 Welcome to Senate Education on this at least in southern Vermont snowy day. We're so pleased to have President Garamella here from the University of Vermont to talk to us about things at the University as well as an overall introduction. I don't remember how long Senator Garamella you have been at the University, but you will remind I know your tenure has been brief thus far but we'll look forward to hearing a little bit about you the university. COVID how everything is going. And then after that, we are going to continue our tour of higher education we will be hearing from the select committee on higher education, as well as others related to the state colleges so with that. Mr President, welcome. We're so happy to have you. Thank you so much, Senator champion. Appreciate all of your time. Appreciate you're asking me to come on. Congratulations to, I think all of you get reelected and certainly for the newer for the new senators. I know Thomas worked hard at this and was very well received in the in our county. So, happy to, you know, looking forward to working with you all. I will acknowledge that Wendy Koenig is here. She really knows everything there is to know, and you should really be asking her questions but anyway, she's a she's a great support. I think for the state and for the university and I'm glad she's on, but I'm pleased to make this presentation, and I see Dr. I'm glad that the portion is coming on to which is great. I work with them on the on the Navy efforts. So, to your point, I've been here about a year and a half, Senator champion. I won't tell you how long it feels like I've been here. So, and I'm pleased that I talked to Senator Hooker, there's relatively recently with the with the changes and leadership and so on to so this is just a start. I'm more than happy to come on anytime you'd like me to or answer questions. I think what I find I won't be pulling up any slides and such what might be helpful I hope you've all received two sort of one pagers I speak in one pages if I can. I think it's easier to convey what you want to convey and keep it clear. So, I, you don't have to go through it. I'll just point to a couple of things that we normally do a one page summary of the University of Vermont. Some consider the university for Vermont as I do. And it sort of captures a few key items which, you know, I think it's good to keep handy. As you think about us. Two or three things in that handout that has been shared with your committee. One is that, you know, almost have 45% of Vermont students attend UVM without paying any tuition at all. And then most of the rest have some form of financial aid so this is important to us. We would like to continue that for sure and to the extent possible, grow that make it more attractive for Vermonters to attend UVM. And the, besides educating the students the big positive is that 30% over 30% of our out of state students that come to UVM stay in the state and work and 70% of Vermonters who come to UVM are employed in Vermont. So, I think, especially at a time of this demographic challenges that you all know, better than I do, high school student numbers going down, etc. It's critical that the talent that the state needs, you know, is importantly being fed by the University of Vermont, of which I'm very proud. So we have, you know, a while back an independent study showed that we have a one and a third billion impact on our state's economy. There's many ways in which we impact the state, and we're proud to do so. We are state appropriation as you all know has remained flat for a long time. And it's always gone to the same categories which are listed at the bottom of that sheet. The summary is that 75% of our state appropriation goes to financial support for Vermonters who attend UVM, and 25% goes to our extension services that are assisting the state throughout all counties. And there's other stats in there. You're welcome to refer to them. I'm more than happy to answer any questions about them. But I will say before leaving this one flyer that affordability is a very high priority for me. And I think especially while we were going down this path and froze tuition from my very first year. I think the importance of that has been underlined by COVID. So many families are struggling, and we would like to make it as easy as possible for them. And for small state support, it is expensive to go to the University of Vermont, but we have now frozen tuition for a third year. We've announced it for a third year. And for next year, we've also announced that our room and board will stay fixed. It's not going to be increased as it has for decades. And it's been increased every year for decades. And this year, we're not going to be increasing it. Moreover, we'll be reducing our comprehensive fee by as much as we can. Not a lot, but I think it's an important message to start bending the curve to the extent we can. So you will continue to see from me. But I will say that the University of Vermont community cares about equity and fairness and affordability comes at the heart of that. And the second piece of information, which is perhaps much newer to all of you is this office of engagement that we have established at UVM. So some of you may remember from our conversations that our strategic competitors plan, which is a two page, very sort of summary document that that, you know, identifies our focal areas for UVM points out three things. One is our central focus on student success and student experience, internships for them, affordability, accessibility, all of that. The second piece is to double down and invest in our distinctive strengths. We're a small research university, not compared to UVM, I mean, not compared to Vermont, but compared to other ones. And so it's important that we identify what we're good at. And we have, I think everyone at UVM agrees that our strengths are in building healthy societies and a healthy environment, given our learner college of medicine, of course, but Rubenstein School of Environment, but even College of Arts and Sciences, every college at UVM contributes to a healthy environment and healthy societies. That's our second focal area. The third focal area is to engage better with our community, which can be defined any way you like, but certainly extends to all 14 counties in the state. And engage meaning be of service to make our significant resources and assets available to our, you know, Vermonters. This is not financial resources, it is our technical resources, it's our intellectual capital, and we can help in many ways. We have for many, many years, but I wanted to draw sort of a bow around it, make it easy for Vermonters to understand how to connect with the University of Vermont. So we set up an office of engagement. I, I thank you, I thank the, the legislature for helping us set up. I'm sorry, President, you're a moment. Mr. Kaplan. Yeah, sorry. Commute yourself. Thank you. I'm sorry. I hope you heard what I said so I won't repeat anything I said but so the state of Vermont, the state house gave us a couple million dollars last year out of the CRF funds to help set up this office of engagement. Thank you very much for that. And you should really the way I explained the Office of Engagement is that it is the front door to the University of Vermont. And it is really a state entity as far as I'm concerned it is something that this that the state has helped set up at UVM so that the state can access UVM better UVM can be of greater service to the state. And so I wanted to provide you a one pager on that as well I do hope you've all received it. Any of you that have not. So, you all know Wendy well if not directly me, and she can, she can be sure you all have it. So, the reason I'm so wedded to and and think so highly of an office of engagement is that I started my administrative career in a university, leading the office of engagement back in Indiana. And it was, it was so clear to me that the entire state depended so heavily on the university and drew on us for so many things. And so, I think there is a lot of potential for the University of Vermont to be of service to the state, especially as we come out of COVID, especially as businesses, individuals, livelihoods are very strongly affected and in some cases destroyed by COVID. We want to be here to help. And so the fact sheet about the office of engagement shows you just some of the key elements of what we're trying to do. I think it's a relatively novel idea for many in the state and I hope that you will increasingly engage with our engagement and and understand what we can do and help us have a larger impact and and connect with the rest of the state. So some of the things I've pointed out in that one pager is that. So there's an economic development piece right we've got the number on that if you've got a sheet is incorrect it's 35,000 alumni from UVM work and live in the state. And that is a big economic development piece by itself, but there's a there's a fair amount of focus on entrepreneurship. We have helped just in the short time, just and to clarify. We've only been running up and running since September or so says been about four months, and this is the outcome from those four months and we will be providing you regular updates. We've helped companies write SBIR STTR grants these are federal grants to support their research and their efforts, and UVM has been at their side helping them with writing these things because they have some pretty specific needs and we can do this. So we bring in about $185 million of federal research funds into the state every year. And so we can provide this kind of service. There's a lot of community service by our students that I've listed there. We have a lot of community partners work with our faculty and service learning opportunities, and specifically for the public service space. We've brought in about $23 million of research funds just the last year. I think adult learners. We've been talking about it in the state quite a bit. We have 2500 or so adult learners that are engaged in our continuing and distance education. I'm hoping that we can continue to double down on it and grow it. But on the SBIR, it's a small business innovation research. On those kinds of grants, we have helped startups write proposals for these grants. There's one in, for example, there's a couple that have come out of UVM technology. One's called Benchmark Space Systems, another called, another is called Cormap that's female-owned. One's about sending small vehicles into space. These is about atrial fibrillation drivers. But we have a 14-county reach. And please remember that we don't forget it. There are many pieces of what we do that apply in every part of the state. Just to give you one example, you know, there was a study that we did on food and security during the pandemic. And our Vice President Research Office funded it. And the impact on Harwick in the Northeast Kingdom was written up in seven days. There was a very nice write-up about that kind of work and how it helps. So we have an advisory council that has representation from across the state. We're continuing to look at it and expand it so that every part of the state feels connected. And so while the CRF funds helped us set it up with the software systems needed, the staffing, etc., we have, I will mention that we're asking for a million-dollar ongoing support for the Office of Engagement. And we will be sure to come back every time on a quarterly basis, as often as you like, to report on the metrics. We're tracking metrics quite carefully, and we'll show you the return on investment, which will be many, many times larger than the funding supported. So those are, you know, I think the Office of Engagement is a new concept for many, and I wanted to sort of spend a few minutes explaining that. Senator Campion, you asked about our COVID experience. Let me say very proudly that this is one thing where we are almost second to none. I believe we have among the best response in the nation of any universities. We had an in-person college experience that we were committed to. We thought we would spare no expense, keep our students safe, our community safe, but also our jobs at UVM and in the community protected, which I believe we've been able to do. And, you know, we adopted among the most aggressive testing protocols, every student coming to UVM tested before they came to the city, and if they were positive, they did not come. So we kept COVID away. We tested them on day zero, day seven, and every week throughout the semester. You might hear about other universities testing, especially large universities and other states. They all test some subset of the students. We tested every single student every week. So we had about 150,000 tests in the fall semester with less than 100 students testing positive. I think this is just a record I'm so proud of because our students did the right thing. They behaved. They signed our green and gold pledge. They took it seriously. They wanted to stay here in person and behave incredibly responsibly. Our staff did an amazing job. And of course, our faculty had to pivot to new kinds of teaching, remote, hybrid, and all these kinds of things. And I'm just very proud of our community for doing that. Our strategy for the spring start for the spring semester will be very much the same. We'll pretest all students before they come. And then the point is we only bring healthy students as in people without COVID to this city. And then we continue to monitor them throughout. So, I mean, I've said to Mayor Weinberger and others that it's far more likely that our students will pick up COVID from the community than that our students give COVID to the community. And it's been true. It's not an idle boast and I'm very proud of that. I will say here more than even with anything else that I'm deeply grateful to the State House for their support through CRF funds for UVM to address the COVID challenge. Our expenses will come out to exceed by a lot the support we got from the state, but still the nearly 30 million dollars we got. We spent primarily towards additional costs of financial aid, a good fraction of it about a third of it went to financial aid that wasn't on top of what students are getting COVID testing was very, very expensive. And we were able to pay for that with with the state CRF funds technology hardware and software and classrooms for supporting remote learning for those students who are at home, etc. additional staff to support instruction equipment and supplies disinfecting deep cleaning additional compensation leave and unemployment for our staff. All of this was, we couldn't have done it without that. So I thank you for that. And, you know, I think we're just beginning to learn what the next COVID relief package looks like and we will be discussing that again. The last thing Senator Campion I appreciate the time you gave me and I'm happy to answer questions but I wanted to address also not simply COVID I wanted to say that COVID has not cow does were not defeated by COVID it's not the only thing we're doing. We have continued and it was very important to us to continue the strategic work focused on the future. And so it was actually the middle of COVID in April, right COVID kind of came on in March in April we released our strategic plan it's called amplifying In fact, as I said it's a two page very punchy document. We have embarked now in a process that, in fact Senator Chitenden but others and the Senate have now helped us expand there's a good number of faculty helping us with what we're calling academic organization. We're looking at our organization saying is this the best, most streamlined most simplified organization for students and parents are looking at UVM. Is this the best way we can align ourselves. Are we offering the programs and courses etc that students are most interested in looking into the future. So that's an academic reorganization effort that I'm that I think is very exciting and energizing and it's kicked off. We're going to have a lot of sub, you know, work groups etc work around that. We're also going through the flip side of that which is the university wide diligence and care and looking at those majors and minors that have extremely low enrollment, typically two to five that we think we cannot afford anymore. We then want to reinvest that money into programs that have more demand and interest from students. And so we're going through that process. We're also going through a very intentional process of achieving what we call our one status. So, Vermont, as you all know, University of Vermont is a mighty research organization, especially with outcome and all the rest of the work we do here. But we, the highest level of ranking by the Carnegie classification is our one, we're currently at our two. It takes very specific things to go to our one, and we're focusing on that. Our research funding grew by 25% last year, it's currently about 180 million plus, we will continue to grow that continue to grow our profile or scholarship or impact on the community but also the nation at large. And finally, the last thing I'll say is, in addition to all this diligence. We've also launched what we call our sore initiative. It's a student financial aid initiative. That's my top fundraising priority. So, to all of our alumni and friends who care a lot about UVM in our future. I have made it quite clear that our one top priority is to support our students and therefore I've said please give in terms of financial aid so that we can support our students. So we've launched that. I'm hoping it'll move forward. There is a piece to it that is meant to serve underserved students. People of color certainly but also those that whose economic situation is such that they never consider UVM. I would like for all of those students to be able to consider UVM as a viable option for them. We will be trying our best to raise some funds, private funds in that space as well. So with that, I hope I didn't go too long, Senator Campion, I'll stop with that and I'll be happy to answer questions. That was, that was very helpful I appreciate it. Committee questions from committee members. Senator Persley. And then center shouldn't. Mr. Chair. President on the engagement center. I got an email through my other job about that and there was some open houses but they were all during the legislative day I wondered if you guys have thought about maybe having some specifically for legislators, because I think that would be helpful. It's a fantastic idea. So, the couple of things we have done is, you know, I'm working with Wendy to try and distribute this one pager. We're also we've got a newsletter that's going out and I believe every legislators on it, but sometimes these things go to spam so you know please please reach out if it's not reached you. But Senator personally, this is a great idea. As you know, we do a day for legislators once, once a year. We focused on El Con actually last year the College of Medicine last year was quite successful, but happy to do this. In fact, I think in ordinary times, we would come out and meet with people and do a reception or something at the State House, but I'll work with Wendy and Chris is our CDA Department of Community Development and Applied Economics who's directing that effort very successfully and he and I and Wendy will work on a plan. And in fact, if you don't mind, we'll reach out to you for ideas for how best to reach the group that might be interested and benefit from learning about it. Very happy to do that. Right, thank you. Senator Chittenden. Thank you. Thank you very much for being here President Garamella. My question is somewhat leading. I would say that Dr Linda Olson from the Castleton University just recently communicated to me that they have the Faculty Assembly has narrowly approved the elimination of their geology major. And I know in a recent announcement at the University of Vermont that it's been proposed to also terminate the geology department. And I see in this communication from Chris Coliba that just came out yesterday that you'd also just referenced and I think you spoke to it in your remarks that we want this Office of Engagement for UVM to be the front door where we can strengthen the connection of UVM to communities all over the state. I was quoting the email there. My question to you, and this is something I've been talking about for years to anybody that will have a conversation with me is how do you see possibilities between the University of Vermont and the Vermont State Colleges as a leader and now a Vermont State Senator of the Green Mountain State? I would love to make sure that we keep and retain the expertise and knowledge of geology here in this state. And I'm wondering if there's ways to have our institutions create rope lines and bridges between the Vermont State Colleges and the University of Vermont to mutually support each other and meet the needs of the higher education of the landscape of Vermont, the Green Mountain State. Do you have thoughts on how we can strengthen our geological offerings by working closer with the Vermont State Colleges and bridging through our continuing ed and distance learning opportunities that have become so apparent to us in this pandemic to bridge UVM to further more corners of the state? Great question Senator, I think there are at least two parts to your question. I will say that you might think it's an exaggeration, but I'll say that no one's more committed to the success of VSC at UVM than me. I have from the time I arrived, one of the first meetings I took was with Chancellor Spaulding at that time, Joyce Judy has become a close friend now, Pat Moulton, Chancellor Zedatny, etc. And even the other piece of it, you know, VSAC with scar giles, etc. So it's very important that we think of the higher ed spectrum in this state as one spectrum. It's not us versus them. You know, we all need to prosper for the state to have the higher education it needs. We serve very different clientele, if you will, different pieces of the puzzle. There are some duplications among entities within the VSC, but also with UVM. And I think the more streamlined it can be where, right, we figure out the needs of the state and try to address them, especially VSC because most of their students are in state. And so I have been focused on this ever since I arrived. Wendy, I will ask you if you don't mind after the meeting or at some point to share this one document. It's a two page document. I faked it as a one pager, but it's got two sides. So it lists the educational pathways between UVM and VSC. We were very deliberate about it. I believe when I first came, I asked what the pathways were. And I think there were nine programs. I said, why can't we rule 25? And we got to 25 by the end of my first year. But we basically extended them to, we said, can we not do it for all programs? And CCV has been the most active in engaging with us on pathways. VTC has some. I believe with Castleton we have something in nursing. I don't know every detail, but I want to, I want to share with this committee in particular our educational pathways between UVM and the VSC system. So that's one sort of piece of your question. As you, as you know, I think I'm also honored to serve on the VSC study committee and have been helping to the extent I can. And, you know, the problems that VSC is facing or the challenges it's facing are quite different from those of UVM. I mean, our clientele is quite different. So many of our students at UVM come from out of state. So the same solutions don't apply to everyone, but I am committed to helping in any way I can. And, and, and I'll say that we are at UVM, as you know, Senator Chittenden, we want to avoid getting into the kinds of situations that, you know, three or four other schools in Vermont have gotten where they had to shut down, etc. And so the kinds of diligence we're going through at UVM are very much targeted at securing a financial and successful, you know, sustainable future for UVM. To your point specifically about geology, a couple of quick points. As you know, when we, you know, majors and minors are very different from courses. First, we have assured all the students that are in these majors and minors that they will be able to see through. We will see them through their program. So no student will lose their major or minor once they're registered. Most courses in these spaces will continue to be offered. And it is that the major or minor, and I don't know the geology number offhand, but for the majors and minors we're looking at the enrollment, the graduation has been less than five students at a time. So, and the encouraging thing is that geology in particular has been very active since this discussion has started, and they're working with how they can collaborate with geography or anthropology or other colleges, etc. It can be a strengthening of that resource so that we can continue that work. Our geology department is quite active with research, small setups number of faculty but very research active, and I intend entirely to support those. So, I think it's the start of a conversation Dean falls of the College of Arts and Sciences is going through this very deliberately in a very collaborative way with the chairs and departments. I would just say that it's about 120 students out of 4,650 that are affected by these majors and minors in in CAS, and also after this change if we go through all the changes we plan we had. There'll be 44 majors remaining and 52 remaining minors in Arts and Sciences so I think we'll have a lot of options, but we'll need to work through the specific question about where geology lands. Where's the best synergy, if you will, in terms of them working together, but I believe that that department in particular has some very strong faculty, and they'll land very well and essentially lead to a stronger offering than, than even they have now. There should you have a follow up. My concern is I thought I was under the impression it was proposed to terminate the geology department and that just to me I'm concerned that we will not have the expertise in house and so that's where I lead the question towards ways to extend our course offerings to the Vermont State in particular to what we've done with CDE with Z sections in the past with distance education students. I would love to imagine a world where we are strengthen those articulation agreements and and rope lines between the Vermont State colleges so if they have students that really want to take geology classes that they VSCs don't have to stand up the program themselves but instead the University of Vermont could have a rebundant as the flagship institution, geological offerings, so that we can extend our expertise to the corner of the state but that's just a follow up comment I see Senator Lyons has a question thank you again for being here President Garamillo. Of course and point taken just a quick quick follow up so we will take it back, and I don't believe anything is happening to the faculty in geology I think they'll probably, you know I think we have a lot of very small departments which are not very accessible the way they are. So if we can have a larger sort of a conglomerate that can offer much more of these things. That's great. I don't actually know Castleton's offerings in the space well, but we will take that back and I'll bring it to Dean false. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you and thank you very much, President Garamillo. It's been really terrific listening to all the things you have to say the plans for the future and how much you've accomplished in such a short time, really appreciate that. I did have a question about geology but I think that Senator Chittenden has pretty much covered it I, I would make one comment about that, however, and that is, when I chaired the Senate. Natural Resources and Energy Committee we had a wonderful state, state geologist and someone who a deputy commissioner who worked with him, who is now your faculty member. The issue is mapping groundwater, and that really did fall to the geologist within the state. I think that is a neat link for us, especially given our concerns around water quality, and so on so that's just not probably not a big deal My other concern, I guess, it's not really a concern but I'm really happy to hear about your interest in connecting and linking with the VSC. And in particular, our state for the past several years has seen a significant need for social workers, masters of social work. Nursing at every level, APRN, BSN, LPN, but the linkages that are made between UVM and other institutions are so significant and I, I don't know if you can talk a little bit about what if any additional seats might be opened up in some of these programs I don't know. We're missing faculty and nursing unavoidable, but I think certainly, I can't imagine that we wouldn't have capacity in the social worker environment so maybe you could just talk a little bit about that. Thank you, clients. Thank you very much. Thank you for your long service at Everson Air County. I appreciate that and your warm remarks. So, for sure, you know, I think that once Wendy is able to get you the short summary we have of the relationships, the partnerships we've built with VSC, that will answer a piece of your question. Okay, that's not the end, that's the start. We are open. If there are stronger pathways, we need to understand what VSC needs and what they can offer, what we need, what we can offer, etc. I will say I'm quite proud that our nursing program did expand. I think it doubled in just relatively recent, maybe two years ago or so. It was something that Provost Prelock now, who was Dean of Nursing, brought about and I've asked her, shamelessly, what it'll take to double again. So I said, if you could go from 70 something to 140, why not 140 to 280. It turns out that the biggest challenge there is placements, clinical placements. We don't have a lot of opportunities in the state. They're saturated. And so working that out apparently is problematic. I don't know a lot of details about it, but that's the issue because we certainly have no dearth of applications in nursing. We could admit many more and still keep up our, you know, still only be getting top students. So there is that. I'm quite proud of our social work. I mean, SES is a great college. I know Dean Thomas is very committed to this. I will admit to not knowing a lot about, again, the potential for a collaboration with the different, you know, with Johnson or NGU or Castleton or CCV and VTC, but we can certainly look into that further and get back to you. Take a look at our one in our short summary. And I believe you have Joyce Judy coming back on the line here after me. And I think she will attest to the fact that anytime they have come to us with suggestions, I have said yes, if it's a doable thing. The door is open. And I think that the more we work together, the more we avoid duplication. There's no need to duplicate. We're too small a state to do that. The better. So I will look into any opportunities in the social work area, but also what challenges they may have been. So let me look into that further. Thank you. Additional questions committee. Before we move on. President Caramel. Thank you very much. Great having you. I did make a mistake prior to your starting and by not introducing Wendy. For those of you in the building. Please know. President Caramel does not have the pleasure of spending every day with us until he runs for office. Wendy does, or we actually have the pleasure of working with Wendy Wendy for a range of questions issues, constituent concerns is an incredible, incredible resource of knowledge and access to to the university so thank you Wendy for being here and we all look forward to continuing our work with with you this session. Thank you for having me and happy to help anytime. She's one of the most competent people in the state I know so actually make use of it, give her things to do and she'll do them within within an hour. That's her specialty. So yes, she's an amazing source of support. And honestly, she can sometimes find you answer is faster than I am a no answer so that's not to say that I'm, I'm, I'm directing all of you to her. I'll take your questions to me to and I'll be happy to answer directly or come back on the committee or so, but but Senator campion I you actually promoted me before and made me a senator to. So, thank you for that. And, and no thank you for that. I think I'm an academic and I'll be a professor for 30 plus years and will continue to be one till the, till the day I, you know, have to hang up my head. Thank you. Well, thank you for being with us and I appreciate Senator Purchlick working with you a little bit in terms of setting up some kind of open house that we can all participate in perhaps one evening or whatever works for best for people so so we'll leave it there. Thank you all very much. And have a good day. Thank you and I'm going to hang up and I'm going to get off the call, you can continue I think right so thank you. Terrific so we have committee we have folks that will be led into the waiting room from the waiting room, we are going to move on to the select committee on public higher education, which I feel we kind of in some way off with our conversation with President Garamella. And we have, if you do not have the report in front of you. It is on our website on our webpage. I have not had an opportunity to look at it I would encourage you to do so. But today we're, we have with us. Joyce Judy, who was I believe President Judy you were one of the co chairs is that accurate. I was the chair. We're the chair. Thank you. Not, not by, not by request. We appreciate you coming back. And I believe Senator Bruce is also going to be joining us chair emeritus of this committee. And Mr Prescott we've not had the the opportunity nor the pleasure to meet. And we're delighted that you're here and we'll, I'll leave it to you to introduce yourself when the time comes and you can let us know your roles and your responsibilities as it relates to this group. So let's give it just another minute to see if Senator birth is going to join us. If anybody needs to stretch. It's a good time to do so. Thank you for your question chair champion. Absolutely. So I have the December 4 report which I understand was an interim report the final report has not yet come out is that correct. That is correct. We just referred to you as chair emeritus of this. It's not official it's an amendment going into the appropriation. I accept. Good afternoon everybody. Good afternoon. So, so we were just, we are just, we've said a quick hello to Brian Prescott as well as to Joyce Judy, and we will start right now. I don't know how best actually from the three of you, you would like to do this if Phillip you have introductory comments as the as the chair, the former chair that you'd like to say and then we could possibly turn it over next then to President Judy and then Mr Prescott. I, if I might, if I may, President Judy and Brian. I think we should go in order of proximity to the work that went into the document. So I'm a member of the select committee, but President Judy is chair of the committee and also on the steering group and then Brian drafted. So I'll just offer some, some general remarks if I can. I just want to, to start by saying, I'm really delighted to see this committee picking this up so quickly, and appropriations has also gotten into the work of the select committee. I think it's, it's an absolutely pressing issue in front of the legislature. If I could, I just want to take the senators on the committee back to the meeting we were having I think we were in a caucus meeting, and Senator Westman read us an email that he had gotten from Jeb Spaulding's indicating that there were three closures to be expected of the different campuses. And that touched off a frenzy really try partisan outrage that those three campuses would be closed finger pointing all around, you know, everybody involved. And one of the things that I tried at that point to make clear is that that finger should focus on us, possibly more than anyone else given that in the 80s. We were supposed to be supplying a substantial portion I believe is the language and statute of the state colleges budget, and we have never lived up to that commitment. So, I begin there as a way of saying that the select committee was born out of frustration with and, and horror over the idea that the Northeast Kingdom might lose its last Institute of higher ed. And that a place like Randolph Center might lose a job engine for that area of the state. So, the select committee was formed up. And we hired N gems. And I will just say up front that their work has been exemplary, very rapid nimble but also far reaching in terms of stakeholder engagement. The select committee, President Judy has done a wonderful job moving things along there. So in the space of a very short number of weeks, we've come up with a plan, and I will, I will just hit the top notes. And that is that under this plan. No campus would be fully closed, although as Brian will lay out, it does call for the shrinking of the physical footprint of one or more campuses with those details to be worked out by the board of trustees. Another thing that I want to not sugarcoat is that this calls for increased funding from the legislature, not in a bridge sense. And in one way I think that was an unfortunate choice of words because it indicates that you're going to bridge funding and then you're going to go to the old, the old normal. And what this report calls for is bridge funding to a new normal that requires the legislature to be funding the state colleges at a more significant level. And toward that end, it suggests that it would be ideal to have a designated funding stream. I don't want to talk about what that funding stream might look like, but it envisions the, the typical infusion of $40 million or so. And then on top of that, another, another chunk 2530 million over that. And so I will just end that piece of what I'm saying by, by acknowledging that there are people out there who wanted, I think the select committee to magically find a way that we could actually save money and keep all of the campuses that were threatened with closure. That is impossible. And I think the select committee very quickly, unanimously signed on to that idea, we will need as a state to be funding those, those systems. And then the other top note is unifying them into one system of governance, other than CCV, which would remain on its own. And so doing, we would keep those job engines where they're in operation in the state, but we would also be, you know, committing to a higher level of contribution as a state. The last thing I'll say before I turn it over to President Judy is we have to a certain extent, I would argue, embarrassed ourselves among New England states by how little we have contributed to the state college system. We've made getting a degree from a state college, almost the most expensive undertaking in the country. I think there's one state where you can spend more to get a state degree, but it is no mystery therefore that we have fantastic K through 12 graduation rates, and relatively abysmal take up of people going on for higher degrees. It's, it's, I think, very much a question of affordability. So with those things said, I will turn it over to President Judy and then I guess to Brian for the walkthrough of the report. Right. Thanks, Senator Bruce. President Judy, thanks for coming back this week. Well, and thank you very much. Thank you, Senator Campion for the opportunity. I just want to begin by acknowledging that, you know, on this committee as chair of this. I come to this wearing three different hats. So when I talk, but today, my hat is as chair of the select committee for this, because as you know, I'm also a member of the Vermont State College is and I'm president of the Community College of Vermont, but I feel like I've been able to compartmentalize this work. It has been a challenging professional opportunity I will say to sort of help move this forward but I, I want to begin by just acknowledging I've been, you know, a part of a lot of legislative committees and I just really want to acknowledge and thank Senator Baruth and Representative Kathleen James for their involvement in this committee they have been very active. They have been very engaged and and it's made a difference and so I just feel like they aren't. They are incredibly strong participants and this is why like we, like when I've been asked to, to come and talk about the committee's work. It's so important to have Senator Baruth and Representative James with us because they are such key members of this committee so on behalf of the committee I want to thank Senator Baruth but I just want to acknowledge to his colleagues and peers that they have been very engaged and it has made, it has made an incredible difference and so thank you for that. I also want to echo the, the sentiments of Senator Baruth about NCHIMS and it's National Center for the, for Higher Education Management Systems. As you all know, the legislature put together this proposal of this request and in the request they asked that we hire a consult, consulting firm to help guide this work and the joint fiscal office put together a request for proposals long before the committee was formed and we had a lot of proposals and the joint fiscal office has really been a partner in this in terms of helping to direct that work. They actually negotiated the contract with NCHIMS and I have to say that it's been my pleasure to work with NCHIMS. And I think one of the most important things that they bring to this work is an outside perspective. Now they don't understand Vermont, you know people will say they don't understand Vermont they don't understand the culture they don't. But it is, it is an, we need to remember that it's an outside perspective they're looking at things. I think, I think this report will give us the guardrails with which to move forward. And so I think it's, I think it was wise on the part of the legislature to ask for a consulting group because it's just simply sometimes it's nice to have someone from the outside looking at it's not that it's the be all end all and they have all the answers. But they do come to it without the baggage that we all have in Vermont. And so I just, I think that this has been an interesting process I also want to echo what Senator Bruce said, we began this work in September, and it has been a rapid fire. We produced and Senator Chittin and you asked about the reports. The first report was due in December. So we had, we brought NCHIMS on in September produced the first report in December, the second draft. So the initial report was in December. The second draft will be due February 12. And the third draft, the third and final draft is early April and I don't have that date stuck in my head, but I bet Brian Prescott does. And so I think that the first draft was giving the high points. And then the second and third drafts are really taking some of the points that we had sort of set aside and refining those in ways and a piece that I want to acknowledge is all of our sessions have been open to the public. So we've had a lot of public comment. We also have engaged the New England Board of Higher Education has been a great partner in helping us with this work. They have convened a lot of focus groups several focus groups early on and they're doing three more focus groups to get feedback on this particular draft of this report. So I guess my message is, I think that one of the things that has been important to the select committee is to make sure that as we go along, we are getting public input. I think the hard part is sometimes people will say, well, we've provided input, but they didn't, they didn't, it didn't, it wasn't reflected in the report. I think that what we have to do is we want to hear a lot and then NCHEMS takes all that information back and tries to look at the data and figure out how to move us forward. I think that the final thing I will say before turning over to Brian has been that, you know, we oftentimes talk about that, you know, we need to have data informed decisions. This is what's helpful about bringing in an outside consultant, because that's what they have is they have data, they can collect data, they don't bring the emotional baggage that all of us do to some of this work. So I think that what I'd ask is to hear from them with an open mind in terms of after they look at the data, after they do their analysis, here's what they best propose. So with that, I will turn it over to Brian to sort of walk through and, and highlight some of that and then I'm happy to answer questions at the end provided a perspective or whatever and I'm sure Senator Bruce would be happy to do the same. So with that. Actually, I will have to go back to my other committee. Okay. But we know where to reach you. I was going to say, you know where to reach it. So with that I will turn this over to Brian Prescott, who is the lead consultant for us from N chimbs and Brian maybe you can give also a little introduction background about yourself and and how you got to be such an expert in the field of higher education. Sure. Thanks President Judy and Senator Bruce and the rest of the committee for the opportunity to speak to you. I routinely have some difficulty being heard in my household and on zoom especially. Can you all hear me pretty well. Okay good. All right, so by way of introduction. I'm, I'm Brian Prescott I'm Vice President at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems or better known as in chimbs in chimbs is a private nonprofit Bible and see three organization in Boulder, Colorado where we've worked for 50 years trying to bring data informed decision making to post secondary policy making and institutional leadership and practice. And of course of that time, not all of which is encompasses my tenure there. We, we've worked in every state at one point or another, and lately we've been involved in a number of states doing strategic engagements like this one, and sometimes in states where the conditions are not as similar to what Vermont is experiencing, like Pennsylvania some of these other ones and so it's been our pleasure to try to help the select committee sift through a lot of data that we've provided some of and they've, they've, they know well themselves. I would And to produce the reports, like President Judy said, we would produce a report that I'm also going to talk about this afternoon. On December 4, we've since been making some adjustments and refinements to it. We have another report due on February 12, and the final report is due on April 16. I would echo as well some of President Judy's comments around not knowing Vermont very well we feel like we've gotten to know Vermont pretty well but normally in engagements like this we will get on a plane and come to the state and spend a great deal of time there. And fortunately for everybody, we are able to do that this time so we've been grateful for the opportunity to to take advantage of technology to do our best version of that. Briefly, I want to talk for just as briefly as I can to sort of provide an outline for this and then I'll be interested in your questions but real quickly on the process. We collect a lot of data. In fact, we were the original source and engines for the federal government for secondary data system back in the 70s. So we're used to data and have a long history with it we pulled a bunch of data. We've engaged with stakeholders all over the state. We've been very grateful for nebbies assistance in that regard. We have reviewed the numerous reports and studies that have come out about the Vermont State College system including particularly the Treasurer's report, Jim Pages report reports of the Labor Task Force, the SCS Thrive, and NVU strong and but a great deal of our effort has been around working intensively with the select committee to develop these recommendations which were forwarded to the legislature in December with the consensus of the select committee so we were pretty pleased with that. As I make my way towards talking about the three major recommendations that are in that report, I would say that our review of the data and of the discussions that we've had with the stakeholders leads to some conclusions about the state of the Vermont State that probably will come as no surprise on first and foremost transformation of the state college system is critical and it's urgent. The CARES Act and particularly the bridge money that was provided has helped delay some very difficult decisions and created space for the select committee to operate, but in the absence of further action. Some of the recommendations that were put forward by former chancellor Spalding are certainly within the realm of possibility and so the need to really wrestle this challenge to the ground is very urgent indeed. And to do so it's going to require some additional state support. That's in part due to the fact that the Vermont, Vermont is the least relative to the state appropriations in Vermont, public institutions get more of their money from tuition revenue than any other state in the country, and it's actually even close. Typically, it's either Vermont or New Hampshire, but the most recent data suggests that Vermont gets about 87 or 88% of public institutional revenue from tuition, and with the remainder remainder coming from the state appropriation. And that would have been fiscal 19 data so it's pretty significant and it leaves the Vermont State Colleges vulnerable to the kind of demographic challenges that can be foreseen in Vermont and in New England. The committee before it before we took up the the recommendations spent the considerable amount of time thinking about the criteria and the charge that the legislature gave it and and establish some criteria for the kind of solutions that would be needed. They included that criteria for student learners as well as for the state, and among them include I'm not going to read them up to you there in the report but they include that that the state college system become more student centered that improvements be made and affordability that there is access to workforce relevant programs for all types of students, especially adult learners and throughout the state geographically. The solutions have to lead to a conditions that are fiscally stable sustainable for the system. And that increasing in order to do that there will increasingly need to be greater coordination and collaboration across the system in both the academic delivery of programs and the administrative functions associated with running a state college system. With those criteria in mind the select select committee made three recommendations in the December report. When we had this conversation with the Senate appropriations committee senator champion. The chair stopped me after the first one to ask, answer questions and I don't know if you want to do that but I would be happy to talk about each of them separately or all of us. Sure, I think, why don't we, why don't we take them one at a time. Okay. Thank you. The first one is to restructure them from our state college system I'm going to consult my copy of dog your copy of this report to make sure you know any details that you might ask me about I'm able to answer without having to hunt for too much. But this is in some respects. This is the biggest set of changes that would be required for the state college system, but we, the select committee, ultimately after taking a look at the current structure, made some some recommendations that the state college system, reduce in size to a system of institutions, Community College of Vermont as a separate one and a combined institution that unifies Northern Vermont University, Castleton University and Vermont Technical College in one under one single leadership and one accreditation system. That restructuring would be is, is designed to better address the needs of the state and the students by sharing academic programs and administrative activities across the unified institution. It assures that or it has a better chance of assuring that it will continue to be a physical presence in the present and the locations where it currently exists. Single accreditation and a single leadership will smooth pathways for students between the existing locations, and will allow authority to be focused in a way that will ensure the better ensure the combination and the collaboration of delivery across institutions. Community College of Vermont has a mission that is somewhat unique and certainly a business model that that is unique and so we, we put forward the idea that keeping that that institution separate makes sense for the student needs and state as well. In addition, we do. We did make the recommendation that there remain a chancellor's office. The chancellor's office's role and responsibility would be. We do not expect that the chancellor's office that this would require the chancellor's office to grow. I think the chancellor's offices role should be this much more around policy leadership, engaging with the other parts of state government, including the University of Vermont, the agency on commerce and community development in the Department of Labor to ensure that programs that cross all those boundaries are well as well as the K-12 system that those programs are well designed and aligned. I think that it's also there to ensure the collaboration across CCB and transfer credits of students attending CCB to the other institution. But we are assuming that administrative activities that are necessary don't necessarily all have to be housed in the chancellor's office under that arrangement and rather to the degree that it's possible the policy relevant or the policy leadership function of the chancellor's office be preserved and maintained for the purpose of the system as a whole. So that was it. That's a quick overview of that recommendation and I'll pause and see if there are questions. I'm going through it while you're going through it. But do you have have you done any fiscal analysis for some of the changes that you're recommending? I mean, so how much it'll cost and or how much we can either save or reinvest in the new organization or in CCB. So that's kind of the the fiscal analysis. Yes, good question. I think that there is a recommendation specifically related to the investment the state needs to make, but we expect that each of the remaining three institutions is expense has a high expenses relative to their enrollment and compared to their peers. And if we combine them if there's a combination of the three institutions, we think that there is savings of up to, at the maximum level based on data that are a couple of years old, the most recent we can get for comparable institutions would be something on the order of $40 million. We think it's more realistic that is that savings or reinvestment opportunities probably are closer to $20 million, but they come from better coordinating with the delivery of academic programs and productions in the employee complement, as well as carrying costs associated with facilities that are no longer being used to their most efficient usage. Of course, when these things happen it's so infrequently infrequent that we see actual savings. And that's how they are subsumed by new needs. So, it'll be interesting to see how that all sugars off. I don't really have another question at this point that I do think it's did you at all look at and I look at maybe Judy or are you Brian. Did you look at CCV as an integrated entity within the system or did you simply decide upfront based on administrative issues that it was best left alone. I mean so just trying to understand how that decision was made. Right, so I'll take the first stab at it. As is often the case in our select committee meetings if President Judy or my colleagues who are not with me today have corrections they will chime in but when we did when we crafted the recommendation for the select committee to consider on this restructuring issue we looked at a variety of different options for how to array the assets of the state in the state colleges including a combination of all four institutions. I think it's a great way, keeping all of them separate and combining Castleton and MVU leaving from our tech as a separate entity along with CCV. Ultimately, we, we, we came to the recommendation that we did, because CCV is an institution that operates differently from the other three. And it, it serves a mission that is somewhat unique at the sub baccalaureate level. The, the toughest nut in this restructuring recommendation to crack for us is around the somewhat unique and unusual nature of Vermont tech, having a considerable amount of sub baccalaureate degree oriented programs, along with some relatively integrated baccalaureate degree programs, and Vermont tech is an institution that we think could be organized under the larger unified institution but with a clear mission to carry on its technical activities as part of that larger institution and to help some of the other some of those programs be available to students attending on campus at Castleton or the shared programs and online delivery and so forth. So is there any consideration given to establishing the CCV administrative and other model parts of the academic model within other institutions. I understand that you're recommending some new administrative pieces. Did you, will there be an opportunity to evaluate the benefit of moving toward a CCV model, since it is so successful, and given that one of the recommendations is for workforce development and getting graduates into jobs. So, so it seems to me that some of the more basic sciences or other areas would be left aside for the more applied areas and I'm just wondering. I'm sure you had a lot of discussion about this but I'm just curious whether you looked at the CCV model as something to be accessed and utilized and other in the other institutions, and I'll stop there. I think it's fair to say that there are there are things that the other institutions to learn from CCV, as well as there are things that can be learned by CCV from the other institutions in certain areas. But the business models are so radically different on a number of levels that it didn't make sense to it doesn't make sense to think of them as being easily melded together. The important distinct distinctions are around the nature of the employment agreements between CCV and it's primarily adjunct faculty and the other institutions with collectively bargain full time faculty, as well as the resident residential nature of what is being provided by the faculty from Baselton, whether Vermont to a lesser extent BTC with a suite of student services and student activities that generally are not as widely available at CCV. So, I think on the administrative side ways in which there's combinations that could create greater efficiencies across the entire system, but in terms of trying to adapt the specific type of business model at CCV to let's go with what's historically been the case and what's currently the case that the other three institutions can only go so far given those very distinctive differences. Senator Hooker and then Senator Chinden please. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think my question has been answered, although I don't quite understand it fully and what the advantages and disadvantages would be to incorporating CCV within the whole system. So, perhaps after reading the report a little more thoroughly I'll understand that a little better but I do am getting the impression that you know the models are different. That perhaps wouldn't meld well, but I'm wondering if the pros might not outweigh the cons in some cases, and would perhaps like to hear more about that later on. Thank you, Senator Chinden. Thank you, Dr. Prescott. My question really has to do with a comparison and your vantage point, I'm guessing you can compare to other states. I look to the state university system in New York where I see 64 institutions, some of them are community colleges, some of them are including Cornell, Cornell has some schools within its institution as well as all the SUNY campuses that we're so familiar with. I believe they've come to the similar realization that you're putting forward in this draft notion that there are economies of scale to be achieved and I completely take Senator Lyons's point that even when you make those savings you don't always see it on the bottom line. But what I will say is when you reinvest in the institution I see much more sustainable thriving institutions that aren't coming back to the legislature for more money year after year after year so hopefully it's still moving in the right direction. My question to you, Dr. Prescott is, looking at CCV, VHS, the Vermont State College System or any potential new merger of the three, and also this institution called the University of Vermont. What additional back office efficiencies have you seen in other states that we should definitely look at while maintaining or moving forward in this trajectory, but still somehow bridging some of our competencies across our institutions to reduce those redundancies to achieve better outcomes with the same amount of resources. I don't know if I made my question clear enough but I'd love to hear how you think CCV can still leverage some of the resources, the systems, the capabilities that the BSC system might invest in. And similarly, how does UVM not merge but also build off of those capabilities. I see that President Judy has her hand raised. I just, I think we're bleeding over into recommendation two, which is about the administrative recommendations and so I think what I might suggest is that Brian you go on to, if it's okay. Senator Campion that he talked about the coordinating the administrative service operations because a lot of what's included in the recommendation to is coming up with questions. The questions that are being asked right now are will be can be answered with recommendation to so if that if that's okay with everyone I think I'd ask Brian to talk about the second recommendation. Great. Does anybody have any questions regarding recommendation one before we move on. Seeing none. Please go ahead Mr. Prescott. Sure. I think that the second one is relatively straightforward and not not controversial by and large I think virtually every report we've seen as I'll come to the conclusion that more efficiency in the administrative services area that are needed for the state colleges. Right now there are a number of activities that are done campus by campus that could be coordinated in a way that makes sense and certain services may affect the improvements of cases. So these are areas that are that are not directly touching on the academic enterprise, but stuff like procurement. Some of these actually are steps that are already being taken by the chancellor's office around the audit and budgeting and counting functions, facilities management, but then there are programs and activities related to their a little bit closer to the mission like financial aid, in which right now each of the institutions sort of has their own financial aid policy their own approach to distributing aid. And we think that the state college system could create the sort of the policy infrastructure under which financial aid offices are actually carrying out the business meeting with students and ensuring their packaging is working for that at the campus level of individual students. So that's it. That's it. That's the kind of way in which we're talking about that coordination and equally around institutional research and effectiveness. I would say to though, and this is a something that I have a sense from a distance that is misunderstood about the December fourth report, at least a little bit, which is to say that that we are not advocating for a larger chancellor's institution necessarily in this report. We are advocating for the identification of where competencies currently exist, either at Lyndon or Johnson or or Cassiton that can be leveraged from the perspective of organizational models that ensure that the kinds of sort of policies that would, that would, that would help create these efficiencies are created within the, where the, that locus of competency exists, and then implementations carried out where the students or the employees are most needed. So that's kind of what we have in mind around that. I would simply just add to go back to similar to this question just a little bit. One of the things that we are making this, we are, we were putting forward these recommendations around is to ensure that there remains a critical mass of competency, whether it's for administrative functions, or academic disciplinary areas, or student services to best meet the needs of students throughout the state in ways that may not be possible if the state continues to allow a or the system continues to allow in much more institutions by institutions by institution approach to some of these programs. So the sharing of academic programs, more effectively means that students attending campus in Lyndon who are interested in programs that, for which the faculty numbers have shrunk at Lyndon can still mean can still get the kind of disciplinary perspectives in an area by taking courses offered by faculty at Castleton and Randolph or wherever they happen to be within the system. And I think that there are opportunities to sort of build on that and expand that in partnership with UVM. And I furthermore think that there are innovations in the delivery and academic programming, including online and the recognition of credit that an institution by institution approach will not serve students well will not be efficient. And does that answer your question at this point or do you have a follow up. Dr. Prescott, I don't know if you in your recollection of the report we would speak at all to how at the end where you speak to opportunities for UVM and the VSC system to also further collaborate but I'd love to see in the next generation of this report expansions upon those things I understand economies of scale which is the thrust of the first and second recommendation. I'm just wondering why we would not want to at least further explore at least to exhaust the opportunities to achieve those economies of scale across the other publicly funded institution that I work at that I'm an employee of and very proud to be an alumni of the University of Vermont. Thank you. Thank you. My question is, can you tell a lot of what you've written is about access access to higher education. I'm trying to get a sense of access in a way to what, what will the offerings be, you know, we agree or disagree with what University of Vermont, but just went through in terms of of serve an examination of their academic programs. And that's the institution that has also gone through this kind of a, of a process in its history I suspect others have as well. How and when will we will the institutions look at themselves and ask the questions about what are we offering what is being offered. Do we need certain majors, do we not eat certain majors, that sort of thing. I have a question in it. I need to be a little bit careful because we want to be sure that as consultants to the select committee. We are trying to take the select committee in places where the select committee is not most ideally suited to go and where we're in fact the, the like, the best place for those conversations to really sort of be settled is perhaps at the Vermont State College and Chancellor's office in the institutions in consultation with the faculty. We have, however, in the report, argued that there is in Vermont, relative to other states, a heavy emphasis on baccalaureate level education, and for traditionally students and we have made the argument to the select committee that the community college in Vermont in particular, as well as the other institution should seek to expand its activities with respect to the adult learners in the state who are currently under, under skill for the needs of the future, particularly in a state that's likely to see a demographic decline in traditional college students and where there is a clear need. We also made, made reference to the need for better integrated workforce skills programming within existence programming. So for instance, a case in point is taken English major, ensure that as part of their graduation requirements they have some courses in and and activities related to technical or any increased focus on experiential learning activities. We also, it's sort of bouncing around a little bit but also related to adult learners, trying to think of in an address ways in which those students might be better able to take advantage of programs at times and in places in means that best, that they can best fit their schedules in their lives. So, we understand the board and the Chancellor's Office has initiated a set of conversations around duplicated program offerings. And those are fraught conversations with the faculty, but the best place I think for those, those particular issues to get resolved is with the board with the board's recognition that there is an expectation that academic programs be shared that there is a structure that happens and so forth. Thank you, Senator Perchlich. Thank you. My question is around the three presidents of the, we merged the, those three institutes institutions, and you were maintained the Chancellor's Office. What is the thinking with the three presidents offices and would that just be part of the Chancellor's Office or would you also have a president's If you merge the three institutions you would be effectively having one president, one chief academic officer, one chief operating officer, CFO type of individual. So, some of the savings that you would, you would be able to count either for actual savings or reinvestment opportunities would come from reducing the administrative overhead on that front. Not for me to say which president or whatever emerges from that, but that is part of the idea. And I think buried in our in the recommendations in the report anyway. I think Senator Baruth referenced this is the need to address the degree to which the Vermont State colleges have too much physical infrastructure. But it's also the case that there needs to be a look at the degree to which there's an employee compliment that's larger than what's necessary to serve the population of students that is currently serving as well. And one way to one way to deal with that is to start trying to reduce the level of administrative overhead there is there is and in addition there will be looks across the system for opportunities to save in that regard. And does the report get into where the budget, the president could be at any of the three institutions or they could be merged with the offices of the chancellor or you don't get into that kind of little detail. No, I know we don't. All right, thank you. Other questions. So this question may be actually team you up a bit for the third section, but I'll ask it now. You know, it seems as though a lot of this is, you know, the success is banking on a solid admissions program in a way. And what I'm concerned about is looking historically at the state colleges. A lot of our students came from upstate New York, which now has practically free tuitioners moving in that direction with Hudson Valley Community College and trying rigorously to lower state tuition. And then New Hampshire, which has has this institution called the university I think it's Southern New Hampshire at Manchester, which again is just exploding and is keeping all of its students. So, if that's the situation, you know, how are we going to compete when wealthier states can actually keep their tuition so low that we're not going to be pulling from these areas. So that's a terrific question. And the answer to that question has to begin with the fact that I referenced it earlier, so much of the institutional health, physical health is based on tuition revenue because of the relative investment of state resources in these institutions that it's the it's a question that demands, it has to be asked. And as we, as we look ahead, there are a few things to recognize one is that innovative models like SNU are a reality and it's really, I think, unlikely that underfunded small institutions with declining environments like the Vermont State Colleges are going to be able to innovate without figuring out a way to develop the kind of economies of scale to give them some freedom of movement. So that's one. Two is, it's essential to recognize that the students that must take colleges are serving now are different from the students that the University of Vermont serves, both within the state and in nearby states. Certainly they don't BSC institutions don't aren't able to recruit as heavily from that state as UVM does, but they also are the only place that students in the northeast kingdom are likely to go in great numbers. And so they they serve a role that is highly valuable to, if the goal of this legislature is to ensure that opportunity is spread widely to a high quality education experience. And the question is how do you, how do you ensure that they are positioned to to be able to sort of evolve in competition and to meet the needs of the students and that requires reaching delivering programs of relevance and quality to students from the populations they serve, as well as to students that are currently not been served very well over the recent past and in Vermont's case that's relatively low income students, a center of birth mission of the outset college going right in Vermont is not anywhere near as high as you might expect given the general value placed on education, but also those adult learners as well. So that's helpful enough and I, your points a good one that the Democrats demographics have changed. I do still worried that our students, some will take their dollars and go to spots where the tuition is perhaps going to even be cheaper than the state colleges they will go to the humane system and go to the Sunnis. And, you know, Massachusetts New Hampshire so it's still a concern of mine but I appreciate you pointing out that things certainly have changed in that the state colleges are going to have to amend, if you will, to to the changing populations center alliance please. I keep bouncing back and forth between all the different recommendations. This is, this is really great. And I appreciate all the work that you have done. It's, it's really a lot. And thank you. I have a couple of questions and one on funding is, have you have you gotten to a place where you're talking about shared endowment me so some some of the institutions were talking about have endowment and some do not and are we looking at sharing at least some of those private funds I guess we'd call them across the across the group of colleges as they work together. And so that's one question. And then as you're talking about innovation, I guess, for me the biggest piece for innovation is lowering barriers. The whole application process to take the next step I know CCV has worked really well at doing that with UVM and others. So that's one barrier to lower but the other barriers are allowing the courses that are at one institution to be consistent and shared with courses at other institutions you know the whole question about did my course in economics actually satisfy the requirement over there. So, but that's, I mean that's not a financial question but it certainly can be for the students. And then I'll just, I'll just stop there for now but I, you know, I think about Castleton College, excuse me University, and how it really jumped out. It made a huge step forward and, and reinvented itself. And part of that was a result of some very strong optimism, no very positive attitude that came from the university itself. And I want to know how much of that was because it was on the way to killing to know all the kids who wanted to ski but. But my, my fiscal question of course is around the, the funding piece and then maybe some attention to barriers that you've identified. Sure. So, let me, if I could, just a moment, make one more amendment to my response to Senator Campion's question about the one state colleges and their value, because I should have mentioned this at the outset. We don't have very good data on the degree to which students, residents of Vermont are graduates from the Vermont State Colleges recently. What we do know is that generally the case is that if students leave the state they're less likely to come back and the students who come to the state are more likely to stay and contribute to be kind. Residents students who stay in state are the most likely to be part of the state's workforce in the future and the Vermont State Colleges gets more of their students from Vermont than the other institutions do. And to the extent that we're able to look at it, it would appear as though that large numbers of the Vermont State graduates from our state system graduates are located in continue to be located in Vermont after graduating so bear that in mind as you think about the flow of students in the market for student mobility and where students from Vermont might go or where they might come from. So thank you, I apologize for that Senator Lines. I think that the answer to the endowment question is one that we haven't a great deal at just yet. I think that if I'm mistaken, President Judy will sort me out, but the Vermont State College system is a single entity. I don't know the degree to which it has an endowment set aside but these are institutions of the type that generally are they do not, they're not now nor are they likely to be those in in the ability to attract charitable donations over the long term. That being said, I think it's fair to say that they're the McChur foundation and some of the investments that have been recently announced at NBU are signs that there is an appetite to serve a private philanthropy to to engage with the Vermont State colleges. And we also think as part of the retooling of the academic program offerings that outreach and engagement with the employer community has some potential as well. But ultimately, I think that the way that in which and we're not recommending a change in the in the single entity structure of the system. And so the endowment would be any endowment would be something that would be shared among the institutions that are there. And I'm not sure if I answered all the questions that you raised. You probably can't answer the questions about the kids wanting to go to killing 10 but I was just thinking about what what's been the what's been the big help for Castleton and you know part of it is so much of what the institution has done for itself and the positive attitude that's come out of that whole area. But then I said, got to be skiing has to have something to do with it. Who knows. I can't speak much to that. I, there are some things that we that we do look at as potential issues cast one of the things that Castleton has done is it's discounted its tuition rate the most among the Vermont State colleges. And that is helpful in, in, in, at least in the short term and attracting students from elsewhere. Also it's right across the border from from New York. And as you've mentioned, there are people who do like to ski as I'm going up here up here in Vermont. Can I can I circle back to the endowment question really quickly and I know it's probably more of a conversation and Wendy would probably be very upset by this but certainly any coordinated efforts with UVM. UVM does have a significant endowment and how would that at all play out and so that that's a very long conversation, but as articulation occurs from UVM and our VSC colleges and CCV. We're all in this together we've heard that so it might be, it would be an interesting conversation I wouldn't suggest that something that has to happen, but maybe in the future. Senator, did you have a question. Yeah, I would just say Senator Lyons, I'm going to be a barking dog or a broken record on these things I just see lots of opportunities for UVM and VSC to help support each other. And again, we just spent a lot of money on this click management software to manage grants and the marginal costs to extend that competency and that capabilities the Vermont State colleges would be so small. So I really appreciate that question, Wendy, I know it was directed at you if you wanted to speak of course chair campion night. I just wanted to chime in because I love talking about UVM and VSC and ways for them to collaborate my apologies. Wendy, did you have something. Thomas or Senator Shinden, I think that I agree with you about the, the software and finding more opportunities and President Judy will recall that a couple of summers ago, UVM and the VSC did a study together on potential for back end function collaboration and I think we can continue to have conversations about that and do on those issues and I agree that the endowment conversation is a much more complicated and longer question but I'll just remind folks for, for the sake of understanding that almost all endowment is restricted. So, at least the endowment that we currently have would probably not be able to benefit the Vermont State colleges based on the donor restrictions that go along with it so. But, but I'm sure that at a future point we can dive into that in a more significant way. After Prescott, I'm wondering, and I hate to even ask this question with Senator Taranzini listening, but was everything on the table in other words football programs for example, you know, one can say what is the, you know what is the goal of an institution of higher education, and I think an argument could be made that certain athletic programs might not be part of that mission, unless you're teaching maybe physical education or something like that. And, but I am asking seriously, were, were these kinds of programs looked at and examined in terms of their costs, when you were putting together this final report. So no, we did not look at the particular costs of say castleton football program. We do think that, and I think I might have distracted some language somewhere today. Nobody's yet seen. Not making a recommendation but but arguing that that's an issue that is a particular issue of residence halls is a particular issue right that that the Vermont State College Board will need to look at as potential avenues for addressing some of the cost issues it faces. Athletics is a particularly sensitive matter because it's so much a part of the brand identity of some of these institutions and one of the pieces of feedback we've heard is the is concerned that the combined institution would would lose those elements of brand identity that are important to recruitment from each of those places and that that's that's a concern that I think is legitimate. It's also not surprising. And we, and I think that there are, there are, there are discussions and ways to address that but I think it's a real question that the, the board will have to raise an answer about whether or not it can sustain in. I haven't gotten to the third recommendation yet, but in terms of it's part of the bargain, the Vermont State Colleges have to have to collectively have to reduce a pre substantial budgetary gap, and how they go about that may involve some decisions about what kinds of programs are offered including athletic programs. Yeah, I would like that and I want Senator Taranzini to weigh in here and put me in my place. I do think that, you know, with Castleton there is indeed, you know it's a recruitment tool it is, you know it's suspect it's a big part of the community as well. But I was just wondering in general are these kinds of things, you know on the table. Please Senator Taranzini. Thank you Senator Campion. I, you know I made the joke earlier to Senator Chittenden about football UVM at partially out of my love for the sport but but truthfully you look at to comment maybe the center lines you look at some of the things over the last decade the Castleton has been able to do with adding a football program and building a stadium and modernizing dorms and adding facilities and programs. I think that Castleton College and made it into a place by changing the name to Castle University which I think helped attract more people. President former President Dave walk was a visionary for that campus and I think through his leadership that made a big difference so I think a lot of things happened at the right time for Castleton under under President walks leadership. And I don't I don't argue that you know we are castles 20 minutes from Killington and you know that it Rutland is well one time was the second biggest city in Vermont and attracted could attract people and now we have the downtown castle and campus and downtown Rutland on merchants row so I think a lot of things have happened, positively at Castleton that maybe some of what they've done here could translate to the other state colleges throughout throughout Vermont so Yeah, thank you for that Senator ternzini is, it would be interesting to see, you know, in particular, how Castleton was able to do this I mean you go down I mean you have the arts you have, you know, I think they've added a lot to the downtown community, and therefore there's this reciprocal relationship students benefit from that. Being downtown and being able to engage with the community and the arts, etc. Any other questions I know that we have a three o'clock stop. And I am a center hooker. Thank you. Dr Prescott, I was wondering what kind of discussion there was with regard to financial aid at the, you know, for students at the state colleges and how the state handles that. We, we have done some work around affordability. It did not make its way in full into the December report but it is under his discussions these days with the select committee. There are a couple of different forms of financial aid. Of course there's the financial aid that comes from the federal government we're not specifically talking about that. The, the financial aid that comes from the state through VSEC to Vermont residents and institutional aid and institutional aid and and state aid work together with the federal aid to address affordability gaps for low income and but institutional aid is a particularly important strategic tool for recruitment. And it is I think part of the reason that Cassiton is being successful they have doubled their discount percentage just in the last four or five years. That is the conversations throughout the country around discount rates. We're creating a lot of alarm as to how sustainable that actually is going forward. And so we have had some conversations about the degree to which financial aid decision making is addressed by the by the system as opposed to individual institutions. Senator Hooker did you follow up. I think we'll probably discuss more as we go on but as far as aid that's given to students that can be taken out of state. That is that we certainly are aware that that is a an issue for some at well there's our sense of of that is that there are strong champions on either side of whether or not Vermont residents have to be able to take from state taxpayer dollars in the form of grant date to institutions outside of Vermont. We have not tried to tackle that particular thing with the select committee yet. One thing I will say about that topic is it's two things I think one is unusual for states to behave that way in the country. The other thing I'd say is that the, the issue of the sack a portability isn't going to be the thing that determines whether or not the Vermont State colleges are able to achieve fiscal sustainability as a matter on its own. And so, to the degree the select committee's charge was to was first informants focused on achieving fiscal sustainability for the Vermont State colleges we as consultants been trying to help encourage that. So the degree that the sack a portability is a possible part of the solution. I think that that is a conversation yet to be fully engaged with the select committee. Thank you. Any questions or comments. Please send her personal. Just a quick comment on the portability. You said it's rare. Is it true it's like we are the only state or one of only two states that allow portability of tax dollars out of the state. Off the top of my head, the District of Columbia allows that to happen. And I think that Rhode Island has some provisions related to that and other than I can't think of any. I think that's two states in a province. Okay, or you mean the district of Columbia not the, not the PC. Okay. Great. Okay, seeing no other questions. Dr Prescott. President Judy. Thank you both very, very much. This has given us, I think a lot to think about. You know, having you back and monitoring. Also, I know you're having conversations and other committees as well. Dr Prescott, would you remind us when is the next report. Do and just what what we might expect in that. So, we're still working on what exactly will go into that, but if. But it's due on February 12. We have a select committee meeting on February 8, where hopefully they will be ready to bless the changes that we will make changes that we make well, you'll probably see some some stuff around the affordability conversation that got table for the last report. I think there are some elements related to engaging the workforce system more intentionally that might make their way into this new document. And there are elements in there's a list. Two more things basics, the beginnings of it, of a set of implementation tasks for various parties within the state that includes the legislature, the governor's office, the board. And so on. We've begun drafting what some of those things will look like. And then the other thing is, and I'm surprised nobody has chastised me for this yet but the report as you know the whole front end is still relatively outlining. We need to sort of flesh some of that stuff out. I want to thank you for your as we've worked very hard over a short period of time to put that report together we didn't felt like putting the recommendations on paper made a prior more priority since then, then, then writing out a lot of the intro pieces so we're going to try to have some of that more fleshed out. Thank you very much. Seeing no other additional questions, we will recess until just a few minutes before 315 so we can get continue this conversation. With us, Professor Helen mango, and I believe Professor mango is at Castle 10 in the sciences. And she and her colleagues are members of the Labor Task Force for public higher education in Vermont, and Senator Hooker was kind enough to set up this visit so at three, you know hopefully we can get a right at 315 star. So we can have enough time with them, as well as questions as folks will recall we do have an end today a little before four because of chairs meeting. So with that I just want to thank you again Dr Prescott, President Judy, thank everyone for their questions. And I look forward to seeing everyone a few minutes before 315 committee members please remember YouTube is still going during the break. So you'll want to mute and turn off your videos. Thank you, wonderful seeing that it's 315. Everyone had a nice break, we will continue our conversation around public higher education in Vermont. Senator Hooker wrote to me and put me in contact with Professor mango. And I'm delighted to welcome Professor mango and I know she has colleagues with her that may or may not want to say something but I'll let Professor mango. Navigate that prior to turning the reins over to you though I'm wondering, Senator Hooker is there anything that you'd like to say, in particular. I was I went to one of the informationals that the group had asked us to attend, and I found that, you know, it does, they do give a different perspective, and I think that it's important for us to hear the perspective of other people who are involved in what will be a pretty sizable change I think in what's going to happen with our Vermont State College system. And knowing that we all want to want to come out of this stronger and more resilient. I think that it's important for us to hear from all parties. With that, Professor mango if you would like to just introduce yourself, as well as tell us about the organization that you are part of, and then take it from there. Well, thank you so much we really appreciate this opportunity to speak to you today and I'm very grateful to Senator Hooker for making the connection. So, thank you we, I have been teaching geology and chemistry at Castleton for almost 30 years. And it's interesting that geology has been a topic of conversation this afternoon. I have a presentation of slideshow that we've put together and that talks a little bit about our background so I think I will go into that right now and certainly if any of you have any questions during this the slideshow. Please let me know or at the end and hopefully I or one of my colleagues will be able to answer all your questions. So, let me share my screen here, and go into our presentation. So, our group is called the Labor Task Force for public higher education in Vermont. And we have been working since April on this design for unified public access higher education system. So the background to our group is that soon after the previous Chancellor's recommendation to close the three campuses was rejected members of the collective bargaining units came together to organize this Labor Task Force. We came together because the faculty and staff are the student facing people in the system, and we work with the students every day we know their stories. We know the challenges that they face. And we also know how to gather data and how to analyze it. And so we believe that we could find a better way forward than just closing campuses. And this would be one that would benefit our students it would benefit the state of Vermont and it would move the system forward in a sustainable and logical way. So, this gives us a chronology and I should have asked you can all see my slideshow yes. Okay, good. So this gives the chronology of what has happened since then so we've held town hall meetings to get input. We presented preliminary proposal to the VSC board of trustees and to the faculty and staff by the end of the summer so we started work in April and we met we have met weekly ever since we have a two page brief that we shared with some legislators and the select committee and the Office of the Chancellor, and then our full report was completed and shared with faculty staff and the Chancellor on the 20th. And I have included it in the materials that Gene asked me to include for this meeting so you should have access to that. And we have contacted like Senator Hooker senators and representatives from the regions that are represented by our campuses and we have sent them the report as well. So, the conversations with the members of the community led us to identify design principles and we use those to establish goals and throughout the entire process we were looking at the issues of cost quality and access. So let's start with the cost goals. And these include enabling students to graduate low debt or no debt so lowering tuition and making it the state college system more affordable is a primary goal. We include reducing the expense of administrative operations to levels of peer institutions, we are top heavy in administration for a system of our, our size. We have about 12,000 students in the system and there are systems that are five times bigger that have one executive group rather than the number that we have. And we into main wish to maintain multiple campuses to support the regional economic vibrancy we know how important our campuses are for the communities where they are where they exist. Our access goals include preserving campus the current campuses as hubs for local educational and student life opportunities all the wonderful things that come with having the campuses. And to deliver design flexible delivery formats in a variety of different kinds of learning. We also wish to expand workforce development options in a variety of ways as well. Our quality goals include fostering collaboration across the campuses we need better communication and we need better collaboration. One thing that we have learned on our committee is how well we can work together across the campuses, and we wish to do more of that. Another goal is to design interdisciplinary programs that are practical and meaningful. And we wish to form partnerships or increase the number of partnerships that we have with local organizations than in other words to integrate applied learning better. So we've come up with some recommendations and the first of these is to reduce tuition and that involves increasing the state appropriation. You've heard a lot about this and this is certainly something that we have in common with the entrance report is that the the very statute that created the Vermont State College system promised that the VSC shall be supported in whole or in substantial part with state funds. And as has been pointed out already since the 1980s the state appropriation has been reduced dramatically from 51% down to its current 17 and a half percent of the VSC budget. We currently rank 49th out of 50th for state support for public higher education, and over half of our college bound students go out of state for college. And another important aspect is there's been a lot of discussion about demographics. One thing which is important to realize is that 40% of our high school graduates do not immediately go on to college. And high tuition is a direct link to reduced enrollment that the hard tuition means that fewer students can afford to come to our colleges. Our second recommendation is reconsidering the distribution of public funds that goes out of state. This has also come up in previous discussions this afternoon. So we recommend that we stop with the unrestricted VSC portability which has diverted millions of tax dollars annually to out of state institutions. In 2017-18 which is the last year for which we have data, Vermont granted about $5 million that went out of state. And of all as has been pointed out here's some details of all of the state money across the United States that students take out of state to attend out of state institutions, almost 42% of that money is just from Vermont. So we have, as was pointed out, a very unusual system, and we feel that tax dollars should not be going out of the state but should be used to support our in-state students and in-state tuition. Our third recommendation is to unify the four institutions of the VSC into a single accreditation institution of public access higher education. So this includes having a common mission, but keeping the distinct educational, cultural and athletic approaches across the campuses. If we have a common mission we can collaborate better. Part of our proposal is to establish what we call system-wide schools to increase access and collaboration and innovation. And I'll show you this in a diagram in a moment. I recommend appointing a president for this Vermont State University who will lead the university with a single executive team. And this executive office will replace the chancellor's office and consolidate the executive teams of the existing institutions. So our vision for this Vermont State University is to have an administrative structure, which is one system, but we keep the campuses as their individual, their individual brands. So we're looking at consolidating common executive and upper level administrative operations and reducing duplication. This is what the system might look like. So we would have the three different residential and local community campus hubs. And across the system, we would have schools, each of which would have a dean that would be managing that school. So for example, there might be a school of mathematics, business and engineering across the system. There might be programs and courses at the different individual institutions. There might be a school of nursing and health sciences. So the idea is that we have an administrative structure that works across the system so that we can use our resources better. And our fourth recommendation has to do with shared governance. So this is to establish a structure for a shared system-wide decision making. The idea is that the fundamental premise of shared governance requires that we have students, staff, faculty, administrators and trustees all participating in the decision making process. And strengthens leadership and decision making, but it has to have an atmosphere of mutual trust, collaboration, communication, transparency, inclusiveness, honesty and integrity in order for it to really work. So we're recommending that the Board of Trustees be reconstituted and it should include students, staff, faculty, legislative appointments and members elected by the Board of Trustees. The idea of shared governance is the intersection between the governing board that I just was on the last slide, the administrative team, so the overarching administration for the system, and then from the campuses, students and staff and faculty Senate as representatives of these other stakeholders. So just to wrap this brief presentation up, our idea to unite Vermont is to have a student-centered proposal to unite the system coming from faculty and staff and we wish to help build an educated and civil society. Vermont deserves no less than that. So our four recommendations just to summarize this are to increase state appropriations so that we can reduce the currently prohibitive cost of tuition and this will lead to an increase in enrollment. We suggest redirecting VSAC portability funds and putting that money towards tuition assistance to lower tuition and this will improve retention and reduce student debt. We recommend unifying the four institutions including CCV into a single multi-campus institution managed by one executive team which can be housed on an existing campus. We don't need an office in Montpelier and we redirect savings from this to reducing tuition costs as well. And then finally, including faculty and staff on a governing board to assure authentic and effective shared decision making. So this last slide shows the task force members. I've also given this information to Jeannie and so I believe that it might be part of the agenda so that you can have a look at who we are and where we come from. So I'm going to stop my share here and I don't believe it's my place to ask for questions so Senator Campion, I will turn this over. If you don't mind I'll kick it off. Were you able to share this with the select committee? We have not shared this particular PowerPoint presentation but we have shared the report. Okay and so have you been working in a way with the select committee? Have you had a voice? I mean I appreciate you coming here. This is great. The select committee as you know as a legislative charge and wondering what your connection to that to their work is or isn't. We don't feel that we have been invited to that particular table. So we don't think that our recommendations are being looked at as much as we would hope they would be. One thing I have noticed though is that in the various iterations of the Enchants report, every change that they make does come closer to what we're recommending so there are certainly similarities between the programs, the recommendations. Senator Lyons. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's as a faculty member and former administrator myself, what you have said actually resonates very well. I mean the question about the Board of Trustees and the governance structure is an interesting one. It doesn't look like you have any outside community members except those who might be appointed by the Board itself. Okay, so that's accurate and so I'm wondering if you, I have to have a couple questions but I'm wondering if you looked at board models to help in that sort of in the decision making. I would very much like to turn this over to one of my colleagues because this report was truly a group effort and that is not my particular strong suit so could one of my colleagues address that question, please. David. David McGoff I'm a professor at Northern Vermont University. And I'll just say very quickly yes we did look at a number of board models to come up with this recommendation, the American Association of University professors, plus the leading Board Association Board of Trustees Association both recommend shared governance models for particularly public institutions and about 22% of public institutions provide board seats to faculty and staff members in order to assure state of the art shared decision making at that level. So those are two points that I would add to answer that question. Thank you. Yes, and it's, it's always been my experience that there's, there is an apparent divide between boots on the ground and what faculty understand, and then what top level administrators and boards believe is happening so. I don't know if you said that very clearly. And then one last comment and I know that it's also been my experience that a lot of the collaborative experiences do happen through faculty and student interactions across across college, across institutions. So in my own area, I think about our science work and a sigmas I don't know if you still remember that, but I work very hard on that across the whole state so it, there are opportunities here I think that can bubble up from faculty and students in a very compelling way so thank you. Thank you. Professor mango, you mentioned that you would want a collaboration or coming together of the four institutions, and the select committee suggests three. Can you just elaborate on why you think CCV should be included as part of the state college system and not separate from CCV? Well, once again, I'm going to defer to one of my group members who is more expert in this Linda is that something you would be able to answer please. I'm Linda Olson. I'm also at Castleton University. I've been a professor of sociology there for 26 years so Helen beats me but not by much. So what I would say is we, we thought a better model would be if we had only one accreditation for all four institutions that again would enable us to reduce administrative costs with just one accreditation. But we also thought actually taking the existing residential campuses, opening them up to CCV if they were close like there's a campus in Rutland that we could merge into Castleton, for example, and we would save on costs that way, but also maintaining the other institutions that are not connected or close to a residential campus that would enable us to reduce costs as well. One thing that was discussed and I want to make sure I make this point because I think it's very important is that we believe there should be faculty oversight over things such as the curriculum. There is some voluntary or there I think there's a small stipend paid to the part time faculty to have this oversight at CCV. But the reality is we would like to incorporate it more into the curriculum that faculty full time faculty are in charge of and CCV has no full time faculty. In fact, it is the only community college in the country that has no full time faculty that to us is is disturbing so while it's held up as the ideal model and being agile and nimble, and all sorts of other things. It is important to acknowledge that that is done at least in part off of the backs of the part time faculty that teach there. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Campion. If I understood correctly. This recommendation would basically eliminate the individual names of the four institutions, or that's not how. Okay, so it retains the name of each individual institution. Yeah, one thing that we realize is that students attend the residential students certainly they attend a campus, they go to a campus for it's the campus. Let's just call it the brand for want of a better word, but they want to attend and graduate from Castleton or NVU Johnson or VTC. Nobody's going to graduate from Vermont State University that's not what they want. So we have to keep the campus individuality, because it's such a strength, and we appeal to different students and certainly geographically as well but no we have no intention of getting rid of the campus names or in identity. Okay, that's, that's good because I think just exactly just said somebody goes to Castleton because of it's a brand, you know, or in view or whatever so thanks for clearing that up. Committee additional questions. Professor I my only final comment would be, you know, we are just starting this process, as you know, this is the first time, you know, we've had testimony, but appropriations is also having the same conversations and we are all now looking to February 12 for an additional report. And so I would recommend you have a similar conversation with appropriations that you're having with us. Senator Hooker I'm sure can be helpful with that. And in stay in touch as we continue to navigate this process. We certainly will and thank you for that recommendation we will absolutely follow up on that. And I think I would just like to add that we're in the system. And we think that's a good thing. And we, we care an awful lot about this we have. This is what I've given my professional life to I believe in public access higher education I believe in Castleton individually, and in the state college system as a whole and it's something which is very valuable to the state and we're trying to help figure out how to make it better. So that that's our goal. It's a student centered, we're trying to make it better for the students and for the state. Yes, thank you and thank you for your partnership. It's, I think it's something we all believe in it's it. It is in part the times that we're living in some of the challenges that are external in other words financial things that are happening in other states in terms of as we mentioned admissions. How can we, you know, again, keep what we have and make certain or some variation of it and make certain that it continues to thrive and serve for Monter so your ideas are certainly welcome, and please that you were able to come in and talk with us for a little while today. We're very grateful thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. Committee. So it looks like we are finished or soon will be for the day. It tomorrow we are going to continue our look at education at financing. And then we are going to hear from our ledge council, so that everybody is aware of a few policies and updates as they relate to act 46, which some of us were here for others were not. But we know that a court case was just decided around religious institution and dual enrollment, we're going to hear an update and help us to understand that as well as just a brief overview for a few new folks of what the Brigham decision was and how it impacts the state of the state of Monter. As you know, as I mentioned, we have asked Jeff fan and to organize our other educational partners to come up with a plan for what the state is going to need to address immediate coven needs as well as going forward when we're looking at remediation, etc. I think it is planning on coming back to this committee a week from today with a report, and who also I think that report will also be shared with appropriations, I'm sure parts of it will overlap with health and welfare I'm sure they're going to also have their own look at schools and trauma and things like that. And there might be some overlap there. That is expected again next Tuesday. I did ask Senator McCormick to come in with his bill the day after the presidential inauguration to come in and and introduce civic education his bill as well as here an update from the Agency of Education, or give us some information on what is happening in this state as it relates to civic education and educating for democracy. You know, what are the standards where does it happen pre K through 12 just to give us a sense of things. And then I've asked a few other people to come in and kind of get us thinking about, you know, more about civic certain things are happening throughout the United States, some of their ideas, again, to get young people engaged in the democracy democracy. And we'll see what sort of comes out of that. Next week we'll have more bill introductions. And then we'll have two senators. Usually what we do is we have every sponsor come in and basically explain the genesis of why they put the bill in, you know, this is this is what I believe so Senator McCormick will come in and talk about why he thought requiring a class in civic education was important. And if it need be we'll have our ledge council talk through the bill. This isn't particularly, although it's important. It's not a particularly challenging bill to understand so ledge council won't do that. And we take some testimony and then we'll sort of have a committee assessment to see where people might want to go with a particular bill. So we'll hear in the end we'll hear from everybody that puts a bill in and we'll really kick this off Thursday but we'll do much more of it. Next week. Questions, comments. Okay. Thank you all. I hope everybody's doing well. Thank you. I appreciate it. I thought today was interesting, challenging and looking forward to continuing to to work with folks on this. So, okay, we'll leave it there. Thanks everybody.