen schools allow us to run childcare, which is, you know, possible for people like me to work during the day so really allow just a gratitude of taking that so seriously, and to the students of course right by extension. Thank you I really appreciate that. One thing I didn't mention is we did have all the students, public and private had to sign a health pledge, you know, obeying the regulations that each college put in place wearing mass social distancing. There were violations and there were students who were kicked off campus, but it was really not as many as anticipated so the students really, you know, saw the value of being together but I appreciate representative your support. What happened in Burlington because it was a lot of work and everybody jumped up and did their job. Any other questions for Susan. Okay. Thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you for having me and also I think you would extend the invitation to have you invite some college presidents who could come and talk in more detail about their programs and what they're doing I think hearing directly from them is better than, you know, me telling you what they're doing so they would be pleased to come before the committee. We'd be glad to do that. Stephanie has a, does I have a question for you. Thank you Susan just a quick comment. So I like that. The fact that higher education institutions were recognized as a significant employer in the state and part of that restart task force. And so it was recognized that that this group is a significant employer Vermont and going forward what would you recommend for us? How do we keep that on top of mind that that these institutions are excellent employers provide good salaries and excellent benefits to their, to their, their staff and just like to write, I think we just need to recognize that this is a significant industry in the state. I totally agree of course, and I have worked at various times with the marketing tourism department. Have had some successes, but it has taken, they still don't think of higher education as a business which we really are, even it's a nonprofit business. So I think the state needs to be marketing higher ed, much more than it does, and that we need to be part of any strategic marketing plan because we are, you know, bringing the youth here and we are one of the largest industries. So I know, you know, they want to promote lodging and restaurants but they should be, I really feel there, there should be more promotion at the state level of higher education, making Vermont more well known for being an education destination. Good point. Anything else for Susan. Well, again, thank you for joining us today and thank you Tiffany Maureen. We appreciate the discussion. We're trying to set up a time with President Garamella UVM and I think it would be a good time. If we can get a date set with him that we can get some dates at the same time with some of our college presidents that you would suggest Susan and maybe we can get the chancellor and with us to state colleges and make it a nice afternoon of discussing colleges. So committee, I think that's it for the week. I appreciate your hard work this week. It just gets keeps getting harder from here on in. Next week we'll be actually looking at the Budget Adjustment Act and the pieces that we have to deal with in that and we're getting that lined up. We, at least Wednesday morning all morning, and it could be longer we have to get a report back to appropriations by the following Monday and my plan is to be finished with that by next Friday so stay tuned to that. We also have s nine received a message from Chairman Sorokin that the Senate has passed s nine. So we will have it Tuesday. And so we'll begin working on that Tuesday afternoon. The hope is to get that passed out Tuesday afternoon. So we can get it to the floor by the end of the week. Any anybody have any questions before we get off live feed. Okay, have a good weekend everyone. Appreciate your work.