 Excellent, thank you very much and welcome everyone. You can tell I am not Chair Dickinson, although she is here, and then thank you for joining. Chair Dickinson is recovering from very recent surgery, so we're grateful for you for joining, Lynn, but we will try and carry this forward today with you in listening mode. So I will call us to order. There is a link to sign up to provide public comment. It's on the agenda that has been published. So at the end of today, we will have that time for public comment, but we'll start us off with a call and order and call for a motion and a vote to approve the minutes from the October 25th, 2021 board meeting, which were in the board packet that was sent out earlier. So moved. Excellent, thank you, Sue. Do we have a second? Thank you, David. Any discussion on the minutes? Okay, hearing none, all those in favor of approving the minutes as they were in the packet, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The ayes can be. So we'll start our agenda today with scholarship and endowment requests and Trustee Silverman, I will turn it over to you, please. Thank you very much. We have a couple of new scholarships to present to the board for approval. Typically, the Finance and Facilities Committee would preview these, but there's some need to move on these. And so we're asking the full board to consider these and approve if they so desire. I would ask President Pat Moulton to present the Brenda Churchill Flint Memorial Endowment, Pat. Thank you, Trustee Silverman very much. But before I get started, I'd like to introduce Tina Churchill and Amy Ferris who are Brenda Churchill Flint's sisters who are joining us today. And also Chris Black who is a close friend and mentor of Brenda and her family. Chris also worked at Vermont Tech and actually hired Brenda if I got that right. And I might be missing anybody else. Am I missing anybody else who's here from the Churchill or Flint families? Yes, Samantha is on. Oh. Well, she was, sorry, it's Tina. Thank you for having us. And I think Carol, is that you? Okay, great. Thank you all very much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. And as the chancellor stated in her memo, which was sent out to the board of trustees, Brenda Churchill Flint was a beloved colleague here at Vermont Tech and at the chancellor's office. Brenda was a student here at Vermont Tech studying business. And I understand from Joyce Twing, co-chair of the business department and a faculty member of Brenda's that Brenda had perfect math SAT scores. She was a natural for business. And as Joyce tells the story, back then we had a selection committee and other faculty members were saying, oh no, she should go into engineering with math scores like that. But she chose business, which of course Joyce would say she chose wisely. She worked initially for Du Bois and King after graduation, which is a prominent engineering firm here in Randall. She then worked for Vermont Tech for many years before progressing to the chancellor's office as a valued member of the financial team there. She very recently returned to Vermont Tech as a part-time controller for us and also working for community college of Vermont. She was very active in her community and in community service, serving on the Brookfield Select Board as well as other services for the town of Brookfield. And her family's name is well known in the Brookfield area. Also, we have framed the scholarship in Brenda's honor for students who are from Vermont, who are pursuing a business related program that have a financial need and also high math SAT scores. There's additional merit for community service and or outdoor activities. Brenda was an avid runner walker having logged hundreds of miles, if not thousands. We are all blessed to have known her and the scholarship endowment is the least we can do to honor Brenda and her family. I should also note that the Churchill family had established a scholarship earlier, the Robert Margaret Churchill Memorial Scholarship for agricultural students to honor, I believe it's Brenda's grandparents, if I've got that right. The Churchill and Flint families are farm families in the Brookfield area that the Churchill's asked that we have these donations go to the Brenda Churchill Flint Memorial Fund and I would seek your approval on this endowment today. Is there anybody else who might like to speak to this scholarship? Hearing none, the formal written ask and scholarship documentation is in the trustees board package and I would entertain a motion to approve the Brenda Churchill Flint Memorial Endowment. Thank you, Shirley. A second. Thank you, Ryan. A discussion. Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? There are none, obviously. And the motion passed as well as the endowment and we are very grateful to the family for this assistance to our community. Thank you to our students going forward. Thank you very much, trustees. I appreciate it. Brenda was a good friend and a great colleague and this is a great way to honor her by working and help students going forward to pursue an education just like she did. So thank you so much. Thank you, President Molten. Next, I'd like to invite President Jonathan Spiro to present the Student Engagement Scholarship honoring Victoria Angus. Thank you, Trustee Silverman. Thank you for allowing me to speak in favor of this new Student Engagement Scholarship honoring Victoria Angus. Victoria, known to everyone as VA, was our associate academic dean for 41 years. Let me say that again, 41 years. She was and is a beloved figure on this campus. VA retired on October 30th and on that day, we held a jam-packed celebration in the Campus Center in which hundreds of alums came from all over the country in the midst of a pandemic to honor VA. We had a great time. We also raised almost $200,000, which we've allocated towards some of VA's favorite causes, Women's History Month, the Green Campus Initiative, the DEI Committee and others. And in addition, VA's admirers created this Student Engagement Scholarship in her honor. The funds will go to students who are deeply involved in on-campus activities, clubs, orientation, student government, and so forth. So I'm honored to be the one to ask the board to officially approve this very worthy scholarship. Could I make a motion that we approve the scholarship in the name of VA at Castleton University? Thank you, Mary. Do we hear a second? I'll second it, Adam. Thank you, Adam. Is there further discussion? I would just like to, if I might, I would like to echo Jonathan's lovely comments about what a wonderful, wonderful person of VA was and a gift to Castleton and the region. So thank you for bringing this forward, Jonathan. Thank you, Mary. It is so fitting that you're the one to make the motion. So I appreciate that. Thank you. 41 years. That's simply amazing. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, of course not. The motion carries. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, trustees. And I will give the floor back to Vice Chair Kluver. Thank you. And certainly a bittersweet way to start our meeting today, remembering these members of our VSC family. We will turn next to a presentation from Vision Point Marketing. So if I'm gonna turn it to you to make the introductions, but I'm certainly looking forward to hearing the presentation from this group. I believe they've been in the state for the past month and on our campuses. So we have given them the opportunity to view at least three of our six seasons and our campuses and our students and to take a look at our culture and context as they bring us the recommendations. I'll turn it to you for proper introductions, please. Yeah, thank you very much, Megan. I actually only see Erica Kim in the meeting. So I don't know, Erica, if, where your colleagues are. Yeah, just some of a quick note. I'm sure they're hopping on your occasion. Do you want to say any few introductory words at all? I'll wait for the team, but just in the meantime, my name is Erica Kim. I'm the Senior Strategist on the project. As the one mentioned, just had that opportunity to visit Vermont and each of the campuses and really enjoyed our time there. Thank you. That's great. Yeah, so just while we wait for Bruce and Tony to join us, just a reminder, Vision Point Marketing is the firm that's been working with us on doing research regarding the name for the new university as well as the branding. And so some of the aspects of the work are still ongoing, but today the presentation is really focused on the branding pillars and the personality traits for the new university. So that is the sum total of my marketing experience to share with you on that. So I don't see them yet. Sophia, I wonder, might we go to the next item on the agenda and then come back? Would that be okay? That would be fine, because the next two items, I think are relatively quick ones. So Patty, Turley, General Counsel is going to be presenting on those. Good afternoon, everyone. Oh, I do see. The papers just came in. Well, we will proceed. In your packet, you will find that we have a couple of revisions to the board of trustee, the board bylaws. First, actually though, we have policy 505, which sets out the responsibilities. This policy referenced certain responsibilities involving the long range planning committee. The proposed changes in the materials in front of you align those responsibilities with the board itself in recognition that the board voted to suspend the long range planning committee back in March. That suspension was in recognition that most of the duties of the long range planning committee is really being done by the full board because of this time of transformation. So I'll stop there at the moment. And see if anybody wants to discuss the fact that we're looking to revise that policy 505 to ensure that long range planning types of reports are still being received by the board and are being properly processed in front of the board. And I would just add one of the requirements that we received from the legislature was to make sure that the board followed its policies. So obviously as we don't have the long range planning committee operating right now, it would not be possible for us to follow our policies. So that's one reason why we're bringing this forward now is just to make sure that we're not in violation of our policies. Adam, I see you have a question. Sure, yeah, I guess when I was reading this, it just struck me that we will continue to reference that each president shall establish an institution-specific strategic planning process that includes both short and long term. Can someone just maybe start the conversation why we'd be retaining that language at this time? So right now all four of our institutions need to be separately accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education. And so strategic planning is a requirement of NETCHI of one of the standards. So until we actually become one single entity that obligation for each institution to have strategic planning is still in place. So we need to maintain the individual accreditation for each of the institutions up until the night or I guess the minute before we pull the switch and become Vermont State University for those three institutions. So we don't have individual institutions doing long-term planning just retaining this language for that requirement. Right, but down the road obviously there's gonna have to be a lot of revisions like that as we move forward. Great, thank you. And I don't know, Vice Chair, if you would like to vote on these, if you'd like to vote on this now or if you'd like the other explanation of changes and vote on everything at once, it's really up to you. Let's take the other explanation of changes and vote on them both together. I think they're both fairly straightforward. Very good. Thanks, Patty. In addition to the long range planning or the strategic planning policy, we have some modest revisions to the bylaws and the handbook in front of you beginning at page 23. The bylaws stated that the election of officers was to occur at the first regular meeting of the calendar year. So that would typically be January or so. While the nominating committee charter in the handbook described that election of officers would occur at the annual meeting. So we had a discrepancy there. In resolving the discrepancy, we decided to look at what would be the best path forward and agreed that we recommend officers be elected at the annual meeting. First, it is a traditional time for officers to be elected. And second, without this change, we run the risk that a trustee might be elected as an officer and then not be reappointed just a month or two later because sometimes the term would end at the end of February. So that is the purpose for the changes to the bylaws that reflect that particular piece. That means that we also took a look at the nominating committee charter or description and it was noted that the description says that the nominating, the board chair would elect or appoint, excuse me, the chair of that committee. But this board discussed this back in January and decided that they would prefer to have the nominating committee indeed elect their own chair of their own committee. So this reflects that change. If we turn to there are two other small changes in the, you may remember that we changed the audit committee to be titled the audit and risk management committee with a few other changes in there as well to ensure that that committee was encompassing the risk management parts of our needs. And some of the change to that title did not get carried through on the audit committee, the audit and risk management committee description. So we have carried that fully out in the proposed changes that are really just clean up there. And we needed to look at the handbook to update that as well because the handbook called it the audit committee, not the audit and risk management committee. So we have, we recommend that we make that addition or that correction to the handbook as well as to add the diversity equity and inclusion committee, which was just being considered or just being established at the time that we last looked at our handbook. So all of those changes are contained in your materials with both red line and clean copies. Any discussions or questions for Patty that I call for a motion on all three of these items to approve the revisions to policy 505 as well as the revisions of the VSC bylaws and trustee handbook as outlined by Patty Turley. So moved. So does that work? That could, Jefferson. Thank you both. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Okay. Hearing none opposed, Patty, thank you for your diligence on this. We will mark that as moved and accepted and we will move back. Sophie, I'll turn it back to you on the vision point marketing. Thank you very much. And so just welcome to Tony and Bruce as well from vision point marketing who are with us today. So we got through the first bit of the meeting a little squifter than we had anticipated. So we appreciate your patience as we decided to just take up something else while we waited. I did provide just a brief overview just of the work that vision points been doing for us and explaining that there's still some additional items that you're working on that aren't getting presented today but we will, I'm sure be presenting at a future meeting. But having said that, I will step back and let, and let you take over. I don't know Bruce or Tony if one of you is running a slideshow or there we go. All right. Yeah. And thank you very much for inviting us today and welcome us to join your board of trustees meeting. You know, as you mentioned, we're really excited to share with you all the continued progress that we've been making in partnership with you all and specifically with our core team that we've been working with from a Kasselton Northern Vermont University and Vermont Technical related to the brand platform development for Vermont State University now. So moving forward in today's presentation we'll begin with a brief overview of the efforts that vision point has been engaging with for the Vermont State College of System. Hopefully it won't be too redundant to what you just shared Chancellor. And then from there, we'll also share with you our key research and discovery insights which ultimately informed the strategy behind the brand pillars and personality traits that we'll be presenting to you today. And then finally, we'll wrap up with a preview of what's to come and the next steps and the timing of those next steps. So in thinking about and to set the stage for what we'll be discussing today, vision point was engaged by the Vermont State College of System to support the brand development efforts of what was formerly known as the new combined entity as part of the broader transformation initiative that's currently underway. As a partner to the Vermont State College of System vision point engaged in, again, research and discovery, the strategy development to inform and a naming recommendation and a brand platform recommendation for the new institution. As part of this process, we're actively engaged with our core team as I mentioned from Kasselton NVU and Vermont Tech and with the new institution formally approved by this board as Vermont State University, we've continued to work together toward the creation of Vermont State University's brand platform. So to illustrate the progress of our efforts in context with today's presentation of the brand pillars and personality traits, you'll see the star that's marked, we are here. And that kind of shows where we are in terms of the progress along the brand platform roadmap. While continued refinements may be expected as we are continuing to advance through the development process, we're excited to share this milestone of where we are currently with our brand pillars and personality traits and the progress that we've been making together. And so with that said, I'm excited to invite my colleagues here, Erica Kim and Tony Pallucci. Erica is our senior strategist from Vision Point and Tony Pallucci is our vice president and creative director and senior strategist that have been working closely with me along developing the Vermont State University brand platform. So with that said, I'll hand it over to the team to walk through our current findings and where we are. Thanks, Bruce. So for a project like this, it was just so important to each of us and our teams to gain a great breadth and depth of understanding. So to that end, we dove pretty deep into our research and discovery process with a lot of different components here. So a brand and marketing audit for each school, institutional research, listening tours and a combined brand workshop. We also had those in-person visits to each school and campus that we were chatting about a little earlier in this call as well as competitor research in a brand perception study. So to touch on the core parts of the qualitative research side of all of that, we conducted a brand and marketing audit or for all three schools for Castleton and VU and Vermont Tech. And in this week's examine that the creative qualities and key characteristics of each from their websites and social media to various ad materials and communications efforts. It was also really, really important to us that we actually listened to folks who know these institutions firsthand who have a connection to Vermont and their communities. So we facilitated a number of listening tours with folks from all institutions in a cross-stakeholder group. So these are folks from leadership and department heads to marketing staff, students and community members among others. We heard some really great conversations throughout all of these sessions, insights about each institution, about participants' experiences over the years. We heard about the students that you serve and the long-term impact that these schools have. And throughout all of this, our team heard some really great insights throughout and wanted to pull out some standout quotes here just to touch on some of those key themes that we heard. We heard that students care about personal connections. This is a really big theme in these sessions that they wanna be more than just a number. That these institutions produce graduates that meet market needs and that they prepare students for those careers and that these institutions are invested in their local communities, that they serve a meaningful purpose. Our other avenue through a tree slot to really listen and engage was through a half-day virtual brand workshop with a couple dozen participants across all of those institutions. We worked through a number of fun exercises together with that goal of identifying and defying core elements of the school's identities and then thinking about the new university, thinking about Vermont State. So one of those activities was having folks break out into different groups to brainstorm a number of characteristics that they would use to describe the Vermont State College's system. And this is just a fun visual of those brainstorming characteristics and the glimpse into how our team was categorizing them into broader themes. And these here on the slide are just some of those top descriptors that participants voted on when looking at this characteristics thematically. Some call-outs here are student-centeredness, a sense of high quality in education and in a great sense of ROI that return on investment, a nurturing and supportive environment as well as accessibility. And like our listening tours, there were some standout quotes in that activity and in others just throughout the workshop that reflected some of the insights that we gained. You heard that students at these institutions are so bright and that they're using their ideas in meaningful ways, both inside the classroom, outside of the classroom during their time on campus and beyond. We heard about lifelong career preparation and meaningful relationships that might start on campus, but that far outlasts their time in school. And about how there will be many more resources and opportunities in this more expansive university in the future, that it'll have a great deal more of a flexibility with that multimodal program delivery with campuses across the state and pathways that meet students where they're at in a way that really works for them. As our team is heading into the next phases of more creative and visual development for this brand platform, we wanted to make sure that we visited each of the schools to see the campuses in person, to see Vermont, to see its landscape. So we've heard so much about over the months and to gain those details that'll inform that work. So some folks on our team, Bruce, myself and our senior graphic designer, Lydia, had the pleasure of traveling up to Vermont and visiting all five campuses, just traveling across the state and getting campus tours from students and from staff. And it was just so special to be on the ground and to actually meet people in person, to meet some fantastic students, faculty and administrators just all throughout the trip. We also got to hear about student life, to see the facilities that students use, to hear about academic pursuits and about how folks engage with their local communities and their surrounding areas and neighborhoods. And then we actually got to drive through those local areas ourselves, just driving from campus to campus and in the process experiencing Vermont scenery, just how open and inspiring those landscapes are and to gain those details that again will inform that creative and visual work. And then lastly, to round out the quality of research side of our work thus far, we had our competitor research and an analysis, just researching a whole range of competitor and peer institutions. And this competitor set here that you see on this slide, this includes both in-state and out-of-state schools, institutions that have a really strong focus on technology and engineering. Some others sprinkled their out, dedicated primarily to the liberal arts studies. And then some that encompass both areas that are strong in both technology and the liberal arts. So in all of this research, we looked at their missions or visions or values, their institutional brands and some opportunities for Vermont State University to stand out. So then just coming out of all of those, those research activities on the qualitative side, we heard a common set of themes that we kept in mind when building the brand platform. So first that across schools, all campuses uphold excellence, that they have these high standards for academic excellence and career preparation, that they do prepare students for those lifelong careers. We also saw that these schools are invested in the future, not just with that career preparation for students, but as institutions with sustainability and green initiatives, that they care about the forces that are shaping the future and that they actually take action in those areas. Another big takeaway was the sense of community that was just so palpable on each campus and just how integral to each school, authentic community and lasting relationships really are. Also consistent thread running throughout all of our research and discovery was that this is not just a degree, these educational experiences are transformative, that they lead to more than just a degree or a credential, but that they actually lead to opportunity, to financial stability and to more fulfilling lines. And then lastly, we saw that in a number of different research and discovery pieces, there are shared aspects of the institution's cultures, like a resourcefulness and a real determination and action. This energy and sense of adventure permeating the campuses, a humble confidence and a commitment to think differently, as well as a posture of embracing differences and authentically listening to and learning from others. So those are just really, really, really special to see and did inform areas of our brand development work, including our brand pillars and our personality traits. Thanks, Erica. So thanks for all for you listening. I'm Tony Pellucci, Creative Director Vice President here. I'm gonna walk through a little bit of what we've done in terms of a quantitative research. So while much of the qualitative research focuses on our own observations and things about the competitive landscape and what internal audiences had to say, we also find lots of value in what we call a brand perception study. And as your brand part, and one of the things we wanted to mention is that part of our responsibility is to be an advocate for those who have less of a voice through this process. So we're engaged with you all, as Erica mentioned, we're on campus, we're listening tours, doing these workshops, but the general public and the people you serve aren't always involved. So doing a study like this is really important to hear from them as well as internal audiences too. So we conducted the study with external and internal stakeholders. And the purpose of the study was really to collect and understand community as well as key stakeholder opinions about what would inform this brand platform for Vermont State University as we move forward. And as I mentioned, we touched on internal stakeholders including students, faculty and staff from all three institutions as well as a general population of Vermont residents. And it covered a lot of ground. This study touched on things like what motivates people to pursue an education in general. We got into perceptions of Castleton Tech in Northern Vermont University as well as perceptions across the competitive landscape that we'll share in just a minute here too. We asked about strengths and challenges for each institution, got some good information around that, qualities that they wanted to maintain. So as a new institution, what do they wanna keep? And so we touched on a lot of these types of things and there's a lot of data that came out of this study but for the sake of this time, we won't be sharing all of that of course today. But we did wanna share five or six slides here with you to highlight a few of the things that really helped inform the decisions that were made in the pillars and the brand platform that we'll share in just a bit. So for example, you look at a slide like this and this shows how respondents rated the top strengths of Castleton, NBU and Vermont Tech individually at different groups. And what you start to see when you look across especially this top two or three rating here, these strengths for each institution is a really compelling and well-rounded story that starts to take shape. So Castleton's top strengths speak to things like a strong history or legacy along with components of a great student life experience while NBU's strengths have more to do with positive impact on local community and a broad range of academic offerings. And tech strengths are focused on technical programs, hands-on learning, career preparation, these types of things. You'll also notice that they all share traits across the board like they're welcoming, they're inclusive, they're nurturing. So when you combine these institutions you get this incredibly well-rounded university that offers almost anything you'd want in terms of academics that cares about its communities that prepares career-ready graduates. And it does so in a way that makes students feel welcome and feel supported. And that's really the beginnings of a very, very strong story. On this slide, and again, there's a lot of information on these slides. So I'll kind of just hit the high notes here, but you'll see an audience by audience breakdown of what's most important to each audience in terms of a selection process of selecting institution what's most important to you. And again, if you look at the top selection drivers they're looking for some pretty practical things. They wanna get a lot of bang for their buck, right? They wanna be marketable when they graduate. They want great careers for better jobs. They want some flexibility in terms of class format, location, scheduling. So again, pretty straightforward. And beyond that, they wanna be taught by high quality faculty who will support them, will not treat them like a number. They like the idea of experiential hands-on learning. And they also wanna feel like they're part of a community. So you start to get a sense of what they're looking for here. And you'll also notice that things like prestige, or student life, or fancy buildings, these things aren't even close to the top of their list. These are practical people who want good careers and they want better lives. They don't necessarily need all the bells and whistles to get there. They just want a quality education from an institution full of people who genuinely care about them as individuals. On this slide, you see what respondents care most about in terms of outcomes from a university education. Again, they want a good career. They want financial stability. They want relevant in-demand skills. And they also wanna be able to think critically, which we love, that was kind of worked in here as well. It's not just about the job. It's not just about getting that next level up in a career or something like that. They do wanna be thinkers as well, which is really, really kind of cool. You don't actually see that all the time in these studies. And which actually sounds like your average Vermonter, right? I'm actually from Massachusetts. Myself, I grew up in Massachusetts. So I've got more perspective of New England, spent a lot of time in Vermont when I was younger. And it starts to kind of feel like a Vermont a little bit, not surprisingly enough. In the survey, we also asked respondents what they want from the future state of this new institution. Again, what are the most important things to retain in this new university? And no big surprises here. Again, they're hoping that you'll still offer an affordable education that leads to great jobs and careers that's flexible, that's accessible, that's welcoming. So the good news is that as Vermont State University, basically already offering what your constituents are looking for. And the argument could be made that you're actually getting better and stronger at providing these things via the consolidation process. And this might sound kind of basic to you all because you're doing a lot of this and it might not sound all that sexy from a branding perspective, but it is actually, and it's actually necessary. Your constituents are asking for this, which makes it all very strategic, makes it all very smart. And it provides a very, very powerful foundation of which to build a brand. So good news all around. Now, shifting gears just a little bit, of course you need the strategically designed institution, one that's gonna serve the needs of your constituents. Check, got that. But you'll also need to have a competitive institution and a competitive brand, a higher education. This is all we do at Vision Point Marketing for 20 years, we've been around. We focus on higher education, that's what we serve. And the competitive landscape in higher education is a lot different than it used to be, very competitive industry now, whereas it wasn't so much back in the day. So you need to have a competitive institution, a competitive brand, and one that really holds a competitive and compelling position against others in the considered set. So with this last slide that I'm gonna share here in terms of the survey results, we wanted to touch on the competitive landscape just a bit. And this slide, as confusing as it might look for his glance, it does shine some light on a potential kind of blue ocean or competitive niche that Vermont State University can occupy in the minds of your audiences. And what's happening here is this slide highlights the associated attributes for eight institutions in this considered set. So each color represents one institution. You've got NVU Tech, Castleton, and this is an order, UVM, Plymouth State, RIT, Champlain and Norwich. And the length of each bar of color correlates with how well that institution is known for each of those attributes you see listed along the side. So for example, you can see in the affordability row, 46% of respondents associate a high level of affordability with Vermont Tech, which is the most among the considered set. When it comes to something like prestige as an associated attribute, you can see how UVM stands out with a 54% association. So you can kind of look at this thing and see how there are different stories in the minds of your audiences about each of the institutions represented here. Now, from a positioning perspective, obviously we're looking at opportunities to compete while being authentic and things that we can focus in on that will help Vermont State University stand out among competition. And we start to see some things happening here that we want to point out just a couple of things. First is that this is a very kind of homogeneous, almost uniform landscape, right? Most institutions are saying the same or similar things and are known almost equally for each. There's really no one institution that's known for any one of these attributes over another, except for UVM who unsurprisingly, as we all know, has a well-established brand presence and a strong associations on a number of these attributes. Now, in regard to Vermont State University as three separate institutions, it may have been more difficult to compete, but we believe that as one combined institution, one that combines the very best of each institution of NVU, of tech, of Castleton, that Vermont State University has a wonderful opportunity to carve out a strong position of its own. And if you look back at the research that we shared, you'll remember that your constituents are looking for things like affordability and value, career prep and career outcomes, a strong sense of community. And as you can see above, the three existing institutions rank really well in those types of categories, which leads us to believe, again, that VCU can really compete on these factors. So, yes, the Vermont State University brand will be one that can compete within Vermont, the region beyond, but you can't just compete on rational benefits and attributes like these alone, right? On affordability, on job outcomes, you've got to mention these things, of course, but you'll be covering the same ground as a lot of your competition, as you can see here, career outcomes, importance of the state of Vermont, all those types of things, but you absolutely can build a brand on substance plus unique positioning. And that's what we're beginning to do here is what I'm going to get to here in just a second with the brand pillars. We're crafting a compelling story that will help Vermont State University make its mark in the minds of your constituents. And as you'll see in just a minute, what's shaping up here is that Vermont State University is a university of the people, it's accessible, it's grassroots, it's down to earth, which can be something that's leveraged into unique and competitive brand. So, before we get into that, let's just quickly recap our findings and then get to the pillars. So, you know, you have these three institutions with a slew of complimentary and desired elements. Stakeholders across all campuses share a set of values around quality, accessibility, affordability, commitment to communities. As fate would have it, your constituents are looking for what you offer. There's a strong desire for an institution that is all these things that you are and that you're becoming. And, you know, you're gaining a competitive edge in the marketplace as well. An institution that's open, that's accessible, that's of the people. This is incredibly attractive. So, that's a little summary of a lot of the work we've done, kind of just boiled down into some cogent thoughts here. So, with all that in mind, let's get into it. I'm going to share these five brand pillars for Vermont State University. And when we say brand pillars, what these are essentially the foundation of your brand moving forward. They speak to what you deliver, what you value, how you're unique, how you're compelling. So, you could think of these collectively as kind of the simplest way to think of these is the promise that you're making to your students, to your state, to your communities, to your prospective donors, to everyone who you serve. And I'm going to literally just kind of read them to you one at a time. And as I do, think about them as a story, you know. Turn off your camera closer, your eyes if you'd like. Think about yourself telling this story to someone who asks you about Vermont State University. A couple of notes, of course, these pillars won't cover every detail. That's not what they're about. They should encapsulate this institution as a whole. And also keep in mind, this is not an ad campaign that we're building right now. This is not a commercial or a video spot. These pillars aren't meant to be too stylized or too conceptual. That said, they will be central to informing those things, to informing campaigns in the future and creative concepts. And they'll inform the new logo. They'll inform how you speak about the university and how you position yourself in this increasingly competitive landscape. So. Tony. Yes. I mean, for Interacting, before you go forward, I think Trustee Jefferson has a question. Would you prefer to table questions to the end or are you willing to entertain them throughout? I'm happy to take one out. I would like to read through the five when we get there and then kind of go back for that. But Ms. Jefferson, please. Well, it might help me to understand what you're doing. So thank you for taking my question. I'm going to ask a crazy question. You just gave us a beautiful presentation about what your research turned up. It appears that we are doing exactly what we're supposed to be doing for faculty, staff and alumni and all of the rest. How do that play into your branding? What do we supposed to do with what you just showed us? That's a wonderful question. Not crazy at all. We appreciate it. Thank you. It's and it's a great thought. So I mentioned authenticity just a little while ago. What we don't want to do is put out a brand story, if you will, of this new institution that's that's completely different, right? You haven't torn down everything and started from scratch. Again, the really good news. So we do this all over the country. We've been doing this for decades. And sometimes you get into these situations and you have to really kind of help guide a brand and the voice. As you mentioned, these are you doing a lot of great things already and the really nice thing. This is one of the big a-has of our research is like, oh, this is what people want, right? These are the things that much of your your constituents in your audience are looking for. So what we're trying to do to answer your question is really build on that. And as I mentioned, you know, it's one thing to go out and say, yes, we are affordable. Yes, we are a community. Yes, we care about you. Those are wonderful things. When people are looking at different institutions, they're going to hear that a lot, right? All over the country. You're going to hear certain things like that. But we want we want them to get a sense of who you are. And that's what we're trying to build up here. So there's a bit of emotion behind this, right? There's a bit of personality behind this. And what I didn't mention is we'll go through the five brand pillars. I'm going to read those out to you. Just take a couple of minutes. And then we're going to touch on personality traits, too. And I'll tell you the difference between those when we get there. That's kind of your your personality around these things. Is that helpful to that? Does that help? OK, thanks so much for the question. Thank you. Very helpful. Now, I look so crazy at loss. This is not something that this is honestly, please. No questions are off limits here. This is we understand that like this is what we do every day. This is not what you all do every day. So if we get ahead of that, please, please do slow us down and let us know. OK, so with that, I'll go ahead and jump in. Again, we've got five five brand pillars. And this is, again, the story. Imagine you're self telling this as a story to someone else who doesn't know who you are. So the first pillar is called the heart of Vermont. And I'll just read these out here. So we are the heart of Vermont, a university of the people, our love for Vermont and its citizens. It's a resting landscapes. It's an imaginative business community. And its unique culture drives our efforts to provide a high quality education and a strong workforce that sustains it. Being integrated in the lives of our communities means that we have real, meaningful relationships throughout the state and a close pulse on its needs. Partnering with local organizations to offer applied learning opportunities is central to our mission and foundational to the training that leads students to become thoughtful learners and engage citizens. Through these internships, service learning, research and co-op opportunities, we're doing more than just offering hands on education. We're contributing to the economic development and vitality of our rural regions for our collective future. We prepare the next generation of leaders who by way of education and partnerships are invested in charting these communities forward into new phases of growth and prosperity that will flow through the state and carry it to greater heights. We are the heart of Vermont. The next one is called Fearless Exploration and Innovation. Vermont has a storied history of intrepid adventurers and curious people with a knack for ingenuity and resourcefulness. We fearlessly ask, what if? We identify challenges, drum up new ideas and take action. In fact, we thrive on the front lines of ideation and we savor the act of coming together to build fresh solutions. This proactive spirit of discovery is ever present in the education we provide. Given our expertise in areas like applied technology, engineering, sustainability and computing, we're well prepared to develop students in becoming relevant future thinking leaders. In the process, we spark entrepreneurial spirits and imaginative thinking, not just in our students but also in communities across the entire state. With the past rooted in bold discovery, we look ahead to anticipate what the world will need tomorrow. We're proud to offer academics relevant to the needs of the future and we're proud to take part in shaping innovation that moves us forward. At Vermont State University, we boldly venture out into the unknown, literally and figuratively. Fearless exploration and innovation. Our third pillar is doers and thinkers. In a world where education outcomes are too often split into distinct lanes where you're either a doer or a thinker, at Vermont State University, our students are taught to think and do. Here we produce highly capable action-oriented graduates who are trained to get the job done while thinking critically about their impact on the world around them. In our students, we cultivate a mindset of deep analysis and independent thought, a holistic education that pushes them to develop not only great imaginations but also the ability to bridge connections. Whether it's through studying history or horticulture, psychology or science or music or math, our students become problem solvers. They learn to write and communicate effectively and they discover the richness and rewards of being able to examine ideas from a range of perspectives. Our graduates excel because they learn to effectively apply the knowledge they learn in school to challenges in commerce, politics, technology, science, healthcare, the arts and beyond. This approach serves as a foundation upon which they learn and continue to grow in their lives and careers. They are doers and thinkers. Our fourth pillar is called expansive yet intimate. With the presence felt throughout the entire state, Vermont State University is an extraordinarily expansive and comprehensive force in the nation's higher education landscape. We offer a broad range of credit and non-credit bearing courses, programs and credentials. Unified yet localized, our model affords our students more access and flexibility and our cross-campus collaboration allows us to bring the very best of our faculty and staff to those who value in incredibly high quality and affordable education. As we evolve as a university, we hold onto the cornerstone of our mission to serve students in a way that maintains the high touch, personalized approach to teaching and instruction upon which we have built our reputation. Our students are more than numbers to our faculty and staff. They're an integral part of our close-knit communities, each with their own personal learning styles, their own unique stories and their own education and life goals. Yes, we may be expansive, but we'll never lose sight of the fact that what we do, we do for the benefit of individual human beings, expansive yet intimate. And our final pillar here is called dream big, dream different. Dreams sometimes get a bad rap. They can be seen as unrealistic, a waste of time, the stuff of children or for those not grounded in reality. But every great reality began as a dream, as a vision of something new, something different, something that did not yet exist, but that was desperately needed. At Vermont State University, we are in the business of dreams. Here, we not only encourage the act of dreaming, we provide the education, the experience, the support and the vast resources to turn dreams into realities. Embedded across our state, our campuses are epicenters of innovation, expert instruction, technological prowess and shrewd ideation that serve the primary purpose of helping students make their dreams come true. We inspire and empower all our students to dream of better lives, of rewarding futures for their families, of a better world for themselves, their communities and future generations. As an institution, we also dream big. We dream of a world where education is appreciated and where students of diverse backgrounds are celebrated. Where students of all identities are equitably supported to thrive. We dream of a world where technological advances save the environment, feed the hungry and heal the sick. One where we hold ourselves to a higher standard by continuously evaluating the relevance, the quality and the sustainability of our offerings. A world where every individual who passes through our doors becomes equipped to not just get a better job or an exciting career, but also to carry out truly heroic accomplishments. Our world needs this, it needs us because making these dreams come true, pursuing them relentlessly campus by campus by way of education, technology, research and sheer will is what we do at Vermont State University. Yes, we are educators, but at the end of the day, we're in the business of dreams. So there's your story. Vermont State University is a heart of this state. It's embedded in the culture of the state. It's connected to its communities. It's a university of the people and it takes a cue from the people it serves, the Vermonters, and that it's a place of exploration, determination, innovation. It's a place where people aren't afraid of a little hard work. They know how to get the job done, they're doers, and they're also critical thinkers and problem solvers. It's an institution that's expansive, offering incredibly high quality education across the state of Vermont, yet still able to maintain the high touch and personalized approach that its students have come to know and to love. And finally, Vermont State University provides students the skills and opportunities to help them achieve their dreams because after all, that's kind of what our education is all about, right? So I'll pause there. See if anybody has any questions. Again, one last thing we wanna go through in a minute is the personality traits, but again, just a little opportunity to chime in if you'd like. It's Jefferson, I see your hand there. Tony, I'm smiling because see, that's why I asked that question before because I really want to understand brand pillars. You have done, y'all have done an outstanding job. And I see why you wanted us to close our eyes, all the way to close my eyes. But I mean, I see all of the surveys and going out to the universities and talking to the people and you really captured from those universities. My two favorite brands were the duals and thinkers. It made me think about how the, that these students are gonna get high quality education. And as they are getting this high quality education, they are evolving into being new people where they could take this, what they are learning and go out and help their communities, not just themselves. And it was so beautiful. My second was to dream the big dream difference. After you put up your first bullet, I wrote on a piece of paper, dreams come true. And then look, you said, it was like, oh my goodness. It's almost, I was imagining what your next bullets were gonna be. That's great. And I just want to say you all have done an outstanding job and you have really captured you know the brand and I wanna thank you. I'm just fascinated. I'm really excited. That's why I kept smiling. So thank you. I really liked that. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Well, what's important to us is that it's authentic that it feels right. Like that's, it's an emotional thing at this point starting to get there anyway. So I really appreciate that feedback. Any other comments, questions before we move on? No, okay. I will head on to the personality traits now. So this last thing we'd like to share is again, what we call personality traits. And these are essentially the brand's tone and voice. If you imagine your brand as a person, these are the clothes your institution would wear, the attitude if it would strike, kind of how would walk and talk, these types of things. So they're kind of fun. These won't be as long either as just a slide or two. But in contrast to your pillars, the brand's story was with your pillars there. Personality traits are stylistic, right? They're stylistic in nature. So they inform how that story will be told essentially when it comes right down to it. So if you get the pillars as a story, you've got the traits as kind of how that would be told. And so the personality of Vermont State University might feel something like this. So we've got a short narrative here, but Vermont State University, it's an institution made up of people who are explorers and risk takers. We're adventurous here. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, we dare to jump into action. We're also curious and entrepreneurial a bunch. We look at things a bit differently and in the absence of something needed, we'll figure it out. We tinker, we innovate, we create because we are inventive. Again, we're of the people, we're down to earth practicing humility and good old fashioned common sense. We're also open to possibility, to all peoples, to all way of learning to different perspectives. Our open-minded nature leads us to find pleasure and joy in richness of diverse thought, of diverse background, diverse perspectives. And finally, we persevere to get things done. Sure, anyone could kind of go out and boldly just venture into the unknown and explore all day long, but here we hustle too. There's a little hustle there. We're tenacious. Our tenacious kind of determination drives us to achieve with hope and conviction. So in terms of a personality we're adventurous, inventive, down to earth, open-minded, and tenacious. And I'll just kind of put those up there so you can kind of see the story and the style in light of each other. And again, just kind of leave it there for any comments, questions at this point. Okay. Well, thank you all for listening. I'll pass it back over to Bruce to kind of chat through next steps here and finish up our section of this meeting. Thank you, Tony, and thank you, Erica. And thank you, everyone. Thank you to the board for, again, inviting us to share with you the progress that we've made and share with you the to date brand pillars and personality traits. It's also really great to see and appreciate, Trustee Jefferson, the initial reaction that you shared. Our goal, as Tony had mentioned, is to ensure that as we're working with you all to develop and define a brand for Vermont State University, is that it feels authentic. It strikes that cord of Vermont, capturing that essence of Vermont, while also positioning you and setting you up for future growth and competitiveness and really help to give you a strong platform to achieve the goals in which you are aspiring to achieve as Vermont State University. So in looking ahead, we are moving forward. We're gonna be executing, we have the brand pillars and personality traits. We'll be executing an internal feedback survey that will be conducted and deployed to key internal stakeholders as an additional means to gather additional feedback. As part of our process, we're constantly and looking forward for gathering that continued feedback to help us refine and help us to ensure that directionally we are moving ahead along the right path. In addition to that, you'll begin to see beyond the brand pillars and personality traits, additional aspects of the brand that will be developed. They'll start to take shape, such as Vermont State University's positioning statement, its key messaging points, along with various proof points to support what we've outlined as part of the brand pillars. You'll also then start to see more of the visual and creative elements like your visual and logo identity for Vermont State University as well as for, you know, as part of the brand architecture with the specific identifiers, you know, that we had discussed in a prior board meeting. With these, we're looking forward to share them with you as they're available, working closely again with our core team from Castleton, NVU and from Vermont Tech in an upcoming Board of Trustees meeting with one that is scheduled. We're looking to reconvene with you all to share our progress again in the January Board of Trustees. And so with that said, you know, I know that we were scheduled here for an hour, but we wanted to say thank you. Again, appreciate your time, appreciate your attention and feedback and response. You know, this has been a really fantastic partnership and we're looking forward to continuing it in the further brand of platform development. Thank you so much for that presentation. Shirley, did you have another question or is your hand up from above from earlier? I was calling myself trying to clap. I was learning what to use to see. You can't use those icons. I know, but I just like to thank them again. This is very, I mean, I've watched a lot of presentations but this has been very so professional and down to earth has really captured what I believe that the community colleges here in Vermont was set out to do and that we as trustees are doing the right thing. It makes me feel good. So thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. And thank you also for taking the time to talk not only with students and faculty and staff on our campuses, but also with the greater Vermont community. I really appreciated hearing how those voices informed the pillars that you created. I think that was very important. So thank you for that. Of course. Thank you so much for joining us. So we look forward to the next round. Great. Take care all. Thanks so much. Thank you. Excellent. And our next item is a report from the EPSIL Committee which just met this morning, but I also want to remind folks from the public there is a sign up for public comment at the end of the meeting that Jen posted in the chat earlier in the meeting. So if anyone wants to make public comment to please go ahead and use that sign up piece. The EPSIL Committee did meet this morning just prior to this. And we'll write a quick report out. We also have two motions to bring before the board. Yasmeen and Patty, I may ask for your help on those. But one of the start was just a quick item at the beginning of the meeting. We heard from a presentation on NVU's learning and working communities. Yasmeen, I'm hoping we can post those materials in the EPSIL section on the board website and would encourage trustees to take a look at them. We heard from a faculty member, Ben Merkin and a student, Calvin Ebreu, who were both of the outdoor education leadership program with some exciting work that's being done to create internships and job opportunities for students as part of the curriculum. This is a result of work that came from a significant grant that NVU secured about a year or two ago. So it was very exciting for the committee to hear how NVU is integrating student learning, the curriculum and also outreach into schools in the Vermont communities. So would encourage folks to take a look at that presentation once it's posted in that website. We also heard a report from Yasmeen on the transformation with a particular focus on the student experience and some of the early design work that's being done in the student experience as well as the progress of the program array. And Yasmeen, I may ask you for some additional details here, but at a high level, when EPSIL last term the program array, there were about 80 programs that were in green and 20 programs that were yellow in terms of being, still having some significant development needed to reach that final consolidated program status. We had as a committee set a date of December 1st, expecting progress on those. The faculty have been working and Sophie and Yasmeen have worked to provide additional support, additional opportunities for the faculty to engage in that work. But one of the updates from the meeting was that that work is not yet complete. So we did ask as a committee, we are asking for a and additional update at the next milestone in mid-January just before the board meeting and do have a motion to bring before the board. But Yasmeen, any additional context that you'd like to share? I think just that there's been really productive problem solving is what I'll say on how to give faculty the time that they really need in times when they can do the work and dig in which tends to be in the breaks between semester. And so there are many other pieces coming into play including scheduling for next year, support that we'll be providing to faculty over the break in the summer. And then just some tweaks in how we're staging what has to happen when so that we hit admissions and marketing deadlines. And then also have a time and more planning and prep to do the full faculty review of programs. Any questions for Yasmeen and for Sophie before I'll put the motion forward? Given that progress and the opportunity for further progress, Epsil did put forth a motion for you all which is a motion that the board charged the chancellor and the chief academic officer with providing administrative direction to support achieving the academic program array timeline goals as developed and agreed to by all four faculty assembly leaders and the president of the faculty federation and to provide a status update to Epsil in January. Are you looking for a motion? I am sorry, I guess looking for a, looking for that motion to be put forward and second. Okay, I'll second it if it's, if it's already been moved. Thank you, Adam. Any discussion or questions? Seeing none, yes, please, Bill. I'm a little hesitant here, but help me understand how this helps address what I understand has some of the expressed concern about timelines and willingness and ability to participate in this important project by some of our faculty. I think to just not talk about that is just kind of, is not helpful. So thank you, Bill. And we did talk about that or I talked about that in Epsil. So yes, part of Megan mentioned moving the timeline back from the December 1st, we had anticipated those yellow programs who, those that had sort of final curriculum optimization design to complete, we thought they could do that. In several cases, faculty have still been working on it. But as I said, it's doing that work during the semester has proved really challenging. In other cases, the concerns expressed through the Castleton faculty through that letter have slowed things down and have made the relationships more difficult. But the concerns specifically, I think, some of them that we understand are related to how all the pieces come together and the need to do more planning work. And so I think that this timeline, in particular, it's going to support our four faculty assembly moderators this spring in and the curriculum committee chairs who have only begun to start meeting together to really plan out to say, how do we come together and make sure we can pull this off? And they just haven't, I mean, it's just been a practical reality. They haven't had good opportunity to have those conversations this fall. And that of course has been exacerbated by the, what happens with the letter going out and concerns around that. So I think that the more planning and finding the right time to support people to get the work done are the two big things we're doing. The third one is a little in the weeds, but it has to do with the fact that we're also developing a general education program while the optimized programs are being put forward and faculty really need to see those two things come together and we're projecting to have all of that come together by the start of the fall. So hopefully that addresses I think sort of underlying, some of the underlying pieces around the program array. I think the immediate concern that was being raised by the faculty regarding the timing and how much time there was to do this, the big concern was that we'd get to a place but we can identify what the program array is because that's absolutely critical. That's a critical dependency for the transformation work that's going on. So we met with the faculty assembly leaders and with the president of the faculty federation on Friday and we now have a process to make sure that admissions and marketing get the information they absolutely have to have in the spring semester so they can then be moving forward with looking to recruit the incoming class for fall of 2023. And so many of the other transformation decisions are dependent on that program array and I think you just heard even from the presentation we just had that the programs are critical, right? Students come because of the programs. So we do have to know what those programs are. So that was the concern around the timeline. We now have a process in place to make sure that admissions and marketing and the other transformation teams that are working will have the information they need to be able to keep moving forward so we can hit the timelines that we need to hit. The formal program review will then be taking place in the fall semester. One of the things that came out clearly from our conversation was faculty are willing and able to do the work but they just need to be able to plan ahead for it. And so this way we now have things built in. For example, some of the program work, the program optimization work where people just need to come together physically to sit down and go through completing some of that program optimization work. There's a plan to have a sort of retreat at the very end of the spring semester. So those teams that haven't quite got things over the finish line can come together in person and just get that work done. Because again, scheduling has really been a huge challenge for everybody. The other piece was planning now for additional faculty assembly meetings in the fall to make sure that we get through all the program review work that needs to happen. So I think we got to a place that works well for the faculty and then still keeps us on our timeline. So we were really happy with how that worked out on Friday. Thank you. I want to just say it's very helpful to hear more specifics. And of course I wasn't able to be part of the UPSL meeting and maybe everyone else had the opportunity. But having, yeah, being aware of the issues that were raised and the need to keep the transformation process moving forward. I take from what you're saying that this proposal is essentially a path forward that's going to meet the needs of more time as well as keep the transformation process on track. And I think that was the challenge. The faculty assembly leaders were struggling to figure out what that process could look like. And again, as Yasmin alluded to, it's just been very hard for them to find time to work together. But being able to have the conversation on Friday I think really helped move us forward. So I think this addresses the concerns that the faculty were expressing as well as meeting the needs that the board and the state and everyone else has that we really hit the timelines on the transformation. Great. Thank you. I appreciate hearing more about that. Jim, I see your hand out. I want to go to Adam first, but just want to add one point to Sophie's note. In addition to the process, adding the check in January for the EPSIL committee was important because that hadn't been planned for. So let's make sure the process is working as planned with a check-in in a month. Adam, please go ahead. Oh yeah. So to Bill's original point here, I think we're going to continue, I'm sure to have input and questions from a variety of stakeholders and faculty, of course, being one of those. I don't know if it's helpful now or in the future. I, for one, strongly support the path we're on and the need to keep and maintain those deadlines. There's been communication to board members. And I don't know if there's a way in which in the future we need to find an opportunity to express continued support as a group for this work in these timelines. But if that ever comes up, I would be happy to participate in that. I think it's real challenge because everyone at each stage is going to have new questions, new concerns. How do we create a platform in which they're heard and discussed with the administration while us as trustees come in and ensure the governance process and moving forward to that, the path that we're on continues forward in a timely fashion. So there isn't really a venue for those kind of back and forths with the trustees as a group. So I just wanna advocate for us coming together as a group and making sure that we've got our eye on those deadlines and supporting the administration in hitting those. And Adam, to your point, should we add to the front of this motion that affirmation of the timelines has established the onset of the program array? I would support that, yes. Jim, please go ahead, then Bill will come back to you. Well, yeah, Sophie, could you say a little bit more about program array? I mean, for the people who are listening in or whatnot, just a couple of words, I think I understand it pretty clearly, but I couldn't articulate it to someone who asked me. So we need to, for the new university, we need to know what programs we'll be offering. And one of the things that was recognized even before we went through the select committee process was that we had duplicate programs within our system that's, you know, it's inefficient, right? We're not well-serving students and we may have students that are interested in a particular program, but there aren't enough of them. There isn't a critical mass at any one institution, but collectively across the system there is. So last fall, we already had faculty involved between Castleton and Northern Vermont University to start looking at duplicate programs. Out of that work, we landed up realizing, and particularly when the recommendation from the select committee came out, that we should bring all three institutions together, that we then move forward with the RPK group to come up with a framework to enable the faculty from the three institutions to come together to figure out what would be the program array that we would be offering for the new university. And that's the numbers that Megan and Yasmeen have been talking about. We came down to around 100, I think it's 101 programs for the new university, 80 or so of those have now got a green light. I mean, the faculty that are involved in those programs are comfortable with what's being proposed as we move forward. And then there's still 20 or so that need some additional work. But ultimately just identifying the 100 programs isn't enough. The faculty themselves have to, sorry, have to actually approve the new programs. And so that's the piece where we've been working with the faculty assembly leaders and with the Federation is to understand the process, the faculty governance process that belongs to the faculty on how will those programs be reviewed? Because there's a formal, the faculty review programs and approve them along with presidents, et cetera. So that's really what we've been working on. But the program array really refers to the 100 or so programs that will be offered by the new university when it's launched. And I don't know, Yasmeen, if there's anything else you want to add to that. Well, I think the final piece is just delivering it to students at Vermont State University. So that's the innovation side of this and another angle that faculty need to think about how we're going to do this. And Bill, please go ahead. Thanks for your patience. No, no problem. I want to just, so again, thank you. There's a lot, there's so much going on. And I recognize the enormous efforts that are made to communicate in with all the different stakeholders. As a trustee, I just appreciate any additional information that's able to be directed to us in anticipation of such a motion so that we're not missing a beat in there. Thank you. Bill, I think that's an important point. And perhaps before, so we will have a, the EPSIL committee will reconvene on the 24th for a very brief meeting. We'll time that with the board meeting. So hopefully it might be convenient for members to attend. Bill will also make sure that the materials reflect the progress and that those are shared in advance with attention and call to them. Yeah, I think that's the piece that I feel I missed a beat. I didn't know what it, because I'll have to be honest to say, I can't, it's not going to be realistic to attend all committee meetings of every committee of the board. That's just not going to happen for all of us. I mean, I appreciate that many people, perhaps many people can, but there's a piece in between that and the board agenda that I think I would appreciate receiving. Thank you. Further questions or discussion on this topic? I think we may need to call the motion again because it's been amended. Sophie, I'll look for your guidance on that. Well, I think it's probably a good idea just to repeat it. So everyone knows what they're voting on. Perfect. So where we are now. So we have a motion noting that the board affirms the timeline established for the program array and charged the chancellor and chief academic officer with providing administrative direction to support achieving the academic program array timeline goals as developed and agreed to by all four faculty assembly leaders and president of the faculty federation and to provide a status update to Epsilon January. I'll second that again. Excellent. Thank you. Any further discussion or questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? So that motion carries. We do have a second motion to bring forward and Patty, I will ask you to provide background on this motion. If you can maybe just share the situation and the impact. And this is the motion on the FCC licenses. Thank you. I will do that. You may be aware that Vermont State College has three institutions or excuse me, has three FCC licenses held by campus radio stations. Two at Northern Vermont University and one at Vermont Tech. We've just completed the renewal application process with the FCC. As part of that process, our outside council identified that there were several, there were some areas that need some consistent attention to meet regulatory requirements. Northern Vermont University has experienced waning student participation and aging equipment for its campus radio station in the past many years. Despite passionate student managers and advisors that are doing the best they can, the two Northern Vermont University stations have had difficulty keeping up with the requirements. The FCC could deny a renewal or perhaps fine stations or continued issues down the road. The university considered the situation and has decided to not renew the licenses for call numbers, WWLR and WJSC. The university plans to pursue streaming opportunities for students, which is similar to an approach taken by Castleton about two years ago. This leaves us with one license, FCC license, and it will be the VTC campus radio station. They're all set. The renewal application was filed. We believe they're in compliance. And so at this time, what we presented to EBSIL this morning, was that Northern Vermont University seeks for the Board of Trustees to recommend to move forward with non-renewal, to approve the non-renewal of the two campus station calls. Thanks, Patty. So EBSIL did discuss this issue and based on the fact that there will continue to be a radio station, this seems like a fairly straightforward ask and would put a motion forward to recommend the Board relinquish the license. I'm sorry, would put a motion forward to relinquish the license. So looking for a second. Thank you, Bill. No, I'm a question, I'm sorry. Perfect, can we get a second and then we can question this? Second. Perfect, thank you, Shirley. And now questions and discussions. So Bill will come to your question first. I'm just reflecting on some other institutions in Vermont who've entered into giving up access to certain, I don't quite how to explain it, broad to access to federal bandwidth, et cetera. Is there any monetary value that we're giving up by not renewing these licenses? And is there anything that, yeah, I just wanna be certain that people have reviewed what the consequences are of giving up something that has been awarded to our institutions and guessing that it's going to be awarded elsewhere once we give them up and whatever. Anyway, that's an inarticulate question. I'm sure you've talked about it, but. Sure, of course. My understanding and perhaps I'm not sure that the folks who share may be able to help with this. But before making the decision, it is my understanding that Northern Vermont consulted with Cassiton to determine that type of impact, like were we giving something up that we would miss because you're right, it's a non-renewal, you know, you don't just decide to pick it back up in a few years. It's my understanding that they decided that streaming services were a different but a good way forward in this area because the high level of regulation and compliance by the FCC is something that we're struggling or Northern Vermont has been struggling to maintain. I would just add, this is different from the educational broadcast spectrum licenses that have value. This is a separate issue, right? So the size of the spectrum for these... I'm sorry, Gwen. The size of the spectrum for these particular licenses is relatively small and is unlikely to be of any real value in our communities. The one at Linden has a little bit more power, but the one at Johnson has a very, very narrow band associated with it. And so we have looked at the possibility in the past of what could we do with those? Do they have any actual value associated with them? And there's really not much. And if we're doing this for students, our students are getting their radio and their music is largely coming from streaming. So we have looked at it over the last few years and it's a good direction to go in. Okay, thank you. I think the only other thing I would wanna say is that I'm not sure that we could commercially do anything with this license because it is for a campus radio station. I mean, it is very specific. We would have limitations on being able to do something else with these licenses. Bill, the Johnson Signal Barrel, he gets to Morrisville. Further questions or discussion? I'd ask for a vote then for the motion to relinquish the licenses. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Excellent, the motion carries. And that will conclude our report on the EPSIL Committee and we will turn to a presentation on the legislative ask. I will turn it to Catherine LaVasser, Sharon Scott and Chancellor Zadafi to share that report, please. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee Kluver. So as you all know, each year we submit a budget request to the governor's office in the early fall. In late October, we met with the finance and administration staff and we are now waiting for the governor's proposal, which will come in January. It is essential to transformation that we continue to have strong partnership from the state, both in the executive and the legislative branches. Transformation is a multi-year process and one on which we have made significant and meaningful progress this year. The Vermont State Colleges will need ongoing state support to become the higher and continuing education system that the state and its students need us to be. One of our goals in this partnership is to ensure that our state leaders know who we are, what we do and who we serve. The slide before you shares a snapshot of our student demographics and the impact of the Vermont State Colleges on the state. This is an important reminder for them and for us of the essential role we have in enhancing the career and work options for Vermonters, creating learning and upskilling opportunities and supporting the economic vitality of Vermont's rural communities. We received incredibly generous support from the state in fiscal year 21 and 22 and we were excited to report strong progress to the governor's office this fall. We'll now share a brief overview of the success of the state-funded scholarships this fall. Thanks to the vision and the leadership of the governor and the legislature, we were able to offer Vermont learners unprecedented opportunities to access education, courses and workforce development opportunities at a free or reduced cost this year. While these programs are still underway, the information shared with you next represents a snapshot of their success so far this year. In act nine of 2021, the state-funded a long-term care facility practical nursing program in partnership with us and the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems. This program opened to 40 students in five locations across the state is underway as the students are currently completing their prerequisite courses at CCB. Next fall, the students will begin their practical nursing courses with our faculty in the long-term care facilities that they are currently employed in. We are really excited by the model this program offers to upscale existing long-term care facility staff, expand the number of practical nursing seats offered by the VSC and address the state's healthcare workforce shortage. And we look forward on reporting back as the program progresses. Also in act nine, the state-funded a workforce upskilling initiative which provides up to two courses for Vermonters impacted by the ongoing pandemic. And this is modeled after last fall successful CRF workforce initiative. We launched this program over the summer and placed 956 students in 1,642 courses this fall. Of the $3 million appropriated to this program, we've exhausted about $2.3 million and we'll use the remaining funds for courses this spring. And I will note that in act 74, the state allocated $2 million for a third workforce upskilling initiative which will launch next academic year. In act 74, which is the state budget for fiscal year 22, the state funded three other major workforce development initiatives. A critical occupations free tuition program pilot, a welcome home transfer student scholarship and a degree completion scholarship. The critical occupation scholarship offered last-dollar tuition. So that is tuition after state and federal gift aid to Vermonters enrolled in certain essential programs. And as you all know from progress reports, this program was a hit. We offered this scholarship to new and returning students and I'll note that 63% of students enrolled in their classes after the scholarship was announced in June. 1,918 Vermonters received a critical occupation scholarship. The median age of those Vermonters is 28 years old and the median family adjust gross income of their families is $67,000 a year. 85% of scholarship recipients identify as women. Thanks to the critical occupation scholarship, we doubled enrollment in our R&D BSN program at Vermont Technical College. So that's one of our nursing programs. Every seat in Vermont Tech's ADN program across all sites statewide is full this fall for the first time in at least five years. And we have incredibly strong enrollment in our early childhood education certificates and degree programs this fall. As you all know, we exhausted the generous funding for this program in mid-July, thanks to student interest and demand. The governor and the legislature encouraged us to reopen the program and fund the remaining enrolled students up to an additional $2.35 million. We did that in late summer and have requested that 2.35 million in the FY22 Budget Adjustment Act in order to meet the additional student demand. The state also generously funded a Welcome Home Scholarship for Vermonters transferring to the VSC institutions from out-of-state schools or for those who returned to school after exiting during the pandemic. We welcomed 1,070 transfer students this year and of those, we were able to offer the Welcome Home Scholarship to 278 Vermonters across all four institutions. And finally, the state funded a degree completion scholarship for Vermonters with some college credits but no credential or degree. This scholarship funded up to 30 credits for new students with a gap of attendance of at least two years. We have 122 Vermonters in this program this fall. With the degree completion scholarship like the Welcome Home Scholarship, we do anticipate increased uptake this spring as well as next academic year as we will be able to advertise these opportunities in alignment with the enrollment cycle. And I'll note that student response to these opportunities as you saw on the slides has ranged from shock to glee. The previous slides included quotes from actual students enrolled in the programs who've benefited from these incredible opportunities. And I think that this really shows the impact that a financially accessible education can have on people's lives. As the state college system, we are here for all Vermonters. And that means single parents, it means first generation Vermonters, those with financial challenges and more. And these notes are from just a few program participants this fall. Next, I will turn things over to Chief Financial and Operating Officer Sharon Stott who will share our FY 2023 budget request. Our FY23 state budget request consists of the annual base appropriation, the select committee's recommended increase to the base appropriation, the bridge funding needed to help us address our structural deficit and a workforce development proposal. As recommended by the select committee, the state increased the Vermont State College's base appropriation from 30.5 to $35.5 million in FY22. And we're very grateful for this support. And we've worked really hard to ensure that we're using the state's resources very wisely. Guided by the financial projections set forth in the select committee's report, we know that the Vermont State Colleges needs an annual base appropriation of $48 million. Last year, we anticipated seeking a $5 million increase in the base appropriation for FY23 to $40.5 million. However, we're now seeking the full $12.5 million increase for a total base appropriation of $48 million. Our request for bridge funding for FY23 is intertwined with the base appropriation request and in alignment with our budget projection and the select committee's report. For FY23, we request $14.9 million to address our structural deficit for the upkeving year. If the full increase to the base appropriation is received, however, this number could be adjusted accordingly. As you know from our previous meetings, the state instituted a number of requirements the Vermont State Colleges must meet for transformation. One of these is that we must reduce our structural deficit by $5 million a year starting with FY23. Our request for structural deficit assistance accounts for the first $5 million reduction as well as the ongoing years. Recognizing the state's unprecedented availability of one-time funds, the uncertainty of funding availability in the future and the four-year plan to address our structural deficit, we're also requesting that the full amount of bridge funding for the years FY24 to FY26 be set aside this year. We recognize that it's a huge ask for our state, but granting both requests this year would give the Vermont State Colleges the necessary funding and time to complete what is anticipated to be a five-year transformation process as set forth by the select committee's final report. This would be a significant show of support for the Vermont State Colleges system and would greatly reassure our students, faculty, staff, employer partners, community leaders, alumni, and parents that the state is committed to the long-term success of its state public higher education system, even if the state's fiscal picture were to change in the future years. In total, we're requesting, let's see, $94.4 million for FY23, of which $31.5 million would be bridge funding for future years to be set aside now so that we do not need to request them in future years. $48 million of this is general fund and $14.9 million is the one-time bridge funding to be used in FY23. In addition to our regular appropriations request, we offered the state in menu of workforce development concepts for their consideration. We know that state funds are limited, but we also know that thousands of Vermonters have benefited from the workforce development package funded in FY22. Taking lessons learned from the prior workforce initiatives, we offered three concepts, strengthening nursing education, a Vermont Associates Pledge, and critical occupations plus. The first proposal is a program to strengthen nursing education. This proposal reduces in-state nursing tuition at the VSC to the national average of state institutions, or $4,500 per semester. Nursing program affordability is one of the key barriers to Vermonters seeking nursing credentials. Given our key role as an educator of nurses in the state and recognizing that the sticker price of our nursing programs is a barrier to entry for many Vermonters, we seek to lower the overall price to attract Vermonters into this vital field of study. With 15 nursing sites statewide and online, our programs are accessible to Vermonters in every corner of the state and our ladder credentials offer multiple opportunities for upskilling Vermonters at every point in their career. Our goals are to incentivize Vermonters to pursue this career field in Vermont by lowering the cost of tuition, reducing their student debt, and assisting the state in meeting this essential workforce need. The second proposal establishes a Vermont Associates Pledge. The concept behind this proposal is to lower CCV's tuition to the national median and Vermont Technical College's technical, non-nursing programs to the equivalent of SUNY's technical institutions tuition. While a federal free community college proposal did not move forward on the national level this year, if the same model is considered in future years, the Vermont Associates Pledge would cover the required state matching funds to enroll in the federal initiative. In addition, this program includes the two-year technical programs at CCV and Vermont Tech, thereby increasing the accessibility and affordability of these programs for Vermonters. These programs are disproportionately expensive compared to comparable programs in other states, many of which subsidize tuition of these programs for their residents. These are expensive programs to operate, given the technology required and the relatively small number of students in the programs, but they are vital to the state's employers. Vermont Tech fields daily calls from employers desperate for our graduates, and unfortunately the highest ticker price can leave qualified candidates standing outside the door. And finally, recognizing the success of the first critical occupations free tuition program, our third proposal funds this program again with a few adjustments to account for lessons learned over the past year. First, the program adjusts the number of eligible career paths to include the highly needed fields of mechanical and electrical engineering, school psychology, and graduate mental health studies. Second, the program provides funding for eligible non-citizen residents who were unable to access the FY22 program as it used federal American Rescue and Recovery Plan Act funds. Third, the program provides funding for the nursing students who were unable to access federal financial aid because their nursing degree would be their second bachelor's degree. And finally, the program establishes income thresholds that match the federal stimulus payment thresholds from 2020. To summarize, we requested $2.35 million in the FY22 Budget Adjustment Act to support students in the critical occupations program. We requested $94.4 million for FY2023, which includes $48 million in a new annual base appropriation, that is state general fund, $14.9 million in one-time bridge funding to be used for FY23 adjusted if we receive the full $12.5 million increase to our base appropriation and $31.5 million in pre-funded bridge funding for future years. Additionally, we requested support for our students via the three workforce development concepts we put forward. And that concludes our state appropriation ask, and I would welcome any questions the board may have. Terrific presentation. Very good. Thank you. Bill, please go ahead. I'll put it in my hand up like others, sorry. Go ahead. All right, Bill, go ahead and then Ryan after Bill. Okay. It's more a request for, if we've already received this, apologies, but the summary of what has taken place over the past year at the beginning of your presentation, Catherine, is terrific. I was trying to articulate that to a group of legislators just in the last several days, because workforce is going to be at the top of an agenda in the legislature this year. It's one of the issues that's bedeviling everyone. And we can't say too often how critical it is for Vermont State Colleges to be essential in this resolution. So if there's a way to summarize what you put together in the different slides about what the legislature authorized and what the implementation in terms of numbers of students, et cetera, that would be terrific to have to be able to share with colleagues about everything from taking training right into the workplace to critical occupations. Every piece of it is incredibly important and valuable. Thank you. I would be happy to do that. More immediately, the slides will be available in the board meeting materials after this, but I would be happy to put together one pager. I think when we looked at the numbers, the unduplicated total across all of our institutions is 36 to 3700 students received one of the state-funded scholarships this year, which is truly remarkable. Over a third of our students received this support. Right, and I think having every legislator many people, stakeholders in the community, understand what the response is when we can make truly affordable access to education available is very motivating for everyone involved. So thank you. Ryan, please go ahead. Yeah, thank you all. Echo, a great presentation. I think it's wonderful. Just curious if we had any idea on the feeling, you know what I'm feeling right now from the legislature and the governor as we're waiting his budget overview and perhaps how close that we might align with that if there's any information you have on that. So the governor will present his budget proposal to the legislature in mid to late January and we will typically hear from them about the same time. We do meet with them once or twice a month to keep them updated on where we are going. We know that they've been very pleased with our transformation progress. We get them very pleased with the scholarship uptake and we are getting some good signaling around the budget adjustment. We meet with the legislature next week on the budget adjustment. It is very early in the process from their perspective to be giving us any promises, but I can say at this point that conversations are going well and that we are feeling very in alignment with where the state is. Further questions on this? Just an observation. I think that I expect that we need to hold up our end of the bargain by keeping our pedal to the metal and continuing to act expeditionously because I expect that rightly we should be monitored for the dollars at stake, but really great results. Yeah, I would second that. And I would also just comment that having spent the last 15 years up on the fifth floor, this governor is more aligned with workforce development than any other governor I've been familiar with. So any further connections we can make and certainly producing on the ones we've already made like that nursing one would just absolutely be right in his ball field. To trustee Silverman's comment about expectations, I will remind the board that the legislature and then the governor gave us a set of requirements to meet in transformation in the budget that was signed in Act 74. And we can certainly recirculate those, but those are subject to ongoing conversations on our leadership team about how we are meeting those requirements, how we will present that to the state. But their expectations are quite clear there around transformation and the conversations that we've had so far with the legislature and the administration indicate that they feel that we are moving forward well. Anything further questions, comments? Thank you, Catherine. Thank you, Sophie and Sharon. The next item on our agenda is a transformation update, Catherine in part hopefully starting to answer that question of how we're delivering on those expectations. But I do want to remind folks that have signed up for public comment at the end that you need to be in the Zoom room in order to be able to make public comment. So it's both the sign up and you need to be in the Zoom room at the end of our discussion. But I will turn it over to Wilson for an update on the transformation, please. Thank you Vice Chair Cleaver. Can everybody see my slides? Yes. Great, thank you. All right, well, it's inspiring to go at this point in the meeting because so much of what we've been talking about so far today is related to transformation. So my role today is to give you a high level update on how transformation is progressing. But you'll see and hear a lot of the similar themes that have come through in the other presentations today. So in terms of a summary of progress, we've completed the discovery stage of the process for the student experience and academic operations core teams. That's one bullet point on this slide, but it reflects a huge amount of work that's been completed. And I just want to take a moment to appreciate the folks that have been involved in the discovery work. We've had more than 13 teams with almost a hundred different faculty, staff and even students involved through the Student Advisory Council. And so it's been a tremendous effort to get to that stage, really the completion of the first of the five stages of the development and project management process. We're now at the stage where the sponsors and stakeholders are preparing to give feedback to the project teams and that will happen this week. The teams are also actively involved in scoping and prioritizing the projects that they'll work on through design. And that's a big important task because as we've talked about, there's so much that can be done and we really have to focus on the things that need to be done and sort of lay out our roadmap of where we're going on those. We also are actively engaged in bringing on some additional technical resources that will be needed in the design process. And I think Kelly earlier in the EPSL meeting talked a little bit about some of the resources that we're bringing on to help with Slate, which is our CRM design and implementation as well as Colleague, which is our ERP design and implementation. So more to come on that at the future time. We also are continuing to work on discovery for the administrative operations core team and that will continue through January, but we're prioritizing the projects for discovery within administrative operations that are most aligned with the work that's going on in student experience and academic operations, so that we make sure that we have that alignment in place, particularly as we start the technical design and development that are needed in the systems that crossover between administrative ops as well as student experience and academic operations. And as I mentioned, all the teams really are looking to the work that they're planning to really prioritize the projects that are required to launch Vermont State University in July of 2023. And that doesn't mean that we will neglect things that will set the stage and foundation for future alignment with CCB and other administrative alignments across the system, but we're really prioritizing the launch of Vermont State University so that we make sure we have the resources in place to do that. So as we move into design, I just wanted to give you a quick snapshot that you wanted to show a quick snapshot of the feedback that the sponsors are working on for the teams. And Yasmeen talked a little bit about some of the questions that have come up in discovery during the EPSL meeting today, but some of the questions surrounded which students are we trying to serve? How do we think about campuses and locations and those sorts of things? And we wanna make sure that the teams have that context as they're moving into the design work. So related to students, we really need to continue to respond to the changing needs of students, the students that we serve. I think it's important to note that nontraditional students will continue to become a larger and larger percentage of the students that we serve. And this was something that the sponsors felt very strongly that we make sure that we keep in mind. Right now in terms of nontraditional students looking just at one dimension of being nontraditional, which is age, approximately a quarter of our students are 25 or older and that's important across and that's just for the institutions that will become part of Vermont State University. And that's a huge percentage and a growing percentage as we move forward. If you include other characteristics of nontraditional students, if they're part-time students are working full-time or have dependents or are financially independent from their parents, those characteristics much more broadly would ensure that we have a much higher percentage of nontraditional students in the campuses already. And then the second thing that's been highlighted is that students will have an increasingly high expectation of the use of technology. And that's something that the pandemic has heightened but across higher education, technology is a greater and greater part of how not just the learning gets delivered but how the experience gets delivered. And that's something that the sponsors and stakeholders felt was really important to emphasize. The second thing related to campuses and locations, one thing that the sponsors really wanted to highlight is some work that's been done by the Deloitte Center for Higher Education Excellence and the Strata Education Network who put forward a report this year entitled Hybrid Campus. And this report really looks at how are the needs of students changing and what does that mean on the ground for our campuses. And to fulfill our mission and the way that students' needs are changing, we must really embrace this concept and think differently about how we provide education and services. And I know it's a tiny, tiny type here but it's always important to sort of pull out one of the aspects of what really a hybrid campus means. And so I'll read this here. The hybrid campus reimagines residential education in a tech-enabled world, a technology-enabled student experience. This is not only a hybrid instruction but rather a blended immersive and digital residential experience that fuses the online and physical worlds across campus. It transcends the current concept of blended education which too often focuses solely on classroom instruction that toggles between face-to-face and online. Instead, the hybrid campus can deliver everything an institution offers with a blended approach. And I think that that's important just to think through and sort of conceptualize there what that means in terms of what we're trying to do with through our design and development. And it's something that the sponsors and stakeholders felt was really important for the teams to keep in mind as they move into the design phase. In addition to those strategic level principles, the sponsors also put forward some expectations that maybe are a little bit more tactical but the projects that are prioritized should ensure the successful launch in fall of 2023. And I talked about that in the previous slide. We also need to make sure that the teams are fully utilizing the DEI framework that we talked about back in October in their design work. And so that's something we're reinforcing for the teams as well. And then also that the design options that are being brought forward should include a cost-benefit analysis where appropriate just so we understand what investments we're making in the areas that are gonna have the greatest impact for student experience and also help us in our sustainability goals. So that's a high level overview. And as I mentioned, the feedback will be provided to the teams this week and there'll be some more, much more detailed feedback obviously for each of the teams, but we wanted to give you a flavor of kind of where things are headed, all right? So as with our last update in October, I wanted to give everybody a quick update on the risks and dependencies that we talked about at that time. We've determined we're gonna move ahead with the Substance of Change proposal for Nechi for submission in March, which is a little bit sooner than we had originally planned. And it just helps us stay on track with some of the other strategic things that need to happen as we move ahead. We have some continuing capacity concerns for the faculty governance approval of programs, policies, and other shared governance priorities. And we've talked about that extensively already in this meeting and during EPSL, but we're moving ahead to address the timing concerns while also prioritizing the decisions that align with the application and systems implementation that's needed to stay on schedule. In terms of capacity for design and development work, we've talked about bringing on some additional contract support for some of the key systems and programming and implementation work. We're also continuing to invest in backfill and support for some of the key functional departments that are needed to get us through transformation. One of the other things that you asked for in the October update was a better understanding of some of the trade-offs that we're making as we go forward, particularly from a cost-benefit perspective. And so we wanted to just highlight some of these here. We're making additional targeted investments in staff and backfill as I talked about to ensure that we have capacity for launch. There's been a lot of looking at how we have our staffing aligned and just making sure that we have staff in the places where we need the work to happen. And then also some of the design options that we will propose as part of the Vermont State University implementation will require some investments in new staff and systems in advance of the savings of consolidation. So whenever you implement a new system and new processes, you need to make some investments that are made with the idea that those will pay off over time. And so we'll be doing the cost-benefit analysis as we go to ensure that we have those expectations, but some of the savings that we recoup initially through attrition and other things will be deployed towards those sorts of things. But we'll prioritize the benefits to students and the drivers of student success. Some of the options, when we're looking at new models of doing things, will be piloted to confirm the benefits that are intended. And then some of the systems changes will have short-term costs, but long-term savings. And that's really the intent for the ones that will move forward. So then I just have a one-slide update from each of the core teams just to give you a flavor of what each of the teams are working on. Academic operations, Yasmeen covered much more detail earlier in the episode as it relates to student experience and faculty governance. But some of the other things that we wanted to make sure got highlighted was the NCOTA visits that happened at each of the campuses, really looking at advising across all of the campuses. And that certainly is helping to inform design. Developing program and course-level delivery modalities is something that was accomplished that's really helping to guide the optimization work as well as looking ahead to communicating with prospective students. We completed proposals for common course and schedule time blocks. We talked at EPSIL about the importance of having an aligned schedule and set of time blocks established. Also, the team has drafted for Vermont State University a new academic organization structure to support the hybrid university and optimized programs. And that's something that's being taken forward to other stakeholders for their feedback and approval. So looking ahead, really looking at the approval of the course schedule and time block by the faculty assemblies, completing the academic organization structure again through an engaged process, developing mission and outcomes and design options for the general education program that's emerged as a really important part of making sure that we can get through the optimization proposals and approvals and then confirming a plan for review of the Vermont State University academic programs. So we talked earlier about that as well. In terms of issues and dependencies, just wanting to continue to highlight the important role the technology plays in the remote delivery programs and also faculty development and instructional design support for remote access delivery as well and then curriculum and development for optimized programs, what's significant change is something that as the programs get approved we need to make sure we've got a program and process in place to ensure that that happens. In terms of the student experience we spent the early part of this meeting talking about the brand pillar development and that's been a core piece that will help inform what we move ahead with in the marketing and admissions of Vermont State University. We completed the discovery process across the student experience and we worked with IT to launch the RFP that will need to support the technical work as we move ahead, sleep being one of the key and critical tools that we use in admissions and recruitment. In terms of priorities, we're prioritizing design projects for the maximum impacts to align with the recruitment timelines. We're also engaging process systems of financial analysis resources to begin the design and then we'll be launching a microsite for Vermont State University early in the year so that we'll be able to be prepared for the launch of the enrollment cycle that begins in the spring. In terms of dependencies, obviously significant dependencies relate across teams and related to the program array as we've talked about and that's just something we need to keep in mind and I think the strategy that was talked about earlier of really prioritizing the decisions of the program array that relate to admissions was an appropriate and important step forward to make sure that we have the information we need to start that process. In terms of administrative operations, this core team started later than student experience in academic operations but has already made some good progress on discovery. We also are moving forward on an RFP for some of the work that needs to happen on Colleague which is our ERP system. We determined that alumni and development, the team and because of the work that they were doing aligned more closely with this group and have made that move. And we've also filled a financial analyst role which is essential to this design stage and with Tyler who's been the Dean of Administration at Vermont Technical College we've been moving over to help us with that here in the near future as we move into design. In terms of priorities looking ahead, obviously prioritizing the discovery deliverables that align with student experience in academic operations as I've talked about, working with academic operations to better understand the systems and IT requirements as really essential and then completing discovery for the facilities preparation for the delivery of the 10-year plan. And I know that's coming up on your schedule soon. So again, we've been looking at making sure we've got the capacity we need to do the work and then also that we've got the things prioritized that we need to ensure the timely delivery of the work. In terms of workforce development this was the last core team to kick off but a lot of this happened already. The core team established objectives and deliverables conducted training around the DEI framework that will help guide discovery and also completed discovery for current operations at each institution. And it was exciting to sort of see the different members of the team from the different institutions get a much deeper understanding of the work that's already going on across the system and workforce development. The priorities looking ahead are really to establish high-level timelines for the stages of development work for workforce. And so in future updates you'll see how their schedule aligns with the other three. And then also really looking to evaluate the systems is important because we'll be engaging with the systems consultants to help us with that work and then just making sure that we can add workforce development team members to those technical project teams as that work progresses. In terms of issues and dependencies we just wanna continue to highlight the importance of recognizing the important role that workforce plays in the overall mission of Vermont State Colleges and Vermont State University. And that's something that the team is continuing to really reinforce. And then needing to align the key processes and systems with the other transformation teams to ensure that as we do the technical development that's needed, we're taking into account that workforce development truly is an embedded part of what is happening. And so VSU is supporting workforce work as opposed to having a separate infrastructure for what we do there. And just to highlight too that we need to make sure as we move ahead with contract negotiations next year that we'll need to include aspects related to workforce operations. So those are the updates from the core teams. Again, just a quick snapshot. A lot of work is going on behind the scenes and a lot more detail involved in each of those areas but wanted to give you a quick highlight. The overall schedule hasn't changed much except the gray area keeps getting larger here to the left which just means that we're now moving into design for student experience and academic operations and close to the end of discovery for administrative operations. And as I mentioned, we'll be adding workforce development here in the next update cycle. So that concludes my report and I'm happy to take any questions. Well, so now I could start us with a question and then I'm sure there are others. Absolutely. And first, thank you for both this report and the tremendous work that has gone into this. We have made incredible progress. So thank you. I do wanna ask in our last discussion on transformation, the point was raised that there's points in the transformation as we go forward that the board will need to weigh in and make decisions or certain items that may come up to the board. And it strikes me as we start to get into design and out of discovery, we are likely getting to some of those points. So I'm wondering if thought has been given to particular items that might come to the board's attention, particularly around the academic org structure or the administrative org structure, if those are milestones that you're thinking about going forward. Absolutely. And that really is the, you've captured two of the most important, I think. And in particular, the administrative organization structure is an area where as we move into design, we'll need to dig more deeply into that. The teams themselves are really focused on trying to understand the work that needs to happen and what process and people need to be there to support that work. But really the work on organizational design is something that the administrative leadership and core team leadership and concert with the board can work on to make sure that we've got the right reporting structures and other things to move that work ahead. So design will be a time when we'll sort of have to iteratively work on some of that. And I guess I'd look to Sophie and others to help us determine when are the right times to check in with the board. Yeah, and the academic structure, that's going to the faculty assemblies this month. So again, I think that will be able to provide an update to the EPSL meeting. And I don't know if it'll be ready for the full board meeting on the 24th of January. The other piece, as far as the academic organization goes, I mean, as Wilson just alluded to, I mean, that Tyler is moving over to assist on the financial analyst piece, which is really where he's tremendously skilled. So there's already some sort of alignment that's going on, but we haven't, we're not at a point of saying, this is exactly what the structure will look like at this point. We really want to let the teams dig in and do the work before we sort of rush to that. But at the same time, we do recognize that obviously people have questions, right? Is where am I going to fit in this organization? So we do know that that is a concern that people have. So as soon as we can, we will share that information, but we don't want to be too precipitous in it. I think it was a natural inclination. I know when we really started this transformation process back last summer in thinking things through, we kind of were like, well, what does the org chart look like for this new institution? And Wilson's been very good in counseling us. You've got to do the work and do the discovery and go through this process. You don't just jump to sort of the end piece right away. So yeah, we're trying to be disciplined about that as we move forward. The other aspects besides organizational structure to think about too are the facilities, tenure facilities plan is something that will be coming to the board that really looks at how are we thinking about planning for facilities as we move through transformation and beyond. So that's a key decision point that the board will need to weigh in on. Also, the strategic financial plan, and that's a key element there of not just transformation, but thinking through, what are our plans for not just how to support operating, but also the capital investment needs that are gonna come out in part through facilities, but other areas as well. And then the strategic plan, and really once Vermont State University is closer to launching, having really a sense of not just the current transformation strategy, but what is that strategy that will guide the work beyond transformation will be critical elements for you as the board to weigh in on as well. So would it make sense? I think our next board meeting is January 24th, which with the holidays is right around the corner. I wonder if at that meeting, we had a little more detail on the timing of, you know, here's when the board should expect, you know, what are the four or five decisions or high level items that the board should expect to see and what the timing is on that? Because it may be, it occurs to me, we may need to change our meeting cadence because the EPSL committee does not reconvene until March and that may not align with the timing that you need for, you know, weigh in on any decisions that would come to that committee or the finance and facilities that would go to Trustee Silverman's committee. Yeah, we do, we certainly can do that. We also do have a finance and facilities committee meeting next Monday, so that will be, that information will then be available. If any decisions the board needs to make for the January 24th meeting. Other discussions and questions? Bill, go ahead. I'm gonna just say that word of deep appreciation for the enormous amount of work that is being undertaken by so many people in the, I mean, we just, we can't take for granted what all is happening to move this transformation process forward, Wilson, your work, Yasmeen's, certainly Sophie and Catherine and so many others. So I, and I think again, I wanna try to help us, I wanna try to find a way for our colleagues, our legislative colleagues to understand that this is not just like, oh, we're gonna do this and we just pull a lever and it happens. It's, this is an enormous undertaking, just an enormous undertaking and very important. So thank you. Yeah, I just, I mean, it has, I mean, Wilson alluded to, you know, 13 teams, but obviously there are more teams than that and we've been working with the council of presidents to provide some stipends by way of thank you and appreciation to all the people that are working on those teams, because it's an extraordinary number of people that are really doing a lot of this work, you know, on the ground. Anything further on transformation? Excellent, thank you, Wilson, thank you, Sophie. Any additional business today? Seeing none, we'll bring us to public comment. Jen, do we have anyone signed up for public comment? We did have some people sign up for public comment, but none of them are in the Zoom meeting. So if anyone in the Zoom meeting would like to make a public comment, please raise your hand now and we will recognize you. I think that we do not have any public comment at this time. Okay, seeing no public comment, we are going to move into an executive session and it is anticipated that the board will take action when it exits executive session. Trustee Silverman, do you have a motion to go into executive session, please? I do. I move that the board of trustees enter executive session, pursue it to one BSA 313A1B to discuss labor rights relations agreements with employees because premature general public knowledge clearly placed the public body involved at a substantial disadvantage along with the members of the board present at this meeting in this discretion, the board invites the chancellor and the general counsel to attend. I further move that the board enter executive session pursuant to one BSA 313A3 to discuss the appointment and employment of a public officer. Upon the exit of general counsel, Patty Turley from the executive session, the board and vice president, Jonathan Speeru and Provost Tom Mazpieu to join the trustees in executive session. No formal or binding action will be taken in executive session. And that's my motion. Mary, I see a second to that. Which I think, Jen, can you pull us into executive session, please? No, I apologize. We need to vote. Thank you. All those in favor of entering executive session, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Jen, can you pull us into executive session, please? You got it. Everyone is back. Thank you all for waiting patiently. And we do have a motion coming out of executive session. Trustee Silverman, I'll ask you to make that motion, please. Okay. I move the board of trustees approve the following resolution number 2021-024 appointing Provost Thomas Mazpieu to serve as interim president of Castleton University. Whereas the Vermont State Colleges board of trustees is responsible under 16 VSA 2174 and under article five, section one of the VSC bylaws for the selection and appointment of presidents of the VSC's member institutions. Whereas Jonathan Spiro, the president of Castleton University has announced his intention to retire effective January 3rd, 2022. And whereas Castleton University will be joining Northern Vermont University and Vermont Technical College to create Vermont State University. And whereas a national search has been launched to hire the first president of Vermont State University for July 1, 2022. And whereas President Spiro, the chancellor and the board of trustees recommend that the vacancy created by President Spiro's retirement be filled by Provost Thomas Mazpieu on an interim basis, therefore be it resolved that Thomas Mazpieu be appointed as interim president of Castleton University with all the associated authority and responsibility of the office of president effective January 3rd, 2022 and will serve until the board appoints the successor. Thank you. Do we have a second? I'll second that. Excellent. Thank you, Lynn. Any discussion? Bill, go ahead. Well, I wanna first thank Jonathan for your service and which has been invaluable to the students and everyone at Castleton University and to the system. And to thank Tom Mazpieu for his willingness and abilities to step in with a smooth transition from President Spiro's retirement from that position. I think we're, I think once again, we are uniquely fortunate to have such well qualified and willing staff to step up at this time. So I'm deeply grateful to him for his willingness to both of you. Very well said, Jim, I agree. Bill, I'm sorry, very well said, Bill, and I agree. Thank you, Bill, for that important comment. Any other thoughts? I'd like to call a vote please. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hey, excellent. The ayes have it. Thank you. Again, both Tom and Jonathan, as Bill said, we are in enormous debt to both of you for your continued leadership and presence in the Castleton community as we go forward. I just want to add that I know Jonathan doesn't want to parade or confetti or any of the other things I've threatened to do for him, but I just want to say Jonathan, how much I've really, really enjoyed working with you. I know we first started, I think working together on the part-time contract doing on the bargaining team together many years ago, but I've really enjoyed the time with you. So I just want to say thank you as well. Thank you, Chancellor. It's been an absolute pleasure and I'd like to second the board's hiring of Tom Moss Pew, clearly the best person for the job. It's a man who knows more about higher education than probably anyone in New England. You're very much going to appreciate working with him and his data-driven approach to making decisions. So it's an excellent choice. I'm very, very glad you made it. Thank you for that. And I think this brings us to the conclusion of our meeting. So I would ask for a motion to adjourn. Mary, I see your motion. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you very much. Seconded by Ryan. And we are all those in favor of adjourning. Hi. Hi. Hi. And the post. All right, excellent. Thank you all. We are adjourned. Thank you. Happy holidays, everybody. Happy holidays.