 All right, we appear to be live and in-person. Good afternoon, everybody. This is the Vermont State Senate Committee on Institutions, today being March 16th, 2021. I am your spokesperson for today, otherwise known as the chair of the committee, Joe Benning, I represent Caledonia County. We also have with us committee members, Senator Mazza from Grand Isle, Senator Ingalls from Essex, Orleans, Senator McCormick from Windsor. We are expecting Senator Parrot from Franklin, but haven't heard from him yet. Today, we are talking about the Vermont State College System. For those of you following along in our itemized spreadsheet, that would be section eight, specifically lines 88 through 91. We're also gonna have some general conversation about the state of the system. And with us today, we have three folks from the state college system, including the chancellor, Sophie Zatni, how are you this afternoon? I'm very well, thank you very much for having us here. I don't know who would like to lead off the conversation, but since you are all basically here, I think you might've been here earlier in the session, but at this point, I'm gonna repeat what I said earlier on. This is a live YouTube discussion. We have no idea whether there are members of the public who are watching. I do have three new committee members, one of whom is a brand new legislator. So we are trying to start with the basic introductions from a 50,000 foot level before we dive down into the weeds so that our listening public, if you will, has a basic understanding of who you are and how you fit into the picture. And then we'll launch into the more substantive conversation about the system itself. Sophie, I don't know if you'd like to start off, but certainly that's the invitation. If you wanted to hand it off to somebody else, that's fine too. Yeah, no, I'm happy to start off. So I'm Sophie Zatni, I'm chancellor of the Vermont State College System. And with me today, I have Sharon Scott, who's our chief financial and operations officer, as well as Catherine Lavassa, who's our director of governmental and external affairs. So we're very happy to be with you today. And we want to share with you a quick update on the Vermont State College System as well as our FY22 capital budget request. So again, you had indicated good to set the stage of who we are. So I'll just take a few minutes to introduce you to the Vermont State College System. We are comprised of four member institutions, Carselton University, the Community College of Vermont, Northern Vermont University and Vermont Technical College. Across all four systems, we educate over 10,000 Vermonters each year. We employ over 3,000 Vermonters. And in spring of 2020, we graduated over 1,800 Vermonters into the workforce with certificates and degrees. Last fall, we stood up a CRF workforce initiative that enabled 971 Vermonters, whose employment had been affected by the pandemic, to take nearly 1,400 courses to upskill and reskill in a time of tremendous need. As you all know, we are currently undergoing a significant transformation. We've been working with the governor, the legislature, our board of trustees, and then also the state select committee on the future of public higher education in Vermont. That committee was created by the legislature last summer. Even before the select committee was created, the system was working on internal transformation. We're continuing to do that today. Much of the work was initiated by, we had a task force called the VSCS Forward Task Force, and they came up with a number of recommendations last summer. Those recommendations were adopted by the board of trustees, and those have helped move us towards unified system operations. So right now we are working to envision what the Vermont State College system will look like into the future. And as we do so, we've been looking at many of the challenges that we've confronted, both from the pandemic and also from the financial situation. And we're trying to figure out how to turn those into opportunities for transforming the system to better deliver for Vermont and the students that we serve, but for decades to come. And as we think about change, we've been focused on three key questions. So one was, does the change meet the needs of the students? Does it meet the needs of the state? And then finally, does it contribute to the Vermont State College system's financial sustainability? So we did present to our board of trustees back on February 22nd, a transformation proposal, much of which was drawn from the work of the select committee. And in that transformation proposal, we advocated several pillars that we've been focused on. So one of them is that student success is our key focus. And that means that we are committed to delivering on the higher education and continuing education needs of Vermont and Vermonters while preserving the high touch personalized approach and close knit campus communities that we're known for. And while doing that, we do seek to better serve students where they are with a learning modality that works for them on a schedule that works for them with the courses, programs, credentials, credit bearing and non-credit bearing that provide them with the skills they need to attain their life goals and at a price that they can afford. So one of the other pillars was education for life. And with that, we're looking to create opportunities for Vermonters at every point in their adult life. So from our early college dual enrollment programs from for high school students through credentials of value for working adults and those looking to upskill and reskill. And we do recognize that moving forward, we need to develop even more high quality educational opportunities that meet the needs of students, employers and the state by expanding on the availability of credentials of value. So associates degrees as well as credentials and certificates that enable students to secure higher paying employment or advance at work. And additionally, we're continuing to work on creating stackable credentials within our degree programs because those help provide maximum value and flexibility for our students. The next pillar is that Vermont is our community. So in addition to serving our students and meeting the workforce needs of Vermont, we are looking to maintain our physical presence in each of our current host communities, combining a reduced physical footprint with expanded access to academic programs statewide. Rural public institutions such as ours do provide crucial educational and employment opportunities to local residents. They serve as economic and social and cultural anchors in their host communities. And they help to educate workers in high demand and local industries such as healthcare, education, business, mental health counseling, hospitality and tourism. And finally, we do recognize that to achieve fiscal sustainability, we need to reduce administrative costs. And so one of the proposals that came out of the select committee's work was seeking a common accreditation for Northern Vermont University, Vermont Technical College and Castleton University while maintaining CCV as a separate institution and then also engaging in further system-wide administrative consolidations. And so that is the work that we're currently looking to undertake. Our board of trustees did adopt those key recommendations at their February 22nd board meeting. So one thing we do know is that transformation will take both time and money, which is why we do have a big ask with regard to our capital request. The select committee's report has recommended maintaining the physical presence in all of our current locations, but there are significant capital costs associated with transforming our institutions to be the Vermont State College system of the future. So to provide some background on our campuses, I'm going to turn this over to our Chief Financial Officer, Sharon Scott. And I believe Catherine has some slides that we'll be showing you as well. The Vermont State College campuses have 145 buildings, comprising 2.3 million square feet of assignable space on over 1,300 acres. A growing number of our facilities are in need of maintenance and repair, and these repairs are substantial and necessary to prevent further deterioration of buildings and our costly repairs down the road. For the last several years, our annual capital appropriation has ranged from $2 to $3 million and is primarily used for deferred maintenance and safety projects. And we are incredibly grateful for the support that we've received in these capital funds. And we'd like to take a minute to share with you a few of the upgrades that were made possible by the investments in years past. For example, capital funds have been used in recent years to update and reconstruct sidewalks, parking lots and walkways that both pose potential safety hazards to users and where an eye soar to our campus visitors, including our prospective students. Additionally, windows, air conditioning, roofs and HVAC repairs have allowed us to improve our air quality and reduce our heating costs and carbon footprint. These repairs are vital to preserving the quality of our buildings and the visual appearance of our campus to visitors. For example, at Castleton University, we recently updated Granger House using a combination of capital money and other funds. Major updates included repair of a leaking slate roof and related damage to ceilings, repainting the interior and significant repair and painting of the exterior of the building. They've also been able to fully upgrade the electrical system and they were able to regrade the yard. This past summer, the Bentley parking lot on the NVU Johnson campus was repaved. While this project was not nearly as exciting to look at as Granger House, it made an enormous improvement to the functioning of the space and dramatically reduced the hazards to cars using the lot. Another project at Northern Vermont University that was also completed this past summer was the replacement of the shape fitness center stairs on the Johnson campus. As you can see from the condition of the paving in the foreground, prior to the replacement of these stairs, they were not in good condition. Replacement had a big impact on the Vermont State College's ability to keep its students and visitors safe. So while these investments are critical to the success of the Vermont State College system and the success of our students, we do want to take a minute to share with you a little bit more about who our students are. So our mission starts with for the benefit of Vermont and we do have facilities in academic centers within 25 miles of nearly every Vermont. You can see our student population on this heat map and it's concentrated around our physical locations. I do want to share with you that it's very easy to fall into the trap of assuming that every college student comes from a stable middle income family, that every student has a home to go to when residence halls shut down due to the pandemic, that every student can afford a residential four-year experience. And while we do serve many of those students, the reality is that we serve all Vermonters. We have included several student stories in the packet provided to you that tell the story of the students we serve and we do hope you have a chance to look at those when you have a free moment. So in educating over 10,000 students each year, our campuses are centers of academic excellence, culture and community. Most importantly, 83% of our students are Vermonters and we educate more Vermonters annually than all other institutions of higher education in the state combined. In addition, two thirds of our alumni live and work in Vermont. This past year, more than 1800 Vermonters graduated from our schools with degrees and certificates and entered the workforce. In the fall, we had almost 3,300 first-generation college students enrolled and we're currently educating almost 3,000 low-income undergraduate students. We create pathways to affordable certificates, degrees and credentials and provide economic stability in the rural regions of the state where our colleges and universities are large employers and economic anchors. As a system, we employ nearly 3,800 people and our employees live in every county of the state, including the communities that you serve. We're among the largest employers in the state next to the state of Vermont, the University of Vermont, the state's largest hospitals and a few of the larger businesses. Regionally, our colleges stack up as large employers as well, employing hundreds of Vermonters in our anchor communities. We do offer competitive wages and benefits and are a significant employer for Vermonters of all educational attainment levels. In addition, our top-enrolled programs align with Vermont's workforce needs for mental health professionals, childcare providers, entrepreneurs, educators, healthcare professionals and more. And while the importance of the Vermont State College system to Vermont is undeniable, we do face significant challenges if it's to continue to meet the needs of Vermont and its students into the future. As Chancellor Zadotny has just shared, the challenges facing the Vermont State College and higher education in the Northeast are well known. Though the process of transformation will continue for the foreseeable future. As a system of highly tuition-dependent institutions, we continue to focus our resources on our core mission, academic programs and have limited capital to support our existing facilities as well as to drive change. Looking ahead, we have carefully considered our FY22 capital appropriations request. The Vermont State Colleges have two primary proposals for capital needs and we ask today for a capital appropriation of $10 million this biennium to support these efforts. The request is updated from our original ask to the administration for $22 million and reflects the further work done by the select committee to outline our transformation needs. Our top priority is construction, renovation and major maintenance and an amount of $4 million for the biennium. Due to the challenges Chancellor Zadotny has noted throughout this presentation, the Vermont State Colleges has diverted its critical resources to its core mission of teaching and learning. The result naturally is increased deferred maintenance. A continued lack of major maintenance means that emergencies will become more and more prevalent over the next few years. These emergencies will be more costly to repair and will likely come with significant opportunity costs. Therefore, the Vermont State Colleges proposes creating a fund to cover the cost of emergency maintenance projects across the system. These projects would allow the colleges to perform instantaneous major repair for things such as a boiler failing in the dead of winter, roof leaksing, a responding to a library flood, a sprinkler burst, water lines that have frozen or a heating line coil failure. And also to complete preventative and deferred maintenance projects such as sprinkler and fire alarm and planned replacements, elevator inspections and planned upgrades, boiler inspections and planned repairs. The Vermont State Colleges request $4 million this biennium to address these instantaneous major maintenance issues. The Legislature's Select Committee for the Future of Public Higher Education in Vermont will complete its work in April, 2021. The initial and revised reports submitted in December and February recommend transformational changes that will require capital investments. Recognizing workforce needs, it may be necessary to renovate buildings into facilities suitable for hands-on learning as well as working and learning communities. Acknowledging the Vermont State Colleges physical footprint is too large. Buildings may need to be converted to use for public-private partnerships. And it's also possible we will need to demolish underused buildings. The Vermont State Colleges therefore request $6 million this biennium to support system-wide transformation. This is $6 million above the governor's recommendation as you can see in the crosswalk noted here. So we thank you for the significant investments that you've made in the Vermont State Colleges system in previous years. The support has been critical to our success and we are grateful for the administration's attention to our capital needs. As we look to FY22 and beyond, we know that transformation is necessary to keep us moving forward. And again, we have taken initial action both in the Chancellor's Office and in our member institutions. And we'll continue to do so in the coming months as we continue to move forward with the work of transformation for our system. So thank you very much and we're happy to answer any questions that you may have. Take a wild guess and say that you folks have made this presentation at least once before. At least once, yes. You've been to our counterparts over in the house. Right. Can you tell me what kind of reaction you got from them? I, you know, if we testified so much, I feel like it was pretty positive. I don't remember it not being positive or supportive. I think they had questions for us and we were able to answer those. We've obviously know a bit more now about some of the things than we did at the time when we met with them, particularly regarding our flexibility around the ability to get rid of certain properties that, you know, to shrink our physical footprint. We know that there's gonna be some more challenges there than perhaps we had anticipated originally. But I would say that, you know, we had a good conversation with them. And I don't know if Sharon or Catherine remember anything else specifically on that. I think there were some very specific questions that we've, as Chancellor Zadatni has just noted regarding the disposition of assets and the possibility of being able to do so when there has been the use of capital dollars to help renovate facilities. And since then we've had some really good conversations with the Treasurer's Office. So we have a significantly better understanding of what that process should look like. And that's been very helpful to us. So I'm gonna open it up to committee discussion in a moment, but there's a couple of things along this theme that I've got rolling around in my head. The footprint downsizing, if you will, that you're dancing along the edges of, I'm looking for specifics. If you've had them focused on, I don't know that you have, but if you have, I'd love to hear what the description of that is. I'd also like to ask if there's been consideration about the state college administrative offices being consolidated within individual institutions as opposed to having a flagship station all by itself. Yeah, so after the announcement last April, both Northern Vermont University and Vermont Technical College created their own internal task forces to look at ways that they could reinvent themselves. And particularly the property piece was a significant portion of that. So both Northern Vermont University and Vermont Technical College have been considering what buildings they have on campus or sometimes not even on campus. Often they've had buildings donated to them or they've purchased in town or whatever. So there are these excess pieces of property that perhaps now would be a good time to think about divesting ourselves from those. So they've been looking at that campus footprint to figure out what changes could be made if there are buildings they no longer need. Northern Vermont University is moving forward with this learning and working communities concept. So for example, they're interested in seeing if there are employers who would be willing to move on to the campuses, to take up office space on campuses and then offer the ability for students to work, have internships, et cetera, with those employers. So really trying to build greater bridges between town and gown and bring sort of people onto the campus. Vermont Technical College also is looking at similar things. They're also looking to allow many of their employees to continue to work remotely, which means they need less office space than they did before. So they've been looking at what buildings and how they could reconfigure buildings to address that. In the Chancellor's Office, we have a lease that runs through to next summer and we've already indicated that we do not intend to renew the lease. We anticipate that we will, we don't have it ironed out in minute detail but that we would not be looking to have a standalone Chancellor's Office at this point. Many of the folks that work in the Chancellor's Office travel considerable distances to get there from all corners of the state. So we have folks coming from the Northeast Kingdom. We have folks coming from Chittenden County. So to locate it somewhere else is, it's gonna add to the commute for some, maybe better for others. But one thing we've learned through the pandemic is that we were able to transition our office, able to transition very smoothly to being online and being remote. And so we anticipate offering employees, the flexibility to continue to work virtually rather than coming into a physical location to the extent that we may need a physical office to hold meetings, et cetera, or for the Chancellor to be based to have ready access to the state house when that happens. CCV Montpelier is on Elm Street. And they have additional capacity there. So we're not looking to create a new Chancellor's Office. We're looking to, again, either work remotely or for folks that live in Linden, have an office on the Linden campus or at Vermont Tech or wherever. So we are anticipating that. That's one of the things we've learned from the pandemic is how well we can do this remotely. I was gonna add something else that has slipped away. The other pieces we talk about, administrative consolidations, while we may be looking to centralize functions, that doesn't necessarily mean that we're looking at building a bigger Chancellor's Office. What we're hoping to do is embed some of the functions geographically at the different campuses. So there may be a particular campus that will take over a particular area that will be based out of that campus. So we are really looking at reimagining entirely how we're doing things on the administrative side. Well, those are all good things to hear. Not only have we all learned about how to conduct ourselves remotely, but the ability to do that has been demonstrated pretty clearly. The one thing that I think is very much in favor of you going with this consolidation of office space, if at all possible, is it deprives a lot of the critics of an argument of being too heavy in the building's department. But that's a whole nother conversation for another day, I suppose. The accreditation consolidation that I've been hearing about recently with Northern Vermont University and Castleton, I'm not sure if VTC was in there or not, but can you explain what that's all about? Yeah, so right now we're a system of four institutions and each institution is separately accredited by the New England Commission on Higher Education. And in order, it's important you have to be accredited in order to be able to use financial student aid. So it's critical that you have that accreditation. And in order to achieve it, you have to meet standards. And there's a list of standards that are set forward. And you get evaluated periodically with that. So having a common, so for example, the standards include having one chief executive CEO, having one chief business officer, having one financial aid director. So if we have a common accreditation for the three institutions, it means instead of having three presidents and three deans of administration and three financial aid directors, we can have one and still meet the accreditation standards. So it actually makes it easier for us to meet the standards. Again, particularly as our campuses have been getting smaller, given the demographics in the state. It facilitates that, it makes it easier for us to meet those standards system, well, not system-wide, but across those three institutions versus one institution having to meet the standards all by itself. I'm trying to think if there was another piece on the accreditation. The other, it's an enormous amount of work to go through the accreditation process. And Sharon can tell you more about that. She both goes out and does, for the commission, she goes out and does the evaluations for other institutions, but also has been involved in the amount of work that an institution has to do to meet those standards as an extensive self-study process that you go through. So again, that's a lot of work that each institution has to do to meet its accreditation. So there are things like that that just by consolidating, you're going to really be saving on the amount of work that's required to maintain those separate accreditations. I'd like to hear that from Sharon. But before I do, Denise, could you let Senator Parrott in the door, please? Hopefully Denise heard me. Sharon? So I have had significant experience in the accreditation process, both in the creation of Northern Vermont University, which merged Lyndon State and Johnson State together. I was the dean of administration that oversaw the work as it related to the financial functions and the operational functions. So it's an enormous amount of work, but there are significant savings that come along with being able to do that. Some of them are ones that we don't think about normally, which is, as Chancellor Zadotny just said, the accreditation process, the self-study process begins a year in advance of the actual accreditation. It requires hundreds, if not more than a couple of thousand hours of preparation for that, and then a week of full evaluation with the accreditors while you're undergoing it. Today we go through that four times for every institution while it's supposed to only be a 10-year accreditation. There's actually a five-year self-study process as well, and then there's often two-year accreditation visits in the middle. And so it's really an enormous amount of work that's undertaken today, just as one small example. In other things that come along with being able to go through that process, by being a single accredited institution, we're able to take advantage of a lot more critical buying power as it relates to things like purchasing advertising, creating materials, dealing with marketing that comes along with that. But also, again, as Chancellor Zadotny just noted, there's the personnel aspects that come along with it. We're able to develop a career path for individuals that we can't do today. We often have departments of one that are unable to really meet all of the compliance standards themselves. And so by bringing together five people, we're able to do that much more efficiently and be able to look at that across the institution. So there's some really significant value in this as we look forward. Also, the opportunities for our students we're able to offer significantly more to them together than we are separately. So what do we give up by going in that direction? Well, I mean, we've been part of a system, which we would think we'd be more consistent in how we do things. We haven't been. We've tended to problem solve and do things our own way. So in some respects, we have a really good foundation to build on for the common accreditation. But we do have a lot of inconsistencies and inefficiencies that have been built in by having institutions just problem solve things their own way. And I think, again, as Sharon said, I mean, the real positives here is being able to sort of pool resources. So instead of having one person wearing three hats, a person can wear one hat and do that job well, rather than being stretched really thin. We will have we would have one president, one provost for the whole combined entity. So we would still need to have people on campus to be the head of campus, so to speak, to be there in the event of an emergency or anything else. So it's not as if there wouldn't be a leader on the campus, but they wouldn't be necessarily the president, the provost on the campus the way you would have right now with the individual institutions. Although, again, at Northern Vermont University, the leadership team is there. Some of them are on Johnson campus. Some of them are on Linden campus. So we would just be expanding that further out. But again, you wouldn't have your own president, your own provost on your campus. So you're thinking pushback is primary, primarily a traditional parochialism? Yeah, it's been interesting because, you know, our labor unions, the labor task force came up with their proposal and they were actually proposing, consolidating all four institutions into one. So I do think there's been significant recognition internally that this is the kind of, the scale of transformation that we need to do. I do think there are concerns around loss of individual campus identity. You know, I think that's, and we saw that with Northern Vermont University. And again, you know, Johnson and Linden, although they're part of NVU have been able to maintain some of their cultural differences, we would hope to accomplish that moving forward with this. But I do understand that it's a challenge for people that, you know, their whole careers have been spent. They may be an alum of a particular institution and that the name has changed. So. Okay. At this point, I'm gonna open it up for committee conversation. Senator Mazza. When you approached the governor on your request for major maintenance, did you ask for 10 million or 11 million or what was the reaction from the administration when you asked for money? So the appropriation request that we asked for from the governor was $22 million. And it was inclusive of several items. In terms of major maintenance, we asked for, let's see, $10 million for transformation, 3.5 million in major maintenance, $200,000 in emergency repairs, roof replacements, and then also in addition to that, we also requested college specific deferred maintenance projects. I would say that the, you know, there's an understanding that we're unable to, it would be a large portion of the capital bill if we were to receive $22 million. And since then we've received a lot of information from the select committee, we were unaware of how it was going to look like. And so we have since revised that request to be more in line with both where the governor's recommend was, which was $4 million for a combination of major maintenance and deferred maintenance. And what we're anticipating our needs are for transformation. And what is the administration's response to your revised request? Have you approached the administration for? Shared the updated revised request with the administration. We do meet regularly with members of the governor's staff and we try to keep commission regression appraised. We've generally had an appreciation for keeping them informed, but not a committed response in either direction. And okay, one other question. What would generally when you're requesting money for major maintenance, let's say, for example, we put in $4 million or $2 million, whatever, what is your portion that you set aside for major maintenance? We typically set aside approximately $200,000 in roof repair funds to be able to hold that aside, to be able to address an instantaneous issue with a roof and another $100,000 for other major maintenance that may occur. That's what we hold at the Vermont State Colleges and the remainder of the funds are distributed to the institutions to support their other deferred maintenance projects that they have put forward. So what would that total be? If we were to give you the governor's request, how much do you have set aside to match that in total? We don't today set aside a specific match for that. It's money that we set aside from the monies that come from the capital funds. You don't have any money you set aside for your major maintenance yourselves, no? Each institution sets aside a deferred maintenance budget within their physical plant budget, but I don't have insight to that right now. It certainly is a future goal of the Vermont State Colleges to be able to make sure that as part of the work that we do that we are setting aside a specific set of money and funding from our own institutional funds to address deferred maintenance. Unfortunately, it's not something that we are able to do in any substantial way today or to do systematically right now. I would think that'd be a priority because if you're gonna continue to ask for money for major maintenance, you'd have a fund set aside that you could match it or it's a major cost that you can't keep deferring it. So I'm just curious why you don't have a program in place presently. That's just surprising because usually when you give money, they return with what they've set aside because you never really get caught up on major maintenance unless you address it every year. Thank you. It's been a real challenge. And I think because historically, we've been so short of funds that the focus has always been on trying to maintain the programs for students. And so the maintenance has built up. I mean, we totally understand what you're saying. It's vital that you address it. It's just a place when you're impoverished that we haven't had the capacity to set aside but it's something obviously that we recognize we need to do moving forward. But Jim Page, the former chancellor of the University of Maine did a report for the legislature last summer. And I think he addressed in there kind of the history of the deferred maintenance and the situation that we were in regarding that historically. So it's a recognized issue that we have. Is there truth to the rumor that there's COVID dollars available for this? For specific transformation, based on the current read of the most recent American recovery bill, there does appear that there may be some funding related to that, but there's no guidance that's attached to it yet. It's just a couple of lines in the bill itself, but it's possible. And it's one of the things, there's some infrastructure that's in there. It would be helpful as we get more guidance to be able to look at it more carefully. But for maintenance purposes. That I don't see necessarily, though I do see that there's language in there that would allow us to be able to do infrastructure changes related to HVAC as it relates specifically to being able to make sure that air exchanges are good to prevent COVID. It's interesting. The courthouses are going through the same thing right now and spending a lot of money on HVAC system replacement, but hopefully COVID-19 is gonna be in our rear view mirror in the not too distant future. We all hope. Yes, Senator Ingalls. I heard through the conversation demolishing of some buildings. Are there a series of buildings that need to come down or they're in too much disrepair to maintain or could we expand on that a little bit? Sure, Sophie, do you wanna go ahead or would you like me to? You go ahead. You're probably more familiar with it than I am. So we are currently in the process of beginning a facilities master planning process for all of our facilities to make sure that we do a deep dive in conjunction with our strategic financial plan to understand exactly which buildings we need and where. That being said, we're already undergoing based on some work that was completed last year and evaluation and disposition of some existing facilities. So for example, on the Linden campus of NVU, a small property that's ancillary to the institution is currently under contract for sale. Just a very small little tiny residential building, that's one. And what we're doing is we're looking at facilities that are either underused and most likely underused as well as those that are probably the ones that would have either the most amount of deferred maintenance or would take the most amount of money to bring them into a state that would bring them into the next level and really begin to evaluate what that looks like. We're also taking into consideration the volume of need that we have on an individual institution. So how much occupancy do we have in the residence halls and how much occupancy are we likely to have moving forward? As the Vermont State Colleges continues to move forward over the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, the expectation of having huge numbers of residential 18 to 24 year olds is probably not going to happen. We know that we'll be happy with enrollment in those categories that remains relatively steady, but we do have excess occupancy that's available at several of our locations. And so really looking at that as a lens to say, is that a facility that might be good for a public-private partnership, as Chancellor Zidane noted earlier, regarding bringing in an outside business to come and be on our campus and work with us and give students internship opportunities and opportunities for growth? Or is it potentially a building that might be good for an outside entity to bring in low-income housing or other housing that might be better? Or if the facility is not good enough for any of those things, is it a facility that might be worth demolishing and reopening up some green space on the campus? So those are all things that we're looking at right now. We don't have the details specifically, but we've begun a fair amount of that work at both the NVU and VTC campuses. They actually began that work last year, looking outside with an outside partner to help evaluate the commercial opportunities of their buildings. One of the things that had been talked about, Sophie, this is before your ascendancy to the position, but there were several conversations going on about the shrinking student population in the need for these institutions to have good salespeople out of state. And I'm only using myself as an example, I came here from New Jersey because somebody made a good sales pitch as to why I should come. And I don't know what efforts are being done now at your level to try to make those sales pitches around the country, if not around the world. What is going on there in the face of a shrinking student population? Yeah, so we have been doing some marketing efforts. We've also been doing some marketing collectively to encourage people to consider the Vermont State College system. And then if they come to the landing page, they get directed to the individual institutions. Obviously admissions has been challenging due to the pandemic and the inability to show people around campus, et cetera. I think as part of doing a common accreditation, we will be looking at admissions and marketing will be two of the first areas that we'll be looking at and how best to reach out and attract other students. I think the reality is that we are in dealing with a very, very ruthlessly competitive market. So we are dealing with our neighboring states have made no secret of the fact that they are doing what they can to lure Vermont students out of state to their institutions by being able to offer them tuition at much greatly reduced rates. So that's been a challenge. We've been uncompetitive because of the historic level of state funding we've received in the past. So affordability is a really key issue for us in order to attract students. I mean, we often hear stories of students that want to come to us from out of state and as well as in-state but out of state students and we can't compete with what they can get from their either their state institutions or other institutions in the area. We do know that a number of colleges have gone out of business planning on growing their way out of their financial challenges. We recognize that the market for 18 to 22 year olds is not growing particularly in the Northeast. So we have to be realistic about what that could look like moving forward. So it doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing all we can to attract students from out of state and we certainly will be looking at strategies for doing that. But the other piece of that is we also need to do a better job of reaching out to populations that we haven't necessarily tapped the market on and I'm thinking particularly about adult learners. One of the things that really came out of the select committee report is that Vermont as a whole does a pretty good job of producing baccalaureate degrees where we really fall short compared to our neighbors and nationally is on the number of associate degrees and credentials and certificates that the workforce needs. So I think if we're thinking about growth of enrollment moving forward we really need to be thinking about serving all students not just the traditional 18 to 22 year olds. That is not to say that we've abandoned them though. No, no, no. We have not abandoned them. Well, it's important from, you know, many years ago I didn't know a whole lot about Vermont but it took somebody that did to end up in my neck of the woods and get me attracted. When I came here I was paying a lot more money for tuition than the Vermonter would be. So there is some rationale behind employing the very best salesman that you can to go out of state and around the world literally to attract people who are gonna come here and pay high dollars in order to do so. I recognize there are many obstacles to that but I hope the system is not taking a back seat with it or even putting it lower on the scale of priorities because I can't see the dynamics of Vermont changing if we're not bringing people here that may end up actually living here and in my case spending 37 years as a trial attorney that's the kind of job and the family that I brought to this environment I think is important for Vermont's vitality and I'm sure Russ will say that I shouldn't be here because I'm a flat lander anyway. But I was gonna say we fired that guy that brought him here but that's the side of the point. That's what I was gonna ask. Who's that guy that brought him here? He's gone, he's gone. Yeah, well we gotta get him and any females associated with that with the back. Thank you Russ. We are continuing to take really significant action out of state. The issue right now is obviously COVID and that has stymied our ability to be able to recruit out of state in person but we have extensive social media ad campaigns that I reach out of state really significantly and the great thing about social media is it really gets to the heart of where the students are living whether it's Spotify or YouTube or Twitter wherever our students are is where we're trying to make sure that our advertising is located and it can be hyper local to what they're interested in. So where it was great when you were recruited in New Jersey and clearly someone captured your attention we can do some of that same thing with some of our virtual advertising where we can get right to the here's the image of the thing that you are most interested in. It doesn't supplant our ability to be able to go in person and recruit as well though and I can tell you that our recruiting staff are anxious to get back out on the road and actually meet with students face to face because that's where they get a lot of their energy from. Do we offer? I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was just gonna say the other piece is that understanding that change was going to come back in the summer we had the three institutions that we're looking at a common accreditation for a couple of them were looking at negotiating a new contract with a vendor that does that helps with admissions. And so what we asked was that all three institutions work with the same vendor. And so that vendor is also in a position to help develop those strategies moving forward. They're getting familiar with each institution. And so we already kind of put that in place last summer that was one of the pieces as we thought looking ahead it didn't make sense to have each individual college hiring their own separate admissions consultant. It made much more sense to start getting those aligned. So those are the kinds of things that we've been trying to do being thoughtful as we look ahead at ways we can start working together on things. So we're again, the goal being to reduce the amount of competition between the colleges and work together collaboratively in attracting students. And again, we do recognize the value to Vermont's about out of state students because as you said, Senator Bennington, you come into the state, you fall in love with it then maybe you stay here, raise your family, you work here and that's something that we need. The state needs is to be attracting young people into the state as we get older and grayer. The rest of us do anyway while for the state moving forward. As a Vermont state college system, offer virtual degrees where people can attend without being here, they can get a degree remotely. Yeah, we do have a number of online degrees and NVU in particular has NVU online where we have degree programs that are wholly, this was pre-pandemic that were wholly online that students could do. And again, we actually had, I think it's like 75% of the students taking those programs were actually Vermonters but it would be a way for people from out of state to take those programs. There's again, very, very competitive market with Southern New Hampshire University but the key is trying to find those niche programs that the students are interested in that they can't get from SNHU or from a similar online provider. Well, and you hate to steal from a CCV but I could see where somebody, a single mom with kids at home would, that would benefit them to be able to obtain their education easier and less costly, less expense to them. So. Well, and CCV, the community college of Vermont even pre-pandemic, they were running almost 50% of their courses online. And again, they're very market oriented, very nimble, flexible and students were really asking for those online options. Again, it gives them the flexibility if they're working or anything else. With the pandemic, CCV has been entirely online and their enrollment has stayed steady even though community colleges around the US have seen a significant decline. They've been the one, all of higher ed's been affected but the community colleges have had the biggest drops in enrollment nationally. So it's, you know, to CCV's credit, they figured out a way to provide online programming very successfully to students. It has to be more cost effective for the Vermont State colleges before it's all said and done. I mean, you know, what do you have there? I mean, you don't have the infrastructure to support, I suppose, but that would be a cool thing to see more happen, I guess. So our online programs are very popular. As you can see, you know, the way that the community college has structured with 50% online activities pre-pandemic and then the ability for students to be able to continue with NVU online and also to even move into some of our master's degree programs that can be taken fully online. There is a tremendous value to it, to the learner. You can do it from home. It's easier to integrate into your work life, into your family life. You can do it at night on the weekend. You don't have to wait for a specific class period or drive to one of our academic centers or campuses and it is really great. It's also in some ways more cost effective in terms of the teaching costs. Though a lot of the infrastructure costs do remain the same. The cost of financial aid, the cost of producing the registration, et cetera. But any opportunity where it can be lower cost for the student and particularly when there can be a great pathway between our community college and any one of our other institutions is really great. We love to see that happen. I'm not gonna knock the direction of that but I will say that a student sitting in Monmouth County, New Jersey is not likely going to invest their dollars in a virtual environment in Vermont. And one of the things that is most important for colleges as well as the society of Vermont is that people learn to gather here and socialize, learn about the community. And in order for that to happen they have to have bed space when they come here. So your move in the direction of a virtual college system is certainly good for business purposes but one of the things we have to sustain is all this infrastructure that we have. We also need to have people, live bodies coming here to congregate and learn what Vermont is all about. So I'm gonna I guess put in a plug that if I was back in my high school guidance counselor's office the likelihood of me choosing a virtual degree program in Vermont would be pretty remote. I don't mean that it's fun, that's just literally saving. And I agree with that. I mean, I think the experience of but if you could open up more missions to people if you could open up more missions to people who wouldn't have the opportunity to come here and make it available. You know, I mean, you grow your base. You grow your base and you provide more more of a learning opportunity on a different level. I don't know where that would hurt. My bet right now is most of your virtual students are Vermonters and I don't wanna knock that ability for Vermonters to get that degree through a much more flexible system. I just don't wanna lose sight of the fact that we have another part of the system that includes infrastructure we have to support and the need to bring more folks here who are willing to become permanent Vermonters is still part of the process. I just don't want that part to be forgotten. It's not an either or I think these things they're going to just become more intertwined as we move forward and we've seen that already. We have faculty members this semester that are teaching that maybe in a classroom in Johnson and have students from Carselton appearing remotely via telepresence and vice versa. We have an archeology professor in Carselton who's teaching Johnson students. So I think, again, this is part of the expanding opportunities for students through doing this, making it easier for students to access the programs they're interested in in a variety of ways. So the in-person is not gonna go away. It's just gonna be complimented and enhanced by having the remote opportunities as well. So whether that's you're participating in real time in the classroom remotely or whether it's asynchronous where you can do it in the evenings and weekends. We just need to be flexible and make sure we're meeting students where students are and what they want rather than it being at our convenience, we need to figure out how to make it more convenient for them and meet their needs. So I learned about Johnson and Lyndon being able to work together so that if a student was at Lyndon, they could take courses at Johnson as well. Is that the plan for Carselton also? Right, and for Vermont Technical College too so that we're really expanding the opportunities for those students. Because again, going back to the earlier part of the conversation in terms of accreditation, when you've only got one geology professor or one political science professor, it's not a very robust and rich academic experience. It's gonna be better if you have access to faculty system-wide rather than just the folks that are based on your campus. So the goal is really to expand those opportunities for students. And back to your point again about the geology teaching of the day than teaching at night. To be able to have that online presence might allow to retain that class, that course that normally you wouldn't be able to have because you didn't have enough enrollment to do that. But if you could double dip in that area to keep that position employed, it just provides more opportunity. Well, it has many benefits because you're running the course. So for example, we have a math professor at Johnson who's teaching a course, or I don't know if it was this semester or last semester, but teaching a high level math course calculus three or whatever that normally would only have about eight students in the course. And he was teaching it in person synchronously. So he had students from elsewhere participating at the same time and then asynchronously. And he had 22 students in the class. So that's the kind of thing we need to be thinking about. So again, those upper level courses that otherwise we struggle to fill and are costly to run. And this was something that came out in the select committee's report. You know, we're running a lot of courses with five or fewer students in or 10 and fewer students in. And it's just not economic to do that. But again, if students don't have access to those courses, it delays their ability to graduate on time. It restricts their opportunities. So I think there's a real win-win here for students and for faculty too, that the faculty can have more students in their classes and the students can have access to more classes as well and then get through their programs on time. So they're not incurring additional costs to their education. So as legislators, we get tons of emails from constituents who have all kinds of magical solutions to the problems that are faced by the state colleges as well as virtually everything else you can think of in Vermont government. But I heard a couple of things I'm just gonna throw out there and see what your reaction is. One of your professors suggested that institutions be used on a much broader scale to interact with the community. And specifically the example that was given was that Linden should become a hub for all of the broadband system in the Northeast Kingdom. I don't know if anything like that is contemplated, but I'm curious as to that example, is that something that's being considered? Yeah, so we are thinking about floating hubs, ways to provide centers so students can come. So for example, if you lived in St. John'sbury but wanted to do a course through Castleton that you would be able to come to the Vermont, to the Linden campus to do that. We're certainly looking at creative ideas for how we can help support communities in really strengthening those town-gown relationships and figuring out ways. I mean, again, we, given our location, we are in these very rural counties that if we were to leave, that would be devastating to those local communities. So building those connections, I think is really, really important for us as we move forward. And we certainly would be interested in figuring out if there are other ways. We can serve the state. We do have a number of things out and out right now with critical occupations. I mean, really trying to make sure we're serving the state as well and meeting workforce needs. So there's a lot of different programs and ideas being explored right now, particularly with the potential additional money coming in from the federal government in terms of how we can really be fulfilling what it is the state needs us to be. And if that includes broadband in Linden, that's something we can think about. I do know last summer when the pandemic hit, we did team up with Velco to provide Wi-Fi hotspots on all our campus parking areas so that the local community members that didn't have access to good quality broadband at home were able to go onto our campuses and access broadband there. So, certainly anything we can do and broadband will be critical. Again, just feeding off what we were just talking about a few minutes ago in terms of access to programming, to have those options to be able to participate remotely, you're going to need to have good quality broadband. So that's obviously an issue that's very important to us. Do you have the expertise to become literally a provider of internet service to roll out to the last mile in the Northeast Kingdom and have Linden as the central hub for all of that? We have programs where we educate people that do that, but we would not ourselves, I don't believe be taking that on. But certainly VTC has programs to help train and provide the skills that people need to go out and whatever it is you do with broadband, lay it, whatever it is you do, but go out and make sure that we are reaching all those homes. So we're willing to support those and be a partner on any of those kinds of initiatives, but we ourselves would not be in the position of taking on doing that kind of work. Another constituent sent me a note saying that anyone who is put on the wait list at UVM should be automatically enrolled in the state college system. I don't know how you react to that. I'm more than happy to take anybody that's interested in coming to us. So we do know historically that there is certainly overlap with UVM to the extent that if UVM digs deep into their wait list, it definitely has an impact on enrollments for us and we've seen that in the past where they've struggled with enrollment. It does have a knock on impact for us. So I do believe that we do receive a number of students that have been wait listed at UVM do come on to the Vermont state college system. But again, we're largely open access institutions. So if they're on the wait list at UVM, I don't think they would have any difficulty finding a home at one of our colleges. Okay, Senator Mazza. I hear from time to time there could be a better relationship with UVM and state colleges. Is there anything, any seriousness of that issue because they've talked about it, said there could be a lot of working together and saving and benefiting from that. Any conversation ever held at UVM to kind of work together on issues? Yeah, so we do have a good working relationship with UVM. We've been thinking about ways to build on that moving forward. I think there was interest there from UVM as well. All of higher education is having to take a step back and really think about what they're doing and how best to do it. We've been talking to them about our libraries. We have CCV and Vermont Tech have a very successful virtual library and Castleton and NVU are thinking about how they can become part of that virtual library. But as part of that work, we reached out to UVM to see if there was a way in terms of subscriptions to electronic resources if we could share the costs of things like that. I think there's definitely room there. We do already work pretty closely with them on a number of things. And we're always open to having those conversations with them moving forward. If there are places that are mutually beneficial for both of us, we're more than happy to work with them on things like that. Committee, any other questions? Senator McCormick. Yeah. If you filled every dorm room, if every classroom was filled, if every course was fully subscribed, what is the capacity of the state college system today? Not what do you have, what could you accommodate? What do you have the physical presence to accommodate? And then what is the actual student population? I guess what I'm wondering is how much excess capacity do we have? But I'll let Sharon answer that. I mean, just quickly, I would say, residential capacity is one thing and that's relatively inflexible. But right now, again, with the ability to provide online instruction, our capacity to provide courses is pretty large. But I'll let Sharon follow up. So for our physical capacity to accommodate students based on residential capacity and physical capacity in our academic centers and campuses, it's about 13,000 students, which is about our peak in the last 15 years. At that point, we were pretty heavily subscribed. We were using facilities and residence locations on off-campus locations, renting hotels and other locations to do overflow for our residence halls. We're running right around 10,000 students or so right now in the Vermont State Colleges. Now that is a pandemic number and that's about 1,000 less than it was the year before. But we know that our residential capacity is uneven at our facilities. So depending on the institution, residential capacity pre-pandemic was running around 85 or 90% in some locations and around 50% in other locations. So it depended on the specific location, what that residential occupancy looked like. But as Chancellor Zedatni notes, with online education and with looking at adult learners as an option, the headcount is actually as a productive number is less an important number to us as is the actual net revenue that comes from dealing with our students. Because that's really what we need. That's the productive number that helps us cover our infrastructure costs. And it's one of the reasons why we know that looking at the size of our footprint as the volume of students in New England and in the state of Vermont has changed those high school graduates, those who are most likely, and it's not just New England, it's really all of the Northeast. That volume of students has declined over the last 10 years and will continue to decline for until at least 2026 and maybe even until 2032, that we aren't unlikely to see us go back to those peaks at least in the foreseeable future from what we're looking at if you look at live birth right now. So while we would love to say that we'll get back to that physical capacity peak, there are dangers with just looking at the head count number because we can over discount to the point where we make no net revenue off of them, which is what has happened in some of the institutions that have closed in New England in the last few years. And we don't want to be in that position. I'm just wondering how much, is this how much excess real estate do we have? And it sounds like like 2000 in terms of residential, we got 2000 rooms going out like that. Not every student is residential, right? Not every student is residential, remember about half of those students are community college of Vermont. So we probably have excess capacity of somewhere on the order of about 100 to 150 rooms across the system. Now that's split across multiple buildings in multiple locations, it's something that we really need to dig into much more carefully so that when we come forward to you the next time, we're coming forward to you with a full plan that we can say matches to our strategic financial plan. And since we know this building matches this strategic financial reason and we can marry them up and you can be confident that all the math is done behind it. We just know it needs to happen and we're at the beginning of the biennium. That's the part that's challenging to us. So we need to shrink. We need to shrink. We need to shrink. How many of our buildings are white elephants? Well, we've only evaluated on two of our campuses and we're told that the commercial market for most of our buildings because of what they're structured like are mostly white elephants. Because they're commercial, because they're educational. And if you look at the sale of the property of in the state of Vermont that we've seen based on the closure of college campuses it's pennies on the dollar if you were to sell them. And that's why we're really hoping that there's a way that we can seek public-private partnerships where we can really look at a way to be able to reconfigure a building to be able to be used to bring in an outside entity perhaps a nonprofit or another organization that can come in and marry with our actual educational programs where we can bring internships and live business opportunities on our campuses and create a real pipeline for students not only to complete their education but from the first day that they walk in be able to see a real life reason for the education that they're receiving. It's one of the reasons why the education programs work so well because you are in the education classrooms from your very first weeks of starting your education program which is really exciting. So I think it's something we're really excited about as we move forward. I mean, I could see a use for incubator buildings to for upstart businesses or flex office spaces and some of those buildings because you are right, they are white elephants to be used for any other setting for any type of commercial aspect. I could see where you would run into problems with that being in the business I'm in. So the possibilities are exciting. It's just we're not quite there yet. Committee, any other questions? I'll close with one question. Catherine, what is that mountain range behind you? I knew you would ask that and I don't actually know. I just know this is a picture from the VSC files and I really liked it and thought I would not subject you to my home office mudroom today. I'm just trying to decide whether those are the white mountains in the very far distance. I'm fairly certain this is a Vermont landscape. It is a Vermont State College's file photo. Well, I do know it's a Vermont landscape that much I can tell you. Like Catherine, that was a background also. All right, even the far distant mountains, that's that almost looks like- The far distant mountains might be the white mountains. And I believe this was actually from a series of photos that were taken by Linden students. So it's quite possible. Those are the white mountains. It's quite possible that they're- Those are the white mountains in the background. That's how. All right, ladies, thank you very much for coming to join us this afternoon. I'm sure we'll be hearing from you again. I will say that one of the consistent themes in this committee with the state college system is that there has been a constant desire to see a plan. Personally, I'm feeling a little more comfortable that there is a plan underfoot and we wish you the best of success. So thanks for coming.