 System Board of Trustees Resolution 2020-019. It's a resolution honoring the service of J. Churchill-Hines. Whereas J. Churchill-Hines, or church, has served on the Vermont State College's Board of Trustees for a total of 18 years from 1987 to 2000, and subsequently from 2015 to 2020, having been appointed by Governors Madeline Cunin, Howard Dean, and Peter Shumlin, respectively. And whereas during his combined 10 years, Church dutifully served on the audit, long-range planning, and facilities and finance committees, Chair of the Finance and Facilities Committee, and most recently served as Chair of the Board, and whereas Church has completed a professional career spanning 45 years of experience in health services, higher education, non-profit leadership, and public policy, distinguished by services Vice President of the University of Vermont Medical Center, and consultant to the UVM Health Network, COO of One Care Vermont, CEO of Visiting Nurse Association of Chittenden and Grand El Counties, member CEO of Vermont Business Roundtable, various teaching appointments at the University of Vermont School of Medicine, St. Michael's College and the University of Iowa, and service on the cabinets of Governor Richard Snelling and Governor Madeline Cunin as Vermont Commissioner of Budget and Management, State Budget Director, and as Deputy Administration Secretary, as well as Chair and Governor Cunin's Vermont Higher Education Study Commission, and whereas Church is truly personified for the benefit of Vermont through his service on the boards of the Curtis Fund Foundation, Snelling Center for Government, Research Center for Children, Youth and Families, Mercy Connections, Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, and Vermont Association of Non-profit Organizations, in addition to the Vermont State Colleges Board, and whereas the Vermont State Colleges Board of Trustees and the VSE system has been enriched and has benefited from Church's professional accomplishments, public service, and community participation, and whereas the Vermont State Colleges Board of Trustees have enjoyed Church's wit, wisdom, and calming presence as a fellow trustee and board chair, therefore, let it be resolved the Vermont State Colleges Board of Trustees expresses its sincere appreciation to Churchill Hines for the benefit he has brought to the state of Vermont through his service to the VSE system, to its four colleges and universities, to its hundreds of faculty and staff, and most important of all, to its thousands of students. Church, we're honored to have served with you and we wish you the very best. Now, do we need a motion just to accept that? I move to move to accept this resolution. I need a second. Second. Okay, any discussion? I think we are at a point of commission to study this. We'd seem that's the kind of thing we would do, but no, absolutely, by acclimation. Okay, all those, anyone else have any comments or any say anything? Lynn, can I just briefly, I think, Church, I'm gonna miss you. I, whenever I'm trying to communicate a point, either in a letter or speaking out during these meetings, I'm going to remember to try and channel you. You're usually direct, but you tend to choose, let's say, you make gentler language choices than I would often make. So I'm gonna work on doing that, plus remember to always include that praise in there, which you've always been good at. So I'm going to work on channeling you. Thank you. Anyone else? Go ahead, Michael. So Church, just want to thank you also for your service. It's great to see you today. And the second what Linda said, it was, I always knew you were sort of the thought, the thoughtful and moral compass of the, of the board, it seemed like, and your way of running a meeting, whether a finance meeting or a board meeting, always did an exceptional job and always sort of took notes and tried to figure out how I can do that like Church. So you served as a great example to us and certainly great public service to the state over 18 years. So thank you. Anyone else? Well, Church, I guess I want to say thank you, but thanks, thanks a lot for nothing also because but you know, you really were a role model and you really were an excellent teacher of how to behave as a chair and how to move a meeting along and do everything correctly. I can't say I always understood that as well as serving under you. I served in a bunch of boards, but this has really been the most educational one in many ways. And working under you was certainly really very, very educational and very helpful. And I really appreciate the support you always gave me. You know, I know you're going to have a great time out there in your shorts and your, in your sandals and relaxing now, but Sophie. Yeah, I just wanted to add. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much, Church, for really helping me with my transition from general council to interim chancellor to chancellor. So thank you very much for that. And I did want to let you know that the collage you have requested is on its way. We are working on that. So we hope to get that to you shortly. And just to let everyone else know, Church had requested a collage of photographs from the colleges and we've gathered those and Jen and I had sort of stretching our artistic abilities, but we are working on getting that for you and we'll get it to you as soon as we can. Anyone else who wants to say something to Church? If not, both those going to say something. Well, I just want to appreciate your leadership, Church, and to say as well that having the opportunity to serve with you, I consider a great honor. And as well, when I hear the litany of the work that you have been engaged in, I'm exhausted just listening to it. But it's such a deep, deep contribution not just to the Vermont State Colleges, but to the state of Vermont. And for that, I am deeply grateful and thank you so much. Anyone else? Go ahead, Karen. I want to thank you again, Church. For those of you who don't know, I probably have known Church the longest. I didn't know him well at the time. I was a freshman. He was a senior. He was always in a leadership role. I remember him as a monitor when the nuns couldn't be in class. They had come in to watch us and guide us and make sure we weren't having too much fun. Are there photos? I want photos. But I would just say this was back in the day. This was, and Church, you've held up well as an older man, senior to me. But those were back in the days when people wore uniforms. The girls had uniforms. They even dictated the color of our knee socks and sweaters. And the boys had blazers and ties. And we had girl stares and boy stares. And all this stuff was strictly enforced. So I want you to see that Church and I have come a very long way in our thinking from that regimentation. But Church was a leader back then. And he was respected and relied upon even back then. So you could see how his life was going to unfold. So thank you, Church. I won't say a word, Karen, if you don't say a word. Well, suffice it to say I wasn't the monitor. Anyone else? Well, Church, do you have any final words of wisdom? Yeah, just a little bit. In my time away, I've been doing a little bit with the medical center here in Burlington and just some reflecting that if my career had been limited to where I've been trained professionally in healthcare, I would have had too narrow a view of what it's all about. And I remember that when I was actively teaching, I would talk to medical students and others about the dangers of too narrowly defining mission and saying that health is a cellular phenomenon, a physiological phenomenon, and encouraging them to look beyond to a broader perspective that the World Health Organization encourages, which is typically phrased as physical, mental, and social well-being is what constitutes health. Working with the DSC, though, I've really been able to broaden that part on social and understand that if we have Vermonters who are not fulfilling their intellectual capacity, they're not healthy. If they're not meeting their economic goals, they're not healthy. If they're subjects of injustice, they're not healthy. And I think if I kind of stuck to the narrower original career plan that I had, I would not have appreciated the breadth of really what it's all about. And I can think of no other enterprise in Vermont other than the one that we are involved in as trustees and the presidents and their institutions and Sophie and her team that is better positioned to really fulfill broadly defined health and well-being for Vermonters. It's been an absolute honor to be part of it. Thank you. Well, thank you. It's been an honor to serve with you. It's been an honor to see you come back and help us as we work our way through these difficult times. You know where to find me. Okay. Thank you. So all those in favor of the resolution, please say I. Okay. Well, thank you very much, church. You're welcome to stick around. I may stick around until the break and then Mimi and I have some things we're going to be doing. Okay. Well, thank you. Okay. We're going on next to the next item, which is the approval of the minutes. We have minutes from September 28th and September 18th. Are there, we need a motion to approve of those? Someone want to second that? Second. Okay. Any discussion? Any corrections omissions? Anything that anyone wants to talk about? Okay. Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion of approving those two minutes, please indicate by saying I. Opposed? Hearing none, they're approved. Okay. I'm just going to remind people, we have down here on the bottom of the Zoom, we have a participants icon. And if you click on that, you can see the list of all the participants in the, in the meeting. And if somebody would like to speak, you can go to your name and raise your hand. I think that's how it works. It's been a little rusty here. No, down at the bottom, it says raise hand. And your hand goes up like that. And then when you're finished, you can lower your hand. That's a nice orderly way of being able to participate and join in the conversation. And if you have something you want to contribute, this is an easy way to be recognized. There are several co-hosts and they can, they can do a variety of things, but it helps me if I want to call on someone, I will try to recognize those hands. It's easier than just trying to catch my attention on the screen since not everybody's on the screen at the same time. So moving along here now, we are going to some of the meat of the, of the, of the meeting, we're going to be a discussion of the adoption of the Vermont State College System strategic priorities. And I'm going to ask Sophie to go through that, please. Thank you. Yeah. So briefly by way of background, we've been working on this for some time on the board engaged in an exercise at its meeting on September 19th regarding updating its strategic priorities. And then following the board meeting, Sharon, Scott, Yasmin, Ziesler, and I worked on a, a draft for the board's consideration. We then sent that around to you for your input. And based on that input, we came up with the document that's attached it, I think it's page 14 and 15 or maybe 15 and 16 in the board materials. And so that really sets forth what the goal is here, the board's strategic priorities for the system are to articulate the Vermont State College's mission and role in providing public post-secondary education in Vermont. The board is committed to achieving success acting as a fully integrated system that achieves financial stability in a responsible and sustainable way and ensures equitable access to and completion of a quality post-secondary education for all Vermonters, including those who've been marginalized or underrepresented historically. And then we have four separate sections. And we had discussed these in the breakout rooms at the meeting that we had back in the middle of September. The first one being affordability. The second one is accessibility and the last two are quality and relevance of the academic programs. So we've tweaked the document, we've discussed it, shared it with the presidents. So really my question to the board is, do you have any and want to discuss this further? Do you have any questions, suggested edits or changes to the document that's in the materials for today's meeting? I mean, I'll go ahead and indicate if you want to say anything. Otherwise, I just wanted to give you a heads up that what the next steps are for this is, given the limited bandwidth that we have and given all the other things that are going on, including the legislative select committee, the work of NCHEMS, the external consultant, what we're going to focus on is we can't obviously do all the things that are listed in that document. So the plan is that the Long Range Planning Committee meeting that's coming up on the 29th of October is that we will come forward with the specific strategic priorities that we will focus on for the remaining nine months of this academic year. We'll be working with the presidents to talk through the potential strategies for each of those initiatives and coming up with the benchmarks to measure our performance on those items. So we'll bring that to the Long Range Planning Committee meeting at the end of October and then to the full board at the November 16th meeting. So those will be the next steps in the process. Does anyone else have any questions or concerns? Okay, if not, if not, we can go and it says the discussion and adoption of the VSCS strategic priorities. We do have some language for motion. Megan, are you still there? I am still here. Are you ready for this, Lynn, or do you want to take this? Well, we can have discussion after the motion is made and seconded as well. Okay, perfect. So then the motion is I hereby move the board to adopt the strategic priorities as set forth in the meeting materials at pages 15-16 and direct the chancellor following consultation with the presidents to recommend which strategic initiatives be addressed first. I further move that this recommendation be presented to the Long Range Planning Committee at the board at its upcoming meeting on October 29, 2020 for its review and approval prior to presentation to the full board at its November 16, 2020 meeting. Now, do I have a second on that? Ryan has a second? Okay. David, you have some comments. I do have a question. I think I heard Sophie say it, but I wanted to verify that when the Long Range Planning Group gets together and looks at the strategic initiatives that we think we can do this year, that at that point you would be setting benchmarks or key performance indicators. Is that correct that you'll do that primarily for the things we think we can tackle this year? Right. So I don't know if we'll have all of those done by the 29th, as that's quite an ambitious timeline, but for sure by the November 16th meeting. So we'll be working with the presidents in terms of what the strategies would be to achieve the initiatives and then how we would measure those. And my hope is that we can also work with NCHEMS. They've been collecting a considerable amount of data as part of the work they're doing for the Select Legislative Committee. And they've already shared some of that data, which we may be able to use, but there may be other information I'd like to reach out to them, maybe for some assistance in terms of identifying what would be appropriate measurements as well. Excellent. Thank you. Anyone else have any questions? Anything you'd like to share? Okay. I just saw one. Bill, go ahead, Bill. Yeah. Could I just ask Sophie to translate the acronym for anyone who isn't using those I think we need to be aware of that. We fall into acronyms both in the legislature and here that are just mysterious to people who aren't eating our food day to day. I am sure there is. It has a full name, but they're just simply known as NCHEMS. So NCHEMS is one of the groups that was, well, is the group that was selected. It was one of the vendors that had submitted a proposal to the Joint Fiscal Office in connection with the work the Legislative Select Committee is using. I believe they originated out of witchy, which is, again, I don't know all the acronyms, but witchy is the accrediting entity for the Western part of the United States. And they were affiliated, as I understand it, with witchy or grew out of witchy. And they're based in Colorado. But I do not know what NCHEMS stands for. It's N-C-H-E-M-S. And I'm afraid I don't know. I'm sure it's got education as the E, but an N is probably national. But beyond that, I don't know. Anyone else have any more questions? Any concerns? Okay. If no one has anything further, then we can vote on this. All those in favor of adopting these Vermont State College system strategic priorities, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Aye. Okay. Thank you. So we will be looking forward to seeing more of that on the Long Range Planning Committee meeting October 29th. Oh, there we go. Someone's just, Michael Fox just shared, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems. Thank you, Michael. That was in the chat. So, Lynn, I would suggest we had, and you know, in trying to figure out where it was a good idea to have a break, we had thought maybe this was a good spot. But as we're only sort of half an hour in, I was wondering if maybe we just moved that, you know, maybe closer to 2 o'clock or 2.15 and move on to the next item that works. Yeah, we do have some people that have to leave. There's a couple of commitments that people have. So what we could do is just go, this is another important piece, the update on the changes stemming from the work of the Vermont State College System Forward Task Force. And this is something that, as Meen can report on. Yes, thank you. So the task force, the board moved forward four recommendations. One was around low enrolled and duplicate programs at Castleton and Northern Vermont University. One was around Vermont Tech and CCV. One was around a general education and one was around online developing a single framework for our online program access. I'm going to start with the final two because those are the short updates and I think we can report more to EPSL in detail. But on general education, we have a committee of faculty chairs of their respective general education programs. We've actually already been meeting for a year. And at this point, we're very close to a framework at the associate degree level that would define a general education core. And the group is now moving forward and working with a consultant to identify what learning outcomes should be for those requirements and then work to kind of finalize a plan with that program. On the online framework for online access, we are in the middle of engaging. We actually just this morning looked at a number of vendors to help us build out a website. Part of that design will also help us really think about how to present the array of what we do. That's very much something where our faculty across the system have been inventing all sorts of new ways to deliver online and sort of highly engaged but distant remote learning opportunities. And so our teaching and learning technologies group this afternoon is also in the middle of discussing what best practices are emerging around those programs. And I think the next step is clearly they've talked about at their previous meeting, needing to develop some good recommendations and standards for how we do that across the system. So that's all ongoing work. And I'm happy to share more with with Epsil in a bit. There is a report on the the Vermont Tech and Castleton programs, but maybe I'll leave that second and I'll speak first to the Castleton and Northern Vermont University work. So you have a detailed report in your packet from a joint group of faculty, as well as our Provost Thomas Pugh and Nolan Atkins who are here today. That group worked very hard and very intensely over about the past six weeks to attempt to respond to the charge the board gave it, which was to bring back a recommendation around low enrolled and duplicate programs. It was it was a very good conversation and I think their their overall thinking in the report is very well represented that when you get into the details of this it's really important to engage the faculty who know their programs best and to come up with a way to have those discussions with programs across institutions to think about how to organize or invite conversation among programs that might find some synergies. So you'll see a sample clustering of programs in that report that sort of shows them in some in one just example disciplinary cluster and then some kind of sample discussion prompts to guide the guide the conversation. The in addition to so in addition to a sort of first recommendation to essentially continue the work of developing a plan utilizing faculty who are directly involved in the programs, the group is also making a recommendation that we develop some clear target ranges for performance indicators. These could be things like achieving a certain class size average across programs across an institution and then there are many ways actually to problem solve how you do that and that's really where the creativity of faculty comes into play. And then finally the group recognizes there are a lot of other things to be sorted out everything from library access to how students might access courses where where they might be listed across multiple institutions and register for those courses. So there is a lot of work in there to be figured out. I will say also that a kind of consistent framework for thinking about this that the group talked about a lot was the fact that you've got cost and quality and access as as different dimensions to the program to this challenge to this problem and it's really a matter of sometimes there are some tradeoffs to the kinds of solutions that you might come up with. So those are things that we talked a lot about and I think are reflected in some of the details of the report. With that little bit of preamble out yeah I'll pause for questions. Yeah so Yasmeen do you thank you for that. Do you see given all the dimensions that people are looking at that there is going to be a path to decision making my concern is always that when you take into account lots and lots of variables you you can't you can't see the forest through the trees and so I am concerned that it what we want it to be thorough it also needs to have a goal line and also and rightfully so people are usually passionate about things which is great but then sometimes the ability to make a hard decision can't fall within the group and needs to come from an external force so I guess my two questions are do you see it on a path to decision making and do you see that whether it's a third party involvement or a trustee involvement or whatever to help make what will feel like in in are very difficult decisions but will not be able to be made within the group because of the fact that they are difficult and can get personal and passionate yeah yeah so I will I will answer this my my selfie I think you've given that question to me directly rather than on behalf of the group which I chaired it's it's hard for me to see a way to come to the hardest decisions you know because it does involve people thinking about programs their own closest colleagues and and there is always there are always more details so that you know timeframes and I think some of the recommendations that the group made are actually constructive in that way setting timelines setting some target things to reach which can really help you know department chairs and faculty think creatively about okay well what do we need to get to but but all that said yes I think I think this is something that is going to need decision making beyond beyond the faculty involved in the designs so I would suggest that that thinking about the who and the what and the how of the decision making should be a parallel process to the work because I definitely can see that it may need an ex for lack of better word an external kind of involvement to help with that and I would hate for us to get so far down the road we decide we need that and we just add more and more time to this which we don't really have I will say the group was very constrained by you know attempting to do this in six weeks so really getting into data um it was just beyond the capacity for us to to be able to do that Adam you have your hand up I do thank you um Yasmin uh compliments this the product is excellent you know it's clear that real time and effort went into this to really try to understand all the layered pieces and where they intersect so I think it's definitely going to be a useful tool for making better and informed decisions my question probably is more to uh Chancellor Zdatny in that you know what's next is even if we were wildly successful in implementing all of these recommendations does this is there a financial ROI assessment of what does this give the system and savings and then secondly is that enough um or do we do we then have additional uh work to do to understand what else has to be done in order to have a sustaining system for years to come yeah this is just a very small piece of of the whole picture it's a really important piece I think everyone that looks at this can recognize that right now it's not ideal um we have some programs that are very small at at both Castleton and NVU that would definitely benefit from consolidation collaboration a consortium some way to bring those faculty together it would it would definitely be in the interest of the students to have stronger more robust programs access to a broader spectrum of faculty um generally speaking um I think part of the issue is that we've you know historically we just you know have been trimming and trimming and so we we just have shrunk um and that really does have an impact on the quality of the programs I don't think that this alone is is going to move the needle um but it is really important work that needs to happen um as I say I think for the for the students as well and I'm sure for the faculty as well I'm sure they would enjoy being part of larger um departments let's go ahead Yasmin yeah I was I was just going to emphasize that Adam I think there are some real positive ROIs that can come out of the process that the group is recommending which is to say there's a way to increase quality when faculty come together we have one person programs one faculty member programs in a lot of cases so that that is a clear way to strengthen quality to strengthen the diversity of offerings for students so there are there are multiple kinds of ROI to to be thinking about here yeah thank you and as as I read this that's what I really grabbed hold of is that you know in a shrinking services which we're we're headed towards the ability to for students in one location to be able to still access that quality education is is key so thank you Linda Linda Mellon yes um yeah I um I found a lot of good things in here that um like I was so glad to see the discussion of like identifying obstacles to collaboration because I think that's very important for moving ahead and um and some of the other evidence I saw of collaboration really gives me you know gives me hope in this and the other pieces that we received for reading really gives me hope that yes I see signs that um we as a system and at the institutions are doing what it takes to be able to respond to the disruption that from demographics and from competition from other schools and other things that we were facing before COVID-19 and have just gotten worse because of COVID-19 although there's a part of me who thinks that COVID-19 has provided the perhaps an opportunity or a catalyst to really to maybe get ourselves to respond faster because the one thing that I see from reading broadly about all sorts of industries is that when there's real disruption like we're dealing with we have to respond quickly and we have to respond boldly and that's the place where I feel I really fear that we are not I think that's where we might fall down we might not respond quickly enough or boldly enough and if we don't do that I really feel that we will be going um we'll be following the path of the schools that we now have closed here in Vermont and elsewhere the newspapers that we now have closed all the industries that we many of us because we're in the same age range are so familiar with that like just don't exist and I really do not want the system to be the victim of that kind of disruption I really want us to be one of the success stories one of the survivors that in fact responds quickly boldly so that we survive and can do our mission and so I I see positive signs from this stuff but I also am very afraid of the elements of it that make me think oh my gosh we're still dragging our feet Ryan Cooney uh yes thank you I have two quick questions for you Yasmin uh going off of so obviously you guys have started with Castleton and NVU is there a plan later on um I know VTC and CCB do share some programs with Castleton and NVU obviously not as much but is there a plan later to bring those colleges in and also look at program duplication and where we can consolidate consortium as Sophie has stated so so Ryan plan not yet I mean that wasn't one of the four recommendations I will say that in the discussions of the group faculty very much recognize that the same kind of thinking that that went into to their discussions focused on Castleton and NVU programs would apply where there's program overlap with VTC or CCB so it's certainly you know something that makes makes some sense to do excellent yeah I would believe that as well and then going back you mentioned the committee on the gen eds and focusing on really standardizing that gen ed core once that standardization has come through is that the plan to roll out a standard gen ed core like curriculum to all of our schools CCB through to the NVU Castleton VTCs yeah so um and and I'll invite everybody I would I would love to take more time to talk about that at EPSOL as it gets a little bit more developed but I would say um there are a couple stages to this one is defining the requirements every college may contribute its own courses to for students to fulfill those requirements we're also talking about a program core that's at the associate degree level because once students are really in their programs to complete a bachelor's degree each institution has defined sort of its own unique learning outcomes for that are appropriate NVU has a has a new sustainability climate change um social justice focus Castleton has some integrative learning for example so um this this design that we're talking about which is still a draft design would would sort of do fit into that larger framework for general education so but there's a lot there are a lot of details still to be worked out too of course thank you no one yeah I I just want to call out that is a member the vscs forward task force from this summer um seeing this work in progress is really exciting um and I'm just so encouraged that it is being undertaken collaboratively uh the faculty obviously has a huge role in the design considerations here um they've met eight times over a very stressful I'm sure a very stressful month as they take their classes uh forward in a very challenging environment so I just think this is a very impressive work product and I'm really looking forward to digging in on EPSOL to understand where we take this but I really want to acknowledge the hard work of the faculty the administrators um and that they've taken this charge from the board and run forward with it I see a lot of hope here in optimism and having the decisions and the input the data uh being built by folks who are closest to it to me that is a really good uh concept and I think it's going to play out well for us so thank you to everyone who was involved jim yep thank you min um to add to this discussion um to go back to um the comment about um stumbling blocks just for example that they need to be addressed look um ferret it out and and addressed um I would thank you linda um I'd like to go back to a comment that sophie made prior to this particular discussion in the words that she used were excuse me yes min said getting to the heart of the decision I mean that's really the critical issue in in a lot of this stuff and other things that we're going to talk about this afternoon um it's that is the hard part that is really the hard part we can have a framework and we can begin to work forward with it and it makes a lot of good sense but to reiterate the hard part is getting to the heart of the decision and making up our collective minds and saying okay this is what we've decided to do for all these reasons and we're gonna go forth and prosper so thanks anyone else bill well excuse me i want to come back to what uh i think janet started with which is how decisions are going to be made um because i have to honestly say i appreciate the work and uh i honestly uh am concerned about the framework of urgency that we're living within and uh and i don't see it reflected uh in the at the level that i feel like we are the reality of what the situation is uh and so um so i'm hopeful but i understand that it's hard to make hard decisions when everyone involved is invested in our decisions uh in a way that frankly makes it very difficult to come to a closure so i i want to i want to bring us back to the suggestion and i don't know exactly how to how to move that forward but i think janet phrased it well if i could have her rephrase it or recall what she said but basically how what's the what's the what's the path to decision making um and to not wait until after all the analysis is done can we realize that decisions are hard to make um that i think we need to be doing that on a we need to be thinking about that and putting that in place on a parallel track uh and we can't ask that group to do that i think we i think some some uh or do that alone in any case and that's not to dismiss or discount the the work of that of the group i really don't mean that but i think it's sometimes it's it's it's asking asking the impossible uh in some ways um for for all kinds of reasons but i think because i think we need to recognize the the destruction that we're living in the midst of uh recognize the challenges of that which i think are far more profound than we're recognizing right now at least for myself both i think we're operating in a world where a covid alone is pressuring us individually collectively emotionally physically uh that alone but we're that's layered on top of everything else which was there before covid i think covid has provided some you know challenging opportunities if you will that we've moved from in person to zoom look at us and and classrooms and we're we will not be going back to the same operating uh but so anyway all of which is to say i think perhaps it falls to the board or falls to the administration to say there needs to be there needs to be a path to a decision uh even at the even at this level and that's let's understand how we're going to get there yes man we're not expecting us to resolve that at this moment in this meeting let me Lynn or myself death mary hi uh first i want to say hi to my old friend yes mean long time no see um and really as the newbie i just want to compliment uh the entire team who worked on this report in such a short time it's given me a great deal of food for thought but it was exceptionally well done so i just wanted to express my appreciation thank you thank you any other comments anyone else janet do you want to comment on your path to decision making expand on that or yeah i mean i think that um you know we could um we could decide as trustees we could ask for a recommendation from sophie and jasmine but knowing that decisions will be difficult to make and we don't want to get in the final hour and go oh this is really hard and we the team can't make them how do we want to have decision making available you know one i'm just throwing out ideas i'm not saying any of these are the right thing to do do we hire a third park excuse me hire a third party um if we do that we'd want them to see what's going on early so that they don't take weeks to get up to speed do we say we're going to use some subcommittee of the trustees and while the isn't the role of the trustees to be management there's a lot of experience in this group do we have to play some role of saying i know this is hard but given the facts given the date of these are the choices and this is what we need to do but we need to decide the who and the how of the decision making because i think it will be doubtful that no matter how hard that team works there there will be very vested these will be very difficult decisions they'll be very deep personal ties and if i i i doubt they will be able to like just have it be super clear and go oh well this is what we should do it's just not going to be that clean so we should be prepared in parallel to decide how we're going to deal with it so that's that's my request um i don't know how other people may have ideas on how to you know what entity bodies we want to put together to do that um you know does it come out epsilon but we better have a plan because i don't i don't think the team will get there i know i'm going to go ahead megan i would say janet i very much support your perspective that this is work that is best done with a third party involved and when we think about external support i think there are two roles that consultants can play they can play a facilitative role which we've had great success with which pulls expertise out internally from a group and helps to shape that there's also a role that consultants can play where they bring in outside expertise to help to move to potentially a you know a different future state that you know internally you may not have thought so i do i am a strong advocate for bringing in a third party with outside expertise because this sense of what is the academic portfolio is an incredibly difficult topic to resolve across all of higher ed for all the reasons that have been articulated here even with the incredible work that's been done and the perspective that our teams have brought to this anyone else okay ask me and i have a question you and sophie um if we if we have gotten to a point where maybe it is time to hire a third party consultant i recognize you had a facilitator who helped write this report um but maybe someone who can help us move it along a little bit um with the presidents and the and you and the other administrators would they be willing to go and work with that and uh get someone that can go and then give some suggestions and some input so that we can get to epsil with recommendations well i i would say i i think it makes sense to me that we would allow the presidents of castleton and northern vermont university to to think about this question and and to come to epsil with what their first recommendations might be and inclusive perhaps if it sounds like the board is interested in us relying on an external consultant um so as a process step that that is maybe the way to think about it sophie wants to speak additionally about the use of the external consultant megan sort of identified two pieces of it and i think the the work of this um group and the report that they have i think speaks to how you would bring out that internal expertise um but if you're looking for some heavier duty um crunching of data that you know goes goes well beyond enrollments and goes beyond problem solving about cost but really gets to an academic portfolio examination if if that's part of it that you know those are those are things that you know are are pretty extensive so that's um yeah we had um we had discussed what to do with this i mean there was recognition that we didn't get this across the finish line and again i i want to commend yasmin and just all the folks that worked on this because they've worked extraordinarily hard but i think we recognize that it was going to be very difficult for um particularly for faculty to make final decisions in terms of programs um whether it's regarding closure of low enroll programs or um consolidation of programs so what we were were proposing or what we would like the board to do would be to recommend that the presidents of castleton and northern vermont university come back to the epsil committee meeting that we have scheduled for october 29th and at that time um discuss what their plans are to address the low enrolled programs that have already been identified through the policy 109 process um which deals with uh you know low enroll programs so do that as an immediate step because i think everyone can agree there are programs that without doubt a low enrolled in action needs to be taken and then the second step that we were proposing uh or we were looking for the board to provide direction on was to um ask the presidents to come back to um epsil at its February 1st meeting with a joint plan of action on how to address program duplicate programs and program clusters uh based on the information and the recommendations that are contained in this particular report that's been done um the other piece is that we would then have the first draft of um the n chems report to the legislative select committee they've also been doing some work on um our programs as well um i'm not opposed to the idea of having an outside consultant if um and certainly you know someone like megan has great experience um in terms of how that might work so i'm certainly open to that if something that the board would like us to do i don't think that would um preclude us from moving forward at this upcoming epsil meeting and asking the presidents to come back with their recommendations with regard to the low enrolled programs but i think having a consultant maybe assist in terms of consolidation of programs or development of program clusters um you know i'm i'm certainly open to that idea if that's something the board would like us to pursue david you're muted i i i think the work that has been done thus far has been excellent and extremely well presented and i'm very impressed by the the campus to campus collaboration uh i i guess i share some concern about getting into a sort of analysis paralysis where we don't make tough decisions we're we're not going to have a hundred percent perfect information and you never do when you're making business decisions but um we need to get as close as we can to write and then take action because we're not going to look like we we do um a year from now or or i fear that we won't be here so learn yes go ahead karin um that's pretty much in keeping with my thinking i'm very concerned about time frame and and the board and and the chancellor have done i i would say a plus job in reaching out to all constituencies really anyone who's really wanted to participate in any way has been given a lot of opportunity to participate outside the system inside the system and i'm i'm uh it's very clear in my mind for me the people who need to come back with recommendations are the presidents um and anytime we get a recommendation from them i think a reasonable assumption is they've done a good job gathering all the information that's relevant and and i have confidence that they will do that the other piece is um however much people don't want to be the heavy the heavy in this is the board of trustees and ultimately we're going to need to make some decisions and um i'm very concerned that i'm not real clear what those timelines are for decisions to be made that are productive decisions versus we wait so long gathering information that decisions are going to be made for us because we don't have unlimited resources and the folks that are sending us money in the legislature don't have unlimited resources so um we're going to need to make some tough decisions or decisions will be made that we won't like that are going to affect even more people so um i'm interested number one in timelines number two i don't care if we have an outside consultant i don't know that we really need it i don't know that there isn't someone who could guide the process ultimately it's the presidents who are going to come back to us with a recommendation we may have the people we need right there but we all need to recognize that we're quickly approaching the point where we make decisions period and we all know who the responsible parties are to recommend and to make decisions and i think we need to do it adam grannell thank you so again uh the compliments to to everyone and i know how busy the presidents and the staff are who took the time out of all the challenging uh ways in which they're trying to operate under and take the time to do this i'm going to echo the the concern about timelines you know to so far today we've heard a lot about end line or goal line um and less about timeline and i i really do feel that we need to now start to frontload with this information with this great work start to front frontload that timeline um and understand at what point in the in the coming calendar do we need to have the financial information in order to make decisions that ensure the sustainability of the system and and i don't know if we've you know maybe that's coming that's what's next but if we're if we're talking about an absolute meeting in February that seems like a long ways off to to not have had some other actionable direction so i would just encourage us to to be thinking that the timeline is is near and that if we're having to make real important and significant decisions come February or March i for one i'm going to want to know what that financial implications of decisions are across the system and i don't know who has the time to put one thing down to pick that up um and you know that's probably the biggest challenge that all of us are experiencing in our own way is you can only pedal so fast we're on this bike and you know we can pedal faster we're not going to necessarily go faster so we need some more folks in the peloton to help along or or something um so maybe that's a direction we have to go in is what additional resources or support do we need to empower the the presidents and the chancellor in order to get this work done in a timeline that is out of our control thank you linda mall well we're talking about gee the short time fine and the window but we still all seem to be really vague about it i gotta tell you based on my understanding of we got the transition money this year i think we have to be prepared to have a lot of these decisions made by june to be implemented come July 1 the beginning of the next fiscal year um so and so i think not being really clear about that timeline um might help us all is helping us drag our feet a little and that's why i wanted to be clear at least in my mind we've got a this is the year we make those decisions to have them start being implemented July 1 the next fiscal year because i don't see us getting any more transition money so it sounds like i actually think i actually think linda you have to back up from that if they're going to be in place if you actually have to have the decisions by january i don't write i mean you don't want to have kids enrolling in programs that we're going to cut or whatever right so i just think i think the timeline's very fast and it might come in phases but i i don't think it's i don't think it's july anyone else jim thank you lin um i think an outside voice might be helpful at this point with the presidents and you know what what they choose to do or what we collectively choose to do but i think i would favor much more of a facilitator voice than um an outside consultant who's going to make a decision on other people's behalf one of the things that we understand very clearly right now is we need collaboration as close to consensus as we can get it um i think the parties are maybe fairly close i would hope so even if it's not explicit um and i think a facilitator might be able to bridge the gap much better than an independent party party who comes in and says well i've heard all this and i think this is what you guys should do i'm speaking just plain plain language this my 10 cents thank you thank you Sharon good afternoon um at the finance and facilities and audit committee meetings on october 29th we'll actually be discussing um at length this year's f y 20 performance uh and f y 21's budget and also beginning a conversation to start discussing the role forward of what f y 22 may look like we've been extremely fortunate this year to receive as much legislative support as we have it has been a remarkable year um 28.8 million dollars in bridge funding um and in my 17 years here with the vermouth state colleges i have never seen such a thing before nor would i expect to see such a thing ever again um that being said it will take us more than one year to transform we do need to spend the next nine months really preparing ourselves for transformation that is um hampered a tiny bit through the fact that we do have a legislative select committee that is working simultaneously now that's not a stumbling block we have our own representatives on those this committee and uh president judy is the chair of that committee which is excellent and our work with n chums um has been remarkable but we do have a lot of work to do with that said there's a tremendous amount of prep work that has to happen and all of the things that i've heard this afternoon um from janet from linda from bill from jim maslin from david silverman there are incredibly important time is very very short so it's really important for us to be really focusing as much as we can on how do we move forward but there are many prep steps that have to happen as part of that and this work of internal conversation is one of those things whether we bring in an outside consultant or we do that work internally it does have to be done it's february a little bit too late possibly if we don't see any additional support coming from the legislature um because it's going to be a very uphill battle for f y 22 but this conversation will not end today um on the thursday the 29th audit and finance and facilities will be dedicated to this conversation and i do think it will help fill in the gaps a little bit um but i absolutely understand and that sense of urgency that we have very little time to maneuver the vermont state colleges is a battleship it's not a speedboat so we really do need to make sure that we are preparing the battleship to be able to move where it needs to go but we also have to know where we're going and those two things i've not quite come into alignment yet thank you bill well i i you know i i i agree with what's being said i just we can't move so fast that we're ahead of the select committee we we must work in collaboration and subsequent to the work of the select committee that is our major stakeholder that's let's be clear uh that that is the that is the companion piece to the bridge money the bridge money was contingent frankly the bridge money is contingent on the select committee doing its work we can't get out ahead of it but we have to be prepared to move quickly when it brings its recommendations or whatever whatever it and think what they're faced with they have to make some decisions or some recommendations so i i just think that there's there's this balancing of frankly i think it's we are in an urgent situation but we must align ourselves with the other work that's going on and that i think the major other work is for me the select committee and so i i continue to want to ask sophie and others to help help us bring ourselves into alignment with the decisions that are that we are collectively a part of but which are operating separate from us as the board but we must be working collaboratively in that manner it seems to me delan yeah i mean really great perspectives being shared here and i'm appreciative of the differing uh sense of where we're going recognizing that i think is a board we all obviously have affirmed our belief that we do need to move with purpose in this year it's clear the last year tells us that um at the same time of course in our strategic priorities and what we're trying to do um i i just want to make clear that our focus is really on that student experience and ensuring that it will be the best it can be into the future um and that a big part of that through this process would be including those voices and so i reckon recognize the timeline concerns and otherwise and having a firm decision making process but also that all of this work will be done whether it be us or the other external groups working on it to ensure that vermont students or prospective students have opportunities preferably in all corners of the state and that they can afford to do so so that is really the lens and and i just view that as what we need to keep as our north star through all the questions of how we do this um ensuring that student support and that students recognize these institutions will be strong into the future president collins yes thank you uh let me just kind of share what i've been thinking about it might be helpful to this conversation my sense is that if we could tear our responses so uh for example at phase one we have been talking about this for quite a long time it's not like we have just started this work on the ground we have been identifying these programs we have talked to faculty we have uh we've spent a lot of time thinking about how to proceed when making fair and just decisions that will best serve our students so we have we have done that work uh i think we are ready at your first epsil meeting which is well before february to come to you with some recommendations as to uh begin that discussion with you about the programs that we are recommending uh that that uh either you know we need to shut consolidate etc the second phase in february that is possibly a time where we could benefit from additional input uh because that would be the work that involves consolidation at or consortium work and that is uh i think a bit more difficult than the first phase of this project so if we if we think about it in phases i think uh i am like very sensitive to timeline extraordinarily sensitive to timeline and so i would like to at least have some time to bring to you as soon as we can i mean when sophie one is our next epsil meeting it's october 29 so it's two weeks so we're talking about two weeks two weeks we can have some ideas to you regarding the programs that we believe historically have um have not been able to perform where we need them to perform and so we will we can do that and then in february which will align well with enchems because they i went back to read what the proposal was what they are responsible to do and they are also looking to make recommendations as to which programs should be curtailed or which programs need to be offered in different different modalities and so if we have their preliminary report in december that will give us some external perspective and then we can decide do we need even further external perspective which we would welcome at that point to try to bring home that second phase but i think that would be helpful uh to those of us who are really close to the situation so that's that's all i have thank you bill well i would just say that i'm also aware of timeline and we're going to be back in session in january that's that's right around the corner and that's when decisions and and prior to january the budget's going to have been built uh the preliminary budget this is not going to wait this is not going to wait till february by february people say you know i have colleagues who introduce bills like in the middle of february and march and then they think something's going to happen with them that's that's after the fact the legislature is going to be looking to us and to looking we are going to influence what happens financially in the legislature by what we can demonstrate that we have actually what what we are well into the midst of and so i'm just you know i i'm hearing everybody but it's like we need to understand the external realities of who what's happening and who our stakeholders are and we can't push ourselves faster than we can move but we can't be unrealistic about the fact that the session doesn't end in may the session the regular session if there is a regular session anyway people forget the budget leaves the house in the middle of what uh in march the budget leaves the house it's not it doesn't leave the house in may that's the final budget so decisions are going to be made uh financial decisions about the vermont state colleges and the legislature's involvement are going to be made sooner than we understand i would just add to what i think i think that we need to demonstrate we need to be able to respond to the select committee and demonstrate that we are on a path forward that will allow the legislature to consider additional funds for us to achieve our outcome because if we don't demonstrate that uh that's that's going to be our downfall i i just wanted to add that that was one of the reasons uh the original legislation for the select committee uh was a sort of an 18 month timeline and it got amended back um specifically to address what bill's talking about which is the timing of different things in the legislature so the initial report is due um december 4th from ncems and then there's a report i believe it's mid february and then the final report is mid april but it is the the stages of it are intentionally um timed to coincide with when things happen in the legislature to make sure that that information is available and out there um ahead of big decisions that are happening well we have a potential motion on this this is something that is an action item um megan and so i'll read the motion here and i think it fits very much with this conversation um i hereby move the board to direct the presidents of castleton and nvu to one report their plans for immediate action to address low enrolled programs already identified by policy 109 to epsil at its october 29th meeting and two provide an update to epsil at its february 1st 2021 meeting on a joint plan of action to address duplicate programs or program clusters as informed by the recommendations contained in the castleton nvu academic programs groups report as well as the first draft report from ncems to the legislative select committee which is expected in early december we have a second on that second janet seconds that any further discussion when yes go ahead karen is is february 2 late i think that what well the the actual report from um the select group comes out in december 4th that's just about the time that the governor is around the time when he's doing his budget he's probably starting to do his budget now but he's working on his budget before that yeah long before then um i think that president collins gave us an example of what we could do to phase this in uh they're going to make recommendations for the epsil committee october 29th we could decide to move some of those those dates up if we so choose depending on how the the process works we have a meeting on november 16th and hopefully we'll have something more concrete at that point that we can vote on um i i just want to make sure that february and there are those of you working closely with this and and i take to heart bill's pearls of wisdom i just want to make sure that february and lue of everything bill said february sounds pretty late to me um maybe i'm missing something well fee what do you think is is is that an appropriate time frame i think for this particular item i mean you've got to remember this is just one small piece of all the things that we're working on right now so this isn't going to i think that was maybe it was david asked earlier this isn't going to solve the crisis that we're in this is a small piece of what we need to be doing um and i think the you know again the epsil committee meeting you know it's currently set for february first of it would be helpful to have one sooner than that um that would be fine but um i think as president collins noted i mean february first would give them time to uh see what the ncms report in december says and uh you know move forward i mean i think there's again just to be clear there's a lot of work that's still going on that the president's and the provost are working on with this um so you know i i think this this piece is fine i mean i totally hear everyone's comments as regard the timeline but that that's kind of the big timeline for like the really big decisions as to what we're doing moving forward this is a piece on the path towards that um this isn't the you know the big decision so to speak this is just an element of it what i hear sophie um and yes mean and the presidents is that uh we would like to see maybe a preliminary timeline that we get an idea it may not be the the actual final finished timeline but it give us something more specific as we see what's coming along we're holding we're holding meetings in november we're holding meetings in december i don't know what we're going to be doing be too after that with the legislature back in session but um but i think a timeline that gives us some idea of like a construction management timeline that you see we'll get this done here we'll get that done there we'll get this done a little farther down the road i think that's something that there's an unknown here that i think the board feels uncomfortable with and i think that's what we're hearing um we can throw on an epsom meeting or a discussion about this whole issue in december i think we have a meeting right after the first enchams report comes in for the select group so i think this december six is that some of what i thought i heard sharon trying to at least you know make us realize we'd be getting some of that information at the on the 29th that would help set us at the first time of that that's what i heard linda yes i think that um we've got the finance and facilities that's going to do the financial stuff that sharon talked about and there's lots of people interested in finance and facility analysis we're going to have epsom doing this we're going to have long-range planning looking more more at these strategic priorities i mean we're going to be doing this in all those committees i encourage everybody to go to as many of them as they can so that they can actually see what's going on in those in those pieces that come along and i think that it would be helpful if we maybe in long-range planning if we got some kind of a preliminary timeline if not a final timeline anyone else have anything else to say win can i win this is drice yes you know i've been listening to the conversation and you know meghan is on the steering committee as well and um and sofi of course is on the select committee i i think that december meeting is going i i think that december report of the select committee is going to give direction um it's going to provide some directions but i think that then the board is going to need to take and develop the specificity i do not see the select committee getting to the level of the specificity that um that i feel like we're going to that this board and the system is going to need because i think you know remember this is a group of 15 people there's only a handful that really understand higher ed and um so it's taken a while to just even understand the systems i think n chimbs will give us um a lot to think about and i think they will provide some i think they'll i think we'll come up with some um directions that are fairly provocative um and i am hopeful but then i think it's going to be this board and the board working with the legislature to say yep this is where this is a direction we can go in just so that you know one of the things that i'm committed to is i meet every two weeks with the governor's office and i meet every two weeks with um with uh now with becca and mitzi johnson to keep them to help to keep them sort of informed of what we're doing but also to give us feedback so that there's no surprises come december um so i think that you know i think december is going to give this board some information but then i think i see that some of the real sort of okay now we've got the directions or it's directional now like the real some of the very heavy lifting i think is going to have to come from this board and megan i would just ask you if you would agree with that assessment yeah i completely agree judy um and thank you for raising that as i hear um us all kind of rallying around the december report from enchams i do not think that we should slow down or hesitate in moving forward because i for the level of work that we have contracted enchams to do they are not going to get into the weeds and they're not going to be out talking with faculty and students and folks on the campus to the level and extent that is needed to make the right decisions adam i think yes i'm sorry duris do you keep going duris if you're no no no i just think that you know i think they're going to be talking they're making a huge commitment to talk to um stakeholders and and and with faculty and with students and with alums and with the board and with union leadership and things and they're going to come up and i do think they're going to come up with and i think the select committee is going to get behind some pretty interesting um recommendations but then i think it's going to be okay we take it's here now how do we implement those recommendations and what does that involve and i think that's where um the board and i think bill you're exactly right and that you don't want to get ahead of the work of the select committee but then i think once the select committee makes some recommendations then you're going to have to dig in fast because how do you take go from point a to point b um and i think meg and sophie and i we're trying to get the board you know this group to really hone in on some really um you know strong recommendations but at the same time we also have to understand the legislative committee that's been assembled it's a very good group but it's still there this is not their business you know and so they're trying to understand it as well so so i'm hopeful that the december report will give us some real direction and as sophie said we adjusted the timeline so that there this the report hopefully will be directional enough that will help influence the governor's budget um when he's developing the governor's budget the governor's office knows that our just our plan is to get something to them so and i'm hoping that they will have they will know what's the you know sort of the direction so this also doesn't come as a surprise to them so i'm all i'm trying to get the governor's office and legislative leadership to also define to to me so i can convey it to the group what does success look like to them with this whole process because you know you know how much are they willing to really um uh think about this because i feel like they're i described this to them to both of them both groups this week i think we have three options one we can create a vsc system that is really innovative and cutting-edge and um very exciting but it will require some significant change and on the other end we can do nothing and we will we will i believe quickly um uh implode and then in the middle is the legislature saying no we want to keep the status quo and we're going to find 50 million dollars more every year to keep the system going i i think all of us would agree that that middle option is probably not likely and so i think we have two choices we can either get very aggressive and think about what we're going to look like or do not choose to do very little and slowly go in the wrong direction so i think we've got some really big stuff to think about in the next just few months so all right i'll stop now okay adama you're next great thank you so uh i think um joey's really just helped frame of a lot of what i've been thinking about is essentially we're and maybe the the the trustees would benefit from this is laying out what when are certain decisions going to be made what information needs to be on hand for those decisions to be made you know i don't know when do we have to understand our next year's revenue and the shortfall that we have this year or what expenses we're going to have for continuing that operation when do we have to make a decision that well are we're not getting enough in the budget we're not going to have enough in revenue we're not going to have enough money to operate as is and that we have to be faced with that decision and just maybe starting to map that out um you know a gantt chart was mentioned earlier as an effective visual tool um so that the trustees understand all these different pieces because it's really hard for us to get our arms around all these different elements that are influencing the thinking and the potential decision so you know again um i'm asking somebody to pedal faster because somebody's got to create that but i think for for the trustees that would be a very powerful tool to help us understand what that timeline is and maybe not be as anxious as we're all feeling today if we do have more time folks on the ground probably have a better uh vision of what that timeline is than perhaps we do thanks thank you thank you bill lippert i i want to just uh say that joice thank you for if you've told us this before reminding us and if i haven't heard it properly for saying that you're meeting every other week i believe you said with the leadership of the house and the senate and governor's office that is the most reassuring piece of information i have heard all day because frankly that is critical and the fact that somehow that has been established uh i think is absolutely essential as we try to move our way forward uh collectively thank you that has been and i have been doing that and um i decided early on that the only way this was going to be successful is if i really figured out a way to communicate so i do i mean when you know it it's it is i'm getting some good info i think there's some good exchange of it work it has to be it's i'm sure it's good in both directions thank you okay anyone else we have a motion oh yes go ahead jasmine well i just very briefly wanted to speak to adam's point about the gantt chart or timeline you know i think the the motion that the board has on the table um and what president collin spoke to earlier you know we have set work in motion and good conversations with with faculty already and so it really is a matter of continuing with with the same sense of urgency everybody's had all along while some of these other layers of work including the select committee continue i just want to say that i appreciate the fact that uh joys judy is on that committee chairing that committee and that is communicating with the leadership and the governor's office i think that um i think she's given us a taste of what that committee is doing and um i think maybe in november maybe in november we're we're at the long-range planning or something like that we can have a report from that from joys and um megan clover about what that committee what they're touching on and where their progress is so we have a feel for it i sometimes feel like we're working in separate universes right and i think that's hard for us as well anyone else okay we have a motion on the floor that's dealing with taking this the report from the president's and going to the epsil committee in october with some more clear cut decisions and then continuing on and with further discussion in february are there any other comments okay seeing none of um all those in favor of the motion is read please indicate by saying aye aye opposed seeing none the motion has passed and we will expect the presidents of uh castledon and nvu and their their provost and academic officers to continue this work and get back to us at epsil uh do we want to take a break at this point or do we want now we want we also have on this we also have a little bit from um um ccv and vtc uh jasmine is that something that we want to hear on now part of the strategic i think you'd you'd be hearing from the presidents of ccv and vtc if if they're ready to go and everyone is okay okay i'm i'm happy to jump in madam chair if now's a good time that's a good time okay um you do have in your packet a piece on the vtc and ccv collaborations that are occurring now and and i believe uh sophie sent out this morning an update but really the work centers in four different areas first is looking at co-location and shared space and we did give you a piece about where we are currently co-located and some work that's under where they underway there in one case in st albins it's a major expansion for both of us to be co-located there which is exciting also just recently um the hartness library expansion is now including castelton university and northern vermont university so that we can look at hartness being the single virtual library for the system uh and i'm very excited about that work and i'm glad to see the the thumbs up and the the nodding on that um i think it's probably some discussion that's overdue but the third area is to really work on certificates and pathways from ccv to vermont tech also create additional certificate and other opportunities that can enable either direct progression or certainly better preparation from four students as they enter such as the certificate and allied health that we currently have right now where students obtain all the prerequisites they need from ccv before they come here we're looking at a similar thing for engineering as well as other opportunities and the last area is to collaborate on business operations and loosely referred to as back office operation and we're currently assessing future opportunities but our deans of administration have been collaborating for a while now and sharing best practices and we're going to try to be taking that to the next level and really examining other opportunities for collaboration some of those may or may not involve personnel so it's not really something we want to get into in an open session but those are the four major areas and you'll find more detail in that handout on where there's currently some very good synergy happening with ccv and not the last but not the least of it is the amazing work that all three colleges have done in the last just two weeks to stand up the website and get the work done for this 2.3 million dollars in workforce development money that the legislature generously appropriated that website went live yesterday president judy has been at a press conference with the governor today and we're really hope we're already seeing responses to that so we're really hopeful that that's going to result in some good action and some good opportunities i've been sending things out to community members to spread the word through capstones and capstone and others to get that word out there joice anything else you wanted to add no i think you've covered it pat i think that you know there's you know we continue to build the synergy and i think that there's good momentum and i um actually pat and i and uh jonathan and alain i think it's very exciting about the hartness library i think that having it be the virtual library for the entire system and then let the individual college campuses do what they want around bricks and mortar and building um learning centers or whatever they want to do with their existing libraries is will be an individual college decision but the but being able to provide the library research support through the virtual for through hartness library as a virtual library is um pretty exciting and i think we shouldn't underestimate what a big deal that is so i'll just stop there and i think there's i think you'll get a sense that there's pretty good momentum yeah and there is a task force that we've charged that with representation from all four institutions to really dig in and develop that pathway in the business plan for going forward any questions i yes this is janet so um i thought that um when i looked at the document you guys provided um the pathways work was really good i think that's just so helpful to students and you know how to integrate the system i guess my request is that if you need an executive if at our next meeting we need to reserve executive session time to talk about the back office consolidation work that in my mind needs to be a lot more um planned out um i appreciate what you've done but that's where that's where there's opportunity in terms of cost um and so but i also appreciate it's you know the form that it should be discussed in so my request is um you know whatever our next meeting is if it's the november one that you guys provide a more detailed plan of what's next what's next after that um i that's i think that's important and again those are very can be hard decisions to make um and if that also results in needing external support to help you make those decisions um you need to put your hands up um and and just for elaine and for all the presidents when i push on this decision making it's because if you guys feel like no we got this we know how to make them and we're confident in doing it great it's just that these can be icky and um emotional and difficult and you also have to put your hand up when you say yeah we're gonna need somebody else so so my request is next meeting we get a more detailed plan on the back office consolidation and you okay anyone else okay we can move on we don't need any any action on that um we have the next thing on the agenda would be an update from the chancellor yeah i'm happy to do that now and then do you want to do a break after we could do that yes okay that would be a logical place to do a break yes yes i don't want to torture people for too long i know that the wisdom i think is like 90 minutes but i i violate that every day so um i don't i i'll keep it brief i mean the the big change uh well not really changed but we i provided an update on the budget um at our last meeting uh the governor assigned that um so i think that's you know for fy uh 21 we got the bridge funding that we were looking for and again we're enormously you know thankful on that and if anyone has any questions i'm happy to share it but i'm not going to dive in more on that um we've touched on the legislative select committee here today and i think that's an excellent idea that we have an update um at the long-range planning committee meeting in a couple of weeks on um you know how things are going with the select committee uh what they're looking at and their plan and um we do have another i'm not on the steering group that joison and megan are on the steering group i'm on the select committee itself and we meet once a month and we have a meeting on monday so i think doing a follow-up at um the long-range planning committee makes makes good sense on that uh the other piece i wanted to touch based on was pat just mentioned um but is the um the crf workforce funds that we received as she noted a press release went out yesterday uh president uh judy was part of the governor's press conference today on it the department of labor is going to be sending um information about the the program out with unemployment checks next week um and i do want to commend the incredible work that our colleges have done on this we've we put together a group um from ccv vtc northern vermont and castleton um tiffany at ccv in particular has sort of taken the lead and really uh tried to turn this around in a very short period of time i think there were folks in the legislature particularly on the senate side that were skeptical that we could pull this off i'm hoping it will be successful and demonstrate what we can do to help the state of vermont um but basically there are going to be programs offered uh at all four colleges um ccv and northern vermont university are offering both credit and non-credit bearing courses and credentials for folks that have been impacted by the virus and have been laid off furloughed or are looking to upskill or reskill vermont tech is offering non-credit bearing courses and castleton has some credit bearing courses through their castleton center for schools so it's taken a lot of work um trying to do it as a system we have a system landing page for people that then will direct people to the individual colleges where they want to take courses or credentials it also the funding also provides wraparound services including you know technology childcare uh food housing other other services that folks need in order to participate in the program so it's a very exciting effort and something that we hadn't been looking to do but was uh we were asked by the house commerce and um i'm really glad that it's working out and it seems to be moving forward and again it's only just was launched yesterday but my understanding is we've already had considerable interest on it so that's extremely exciting um and i'll you know keep you apprised on on that as we move forward the other piece i wanted to um share with you is the plans for the spring semester there are materials included in the in the the the board materials for today on the spring plan so generally speaking uh following um guidance mandatory guidance from the administration in the board materials there's the proposed guidance the final guidance came out yesterday but um the the governor in in um coordination with the department of health their primary concern was to push back the start of the spring semester because of concerns about spread of the virus when people are inside and also the flu season so um the colleges generally are moving their start date back to february 1st the other um big issue was spring break um the concern being that if folks uh went away for a traditional spring break they were all going to have to be quarantined and retested when they came back just as they are at the beginning of a semester so included in the packet is is sort of the particular details for the individual colleges uh the one that has changed a little bit is um is vermont tech and um i can let uh president malton sort of fill you in just on the changes there um before i do that i did want to just note that we do understand and it's well documented in the you know higher education literature that's out there that it is really stressful for students and faculty and staff dealing with um you know responding to the pandemic but then also doing the online uh virtual learning it's really taking its toll and so um i just wanted to first of all go to uh president collins who i just received information this morning about something they're doing at nvu and i just wanted her to share that with you thank you sophie so uh on october 8th the executive team and i met with nvu student leadership on both campuses and we just wanted to check in as to how they were doing because we started hearing that uh that there were some concerns both in terms of faculty saying that their students were starting to wane they were tired they were non motivated um so this kind of raised a flag for us and when we talked to them we really heard them loud and clear about um given the fact that now we don't offer any breaks so typically they relied on those breaks to catch up and they relied on those breaks to like read a complete book and finish it and to just kind of uh chill out for a week and then be ready to start again and now with no break and all the stress and all the work they're just exhausted they're absolutely exhausted at this point so we heard very clearly that they were asking and some of them actually said and i think this as a former teacher um this was the most turning piece of information that i heard which was they said you know we are going to class but we no longer can intake any information we don't even understand what's being said and i mean if you get to that point there's no reason to just power through and think that learning is going to happen and so what we decided after a lot of conversation with students with faculty and with staff and and to be clear you know not it's not 100 percent everybody is in love with this idea but we're going to pilot a two-day break it's going to be in the middle of the week the middle of the week was chosen specifically because we want to ensure that there's strict adherence to the cross-state travel guidelines and we have underscored them probably three times in bold in the messages that went out to students to make sure that they follow those guidelines uh the like i said it's midweek it's Wednesday and Thursday so we're not taking away if we do a Tuesday Thursday that would take away a whole week of classes so we we tried to just pick uh you know like a Monday Wednesday Thursday one one class there or one day there and then Tuesday Thursday block one day there as well so October 28th and 29th we will be letting the students have an instructional uh couple days off so there will be no instruction and hopefully they can come back uh caught up a little bit and in their words salvage the semester for them uh and be ready to start again and this is again a pilot for how then we will shape our spring semester based on what we learned here uh how well it worked um how you know are two days enough to give them that downtime if we space them out throughout the spring semester those are the kinds of questions we want to answer all right pat did you want to fill in on your the changes on your yes spring plans thank you so much sophie and um what we sent you in your packet has changed um the uh and and we like president collins our students are telling us the same thing it's exhausting with no break the method of delivery um the inability to connect face to face with faculty it's a lot more work and it's exhausting and so we heard that and and we too looked at um looking at the two-day midway midweek break for spring and what that's what we had put out to you but after really looking at the calendar given our our different type of delivery than what northern vermont university is doing given our lab weeks uh and the fact that we would miss two wednesdays also the concern that okay you have a wednesday thursday break and if you're remote on friday and somebody has one class you know if they really don't care they could take that one class in florida or wherever so the temptation to take the long weekend was a bit of a concern so we felt and we heard the students loud and clear and ryan was one of them thank you ryan um and i would call some of the students that we heard from folks like ryan who are good time managers and who are making the semester work for them so we've instead decided to have a spring break but we're going to do it late in the semester it's going to roughly be the twelfth week or yes yeah the twelfth week of our semester it will be a full traditional week off but students will go home at that point and finish the semester remotely so they will go home uh or yeah they'll go home that um twelfth week or the end of the eleventh week and not come back um that means they'll be completing uh three weeks remotely one of them being an exam week and um we will enable students who have to stay on campus maybe to do senior projects they need lab time or pilots who need to remain for flying whatever the case might be we will make exceptions and there are exceptions to certain health occupations programs that need clinical time our nursing in particular vet tech um our respiratory therapy etc they're going to be on a different calendar to facilitate that clinical time there's no way to avoid that but the umbrella calendar as we're talking it for all students will include that one week break it means we're ending the semester a week later um and that's the that's the cost but I think what we heard loud and clear was that we uh the students want the time off to catch up to take a breath um and and get they're organized again for the remainder and exams and I can send you an updated memo on that if that is preferred so and obviously all these plans are contingent on what what happens with you know if something happens we have a flare-up and the guidance changes from the Department of Health then obviously things will change but um as of right now those those are the plans for the spring if anyone had any questions for the presidents on on their proposals Ryan yeah I actually so I want to thank President Moulton for that update and as well thank her I very much look forward to a week long break now in April um but I had a question regarding Castleton's plan if uh Jonathan Spiro could jump in here for a second so I have a it's kind of a two questions we'll start off with I noticed you're calling for three one day breaks throughout the semester based on the plans we're hearing from the other schools they're looking at a minimum of two to a full week um I'm just curious what made you decide on one day break and do you believe a one day break is actually adequate enough for your faculty and students to be well rested enough to continue with their learning so Ryan I'm really sorry you asked that question because um we officially have three one day breaks we uh didn't we purposely did not schedule more because we don't want anyone making plans to go travel anywhere during the spring semester but if you promise not to tell anyone I will tell you in confidence that the president um has the right to decree certain lesson free days as a surprise throughout the semester that no one will know ahead of time that they're happening so they can't make travel plans but nonetheless we'll provide that those extra days off okay uh and my next question was obviously vtc's included students nvu has included students how much uh just out of curiosity how much student involvement did you have in making your plans for the spring semester here um uh we have faculty and union and student and administrative and staff involvement in all our decisions um it's not quite as easy as when everyone is on campus but uh we regularly consult with our student leaders in sga and then we before we announced our plans we made sure that we had the approval of the faculty federation as well um so it's all a collaborative effort it's the ongoing really for months to plan and um we're very happy that what we were thinking of doing was in fact not just endorsed but sort of enforced by the governor and the department of health and that's why the plans among the the uh all the vsc s campuses look very similar because um things like no week-long spring breaks things like delayed the start till February 1st which we were thinking of doing anyway in fact we're in line with what turned out to be the governor's directors excellent thank you anyone else is there anything else Sophie no the other the other piece that that um the colleges and universities around the state were struggling with and again our representatives from our colleges are involved in those discussions with um you know the administration and the department of health was around athletics so um but again I've provided the trustees with an update on um what the new language is um and we haven't really touched on that so much here but um you know for us it was really more the the scheduling side of it rather than the athletics but that was a big issue that um they spent a lot of time working with the colleges and universities on um I had one more thing but it's vanished um it's gone okay um short I'll think of it at some other time so um so is it would now be a good time to do a quick 10 minute break for everybody yes now would be a good time we will be coming back and we will be doing the um presentation by the vsc social justice on diversity and inclusion initiatives and a little additional business comments from the public and then we'll go into um executive session hopefully a brief one but so we will take 10 minutes come back about 3 15 but Lynn can you just tell me if you hear me I can hear you Linda I'm testing my coming back from you so Lynn Lynn just to be clear we're not supposed to leave the meeting we're simply supposed to mute and go off video and yes you can mute and go off video but um because in fact every everyone needs to understand if they don't whatever they're saying is going to be broadcast on youtube people really we are still alive we are still on live so please we've learned the hard way in the legislature let me encourage you mute go off video during the break otherwise the world will come back at 10 minutes and we want everyone to stick around because we have more important work to do and I appreciate everybody's patience with this but we'll be back in 10 minutes okay I think um I think we have a quorum here of the of the trustees Sophie how many do we need seven or eight yes I think you have you have uh you have enough yes you've got plenty I think okay well we want to get moving along here now and um uh Sophie shell you uh introduce our speakers going on to our next item on the agenda for the remote state college social justice on diversity and inclusion initiatives across the system yeah thank you very much so as the trustees know the colleges have been taking actions to address issues of racial justice as well as diversity equity and inclusion um this the semester I mean I know they've been doing things in the past but they've really been focused on that this semester and I know some of the trustees have participated in some of the events and I really appreciate um you doing that I think it's a good way to connect with the colleges when we're all in this strange virtual world um so VSC social justice is comprised of representatives from each of the colleges and they've prepared a presentation to share information with you about what's happening at each of the colleges and to be honest I'm not sure who the leader is I know Pat Shine Professor Shine is the one I've been speaking to the most so um but whoever it is that's leading the the show please feel free to jump in okay Sophie yep it's me um so good afternoon everybody my name is Patricia Shine and I teach in the psychology and human services program at MVU Linden for the past several months staff and faculty members who've been involved with racial justice work at the various VSC campuses have been needing to learn about what's being done at our sister institutions to share resources and ideas and begin to build community with each other in order to strengthen our individual efforts into collective action as representatives of the VSC campuses we really appreciate this opportunity to dialogue with all of you about racial justice work being done on our campuses and the racial justice work that needs to be done on our campuses and system-wide the foundation of every educational institution has to be social justice and that foundation requires all of us to consistently work together to create and nurture communities that are genuinely inclusive and equitable in regards to race gender ability status sexual orientation social class religion nationality ethnicity so although we're here today to speak to specifically about racial justice we want you to understand that our racial justice work is embedded within the foundation of social justice it's estimated by 2045 which is a mere 25 years from now which is amazing the US population will be comprised of 50 people of color so one of the questions we're facing as institutions of higher education is are we preparing all of our students white students and students of color to function effectively and successfully in that world the colleges within the VSC need to increase enrollment in order to remain viable institutions and this is one of the priorities of the VSC strategic plan so in terms of recruitment do our colleges draw in students of color and when we do and we do but not in the numbers that we could how well do we retain those students of color how genuinely safe and welcome do they feel on our campuses and what about staff and faculty of color personally i know three black faculty members among the extremely few we've ever hired on campus who not only left envy linden but left the state of vermont predominantly due to racism and that was such a tremendous loss so today we're going to be sharing what we are doing on our campuses to work for racial justice but we want to be clear that we are not doing enough most of us are involved in the work of racial justice have already full-time jobs within the system so we really need you as board members to appreciate the gravity of this issue and to see the benefits that would come from supporting diversity equity inclusion efforts at the VSC level and we're going to talk more about that in the concluding remarks and as we share what's going on on our campuses we also look forward to hearing from all of you in terms of what work the board will be doing to further racial justice within the VSCS so onto our presentations each campus representative will share their work for about five minutes and then we'll open the floor for discussion and questions we're going to start by hearing from kathleen mason the coordinator of diversity equity and inclusion from vtc after kathleen we'll hear from elizabeth lair liaison to the diversity equity and inclusion task task force at ccb from nv johnson we'll hear from hannah miller representing their diversity and inclusion task force i'll speak as a representative of nbu linden there our campus social justice group we'll close by hearing from linda olson liaison for the change initiative and one of the faculty creating the kathleen center for social justice and trauma informed care and myleson at the member of the diversity and inclusion task force at nbu johnson will provide summary and closing remarks after each campus rep has had a chance to share their work we really look forward to hearing your questions and comments so with that i'm going to turn it over to kathleen thank you patricia i appreciate that introduction my name is kathleen mason i am the coordinator for diversity equity inclusion here at vermont technical college i'm primarily on the randolph campus but i do serve the entire college across the entire state i am the only coordinator for diversity equity and inclusion in the entire vsc and even though that's my title i always have other duties as assigned so right now a lot of my efforts are based in retention and working with the abiso retention software so uh diversity equity inclusion at vermont tech became is a priority but some of the efforts that we've been working on this year have begun with a series of trainings that we've done this fall and will continue i've titled them uh diversity equity and inclusion lunch and learns and we've been having virtual hour long meetings to discuss social and racial justice issues including implicit bias uh words matter recognizing stereotypes and racist uh and racist and biased expressions uh now a couple hours ago i just finished a presentation on interrupting bias and racism giving strategies to interrupt those in the moment next week the hardness library will be doing incredible presentation from a person who is has been part of the criminal justice system and understanding race as part of the criminal justice system then we will be going into engaging and challenging conversations building that community and then i'm going to try something um interesting uh the couple of days after the election and having a cafe type forum about called so the election just happened now what and how can we engage as a community about that and then we're going to end this fall semester with becoming an ally these are 15 minute presentations and interactions i've had people about between 20 and 40 people attend from across the state including people from ccv which has been fantastic but people are hungry for more and but there's only so much that we can put on and people can attend in the few hours of the day uh de i efforts continue with i am running workshops on stress management to support our marginalized populations in specific implicit bias trainings on um for uh departments and offices like the nursing department or admissions or public safety and i'm working with other departments such as student activities and hardness libraries to try and coordinate our de i efforts so we are sure that there's no duplication or or scheduling that's conflicting uh of course i work directly with students regularly i'm a general support for students as they if they have any needs coming up uh students who are part of any marginalized group or feel targeted in any way and we've been where i've been working with a student initiated um project to raise the Black Lives Matter flag at Vermont Tech that had to be done in our from our perspective from a student led effort so that is still in the works uh up and coming what we hope to be implementing very soon but this is the bigger efforts that take time and energy and um a commitment to everyone at the vsc is really engaging um in deeper projects through a diversity equity inclusion committee with stakeholder stakeholders across Vermont Tech as well as we're implementing a campus climate committee and what that is is a place for people staff faculty or students to go if they have had microaggressions or biases or felt marginalized at a at a level that doesn't rise to conduct but it does affect the climate um that we all are part of so that will be implemented and then of course we're trying as we move forward the hope is is that we're going to be engaging in conversations about our policies and our practices um as free of bias as possible that is deep work that needs to happen um by department and office level um and are we let's see what else are we trying to do here we're you know implementing specific from programming to faculty how can faculty engage in DEI efforts across the curriculum should we have a graduation requirement for our students that have a competency in diversity equity inclusion concepts so there's so much work to do and I'll stop talking here and pass it on to uh the next person um but uh we're we're working hard at BTC but there is definitely as Pat said there's a lot of work to be done so Elizabeth yep you're up next yep here I am thank you um I'm Elizabeth Lear I'm history faculty at the community college at Vermont um I am joined the committee um I was asked by the ccb united faculty union to join the committee as a liaison between the DEI initiatives on campus and um this committee I'd like to start with just some broad figures of uh 5465 students across our 13 campuses 785 identify as Black Indigenous people of color or BIPOC of 783 faculty 27 people or 3.5 percent of the identify um faculty and of the staff there are 154 staff and 9 or 5.8 percent identify as BIPOC as you can see we're not dealing with a significant percentage of BIPOC folks within the ccb community however we live in a multi-ethnic world and in a state that has an ongoing challenges with racism and hatred towards various people of color over the years as the state's largest institution of higher education ccv colleges across the um across the state is heating the call like colleges across the country is heating the call to create a warfare and democratic society in july president judy called for volunteers to sit on a newly established ccv diversity equity and inclusion task force that was created this summer the purpose of the task force is to bring the DEI lens to the many aspects of work going on across the college the committee met for the first time on september 28th so therefore the task force is just now starting the process of establishing goals for this academic year the plan is for the DEI task force to establish one or two goals for the year for its own work but also it is assigning members made up of staff faculty and students to work with various college committees to help the committees establish goals to meet DEI initiatives the committees will work with the DEI task force members include the president's council academic council college council which is comprised entirely of staff gracey human resources development marketing and communications and the hartness library additionally ccv has created banners that says black lives matter on the front and back these banners will hang over the front doors of the 12 academic centers and lou flags is all but two of the centers do not have flagpoles also this summer the ccv united faculty union began to explore the needs of DEI awareness within our institution and began work on ensuring that our students are being properly educated with regard to DEI concerns we felt called to undertake this work because faculty are those who have direct and ongoing contact with our student population yet faculty which makes up approximately 84 of the educational professionals at ccv with only has some representation above on the mentioned committees therefore the union established its own anti-racism working group that has systematically gone through ccv course offerings to review the essential objectives for each course and has made specific recommendations to the academic council academic council has sent directives to various program management committees that develop curriculum requesting that committees update course essential objectives to reflect DEI concerns united faculty anti-racism group has also requested that a DEI general program requirement be required of all degree students that meet DEI course proficiency as of yet we do not know if academic and president's council are going to act upon these recommendations however i am pleased to tell you that a number of DEI special life courses will be adopted within the next academic year thank you right i'm next hi i'm hannah miller i'm an education professor at NVU johnson thanks for having me i use she her pronouns um so i think when i want to talk about what's happening on johnson at the johnson campus i just want to talk a bit about the momentum that we started this year with i think we were all at home in our families communities watching a heightened awareness of race and racism in our society and our students faculty and staff came back to campus this fall ready to dig into this work and i think my evidence for that is that we're seeing on the johnson campus this work pop up in lots of different places and in some ways we already had networks and systems on campus to accept and pick up this work and get going and we're also seeing new systems of this work popping up on campus and so i want to tell you a bit about what's already there and the new things that are popping up and then our ideas for how to keep this work sustained over time because we want to take advantage of this momentum so one of the systems that we already had in place was our diversity and inclusion task force this has been ongoing but this year we identified five priorities we wanted to work on because we can't work on everything although i'm sure you all feel sometimes right now it does feel like we're trying to work on everything but we're actually just doing five things one of those is creating an incoming shared experience for all students faculty and staff to help them learn about the culture's norms and expectations for our campus another is to audit our protocol for responding to racist incidents on campus and then to think about how to improve that protocol to for example shorten the time between incident and action and to not over burden the students with needing to make that change happen another is to build our web presence so that our prospective students perspective faculty and staff know the work that we're doing a fourth is to create a campus climate survey so that we have avenues for being more responsive to student lived experience as it's happening and then fifth we are working on developing diverse and equitable hiring practices and we are starting our first round of that this year with faculty and staff hires so those are the five initiatives the task force are working on this task force is also exciting this year because we have a lot of new stakeholders we have about 45 people who are showing up for this work and that includes community members alumni students faculty staff and that's exciting for us we can feel the momentum so that was already established and then there's some other things popping up as well and we see all of these people are showing up on campus ready to do this work and they're figuring out how to do it in their own spaces and spheres of influence so for example we have the serve office that coordinates our student service opportunities organizing racial justice petition signing parties we have faculty organizing a bar we group which is building anti-racist white educators so we're reading and talking with other faculty about how to make our curriculum more anti-racist we have a lot more visibility of cross-campus opportunities we're seeing you know collaboration between linden and vct vtc and all of these different workshops that we're offering we also are seeing the athletic department has just started a coalition of minority student athletes which is very exciting because it's giving our students of color a space who are athletes a space to form community and identity and build confidence to take on leadership positions on our campus and that group is working to reach out to community to spark to start an affinity space with our students of color in middle schools and high schools in lamoille county which is very exciting because then that gives our younger people role models who look like them in the community in lamoille county and they're working doing that work with the racial equity alliance of lamoille so they're starting to build these community collaborations between the institution and the community so i think that what we're seeing and that's just some of them there is more happening but i think what we're starting to see is that there is momentum behind this work right now and we want to think about how we can sustain it and so i so appreciate having this space to talk about ways to do it what we see on johnson is that this sort of grass roots everyone doing different work in their own spaces is happening but we don't really have someone to look at it all and coordinate we don't have someone looking at it all and seeing a vision for how this work could be done more efficiently we don't have a physical space on campus for example where a director or a coordinator could create a safe space for students of color or other students with minoritized identities who could show up and build community to help transform the campus to really feel like a safe and inclusive space so i think that and we'll talk more about this later but having a position like this would demonstrate to our campus that we pay for what we think is important and investing some finances into having this type of position doesn't mean the work would end because we're going to still keep doing this work but i think the work would be more efficient and it would give us all a network that we could use to um continue this work over time without burning out which is always a challenge when we're all doing it as volunteers and in our own different spaces so thank you for having us here today that's the end of my time thanks Hannah and i just want to acknowledge you know as we are unified and we continue our work at unifying the linden and johnson campuses do work together we had separate groups and so we have had separate initiatives but we're involved with the task forces and we're very appreciative of being able to do that um so nvu linden fair is the linden campus social justice group and fair is an acronym that stands for fairness awareness inclusion and relationships in our community so there had been a campus climate group at linden for a number of years but that group tended to be more of a report out group so when a new president came to the college a while ago we identified the need to establish a group that was more proactive in terms of all aspects of social justice including racial justice programming and identifying ways to respond to incidents of racism in our community so for the past seven years fair has provided lots of social justice programs for our community and just to give you a sense specifically to racial justice some of the things we've done and continue to do um we've hosted nationally known speakers on campus including uh tim wise debbie Irving and paul Hernandez uh we sponsored student panels addressing racism and white supremacy and the challenges that newcomers to the u.s face uh when coming to this country we've facilitated race racial justice trainings including one uh just a few weeks ago we facilitated uh brown bags and a lot of small discussion groups focusing on issues such as racial microaggressions and implicit bias and and we have one of those coming up actually next week uh we've had um held community conversations using a restorative practices framework in response to racial incidents on campus and that's been very successful we hosted the i am vermont 2 photography exhibit that was shown throughout the state and that exhibit focused on the microaggressions people of color face in vermont including people on our own campus uh we have a web presence uh we have facebook page facebook group lib guide uh but aside from what we do we believe it's equally important to focus on how we do what we do in other words we focus not just on content but also on process so there are ways that white culture manifests in organizations without those of us who are white seeing it and sometimes that culture can engender many things and sometimes a sense of paternalism for example uh for those of us who are white without any ill intent at all can think we're capable of making decisions for or in the interests of folks of color without including them in that process and a particular example of that comes to mind so last year one of our campus groups decided to hold an event for black history month they publicized it and then they were surprised when those students of color attended afterwards a number of black students followed up with organizers and said hey had you thought of including us in the planning like where were we in deciding what might be a good event for something that celebrates our history as this incident was brought on up in one of our fia planning meetings we followed up to try to figure out how did this happen and what we heard was that one of the main reasons the organizers hadn't approached any black students was because they feared that doing so would come across as potentially tokenizing like they as white organizers should be able to step up and show leadership in terms of racial justice without having to expect students of color to do so and as a fellow white person I can totally see how they would have that would have made sense to the organizers but the problem was far more fundamental in that the problem was that the organizers were all white they weren't in relationship with students of color and students of color were a part of that group in the first place so I share this to exemplify that those of us who white can despite what would be our best intentions we can assume that we know best for our colleagues and students of color the impact of that thinking can have serious and you know possibly devastating consequences for people of color as white people we absolutely need to educate ourselves about racism and white supremacy and we need to demonstrate leadership and advocating for racial justice and at the same time we have to be accountable to and follow the leadership of people of color in this work and in a predominantly white state in a predominantly white institution such as a vsc being accountable to and following the leadership of people of color means we need to look around and see who is in the room and who needs to be in the room and so when we're doing this work we have to think of the content but we really have to think of the process and how things happen so I'm going to now turn it over to Linda Olson from Castleton. Thanks Pat and I I do want to thank you again for organizing this whole system-wide initiative it's been really great to participate in it. I wanted to start by talking about the diversity equity and inclusion committee which is a Castleton committee that has recently been modified and changed and has been put in charge with the president's pledge which was announced this year. I'm not on this committee but Dean Gally is so she can answer any questions afterwards if you have any questions about it but the first pledge item was to strengthen our efforts to diversify the student body. The second pledge item is to foster a climate of safety for students employees and visitors of color and other historically marginalized groups and to that end the student government association has raised the Black Lives Matter flag there was a ceremony on Sunday which was really wonderful and well attended we also established a student of color advocate position so this position will work directly with students of color to make them feel more comfortable and safe here on campus. Another goal of the pledge is to provide co-curricular programming about racism and white privilege to support students of color and other historically marginalized groups who seek to create programs and organizations that ensure they feel supported and heard on our campus and to that end there is a student chapter of the NAACP that's being formed on campus in conjunction with the student government association. We also the president also made a pledge to support anti-racism training for staff and faculty a review of our curriculum in order to combat systemic racism and implicit bias to diversify our faculty on campus and also to encourage students to vote and engage in other political action. I was asked to participate because I've been working on other initiatives with colleagues including the change initiative which is in its eighth year under the leadership of Amy Bremel who is also on this call and can probably answer questions if you have them. Amy is the coordinator of advocacy activism and non-violence education on campus and change as well as the peer advocates for change for student advocates, trained student advocates focus on issues such as sexual assault, relationship violence, harassment, and LGBTQ issues. Our PAC students are trained to serve as educators, advocates for survivors, and activists on these issues. We also started a interdisciplinary trauma study certificate program about a year ago that's been wildly popular. We have a lot of people that signed up for it and a lot of people who are continuing to ask for information. And finally the sociology, social work, criminal justice, and women's and gender studies department along with collaboration from the Castleton Wellness Center just applied for a grant which we'll find out about in December which would support the Castleton University Center for Social Justice and Trauma-Informed Care. And the center has a realization that unless you dismantle the structural inequalities that exist trauma will always be the outcome. So you have to have both trauma-informed care as well as dismantling the structure in society that causes trauma such as racism. So the center will actually be an attempt for us to have a trauma-informed campus so we'll provide resources to that end so our students get a trauma-informed education and graduate with a trauma-informed response for their professions in the future. But the center is also going to work to fill in gaps in Rutland County with social service agencies and schools and the like to help them with trauma-informed care and social justice issues. We've already started establishing partnerships and so far there is a lot of enthusiasm that we are creating this center to help support Rutland County. And I think it's very critical now with the COVID pandemic and resources being cut in these very important social service agencies. So that's what we have. How's everyone doing? My name is Miles Smith. I'm the Assistant Athletic Director and Headman's Basketball Coach at Northern Vermont University Johnson. And in summary, we believe that the Vermont State College system should be educators and leaders in advancing an inclusivity that raises awareness of social injustice, enhances ethical courage, promotes critical thinking about power, privilege, and equity, and encourages actions and equitable solutions. The steps that have been taken by each Vermont State College institution shows that the foundation has been laid. Vermont State College social justice partners recommend the three-step equity and inclusion action plan. This equity inclusion action plan would allow the Vermont State College system to grow in student retention, recruitment of faculty, staff, and students. The equity and inclusion action plan will lead to the development and implementation of proactive diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which will support the Vermont State College system strategic plan. The equity inclusion plan will play a pivotal role in three out of the six main priorities of the VSD strategic plan. Strategy two, improve the retention and graduation rates at our colleges. Strategy five, operate as a more integrated system to expand student opportunities and achieve operational efficiencies. And strategy six, increase state financial support and other supplemental revenues. As we grow to become more diverse and inclusive campuses and systems, we also need to be incremental in investments into a transformative future. We ask the Board of Trustees to support the following recommendations, which will help the VSCS to be more innovative and inclusive on all forms of social justice. Step one, support through engagement of the Board of Trustees in this work with all Vermont State College institutions. We'll evaluate potential barriers and develop strategies focused on recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and student body. A data analysis on access, retention, and excellence and institutional receptivity will be applied supporting the needs to move to the next step. By applying what we learned from the data, we strongly believe that will lead to growth and becoming a more diverse and inclusive Vermont State College system. With this growth, as any growth, we will need additional means of commitment from the Board of Trustees for diverse and inclusive community that is developing. Step two, support hiring of a coordinator of equity and diversity inclusion for the Vermont State College system. This position will work directly to serve all campus but be housed on a particular campus. This position would work with an advisory group compromised of staff, students, and faculty on each campus. This position would also report directly to all presidents. Step three, support hiring of a diversity inclusion officer for each campus for the Vermont State College system. All steps will focus on the development and a vision of efficiency and strategy that advocates the importance and the value of a diverse and inclusive environment. Each step will also engage faculty, staff, and students to build a welcoming and inclusive culture for all Vermont State College institutions. The foundation has been laid. The work has been done. Our three-step equity inclusion action plan will not happen overnight, as this is a process that will continue to build for the VSC. We know that transforming a community will take both work through revision of policies and systems as well as meaningful self-reflection on our culture. Each step will grow in both initiatives. The task-oriented work of analyzing and revising policies and process-oriented work of self-reflection and cultural change. If a cultural shift is expected, the process has visible and unwavering support for this work from the chancellor's office and the administrative team so that each campus community knows that this is a top priority. Working towards equivalent access to opportunity for all people through understanding and addressing the root causes of social injustice and developing groundbreaking solutions will allow the Vermont State College system to have a transformational and innovative experience for faculty, staff, and the whole entire student body for the VSC. Thank you. Thank you so much, Miles. And thanks for all of the speakers who contributed today. And we now welcome your questions, your comments, any responses you might have. Ryan. So, yeah, first off, I want to thank everyone who spoke. I think it's some excellent work we're seeing at all of our campuses, really beneficial. Obviously, this is just a starting point, but really got to commend you all on your work. And, Miles, I think you really did the head there with your summary. I like what you're recommending, and I would urge the rest of the board to really consider and let us move forward on those recommendations because our students, as our largest stakeholders, are really the most important part. It's important that we are in lockstep on these conversations and that the entire VSC feels they are supported in everything that they do. But I do have a specific question to those who spoke, and that is, what do you guys need, number one, to help support you at each one of your campuses in continuing your work? Essentially, if you could have the blank check, million dollars, what would be the first thing you would go out and do? I know some of you kind of spoke to, you know, ideas you would like, but just number one, what's that wishlist look like, and what can we do to really up the ante on what you guys can provide to our students? So, whoever wants to start off, by all means, please. I would say that if cost wasn't an issue, you know, most colleges have a position like this on their campus. I've been chair of the fair group for seven years. I have a full-time job plus other stuff, and I just see how much could be done and how much isn't done because there's, you know, and everybody on the fair planning group is great and they do a lot. They all have a full-time job. So, if this matters, then there needs to be support for it. In most other colleges do this, and I welcome feedback from anybody else in the group. I also absolutely agree that having someone in a full-time position to help lead this work, I think it's really critical to covering the broad bases that we have within our college. And by broad bases, I mean geographically with different areas that have very unique issues related to DEI concerns, and having an officer in a position or a coordinator in a position would be tremendously beneficial for the college community. Ryan, this is Miles. I think that in a perfect world, our group would all say that we can go right to step three, right? But because of the financial stabilities and things of that nature, I think that's why we came together with that three-step process. But like I said, in a perfect world, if you can get to that point where you have an individual on each campus, I've been here for six years and I'm also an alum at MBU Johnson. And the one thing that I always hear is that, oh, well, people of color, this area just isn't, it's predominantly white. And I think that's the wrong mindset of thinking. I think we actually have a gold mine, as I told our group, is that we have the potential to be access-oriented state institution that allows for these individuals to find a safe space. There's no access right now in the state of Vermont. When we say predominantly white, we automatically assume that the state of Vermont has no people of color. With that is completely false. Now, what if there was an opportunity for us to develop a state college system where access was granted and they would have a place to feel safe? Now we are growing as an institution and as a state college system that allows the BIPOC community to be free and to be leaders as well. And you changed that with looking at people that look like them. I went to school for four years at MBU Johnson. My students that I coach have been there from two to four years. A person of color potentially could graduate and never see a professor that looks like them. That's tough for an individual who's looking to become a leader in a different field. Now, I know there are steps that needs to take place, but for me, I think that having that individual, having a diversity and inclusion person on each campus is definitely something that I think we should strive towards. Hi, this is Janet. Thank you all for presenting. And I don't remember who it was mentioned, space or having a safe space on our campuses. Did I understand that correctly? I wasn't quite sure what that meant. Definitely, was that you? It may have been me. Okay. Yeah. I think that was me. Hi, this is Hannah from MBU Johnson. So I was thinking that if we had a magic wand and we had all of the money and we could move right to step three and we had an officer on each campus, that officer would have a physical space where students could actually go and see other people that look like them, like Miles was talking about, to form community to gain confidence in their identities on campus and in that space and just to feel like there's a home for them. I think having a physical space is important, but having a space that helps develop the culture and norms on campus as well would be benefited from a position like that that could hold both physical and ideological space for those kinds of ideas. So that's what I meant by safe space. Did that answer your question? No, I was concerned it meant something more literal than that in terms of physical people fearing for their physical safety versus a place to have safe conversation, build community and that sort of thing. So that's good. And then my other question is I was thinking about that is do all of our campuses and facilities have prayer rooms? Because I know that's become big in industry, all of us in business now do that and is that a standard thing we see on our campuses? No. At Vermont Tech we have responded to the request for a prayer room and that has been offered and spaces have made, but it's not a standard process. And of course that would be a an easy step given a lot of what we have for space available on our campuses. It might be considered small and minor, but it's a step I think if someone shows up and asks and we say wow, huh, it's a lot different than saying well, but of course we have a prayer room. And like I said, it's very dominant in business right now, particularly in manufacturing facilities to accommodate that. So I just think it would translate well to our college campuses. I would just say that what we're calling for here is cultural change and that's never easy and it's never cheap. So if we really truly want to change our campuses in ways that are meaningful for our students of color, we have to dedicate resources to it. And we also have to make connections off campus as well because while our students may feel safe on campus, they're going out into communities where they're often profiled or targeted and that is not acceptable either. So it's really about making broad connections that keep our students safe, make them feel welcome and that's not easy. Does anyone else have a question? Pat, President Mullen. Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't have a question as much as a comment and I just want to echo the presenters we've heard today and echo Linda's last point. We've heard some stories here at Vermont Tech recently, not just for students not feeling necessarily comfortable here, but not welcomed in the community by other Vermonters who, you know, as a native-born Waspie Vermonter, I get it. We're not used to the diversity that we are now seeing and are welcoming in our state. But I also agree that we've got to put some use our power to put effort behind this. The Black Lives Matter resolution was something but it's not wrapped. It doesn't have anything else wrapped around it. And that's where I feel the board has got to put some effort and emphasis and work and funding behind this for us to really start to make this a more welcoming system. And I agree with Mr. Smith that if we do that, we'll do a better job at retention. We'll help make Vermont more of a safe place. So very supportive of this dialogue and I appreciate the board engaging in it. Well, I have a question. Maybe Pat Shine can address this, but really all of the speakers, when you have student services, the need for student services is a very big part of what these state colleges provide and continue to need to provide to our students. What is in your student services package or programs that can go and help these students who are people of color, even people from foreign countries, people who have immigrants, people who are immigrants, you know, I know you have those services and I just want to know how you integrate with those. I'll answer for our campus and I'm not even sure if I'm answering your question and then I'd welcome anybody else. It's we're a small campus, even when we were better enrolled, we were small campus. And so it's through relationships. And so one of the, in that it's back to the space. So one of the spaces that a lot of our students of color and newcomers to the US gravitate towards is academic support, where there's food and there's a welcoming atmosphere and that's where people get to know each other. And that's how so a lot of the connections that happened are just our relationship based in community based. And that's why this is such an important part of the work is to is that process part of knowing each other. So we have things in place. You know, we have stuff on the web. We have information packets for incoming students. But that's a lot of how that works for us. I'd be interested in hearing from other people if I'm even understanding your question correctly. Now that's what kind of support services do we provide and we provide it for all kinds of students, but is this specific group of people, what are we doing specifically for the BIPOC students or students that are fear and have stress issues or whatever? Yeah, not much at all. And we have we have the counseling center, which is accessible to anybody. We've tried to start on our campus support groups for students of color. That's when we've had staff or faculty members of color who are willing to do that or able to do that in terms of time. That's a rare occurrence. I don't think we support our students of color near at all as well. That's why that's the efforts. Okay, thank you. I can only this is from Miles Smith from the Johnson campus. Hannah, if you could elaborate if I've missed anything. But I think the student services piece in as far as a job responsibility is a little bit different in which in which you might be equating it to only because that they're educational platform that comes along with trying to care for these students. It's more of an equity piece rather than an equality piece, I would say. So when you're looking at that, you're basically simply talking to what past China saying like individuals have to become that piece. Sometimes it's someone of color. For us, it's athletics. One of three minority, I believe, full time staff or faculty members on the Johnson campus. So within athletics, there's a lot of minority students. So that becomes a safe space me physically and then my office becomes a safe space for students of color. But then you have faculty members that also can relate to those students as well. And I guess the summary that we try to put together is that there really isn't a piece for this to happen. Linda talked a little bit about it. There's a different form of trauma when it's coming from a student of color or the BIPOC community, when they're coming into a brand new culture, a PWI institution, and they don't have no access to be able to counsel that even if from a counseling services piece, that's a different form of counseling that needs to be put on for these students. And it's not like one or two students. We do have a good amount of students on each campus that needs this equity piece to be able to achieve some of the same things that some of our other students are allowed to achieve. Thank you. Bill. Thank you. So I want to just acknowledge and well, first of all, thank you for each of your work, most of which is done on a volunteer basis in addition to your other work. And I want to, two things come to mind in particular for me. One is, I think it was, I think maybe Pat Shine, Patricia Shine, who talked about trying to work toward a trauma informed campus and to recognize that any marginalized population, students or faculty, for that matter, have experienced trauma. The cumulative microaggressions and the explicit aggressions are traumatizing and that we just, we need to come to, we need to come to understand that. And it goes to other marginalized groups. And frankly, I speak out of that experience myself, but not as a BIPOC person, but as a marginalized community. And that having that awareness is really important. And to recognize that in addition to what's happening on campus, as it was said, we in the legislature just very recently in the last year formed what we're calling a social equity caucus, which is made up of legislators and community members throughout the state. And we need to acknowledge and recognize that there are overt, there is overt racism in Vermont, it's not all just implicit bias. We are, we're living in a period where all across Vermont in different communities, there are, there are, there are individuals and groups of people feeling entitled to actually step out and claim white supremacy in a very explicit, hurtful, targeting and damaging way. And that we live within that environment. So we need to take our, we need to shoulder our piece of responsibility in standing against that on all of our campuses, because we were presidents all throughout Vermont. And some of the communities in which we serve are really, really struggling with some very, very overt racist actions to the degree where some, some activists have felt absolutely compelled to leave their communities to move. So I think we need to understand that in this period of time, particularly when things are being inflamed rather than relationships being built at, at levels that I think many of us find very distressing, that we in Vermont are not immune from that. And it's being, it's having to be addressed across the state. So to the degree that we can engage as fully as possible as the Vermont State College System and as Miles I think said, it's, it's actually, it's not only the right thing to do, it's in our self-interest to do this. That we, to for us to be one of the places where adult students as well as rising students out of our school systems could recognize that the Vermont State College System takes us very seriously and wants to have us be a strongly welcoming environment all across the state. That's in our interest at every level. So thank, thank you for the work and yeah, in this financial environment it's very difficult, but I think you've laid out a roadmap that we can think seriously about how to take some steps to get us there. And I think we should, as a board, need to really take this to heart. So thank you. Any other questions? Well seeing none, I want to thank Patricia and the other speakers for bringing this to our attention. I'm sure this is not the last time we're going to have this discussion. We probably can expand beyond that and I know that some of our members have actually, our board members have either been able to attend or be involved with some of the work that you're doing around the state and in your classes. But I appreciate the time you spend. Thank you. Yeah, yes. Lynn, can I ask one more? I'm sorry. I'm just assuming this is happening, but if not, could we ask for the summary that Miles, that you've presented to us as a board, be presented formally to us in a written form? That would be helpful, yes. So that we have something in front of us in terms of the three-step, the path, three-step path, I think you were talking about. Yeah, sure. I can send it over to our leader, Pat Shine, and then Pat, you can work with them through there. Email it to the members of the board. Very good point. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Next on the agenda, we have additional business. We have committee assignments. I haven't spoken to the two new people yet. Well, I did speak to one of them about one of the assignments, and I think I'd like to do that maybe privately as well as doing it now. But one of the assignments is for Sean to be appointed to the audit committee. I'm resigning from the audit committee. I don't think that I can do every committee all the time. So what we need, this is something that the board normally elects and nominates. The nominating committee did not meet to do this, but I think that his background in the hospital as a CEO would be a good place for him to be participating in the audit committee. Is that something that I can hear a motion on? So moved. Second on it. Jim, Jim Maslin seconding. Any questions, discussions, or anything like that? Okay. We will have a vote for all those who want Sean Tester to be on our audit committee. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Sean, congratulations. Thanks, I think. Welcome, Sean. I promise we don't bite. Most of the time it's not that hard, but it is it is an important committee to work on. And I know that you'll bring a lot of expertise to it. And our biggest meeting is coming up on the 29th when we'll get the approved audit report. And I assume that the auditors will be joining us at least by Zoom. Okay, the next time. Yes. The next item is comments from the public. We have several people from the public here. Would anyone like to say anything? Beth Walsh has got her hands up. Let's go with you, Ball. Beth? Hi, thank you. Very interesting meeting today. And I want to thank Pat Shine and everybody else on their social justice committees all across the Vermont State College system. We work hard. We are committed and we are excited to share all that stuff with you. I want to also share that the Vermont State College's career consortium we call ourselves, all of us career directors, are coordinating a Vermont State College-wide virtual career fair. I just sent out over 2,000 emails to businesses across the state and the country. I got 200 and something bounce backs, but I will deal with those and reach out again. But we're hoping to have a real robust list of employers looking for new staff, new interns. So as I listened to this meeting, and I introduced myself earlier, but I am the director of career development at NVU Johnson. I'm also the president of the Vermont State College's nine professionals. And I especially was interested in the discussion about the VSC Forward and the select committee of the legislature working to try to reconfigure the Vermont State College's into a more sustainable model. And so I especially liked the conversation about how do we make this decision? There aren't easy decisions. I understand that. But I want to encourage whoever ends up making the decisions on moving the VSC into the future to keep in mind a few things. I'll try to be brief. Please consider the effects that changes will have on our communities and our students and our state. Also, keep in mind that lower enrolled programs are not always expensive. Sometimes they're low enrollment, but it doesn't cost a lot. And it's an important topic to be on our campuses. Many of our students cannot learn well online. So if we think that that's the way to go, there are so many of our students that don't have access to the hardware or the connectivity or even the learning ability to learn well online. It's important to have residential campuses across our state. The presentation from Pat Shine and Hannah and Miles and the others makes it clear that it's important for our state to have students from outside of Vermont come to Vermont. Many of them stay in Vermont. But if we change the residential status of our campuses, we will miss out on those out of state students and we will reduce the diversity of the state, the potential diversity of the state. Another thing to keep in mind if we're thinking about changing residencies is that millions of dollars in federal funding through TRIO grants will be lost if we do not have our students on our campuses because those TRIO grants require our students to live on our campuses and that's a lot of money. And Karen Luno said something that I thought was interesting. She said that the heavy lift that, no, that the Board of Trustees was going to be the heavy on this, on the decision making. And I have to push back a little bit because I think it's more the governor and the legislature that are the heavy. We know that we need better funding, that if we don't get increased funding we'll continue to to defer our maintenance of our campuses. We'll continue to have to have high tuitions and we will continue to send more students out of state than are staying in state. Thank you for listening and please contact me if you have any questions. Beth.Walsh at northernvermont.edu. Thank you. Thank you, Beth. Anyone else? Not seeing anyone else coming forward. We are next on the agenda to go into executive session. We hope it will be brief. Go ahead, Janet. Yeah, before we go into an executive session, I think there's just one other thing I wanted to, and I guess discuss or comment on, which was the letter we were shared from Sophie from the union group and their recommendations going forward. And so I just wanted to comment that I found it interesting. I thought that you know it's great that there were recommendations about how to maybe streamline the top and in ways to organize our curriculums better and realign, but it was actually very disappointed to not see a lean-in by that group itself as to how they were going to help. Because I think everyone knows the big piece of our cost is what we do with our employees and if we're going to be urgent and take this whole situation seriously, then I think it's really important that everyone lean in and I was very disappointed to not feel that way from that letter. Okay, I got Bill Lippert first and then Linda second. Well, I have a different topic to bring up. So if it's Linda who wants to follow up on Janet's comments, let me wait. Okay, that sounds good. Linda, you go next. Yeah, as a member of that committee, I have to say that the staff and faculty have already leaned in. The cuts have already been made to the staff and faculty. We have endured cuts year after year after year. So it's not that we're not leaning in. We've already leaned in. Okay, Jim, is this on, do you have something on this topic or do you want to do something else? Well, on the on the letter. Yeah, but if, if, go ahead. Um, well, a couple of things. One is I read it intently a couple of times. I think there's some good ideas and I'm contained in there. I'm less interested in renaming Vermont State Colleges, Vermont State University, more than in the, in the substance of what's being presented. But, and I'm, I mean, it merits a broader discussion more than just my comments. But what I was noticing, reading that over and also during the discussion earlier today, at the core of it, I think, even though it's not acknowledged, has to do with what Yasmeen said earlier is getting to the heart of the decision. I mean, there, there are definitely decisions that need to be made among the parties. And one of the things that I found, I guess, somewhat disappointing in the letter that good ideas were presented. But then again, again, it gets back to the, the core of it all, which is how are we going to, we collectively, whoever the collector is, I'm going to make decisions going forward. And, and I didn't see that in there. Maybe that parallelist, whoever just spoke, but it's a consideration. And that's why I spoke earlier about the notion of having a facilitator, if, you know, in a different, in a different form, to ferret out the good ideas, the best of the ideas, I guess, or, or expand upon them and, and figure out how we get from point A to point B. So that may be in from good information for some people, good comments and, and less useful to others. But that's my 10 cents for this afternoon. Thanks. Thank you. Bill? Again, I have a request that's going in a different direction entirely. But I wanted to, if I may, I think Pat Moulton, I believe you were the person who were talking about the initiative using coronavirus relief money and training opportunities at the four campuses. Am I remembering that correctly? Yes, I mentioned that. And, um, twice Judy is also, well, and Sophie talked about it too. Yes. Well, what I'd like, I'd like to make the request that, excuse me, that something summarizing and giving acts, you know, how do you access that? Be shared with every legislator, because we have, we reach out across the entirety of the state. And it's something which legislators can put out there as an opportunity. And frankly, you know, we all are supporting it. And we all should be encouraging folks to, we should be encouraged to make sure it gets broadly distributed as information. And we are a network of 180 people who have an interest in talking to our communities. Yeah, we can do that, Bill. And it also reminds me I should reach out to our congressional delegation too, because they obviously get contacted by folks as well. So thank you. That's a really good point. Yeah, one question that I have, maybe one of the presidents or Sophie can explain this, that came out of commerce, the mic committee that was discussed quite a bit and was really something we chose to make a different choice for the money that was suggested for us originally. Is that something that people can access through ACCD or is that something, where do they access that on the state website? So right now there's a landing page, a link to our website, the VSC website. But that link is being shared by, with the Department of Labor is sharing it with people. And I don't know if Pat or Joyce have additional information on that, but we are, I know we're also sharing it with the State Workforce Development Board, you know, all the various contacts that we have with workforce groups, it's going out. So we're trying to get it out as broadly as we can, because it is very time constrained. I will say that it was, I shared that at the press conference, and it's been picked up by all kinds of news organizations. So it's on CAX's website, it was on WDEV, so that the landing page URL is really out there. Okay, okay. That was the whole. Is the landing page just for, is it for the whole system? It's for the whole system. Yeah, we're striving to definitely promote the system as a whole with this. So the landing page is on the VSC website, and then there's a whole range of different courses and credentials and programs. And depending on which ones you're interested in, you then get directed to the individual institutions. And Adam, you can search by, if you go to the landing page, you can search by sector, you can search by college, you can search by format, like if you want online or hybrid or whatever. So there's a number of different ways that you can search that. I will just tell you that CCB in the last three days has, we have over 150 inquiries. So we're pretty happy. And that was before it was really, I mean, you had 105 before we even started advertising it. So can I ask you a question? Are we concerned that it'll max out? No. That would be a good problem, Bill. Well, I'm just asking because I don't know. We can handle. I haven't received anything. I don't know the specifics. I'm a trustee. I'd like to know. Yeah, there's funding to support a thousand people. Okay. But the problem is, they have to use it. You have to sign up for a course. You have to be done by the end of December. I think if we get 200 or 300 people, I think we should, we should hail that as a success. I may be completely wrong, but. Well, I don't have any idea because I don't have the information in front of me yet. But so I would suggest that we, I mean, obviously we want to promote this broadly. And again, think about what reaches our communities across Vermont. Front Porch Forum. Perhaps we should buy and add in every front porch forum. Do we have the funds within that grant or those monies to promote this? Or do we only, can we only use it for the actual provision of service? No, there's money for advertising. And I think you're going to see it pretty broadly advertised. The problem is we had, we only had the URL yesterday. So there is a, there's a pretty good marketing plan that the four schools have developed. Great. But I think your point about getting, you know, and I'll talk to Sophie, whoever's going to send the flyer out to legislators. But I think there is a pretty good, I think it's a pretty robust marketing plan. It has been coordinated. Be sure to include legislators. And I need legislators. Every legislator can claim ownership of this. Seriously, you want them to. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and something tells me you're going to be talking to people between now and November 3rd. So you can. It might happen. It might happen. And, and I did just paste the URL to the landing page in the chat if anybody wants to get a quick look at it. But I think one of us should get that out to them soon. So I can ask Amanda to do that for you. Just the link right now on the VSC page just goes to CCV. Not workers. It didn't. Well, maybe there's multiple links, but the one that I found on the homepage says free training for Vermonters impacted by COVID-19. That just goes. Did you use the URL in the chat, Adam? Yeah. Yeah. So there are two different ones. Oh, huh. Interesting. Cause that it was supposed to be for the entire VSC. Yeah. It is for the entire VSC. I will say CCV did post a link ahead of time. So maybe it's somehow picking that up because CCV started registering folks a day or two ago. Yeah. And you can click on institution on that URL I just sent. So I'm, that's a little weird, but you're only getting the CCV thing. Cause when I click on it, I'm getting to everybody. So weird. Yeah. So my, there's probably two links. It's straightened out. We'll get it to you. We will get it straightened out. I will definitely do that. Jim, you wanted to say something. Jim Maslin. There was that leftover from before? Over from before, Lynn. Thank you very much. Okay. Good. Just wanted to make sure. I'm good. Okay. So Sophie and the presidents will make sure that or Sophie and Yasmin or someone will make sure that we get the links properly worked up for the Vermont workers project that is through the workforce development. Is there anything else? We have an executive session to go into. I don't see Megan here. She just joined, as she said. And actually just back. You are very timely. We have got a motion to go into executive session. I move the VSC board of trustees enter executive session pursuant to one VSA 313A3 to discuss the evaluation of employees. No formal or binding action shall be taken in the executive session. Along with the members of the board present at this meeting, the board invites the chancellor to attend. Second. Okay. Any discussion or questions? Jim, was that a question? No, that's, let's go. Let's go. Okay. All those in favor of going into executive session by the motion, please indicate by saying aye. Opposed? Okay. We are now an executive session. We will come out. We're going in at 435 and we will be out shortly, we hope. I'm going to go to a breakout room. So you have to join? Join. Sophie back. Okay. We're exiting executive session at 506. Is there a motion to remain? I do have a motion. I move that upon the recommendation of the Chancellor, Elaine Collins, President Northern Vermont University, Patricia Moulton, President Vermont Technical College, Jonathan Spiro, Interim President Castleton College, and Joyce Judy, President Community College of Vermont, each be reappointed for a term through June 30, 2022, subject to and in accordance with the terms of letters of reappointment to be signed by the chancellor. Based on each president's performance during the year, the chancellor's evaluation of each president and for the reasons discussed during the executive session, the board believes that each president and interim president remains the best candidate to lead his and her institution. Is there a second? Second from Jim Maslin. Any discussion or any questions? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye. Any opposition? Say no. There doesn't appear to be any opposing views, so the motion will pass. We will be meeting again October 29th for our committee meetings, and we hope to see everyone there. Thank you. Thank you very much for tonight. Thank you very much. We'll get a motion to adjourn. So move. Okay, second. We'll get that to Mary Moran. We had a couple of hands going up there. All those in favor of adjourning, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Okay, thank you, folks. We'll see you in a couple of weeks. Thank you. Thank you, Sophie. Thank you all the presidents and everyone else. Thank you, everyone. Have a good weekend.