 Excellent. Thank you, trustee Jefferson. Is there a second, please? Thank you, trustee Bambardi. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor of adjourning, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Excellent. With that, then, we will close out Epsil and trustee Dickinson. I will turn it over to you for the board meeting. Thank you, Megan. And thank you, Yasmin. That was very instructive. Okay, it's now 1.30. I think it's still 1.30. Yep, 1.30. And I just want to call the regular board meeting trustees to order. We have a good group here. I want to thank everybody for committing their time to this, especially the trustees, but also all of the administrative and support staff that we have with us and faculty today. And anyone else who's watching us. I'm going to do a little bit of housekeeping where you do have a link to provide a public comment that is available on the agenda. It's published on the website. And is on the link posted in the chat. Thanks to Jen for taking care of that. We have approval of minutes scheduled for the December 6 meeting. That was with your materials is do I hear in motion to approve the minutes. I can do this one. Okay, so you made the motion second. Somebody made the surely did surely did. Oh, good, surely. Okay, any questions or corrections or any omissions on that. Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the minutes of December 6 for the board meeting, please indicate by saying I Hi. Hi. Opposed. Okay, we are now going to the report from the finance and facilities committee which met on December 13. I'm going to ask the CFO Sharon Scott to start with that. And if the chairman David. I believe that the chair is present and he's prepared to speak. Okay. He is indeed present. We have an abbreviated report we did meet on December 13 and Sharon shared the contents of that meeting in the, the, the board package and we would answer some questions if there are any but other than that we could go on to the main meat of our report but let me pause for a second and see if there are any questions. With regards to the materials in the board package. I would foreshadow that we have a meeting on February 7. That will be a fairly significant meeting talking about both the strategic financial plan that we will be seeking to get approved by the trustees, as well as looking at some additional information about our facilities planning, which we also discussed at our last meeting. The trustees are able to carve out time for the seventh finance and facilities committee meeting. That will be a very important meeting with regards to transformation so if you have the time. We would love to see you there. Questions with regards to the board materials. Hearing none or seeing no raised hands. I'd like to ask President john mills to present the Russ and Amy ballas endowment. Yes, I'm sorry I'm off screen it says the host has blocked me, but I think you can all hear me. Bayless have made a contribution sizable $50,000 to a scholarship they already had. Now I can. You have the pleasure of my face now. And just a quick response this is for students studying digital community communications entering the junior or senior year preferences given to out of state students. That's their choice. And after not three qualified students dinner scholarship funding to can go to a nursing student, and I would just like to say that this is from an alum from 1986 he's been giving they have been giving continuously. And a little tidbit is, is was stimulated by our student phonos on reaching out to them. And all of a sudden he got the bug in his ear or wherever and said yeah I got to do more and within the next day, he had committed the $50,000 to add to his endowment fund so we're very pleased with it. Any questions. The facilities financing facilities committee reviewed this request on our meeting on December 13 and agreed to recommend approval of this to the full board. And I would make that in the form of a motion. We have a second on that. Also again I'll see. Any more discussion or questions on the balance endowment request, seeing none, all those in favor of accepting the recipe me balance endowment please syndicate by saying hi. Hi. Post. Anybody would be opposed to someone donating a substantial amount of money for students that's really a very nice story that the president of envy you gave us. We appreciate their generosity. So before we yield back to the chair, Sharon I want to give you a second. If you have anything to, to report on that I've missed. The only update. I know Catherine Levasseur has provided the board with an update regarding government affairs. As you know, the governor did put forward his recommendation. Last week for budget. We had, we had last year we had put forward a proposal of both schedule for increases to our base appropriation to $48 million. And there is a very broad acknowledgement from the governor of that plan moving forward. And so his appropriations proposal is to increase by $5 million, which is consistent with the plan that we put forward last year. We did, however, put forward our request when we proposed this year, recognizing the unprecedented position that the state is in moving to the full $48 million and we will continue to move forward with that request, putting that forward. But I just wanted to just bring that forward so that you're all aware that that work is ongoing. And we begin our first testimony with the Senate earlier later this week. The only other item is that the governor's recommendation did not include big bridge funding, which we had proposed and had a schedule for last year that would be $14.9 million this year. We did make a request as part of our proposed proposal to the governor's office to bring forward and be full amount of bridge funding necessary for the remaining years of transformation. And again, that is something that we'll be discussing with the House and the Senate in the coming weeks. Any questions. Thank you Sharon. Any questions on that hearing none. We did have an executive committee meeting in January 7. And the report on that is that we received an update on planning for the spring semester in response to the Omicron variant of COVID-19. And these plans have subsequently evolved following meeting and the president's cannot provide an update on the response to the virus, going with the return of students to campus where they provide the reports later. It has been a major topic over the past 18 months to two years and this is almost two years and it continues. We also have additional information on the discussions with unions over the COVID policy from employers, employees. And we also received an update on transformation expenditures and that is publicly available and posted on the website as part of the meeting materials. We'll hear later, I believe, from others about the continuation of the transformation. Thank you for the report from the nominating committee. Adam Grinald, the trustee is going to provide a report on that. We had a meeting January 10. Yeah, thank you. The nominating committee met on January 10 to consider recommendations for the board appointed position. And the nominating committee today is bringing forward a recommendation or nomination, if you will, to elect trustee Silverman for that position. In addition to that recommendation, the nominating committee as your packet identifies the members committed their continued interest in serving another term should the board choose to elect those folks to the nominating committee again. Okay, so we need a motion on the floor to elect David Silverman to accept the recommendation from the nominating committee to elect David Silverman to serve a second term term as a board elected trustee. Do I hear a motion. I'll make that motion. Okay, Adam Grinald and seconded by Megan Cleaver, the vice chair. Okay. Any discussion or any questions on David's nomination. I would just say that during the discussion I think we all expressed our appreciation and gratitude that he was willing to serve and happy to have him offering his name up for this. Any others. Hearing none, all those in favor of reelecting David Silverman to a second term as a board member please indicate by saying hi. Hi. Thank you, David. We know that you're doing a great job. We really, really appreciate your efforts and you are a valuable member of our board. Thank you very much. Thank you and I just, you know, our job is not done yet. Now that's for sure. Thank you. Okay, Adam, we have the nominations then for the continuing members of the nominating committee that the board elects. I don't know, shall I read names to include myself for that recommendation? How would you like to proceed? Yeah, that would be good. Okay, thank you. So the current members of the nominating committee are Adam Grinald, Janet Bombardier, Lynn Dickinson acting as ex-Fishio and Bill Leppert, all of whom have indicated they would serve again. And I would make that nomination. Do I have a second? Mary. Okay, Mary, several people seconded. We'll take Mary's, Mary Moran's. Okay, we have three members of the committee and an ex-Officio as the trustee chair. Does anybody have any questions or questions or discussion on that? Seeing none, all those in favor of accepting the recommendation from the nominating committee for the other, for the new continuing members of the nominating committee, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? I want to thank all of you for serving on that. Adam, thank you for being the chair and I guess we won't have to do this again for another year, we hope. Okay, we have Wilson Garland who is our project manager, director of transformation projects to give an update on the ongoing transformation work. Thank you. Let me just share my screen here. Okay, is everybody able to see my transformation update screen? Okay. Great. Well, this month we have a brief update just to make sure that the board has updated information on our progress to date as well as other areas of priorities that we're focusing on as we move the transformation work ahead. A quick summary of progress. We have the student experience and academic operations teams that have identified and prioritize their design projects. It doesn't mean that we've prioritized every single project but we've identified the ones that need to get started right away and have significant contingencies with the other work that's happening. The administrative operations teams are beginning to transition from discovery to design. We've had two of the teams go through their discovery process already and we have the remaining coming up here. The workforce development team is engaging in some visioning work and other work as part of their discovery and we'll have some more update on that coming up here. We also have some significant core system projects that are kicking off that are significant in the slate and colleague or two of the systems that we rely on for a lot of the work that we're doing. We're kicking off process reviews as part of the design work. So that's a critical milestone because a lot of the work that we have been doing in terms of discovery and design is dependent on those systems. And you can see down at the bottom there how we've, we have staggered out the where the different core teams are and related to the overall product process that we use for the project management. The academic and student experience teams were in the process of transitioning from discovery and into design and really taking into account a lot of the feedback from the sponsors as it relates to the operational vision of what we need to build as we get to Vermont State University. The sponsors and stakeholders are continuing to work together to put more definition around the hybrid university concept that's needed really to inform the design work and also organizational planning that will come out of the design work as well. We have the leadership team engaging in training related to the DEI framework and completing a self assessment of the aspects of that framework that are most related to leadership and strategy. And that work then will guide the work that's happening with the teams and design. We're also conducting some facilitated discussions to infuse the work of strategic thinking and data analysis and best practices into the work that we're doing on the teams as it relates to their design. And I think we've had discussions in this group in the past specifically related to the importance of financial modeling and financial analysis that's part of the work that we need to do on design. And what Tyler's leading that work for us but we've also engaged some contract resource to help with that work. And that's really critical just from a capacity standpoint is we have so many different pieces that we're trying to do that analysis on and making sure that we have a common framework and a common process for how to implement that work is really important. An update on the risks and dependencies. And I've shared these three areas before so I'm just providing a quick update on each. We're completing the first draft of the substantive change proposal for NETCHI, our creditor for submission in March. So that is continuing progress on that important dependency and the work that we're doing. So, Yasmeen reported earlier in EPSL on the progress that's being made with the Faculty Assembly and Federation leaders, reaching agreement on some really key schedule elements and milestones for approving the program, as well as moving forward on their governance planning. And we talked about those two different pieces of faculty governance is really important in the work that we're doing so some great progress on that, but we're continuing to monitor that as part of the risks and dependencies that are part overall for for transformation. And then finally, you know, we talked at a previous meeting about some capacity constraints as it relates to design and development and the work that's needed there. I talked about adding some resource to the, some temporary resource in the financial analysis area. But we've also brought on some technical consultants and temporary contractors and other areas to help with that work. And we'll be talking a little bit more about the slate project and the colleague project, which are two of our big systems projects there a little bit later. In terms of academic operations, the key priorities here reflect a lot of the things that you heard earlier from Yasmeen. Faculty approval of the optimized programs with the high level information that's needed to support recruitment and the broader systems projects that I talked about. That's really a high priority there and that many of the other teams are working on projects that require some of that information. Submitting the substantive change request to NETC in March is obviously a high priority and a lot of work happening on that currently. And then finalizing the academic organization and administration structure related to the programs department schools, you know, we've talked about how important that is to the work that we're doing on transformation. So that's obviously a high priority. And then collaboration with faculty leaders on programs governance and the policies needed to support the student experience and the academic experience for students. Those are all high priority items. In terms of project highlights, I just want to bring forward a couple that really are significant in the work that's been done and and really have a broad impact on what we're doing. Yasmeen talked about the common time block schedule that's being used for fall of 2022. And that sounds like a simple thing but it's really a significant thing when it comes to how we align our courses and programs moving into 2023 and giving ourselves the opportunity to get that work done. Also, the general education program mission vision and goals that have been drafted. It's called connections and I think that that element is really an important aspect since all of the programs that we've talked about from optimization share the general education program as well so those are two highlights. And I'll just make a general comment that obviously I'm presenting the these core team updates but this is reflective of tremendous work that's being done in this case with Yasmeen and the academic operations team and the other teams as I'm sending them. So the student experience team. The key priorities here, we're obviously bringing three separate admissions and enrollment departments together as one. And that group has been working very well together to focus on the areas that are high priority for them from a recruitment standpoint for 2023. We also are looking at some multimedia marketing and communications to build awareness under one consistent brand. And that's something given the, the way that the enrollment cycles work it's really a high priority item for us here in the in the near term to be prepared once we have some additional elements to communicate there. Also the website and infrastructure to support the application and admissions processes for fall of 2023. And you know slayed as part of that, but then there's other pieces that that fit in with the applicant and enrollment infrastructure. And then completing a tuition evaluation study and recommended approach for academic year 2023 24. We have a group that's working on that and has engaged a resource to help us work through that and do the planning that's needed to get to that recommendation. In terms of highlights here I'm highlighting the slate project and and for just background slate as the system that we use for customer relationship management or you know it's called CRM system. And that really manages the communication, primarily with applicants and people who are interested in joining our institutions. So what's exciting about this is we're in the process right now of doing our business process review on this. And looking for a singular online application and admissions process with a consistent perspective student experience, regardless of the campus or location and the teams done some great work to get to some common vision elements for what that process will look like but it's, it's work underway as this project really unfolds but we spent three days last week with people on campus really dissecting those different discovery elements and really trying to figure out what those are. Also the, the newly revised system will provide some really great opportunities for data analytics and reporting that will help inform our strategic direction and thinking as it relates to the new process around admissions. And then we also have tremendous opportunity in cooperation with the workforce development team to integrate the infrastructure that supports colleges and workforce development using the slate tool so that's something that we're really exploring to the fullest extent. And there's members from the workforce team that are also part of that slate project as well for that purpose. From an administrative operations team update, our key priorities here are really focusing on the back end processes that are dependencies for academic operations and student experience. That doesn't mean that we won't be getting the other administrative operations consolidation work done but it's really reflecting the high priority that we have in getting Vermont State University up and running effective for the 2023, 24 academic year. And then we're prioritizing data definitions and architecture during our systems development projects really what the idea and I know we've had discussions on our accountability dashboard and other things in the past and it's really making sure that we've got the data elements within our infrastructure to support. That's sort of reporting both at a strategic level as well as an operational level as we think about the work ahead. The project that I wanted to highlight here is the colleague project. And again, colleague is the product that we use for our enterprise resource planning system or enterprise system. And that encompasses the student information system encompasses finance and encompasses a lot of the back end processes that are necessary for running the universities. So from this perspective the project governance structure is being put in place to make sure that we have broad representation from the key business areas. We are doing a thorough custom code review. I think many of you are familiar with the fact that we have a lot of customization that's been built into colleague over the last 20 years and to accomplish the consolidation of the universities and the Vermont State University, but many of those customizations need to be addressed. But in doing that it really allows us to find better and more streamlined business processes and really set up for long term agility as we're thinking about how this system will evolve over time. And the key thing to highlight here is that business process review is really at the core of the strategy that we're using for colleagues so making sure that we're not just merging things together and implementing bad processes but really getting clear on what the best processes are before we implement. And then finally workforce development. This team is obviously the one that kicked off last, and we're still in discovery stage here, and really trying to look for external examples and best practices as we think about what that work looks like for us moving forward. We're creating a shared definition around workforce development I think that's one thing, not just within the team but more broadly across the system. I think that a lot of people have different perspectives on what that means and how we get a common definition is really important. And along with that applying a shared vision for what that means for Vermont State University and Community College of Vermont, as well as the broader system and what things are available there. And as I mentioned we're really as we are going through the work on our core systems really looking to identify the areas where we should be using those core systems to support the workforce development efforts as well. And then we're identifying gaps and prioritizing opportunities for future development on the workforce development work. And the highlights just would want to bring forward that we're, we've gained a deeper understanding of all the current programs at each institution and the various stakeholders I think that's been an initial win in terms of the work that's been done with the workforce development team is there's so many different things going on and really understanding where those synergies are and where the opportunities are moving forward. So we are defining the dependencies across the different institutions as well as more broadly across the system. And then working with the legislature and communicating our vision around workforce development a lot of the work that Catherine is doing with the legislature there. So that's the workforce development update. And a quick update on this on the schedule and what the future here looks like I think the key thing to recognize is, we've added some additional cycles into the process as we work to prioritize the different projects within each of the streams. We've added some design and development cycles for things that come later into the process. But we are still on track and and still looking to make sure that we're identifying those cross dependencies across the different core team areas as we go from a transformation budget standpoint and I know there was some information shared on this from the F and F meeting. But we just wanted to give a quick snapshot of what we've already allocated in terms of transformation spending and what we've already spent. And this is across the different areas of project management academic operations administrative operations didn't experience and workforce development. There's also been some supplemental transformation spending on program optimization from the Davis Foundation as well as the facility studies, which came from the state capital. So, in total, a little over half of our budget for this year has been allocated already. And then if we look at spending by category, you can see sort of how those different elements break out across consulting marketing personnel, stipends and technology. And then looking at that graphically across the different parts of transformation, you know, student experiences, a big element of what we've done also academic ops already. And project management and administrative ops and then workforce development, which is included in part in the unassigned are areas that will build out more as we go. Finally, just to wrap up, there's still additional things for the, the board to have in mind as we move forward. I think trustee Silverman talked a little bit about the facilities strategic plan that's coming up and also a review of space utilization plans. And then, obviously the presidential search being a significant part of that work. And then we'll have tuition pricing models and additional budget plans, etc. to round out the rest of this year. So, any questions. Many kept questions here. I'm just Stephen Barger. I'm on the workforce work. Are there external stakeholders involved is it just people from the colleges. Right now we've started with the, the team that includes primarily people from our institutions, although we do have some affiliated groups that have been part of the discovery to date. And then we also have begun to reach out to some of our external stakeholders as well. I'll let President Molten comment on this because I think there's some things in the works that would be helpful there to understand. Thanks Wilson. Yes, as Wilson described right now it's an internal group is we're trying to get to know or now that we're getting at the end of getting to know what we're all doing. I tend to do a fair amount of external discovery. And then I have been contacted by some external folks who would like to engage with us but we really need to have more of a plan before we want to engage with them but the it is our intent to engage with regional corporations and others who are part of this work already, just to get their input and understanding regional development corporations the, the remaining workforce investment boards that are active are all part of what we'll be engaging with. At some point when we have something to propose and engage and get their feedback on but right at this point we're not there yet. And just, I don't know, Adam may have some comments as well but from my perspective as an employer, there sure seem to be an awful lot of groups trying to address this and boy is it all over the map. And then if the state colleges could take that leadership role and we could get, maybe you can use some of us to try to get those other groups to follow you. But it seems like we're putting a lot of overhead into this issue with as a state, not as a state colleges but across the state of Vermont, we are putting significant overhead into this issue with very few results. And I see your hands up, Adam, and I know the RDCs have recently been working on a proposal for more of a coordinated workforce development system. It's been something I've been asked on and off in my prior life, working in state government and I have some very strong feelings about that but I don't know that it's the Vermont State Colleges role to solve the workforce development system problem for the state of Vermont. I think it's our role to be the service provider and training provider that's going to help meet those needs. But I think there are systems in place that can really coordinate the intel of what the demand is and and where where we can go but I'm always curious what others may think and you may have some ideas on that, Adam. Yeah, I think, you know, this is an interesting time that happens to coincide with the transformation I think the sort of activity around the workforce development would be happening. Regardless or regardless of this but the opportunity for the state college system is a good one here. This will be a very active legislative session and workforce development because, of course, every legislator is hearing from their constituents, the need and the importance of this across all industry sectors. And you know it's it's as much a population problem as it is a workforce problem. But nonetheless we have to I'm not going to even say better align the system because there isn't really a true system. You know you've got federal funding coming into Iowa, which the state college system can access and help up skill folks through that those those dollars, but then you have probably 95% of the other workforce challenges outside of Iowa. And I think that's even an opportunity for the state college system here so not to go too deep on workforce here for today's meeting but I think, ensuring that we engage those outside stakeholders sooner than later getting folks to the table there is a lot of folks in this sort of ecosystem. There's there's only a handful who are statewide who understand the statewide as it exists and maybe with the aspirational views of where it could go. So, I think the state college system could create some good ballast for that that conversation or that journey. So looking forward to seeing what's coming in the future. I agree, Adam and we're not going to. Yeah, we're not going to solve the workforce systems problems for the state of Vermont but we can be a serious player and or continue to be a serious player in this arena and you know it's been eye opening to understand what all the various workforce development efforts and continuing at efforts are around the system and so. And I know some of them, every single one of them has utility but I know there are some that could be expanded and grown tremendously so to meet some of these needs but I also think you know the hammer on the got the nail on hit the nail in the head. There isn't just a workforce problem, it's a population problem. And we just don't have enough people to educate and train or that want to be educated and trained in the various fields so it's a multiple layered solution. Anyone else. I just like to state that as a member of the Commerce Committee some years ago we tried to put together a list of all of the workforce development that existed in state government. Every department and agency in state government has some form of workforce development, including human services and agriculture and education and I mean your name that they've all got it. And it was impossible for us to do that. I mean it really was we brought in all kinds of people. It's important. I think the important thing I think President Moten brings up a really good point we are the service and training provider we provide the education where the seed money that the state gives us so that we can provide the training and education for Vermonters and there's a way to upskill their, their skills and their education and provide better and more high paying jobs, which will generate more revenue organically and which will help employers grow and expand, which will increase their revenues to the state organically without having to raise taxes on the same old people. It's a population issue. It's a work, you know, we used to look for jobs, where are the jobs coming from now we look for where are the people coming from where the employees coming from. And we have a lot of population that doesn't pay doesn't participate in the higher education continuing education or opportunities that we do provide and others provide so I think the important thing for us to remember is where the seed money that enables all of them, everyone to have better opportunities and to raise more revenue for the state by increasing productivity. My speech for the day. Anyone else. Thank you. Lynn unrelated to workforce I just had an observation in reviewing the slide deck there and the stipends that are paid out. I'm just curious are my thinking as I saw that as a reminder of how much extra work, everybody is putting into this. And what they're being asked to do to help plan and execute on the transformation. Can you imagine that the available stipends as a fraction of the actual time and effort. And I wonder if, if there's any tracking of that time and effort and be above and beyond the stipends and, you know, I think as trustees I think it would be helpful for us to know to quantify somehow above and beyond and to be able to be reminded of that effort on a regular basis to just continue to understand and appreciate all that that's going into this. That's a good point does Sharon or Wilson have any or the chancellor have any thoughts on that. I was going to suggest that Sharon can weigh in here in terms of the stipends we did issue a series of stipends in December. And the way it was done was to take into account what what teams people were on it wasn't. It was a flat amount if you were on a sub team if you were on a core team it wasn't you know the individual effort that had gone into it. And the other pieces that we have tried to provide a backfill and additional support, as well as salary additional salary support for people that are really taking on a lot more than than, you know, than their historical job job responsibilities. But Sharon I'll let you weigh in to you did all the work on the stipend so. It was it was certainly a team effort. We are not tracking specific hours that individuals are working on the transformation related items. What we do though is track the assignments that individuals are working with so for example if someone is assigned to three different teams as a team member. We're keeping track of that. If they're serving as a team lead, if they're serving as a resource to a project. We are keeping track of that and that's the data that we used and actually to calculate the stipends. So depending on if you were a team member a team lead a core team lead and the number of teams that you belong to, we calculated an amount for that. We didn't do it based on the specific effort, because as we all know some individuals are able to schedule their work in a way that allows them to divide their work more evenly and fairly than others, but instead did it as a flat amount. It's certainly something that we can continue to track as we move forward, because it is really an important thing for us to acknowledge. We are really cognizant that the goodwill of our colleagues is really what's helping us be successful. But there is only so much that individuals can do and that's why as Sophie noted, looking at areas where backfill is necessary or reassigning staff completely to a task will be important, particularly as we move into the design efforts. Yeah, I would say that's probably my biggest concern is burnout and just how much people have on their plates and trying to be mindful of that but being mindful of it and being able to do something practically to two different things right so the will is there but but trying to figure out the best way to manage it. You know is a constant challenge and trying to make sure that we're not overwhelming people because that's not going to do us any favors in the long run. Wilson do you have something to add to that. Thanks, I thought that was a good summary. Good, thank you. Yes, that was a good question and I think we would like to continue to be aware of that because it's important for the people who are doing the work and and for the institution as a whole, the institutions all of them. Any other questions on transformation from anyone. Any questions or suggestions or anything. Seeing none we're going to go on to the presidential reports. COVID has been an ongoing continuing issue and we're going to ask for a report on how things are going with enrollment. COVID, whatever else there is going on and I invite questions from the trustees but we'll start with President Joyce Judy CCV. Thank you Chairman Dickinson and it's a pleasure to talk with you just for a couple moments and give you an update on where we are with CCV. CCV began its spring semester today. So we are underway. I have to say, I am pretty pleased and pretty surprised we are up significantly. We are up 3% in our head count. And we are at 4% in our course placements. So I want to remind you we have nearly 5000 students who are enrolled so up 3% is not insignificant. So we are. Our enrollment is strong. And just as a reminder we were up this isn't this is we were up last spring is what and last spring and fall so this isn't we are seeing an uptick from even during COVID so it's great. I want to just comment on our enrollment pattern though, because you know I think we've been reading a lot in the media about this pent up energy for being having in person classes. We actually were not seeing that at CCV and most community colleges are not seeing that we actually ended up, you know, we offer, we put out our course list with courses and also the format and so students get to choose what courses, what format, they register by sections. So we ended up adding a lot of online sections and canceling a lot of on ground sections because people are not rolling. So our mix this spring 72% of our classes are strictly online. Another 7% are synchronous and online, and only 13% of our classes 13% of our course placements. Our are in person that's in it's about 1518% of our class offerings are in person. So it's an interesting time for us. You know, we're before pre COVID we were about 45% of our classes were online. Now we're at 72%. What will that look like when hopefully we settle out from COVID and all that but it is something where we're keeping very close tabs on and also, because I do work with some of the National committees that I'm on other community colleges are seeing the same, the same kind of behavior so we're doing that closely. I will also just in terms of COVID. I'm just as a reminder in the fall we did not require students to be vaccinated but starting this semester we did require all students who are taking any component of an in person course so if they are doing a hybrid or in person or whatever. So I'm pleased to be vaccinated and I'm pleased to say that we had very little pushback and very few requests for exemptions. So, we are happy with that. And as we are with as the VSC and so I'm sure we'll be giving you an update on this. We are strongly recommending all faculty and staff to be vaccinated. So I feel like we're doing as best we can to manage in the COVID environment and of course we are requiring mass anytime you're inside at a CCD location and also just trying to make sure we are practicing as responsible as we can social distancing. One of the probably this in addition to our spring semester starting. The other thing I just want to call it trustees attention to is, we are hosting our, our NETCHI re accreditation visit March 13 to the 16th. As people know of people who have been involved in this re accreditation process from the trustee standpoint. This is a huge lift for colleges. It's about an 18 month process. And the end of we are, we are submitting this week, our self study and all the required documentation. And I just want to give a shout out to so many people. We had more than 70 faculty staff and students involved in all the standards and putting together the report. It's been a heavy lift just as the other schools have gone through it as well. But just acknowledge that and just thank our staff and faculty and students who have participated in this. And then the only other thing I found this really interesting because we have really tried to put it over the last two or three years a real emphasis on professional development for faculty and staff and we've really tried to take advantage of the COVID environment and do a lot of virtual trainings and I just was looking at from our self study. We have done 60 professional development seminars for faculty in the past 12 months. That's not insignificant and we've had hundreds of faculty attending. And so there are some silver linings with the COVID environment and the second piece I would say is a silver lining as we have for the past since the fall of 2020, we have been doing all our new student orientations virtually. And this spring, you know, we do them at different times we do evening we do daytime, we do lunchtime, which is interesting. And we do early morning. And this, this spring we saw more than between 400 and 500 and all the exact number between 400 and 500 new students attended one of those orientations. And I can tell you that's by far more than we would have been able to touch had we had in person new student orientations at the at our centers, and they're quite rich we use the breakout rooms they get to break out with their advisor. They do a whole section with we have current students talking to students, and they also get to break out they do two breakouts one by advisor. So it's by discipline I mean by discipline and then secondly by advisor. So it's a really interactive time but we're managing like the last one we had 180 students on it. But it's we have it down and it's pretty impressive if any trustee would ever like to attend one I would be more than happy to invite you into into the free. So with that, I will stop and entertain any questions. Any questions for Joyce Judy. I have one question. Yes, I just like to say you doing a lot of professional development and getting all of those folks to show up. That's a job. What type of professional development. And if so that did any of it include the I in any of it. Yes, yes. Do you know, do you know about how many you have that dealt with the verse to equity and you know, trustee Jefferson, I don't but that has been a major thrust. And what's really nice about the faculty professional development oftentimes it's faculty talking to other faculty. So we did. I think there were four or five that were specifically focused on on DEI components but then I would also say they think one of the things we've really tried to do through our DEI committee is to really look at all of them. Oh, a lot of issues a lot of decisions how do we look at it through the DEI lens. And so it's, you know, people looking at course descriptions, how are they incorporating conversation into classes. All of those things language, how do you build trust in and build a trusting environment so people feel like they can talk about things. Those are all things that we have been including in those conversations. Great. Thank you I have just one other question. You said that 72% of your students, your classes are online. What is the retention attrition rate for your students in the in these courses. Our retention rate with online. We track that really closely because just, just as a point. We have been doing online classes since 1996. So this has been a very significant piece for us. Our retention rate and online is equal to our retention rate on ground. It's about 80%. One of the things that we do do that is sort of our niche in online is our classes are really small. Our classes are the same size online as their own ground. So our classes are online classes are no bigger than 20, which is, you know, very different than most models nationwide. So, and the other two other components to our online classes is, we take, we take attendance in online. So people have to participate a couple times a week at maybe in a discussion board or maybe something but they have to participate, and we do track attend faculty, faculty track attendance so that advisors can reach out to students if they're not attending. So we, we try to help. We know that what's really important in online is, for those of us that may not be as disciplined as we should, we need to build in guardrails to help develop that discipline. And that's something that we work on really closely. So one of the things in our faculty contract is faculty are required to take attendance, and that attendance. When a student is missing class, it's fed back to our advisors who then reach out to students. So our whole goal, and this is what we talk about a lot in our orientation is, it's a partnership we want, they want to be successful and we want them to be successful. And it's a long way to say our retention rate is something we, we pay attention to a lot in online because it has grown to be someone had ever said to me back in 1996 it. Well, pre COVID that almost 50% of your classes would be online, I would have thought they were like, I don't know, I can't I wouldn't have been able to believe it but it is something and I think it's the success of our online courses and and how students doing subsequent courses and what's more important than how they do when they transfer. You know just as a reminder CCV is the largest cohort of transfer students to UVM and they're most successful. So not only within the system but outside of the system, they do well. So I'm very proud of what we do online. And I'm very impressed, President Judy. Thank you and you're doing a great job. Thank you, thank you. Questions. Okay, thank you that this helpful what about President Tom mouse pew from Castleton University. I, so I apologize I clicked my icons little too rapidly there. Thank you. So CCV very smartly begins a semester about a week or so after we do. And this is really helpful for Castleton students that if they're unable to get a particular class they need the last minute. It's easy for them to pick up on CCV course. So this is our second week of classes today. I believe Sophie shared a campus by campus COVID update with the board in terms of what our plans were. We did opt for remote classes for week one of the semester. So that was last week. So as to spread out the expected impact of the Omicron infections to reduce potential strain on personnel and services and mitigate any potential impact on local health care provides for struggling with isolation and isolation isolation I see rates and staffing shortages to do as testing positive the week of remote classes appears to have gone well. We're now back fully in person. It's great to see the full parking lots and student crowds migrating across campus to get to them from classes. Since January one, approximately 25 people have tested positive. few of those are still in isolation. We've had athletes back on campus since December 28. So it's not that all the students arrived a week ago. They've been coming in and stages for three weeks or more. I will update you while we're on athletics, just to remind our athletics, we have approximately 550 to 600 varsity student athletes, about 35% of our undergraduate students. It's a big part of the castle that experienced both the participants and spectators. The team that came back on December 28 was our wrestling team. And if you want to think about nightmares, think about a very large wrestling team amidst COVID. And not only that, but on December 28, they got on a bus and went to Florida for a national set of competitions. They spent a few days in Florida, turned around, came back, one member of the team tested positive during the entire trip, which is just the discipline and the care of the athletes and the coaches is impressive. Our teams have been engaging in competition right along. Wrestling, by the way, is 11 and two overall as a team. They're tremendously powerful. Had two first place finishes while they were in Florida. Men's alpine skiing won their first two events out of eight teams, came in fourth in the third out of eight teams in one or four. Women's alpine has won all four of their events. They're phenomenal. And men's and women's Nordic, they're off to a good start consistently placing racers in the top 10 spots. It's a little petty on my part, but it was a former faculty member of Dartmouth, which has a nationally ranked Nordic team. When I see the Castleton team beat their team, I get a little thrilled. They've also been outpacing UVM in Middlebury. It's always nice to serve the public good in such insular ways. Basketball has been struggling a little. Men's basketball, five and 11. The women have not. They're at eight and five. I watched an excellent women's game against Eastern Connecticut two weeks ago before we put a moratorium on fans. I'll get to that in a minute. Men's ice hockey, four and 14 and one and women's is six, seven and two. There seems to be a pattern. The women's teams do a little better. I'm sure it's completely coincidental. Everyone likes to win, but the emphasis at Castleton is on the athletes as a student. It's on their personal development. In the fall of 2021, all teams averaged a 3.0 GPA or higher. That's higher than the Castleton university average. It's really unusual in college sports. Our student athletes are unambiguously students first, although athletics is a strong part of their experience and helps them develop quality. We did ban fans at events last week in line with the first week of classes going online. Effective today, fans are once against welcome to attend all athletic events. It will be great to have them back. I want to shift to regional accreditation. For those unfamiliar with the concept, the federal government, the U.S. Department of Education has basically sent allocated its duties to verify that institutions comply with U.S. Department of Education regulations and thus are entitled to receive Title IV grants through a system of regional accreditors. Ours is Nechi, New England, Commission of Higher Education. We had our 10-year visit in October as CCD is having theirs in March. I've seen the draft report. We're awaiting the final report. The draft report is strongly positive. It listed 23 areas of commendation in its summary. It noted 13 concerns, none of them major. At the exit report, the team stated that Castleton had met all nine of the Nechi's standards. So on April 21st, I will meet with the Commission in outside of Boston, spend about an hour and a half answering questions. In about a week after that, we will be notified of Nechi's final determination of the status of our accreditation going forward. It all looks very good at this point in time. I want to pause for a second. There are a couple of other things I'd like to touch on, but I want to see if there's questions, anything I've covered to date. No questions for President. It looks like you're all set to go. All right. Enrollments. Enrollment numbers I'm going to give you are as of January 20th, and numbers will continue to shift over the next two weeks. For example, headcount went up five over the weekend as students sort out their status and pay bills and all those kinds of things. Our headcount as of Friday was 1,894. Our FT was 1,567. Our enrollment did go up about one and a half percent this fall. It's been doing quite well. We are about 20 or so below our budget projection for spring, but for various reasons I'll get into in a minute that has not had a negative impact on the budget. The headcount when you break it down, 40 percent of our undergraduates are out-of-state students. At 615, 910 are Vermonters. Our graduate students split into two groups. There are the matriculated students that are in a degree program, a master's, MA or MS, and then there are the center for schools students. These are generally professional educators. They're receiving credit for graduate study. It's to its re-licensure. It's to its professional development. It advances them on their collective bargaining pay scale, but they're not necessarily matriculated in a degree program. So our graduates break out at about 50-50 matriculated, 180, and about 50 percent un-matriculated 189 center for schools. Center for schools does educate about 2,000 students a year through their programs, so a pretty important part in the professional development of educators in the state of Vermont. And our graduate students, whether for center for schools and matriculated, comprise about 20 percent of our headcount. Fall 22 admissions, never too early to check track, but these numbers are early. Applications are up 21 percent. We have about 1,200 applications as of last Friday versus 1,600 last year. Our deposits are up 110 percent. We have 42 deposits versus 20 last year. These are very preliminary numbers subject to change over time, but it's always good to have better applications early in the process. Our budget. We went into the academic year projecting a budget deficit of about 8.9 million. That has been significantly altered. At this point, we're projecting about a $4.7 million deficit. That's a $4.2 million swing to the positive. That's partly because salaries and benefits are down. That's partly because of empty positions we haven't filled or positions we've tried to fill but been challenged because of very difficult hiring time, but tuition fees and room and board are all up. So I had mentioned earlier that our spring FTE enrollment is slightly below where we've projected, but given the makeup of the students, scholarship aid, how many of them are out of state, in-state, etc., the revenue is actually up. So pause there. Any questions? Yeah, just a quick question. I'm curious. It's interesting to compare year over year to last year because there's so much uncertainty with the pandemic, but what would you typically expect for deposits to be this time, say pre-pandemic? Yeah, it's a great question. The other variable, the pandemic is an important one. The other variable is a few years ago we contracted with EAB as a consultant to advise on our recruitment procedures. They project and advise not only on scholarship aid in locations, but they also help us with targeted activity, optimizing some of our systems, and that includes how we utilize slate messaging, sequencing of the messaging. So there's a lot of variables that have changed aside from COVID. Where we are in applications currently is slightly ahead of where we would have expected to be in the last few years. Other questions? Okay, if there are no other questions, is there anything else that anyone wants to add to this? Okay, is that it, Tom, or we have anything else? Well, there's a lot going on. You're all welcome to stop down and visit anytime and we are fully operational, so come watch an athletic contest, take in a play, music, et cetera. But nope, things are going great. It's really good to have the semester underway. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Sorry, could I just quickly, Tom, do you want to just share what you, the transformation updates that you're doing as well on the campus? Because I think that would be of interest to the trustees. Yeah, sure. So starting the week before classes, I initiated an all-campus Zoom call for all staff and faculty every Thursday from 2 to 3 p.m. So we're, we've had two of them now. We had 69 people on the first one, 63 on the second, and we do updates on where we are in the transformation process. Different team members report out and we take questions, answer people's concerns, bring that information back to the teams. And the team members, we have approximately 30 Castleton employees are serving on one or more transformation teams. This is also a good opportunity for them to share what they're doing on their individual teams. So it helps network information across the teams. And it's been very helpful. The feedback I'm getting is strongly positive. We will continue doing it as long as people continue showing up. It seems very helpful. Thank you. That sounds interesting. Good luck with it. Any other questions? Not seeing any. We will move along to President John Mills, who's here from Northern Vermont University. Thank you. And I appreciate this having the opportunity for the first time to talk to you about NVU. I'll quickly do COVID. We're following the same opening procedures that you heard from Tom at Castleton. We were remote last week. Students were coming in anyway to occupy dorms. And of course, we also brought our athletes in. It was all basketball for us. And it was somewhat challenging and disappointing because it wasn't just COVID affecting our students. It was COVID affecting other students. For example, another school we were supposed to play against ended up with 30 positives within one day. So we had to cancel. And the other thing that was unique, and you'll have to love this, there were two other schools in the Northeast Kingdom who had arrived here for multiple weekend games, had games cancelled, and called us up and said, hey, we're in the area. Can you put a team together? And we actually did that twice. Scheduling, I guess you could call them itinerant teams traveling through looking for a pickup game. And we won two of the three that we got out of that, even though they were unscheduled. So right now, we're having all our students pretest and then arrive and they get a rapid test. We're continuing with our PCR testing in the week. Right now, we have three students fully isolated on campus out of the total. And they're pouring in today. I'm sure we'll end up with a few more as they come in. The parking lot in front of my office has had constant exchange of materials and parents wheeling things to dorms as they pushed the last minute to show up. But that's been a very positive aspect of our return. I want to say something also about our students and the activities on campus. And this speaks to the hybrid nature of our student body. As Joyce mentioned, how many of our students are interested in online, well, our students that have poured in have just taken over the campus with activities, broom ball games in the evening, planting a winter carnival. They're out there building snowmen. So, you know, again, you have to remember this, this is going to be a hybrid university, not just in delivery, not just in the way we do things behind the scenes. But remember, our students will be hybrid. And we got to serve all aspects of the Vermont community because our students want to be here face to face and engaged with the community. The budget is looking good based on enrollments where 51% in the spring from last year and 62% at the same time we were at 2020. That's been, I want to give a shout out to the legislators here who supported the critical occupations. Some of that's been driven by those scholarships. For example, the early childhood education program has really drummed dramatically because of the support that's been given to those programs. And I also want to mention, as Tom gave the indication of the out of state students, our out of state enrollments are still very strong and they're significant this year. Students from out of state want to be here. And they're, of course, a significant driver of tuition revenue because of the what they pay for out of state. And that's shown by our residential counts now being up this spring. And we'll have to see how that figures out once the end of the check in comes this week. So that's also been a very positive. We end up when you look at full pay equivalents at this point for the spring compared to last year as we're up by 45 full pay equivalents. And again, looking at the fall again it's very early for us, but our numbers are up in first year deposits over last year, 21% and 22% over 2020. But of course, you don't count them until you get the head in the bed, as we say with a residential college. One of the highlights I wanted to point out for NVU, and it's going to be a highlight I think for VSU was a program started before I got here, which was learning and working community, where our students are given the opportunity to get stipends and credit for internships and working in in their professional areas in the community. I also want to give a shout out to the Northeast Kingdom and how these businesses profits and not for profits have stepped in to take part in this process. And it's been a very big success. We started it last year. We had 27 students take part in the summer 39 in the fall. And so that program is turning out to be a big success. And we're adding a new companies and new people every day to that partnership that we're developing, including with a new initiative that looks like it's going to be very significant with some of the Vermont ski area association groups such as Jay Peak, who are very much engaged in us working out some workforce development and of course stackable credential programs for college credentials and college degrees with their employees. So that's also a very positive aspect of what's happening here. And the other thing that I wanted to mention along with that outreach is something I started when I got here and being a new person. I heard in the community so much about gee what was happening to NVU because that's the community I'm in. Are you going to be around? And they heard a lot of negativity about when the announcements for shutdown came out. They didn't hear much about the commitments that legislation made through Act 74 and this board made to have these institutions stay, get investment and thrive. So I've been traveling as much as I can around the North East Kingdom and beyond. I've hit seven school districts at this point. I don't talk to the students. I talked to superintendents, principals and guidance councils to tell them we're here and we're here to stay. I've also gone to three service organizations in the region. I've actually been coerced into joining two of them once I showed up so no good deed goes unpunished. And then I've also been in four regional business headquarters since I got here. Armacron completely stopped that in January, but I hope to get that restarted. And in every case, the institutions were very, very thankful to hear what we were doing, what VSU is going to become. And in fact, from that, two organizations have now started joining us for the working and learning community to be part of this process. So it's been a very positive response from that outreach to tell people this is a viable and strong program moving ahead. And they're all excited about the direction that we're heading. I haven't heard any negativity at all. And finally, just to mention another thing that's kind of special to me, because I've been involved with this for a long time, we're celebrating Black History Month with Celebrate Black Excellence and it's being hosted by both Lyndon and Johnson Diversity and Equity groups. And we're asking people in the NVU community to submit examples of Black excellence and we'll be posting that for the whole month to let people know we are committed to this DEI effort that the whole system wants to pursue. So with that, I'll end. I stayed within my allotted time and I'll take any questions. Thank you, President Mills. Is there anyone who has any questions or suggestions or comments? Okay, well, thank you. I'm glad you're getting the word out into your region. Thank you very much. We have President Pat Moulton from our Technical College. Great. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you all for your time and attention this afternoon. It's my pleasure to share with you what's happening here at Vermont Tech. I'll start with enrollment. We have regained much of our loss last year due to COVID with our first year class this year. We're still down about 3 percent from last year, but the first year class is a little bit bigger and we're happy about that. We're not ultimately where we want to be for sure, but we are getting there. And as you've heard from the others, it's still very early, but next fall is looking really great. Total applications are up 35 percent over last year. And it's exciting that we're doing this work with EAB, but what I'm hearing from my admissions folks is most of these, the increase is Vermonters who are seeking out education, which is great news to hear. And hopefully next fall, what we were on track to in the fall of 19, when we were looking for one of the best years we've had since I've been here and then our friend COVID showed up and made a different plan. But it looks like we're going to get back to that level hopefully next year. We are releasing the first round of practical nursing acceptances, actually today and this week, along with dental, vet tech, radiologic science, and those acceptances will be reflected in the February 1st report. I can say we are already waitlisted for dental hygiene, radiologic science, vet tech, and a few of the nursing sites, certainly not all, but that's a really good sign. We're usually not waitlisted this early, so we're pretty happy about that. And I would just remind folks that we are opening up 45 new nursing seats through a long-term care cohort that we're working on. And then we hope to have additional seats in Linden. So we're hoping we're going to be able to accept more students than normal this year, this next fall. So very excited about that. COVID, deja vu all over again. Here we are. Everything seems to be changing with COVID on a daily basis, but we're watching the protocols and we have required students to test before they came back. We had 59 students that tested positive most before the semester, so these are students who do not return. Last Tuesday for classes they had to isolate in place, or I believe now we're calling it recovery in place. And so we had those 59 positives right now. We have positives on campus, approximately four. These students are isolating in place in their rooms. If these students are ill, we will utilize the 14 isolation rooms we have in one dorm. But we know that in a lot of cases students are testing positive, but they're not having symptoms. They're not ill. And we are also asking anyone who tests positive to go home. And in most cases, they're able to go home. And if not, they're staying here and isolating. We still have mandated vaccines and mandated boosters for when students are eligible to get those. And most of them will start being eligible next month and later. I'm just so incredibly pleased that we now have a full-time health services coordinator in Sarah Billings-Berg, who's able to provide a lot more assistance to our students with COVID, or even our employees with COVID. And she'd been doing a fabulous job on planning and developing flow charts. If you're positive, if you're negative, what do you do? Because it's very confusing now with a lot of the changed protocols and things like contact tracing, which are not happening, is up to the individual to do their own notification of any close contacts now. So much more of a personal responsibility shift in COVID, which is good as we start to shift into the endemic stage of this lovely disease that we have. As has been mentioned, we're moving forward in transformation. We have dozens of folks working on transformation. I will say they're struggling to get to stay on top of their regular work, along with the transformation work. As an example, we usually get nursing decisions out a week earlier. We weren't able to do that because we have admissions folks who spent three days last week in a slate workshop. So I respect the question you asked, Trustee Grinold, in terms of time and effort, because that would be great to track, but a royal pain to track as well. But we do have some ability to track, which I'm pleased that Sharon has. I just wanted to talk a little bit about our Center for Agriculture and Food Entrepreneurship, the orange program we still have that is going slow, primarily for the need for funding, and primarily because we just don't have the bandwidth to put the time in. We basically get yours truly working part-time on this. Molly Willard working part-time because she has a full-time job and our Department Chair, Agriculture Department Chair working part-time on this. So it's taking longer than we want. We do have three consultants working in three separate program areas. One is working on developing additional short courses in agriculture and a heavy focus on meat cutting and development of a meat cutting lab for us. We have a second that's working on the farm renovations and transformation that need to happen for us to really launch the Center for Agriculture and Food Entrepreneurship. And the third, who we hope to be hearing a close to final report from tomorrow, who's setting up an internship program for us and has identified more than 50 sites that have expressed an interest in hosting interns, be they farms, be they food manufacturers and others who are in the food supply chain who would like to host our interns. So I'm bolstered by that number and that consultant is working on actually the internship manual and the whole whole kit and caboodle on that. As Yasmeen said, we did submit a EDA grant application last year. That seeks three years of seed funding for the critical staff we need to get this off the ground, namely our director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Entrepreneurship, the internship coordinator and a meat cutting lab tech lab director. And we're hopeful for that EDA application and I just don't know the timing as Adam knows EDA is hard to predict often on the timing. So it often moves like a slow like molasses on a morning like this morning. But we also are hoping to submit hope to get invited to submit an application to the working lands enterprise board to establish a meat cutting facility that can be dedicated to our programming. Our problem has been accessing those facilities because the butchers and meat cutters have been letting us use that total classes are too busy to let us in with the frequency we'd like to be there. And we are actually looking at a possibility of leasing some space initially versus building brand new so we can really get things launched and be making some money before we actually invest in bricks and mortar. We are going to have to look for another grant for farm renovations. We don't have that funding in place right now, but so that's a little bit more of an update on where we are on the Center for Ag and Food Entrepreneurship. I want to talk a minute for about our advanced manufacturing center. We have an exciting visiting faculty member Dr. Andreas Villanos. I'm not going to get his name right, but he is a world renowned expert in additive design. And he's co-teaching a mechanical engineering course for us this semester with Jeremy Cornwall. And additive design is something that employers introduced us to early. It's one thing to design and build blueprints for a subtractive model where you're cutting out metal or plastics or whatever. But when you're building it for an additive building up 3BD printing model, it's a different type of design and a different type of engineering. So he's doing that work for our existing students. We're hoping to set up some workshops on the same topic for incumbent workers at manufacturers around the state who need that tutelage. We're also working on a ribbon cutting date with Senator Leahy, hopefully in March. We're still waiting also for last pieces of equipment in that center. The interest there is only growing pretty exponentially as more manufacturers in particular find out about the capacity we have there and want to know more about our graduates. We do have some nursing changes, nursing staffing changes. Sarah Billings-Berg is now our full prime health services coordinator and still lending assistance when needed to the nursing program. But we're really pleased to announce that Dr. Lisa Fox, who was one of our site directors, is now our new associate dean for nursing and doing a fantastic job. We're also working on hiring a nursing coordinator to assist Lisa. We recognize we probably loaded a lot too much on Sarah's plate and that that work, particularly given the continued pressure to look at growing nursing, we need some additional support for an admin in that work. We're also hiring a new administrative assistant, executive assistant for nursing because Jerry Lynn Cohen retired this year. We're going to need to also refill Lisa's site director position in the northwest. We still are looking for a site director in the southwest. We have three full-time nursing faculty positions open. We have seven part-time clinical associates positions open. It's not easy right now hiring nursing faculty and staff. As I mentioned, we're growing the 45 new positions in long-term care and then we'll grow 60 new seats due to the partnership with MDU and the Linden expansion. 60 new seats over the next three years, 20 seats a year that will when that construction is finished. So another thing I'm really pleased to announce is once again, for the third year in a row, despite COVID and remote learning and you name it, our nursing students exceeded the national NCLEX pass rates again this year for the third year in a row by some decent margins in some case. In 2021, the national NCLEX pass rate for associate degree nursing was 80.45%. The lowest in the history of the exam and the national NCLEX practical nurse pass rate was 80%. At that time, however, Vermont Tech's pass rates were 86.7 for our associate degree students and 97.9 for our certificate students and 97.9 for our associate degree students. So we blew everybody out of the water on the NCLEX pass rate. So it can be done to Joyce Judy's point. You can learn remotely and you can do it and you can do it well. It's not the first choice by some students, but particularly where you have a heavy lab and lecture combination and it's really hard to learn how to fly a plane without actually getting one or fix a car without actually putting a wrench on an engine and things of that nature. But our nursing students did very well. We're really pleased to hear that and we know and we still achieved a 99% placement rate last year. So we're really pleased to hear that. As Tom must be said, it's really nice to see cars in the parking lot. It's nice to see students on campus. I will say though Friday night, I kind of looked out at the parking lot and said, where'd everybody go? So I think folks are choosing to go home when they don't have to be here. But we're glad to be open and operating and hope to stay that way, keeping our fingers crossed. So that's my update for now and I'm happy to answer any questions. Any further questions for President Moulton? Bill? So I just want to say how important the incredible work that's being done around nursing is and how much we in the House Health Care Committee and the legislature generally are looking to be supportive because we recognize the partnership is so critical to the health. It's a really strained healthcare workforce in Vermont right now. The creative partnerships, I hear about it when I hear from the hospital association. They tout the work that VTC is doing. And so I think we should just generally be pleased. There's a lot more for us to do and we're going to do our part to try to see if we can't continue to put resources behind the desire to strengthen nursing training in Vermont. So but thank you. Thank you, Trustee Lippert. And I just can't say enough again for the critical occupations scholarships last year, how that doubled our BSN population, our online bachelor's degree and filled every nursing seat we have for the first time in about five years. So those it shows that there are folks who are interested but they need to find a way to report it. So I'm very appreciative of the legislature's efforts last year and very much looking forward to working with you all this year to keep it going. We'll be hearing from us very soon. Anyone else have any questions? Bill, one more? No. Anyone else? Congratulations, Pat. It sounds like you've got a lot of good nursing students there and they're coming out quick and we need to get them out there as quickly as we can. So thank you. Tom Mospew and Helen Popeka from Castleton would love to come talk with you too, Bill. Yes, yes. All of our all of our critical occupation students who were able to get access, affordable access to these schools, all of our schools and all of our programs have been really key, mental health, nursing, many others, early childhood education. It shows you that there is a need and there is a real groundswell of people who want to take advantage of these. So just a message for the legislature and the governor. I do want to quickly flag that we've had some really productive conversations between Castleton and Vermont Tech as we think about nursing moving forward. So as we're coming together to create the new university, I just think it's really important that we support the efforts that they're making. So yeah, just thank you to Tom and Pat and then to Lisa and Helen, both at both institutions. Yes, yes. The continuum is the stackable credentials and the continuum is really important and that goes for many, many, many programs and many occupations. But thank you, all of you. Anyone else have any more questions for Vermont Tech? Go ahead, Jim. Thanks. Pat, I've heard from some nursing ethatologists from out of state that they'd like to come back here and there's a question about supervision in this state versus other states and this is beyond the trustees scope of business, I guess you could say, but I'd like to have a conversation with you offline or afterwards or something about allies for bringing those folks here. Thanks. Love to, love to. You want to give me a call, Jim, or do you want me to call you? Hey, Pat, either way. Okay. Okay, that's anyone else. Okay, appears that that is the reports from the presidents. We now have, is there any other additional business that we may have coming up right now? Seeing none, we have a link in the chat. Yeah, Trustee Maslund had his hand up. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Just apologize for being so late, folks. I've got too many things I'm trying to juggle in. Some days I don't do a good job of it. So nice to see you. Yeah, glad you made it. We do have a link in the chat for additional comments or public comments from anyone from the public. Is there anyone in there? Does Jen see anyone who has signed up or requested to make a comment? We do not have anyone signed up right now, but if there's anyone in the meeting that would like to make a comment, you can go out and raise your hand. I'm thinking we do not have anyone that wants to make a comment at this time, Chair Dickinson. Okay, well, thank you, Jen. In that case, we will go and I'll invite Vice Chair Cleaver to make a motion to go into executive session. No formal or binding action will be taken in executive session. If we take action, it'll be after we exit executive session. So I move that the Board of Trustees enter executive session pursuant to one VSA 313A1B to discuss labor relations agreements with employees because premature general public knowledge would clearly place the public body involved at a substantial disadvantage. I further move that the Board enter executive session pursuant to one VSA 313A3B to discuss the appointment and employment of a public officer. Along with the members of the Board present at this meeting in its discretion, the Board invites the Chancellor, the General Counsel, and the Chief Financial and Operating Officer to enter. Okay, we have a motion on the table. Is there a second? David seconding. David Silverman seconds it. Any discussion or comments? Seeing none. All those in favor of going into executive session, please indicate by saying aye. It's now five minutes after three. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed. Okay, we will have a breakout room. Can you unmute it? Okay, I think we have most everybody here now. We are coming out of executive session at 4.32 p.m. I have a motion. Just about everybody's here. All right, I move that the Board vote to formally ratify the recently negotiated collective bargaining agreements with the CCV United Faculty and with the Part Time Faculty Federation and that I'm authorized to sign each agreement on behalf of the VSE Board of Trustees as the chair of the Board. Do I have a second on that? Second. Mary Morana seconded that. Any discussion or questions? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion is read. Please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed. Seeing none. We are now able to ask for an adjournment. Is someone please make a motion to that effect? So moved. Mary Morana seconded. Jim. And Maslin. Okay, any questions or just discussions of that? Seeing none, we are all those in favor of adjourning, please indicate by saying aye. All right. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Bye, bye.