 So our agenda today is, as I said, to talk about our progress so far in transformation. So we'll do a little bit of an introduction, but really the core things we'll cover are sort of why we're here and kind of where we are. Talk about our goals for transformation. Talk about the scope of the work that we're doing for transformation and how we're planning to organize that work. We're also now kicking off some of the teams and so we'll talk a little bit about the teams and how we have structured the teams. We'll also talk a little bit about how we've selected folks to be part of the teams. And that doesn't mean that these are the only teams that are happening, but we needed to get started on some of this transformation work so that we can make sure that we're ready to go live when we need to go live and get the hard work of transformation done because it will extend out over a long period of time. We'll also talk about the project management approach that we're taking and kind of talk about progressively how we're getting started with that approach. And then importantly, we'll also talk about governance and decision-making and how we're going about that for these specific projects. And then we'll talk about next steps. So those are the things that we're planning to cover. All right, so why are we here? Well, in the most immediate way, we're here because we've been given a mandate to transform from the legislature and the Board of Trustees. But as with everything we do, transformation included, we're really here to deliver on the mission of the Vermont State Colleges. And really that is for the benefit of Vermont and Vermonters to provide affordable, high-quality, student-centered and accessible education. And I wanted to put this up here in particular because we talk a lot about what it means to be student-centered. And for us, what that means as we go through transformation is that we try and think of everything from the student's perspective. And really what that means about how we organize our work, what that means about the processes and systems that we have in place to support the work and how we really work to execute on the mission and vision of the institution. So that's really what's at the core of why we're transforming is that we need to do a better job of how we're organizing ourselves and to do it more efficiently and sustainably to get that work done. So that's the why we're here part of the process. In terms of the specific goals of transformation, our goal is to bring together the strengths of VTC, Castleton and NBU into a new combined entity. And with that, what that will help us to do is to put the institutions of Vermont State Colleges on a firm and sustainable financial footing. We've been given a goal of removing $5 million of deficit each year over five years. And that deficit reduction can be accomplished in two different ways. One is by increasing revenue, but the other is by reducing costs. And so we're looking to put together a good foundation for the system that will enable both of those things as we move forward. And as I said, really what the goal here is is to lay a foundation for the future of higher education in Vermont. And the strategic goals that we have behind that are obviously high quality, making sure that the education is affordable and a good value for students, that it's accessible and that we're able to do that in a way that fosters diversity, inclusivity and equity in the programs and the way that those programs are offered. We also wanna make sure that the education that we provide is relevant. And to do that, we need to constantly innovate and focus on the future of learning and the future of work. And so this is a complex challenge is to sort of reinvent what we're doing in higher ed, but to do it in a way that's putting us in a place where we can be innovative and create really a culture of innovation where we always are trying to strive to do things better and improve what we're providing for students. So those are the goals of transformation. I'm gonna pause here just to see if there are any questions. Looks like we have a hand raised from President Collins. I don't think so, I didn't raise my hand. Okay, well, thank you. Sorry. Any other questions or comments before we move ahead? Looks like we have a question in the chat. So the question in the chat is when we talk about having a student-centered focus, how much student input is taken into account and are we talking to current students as well as prospective students? And that's an excellent question and certainly something that we've been planning into the process, but knowing that we need to continue to gain input, not just from students, but other stakeholders. But you may have noticed in a recent transformation update and I think most of you are probably aware since you are attending this session and found the link that we do a bi-weekly communication from the chancellor about transformation and provide an update of where we are. And one of the things and one of the recent updates that we talked about was putting together a student advisory board or student advisory panel. And our intent is to be doing that in the fall as students are coming back to campus and we'll give them opportunities to self-nominate themselves and also to participate then in reviewing the work that we're doing on transformation and also providing feedback and input on things like branding and other things as well. So we definitely have an intent to include students into the design process. And I'll talk a little bit in a few moments about kind of the sequence of the work that we're doing. We're kind of launching into discovery right now which is to understand what we're doing and look at best practices and those sorts of things. But in particular, as we get to the design work that's one of the stages where we feel like student input is really important. We don't have a mechanism in place yet to really include feedback from students that are not yet or prospective students that are not yet part of the process but we are gonna be doing some discovery work in the branding research work that we're doing where we will engage with not just students but prospective students and get feedback from them as well. One more question in the chat, Wilson. Are we also talking to and thinking about all types of students, full-time, part-time, on-campus, commuting, non-matriculated, non-degree, et cetera? That's an excellent question and the answer is yes. And I think that one of the things that you'll see when we get into the discussion on teams and who's part of the teams and so on is we're making sure to have a good cross-section of people representing different institutions and also representing different work that's going on across the institutions of the system. And many of the folks on the teams work with different types of students, whether those be non-traditional adult students or what some people call post-traditional students as well as part-time and full-time and those sorts of things. So we are really trying to be intentional about taking into account the needs of different types of students as we go through this process and it's gonna be an interesting balance that we go through here because one of our objectives that we'll talk about is to try and take some of the complexity out of the processes that we use to serve students but to maintain enough complexity in there that we can serve different types of students with the different types of needs that they have. So that will be a work in progress but that's definitely one of the guiding principles that we have going into this work. Okay, I have one more. Will you be addressing the $5 million deficit reductions strategy? The past has shown that this has fallen heavily on faculty and staff. This is not sustainable. Yeah, we'll talk a little bit about what some of that work might entail. I think that as critical as that goal is in both the short-term and the long-term our intent is to take action based on the work that we're doing around these core processes of things that we need to serve students and obviously faculty are involved in that and staff are involved in that work to figure out how to best structure what we're doing to serve the students. And certainly as part of that though we will be talking about administrative operations and some of the efficiencies that we'll be looking to gain in that but the work as I said is just starting at this point and we don't have a clear roadmap yet in terms of where that $5 million is gonna come from but that will come out as we develop the work and develop the longer-range budgets and plans as we go into this work. No more questions in the chat. All right, so in terms of the scope of work some of this may be self-explanatory for people but we felt it was important to really put it down as we're charging these teams with going ahead and doing the work. And that is what is in scope is certainly to change campus configurations to better serve students and programs. We need to look for opportunities to co-locate and consolidate services and programs and we need to look for opportunities to shift costs and resources to more efficiently provide the experience to students, both the non-academic and the academic student experience. In terms of what's out of scope, we know that we can't continue to do the status quo in a lot of places. Number one, just because the complexity that we have across all the different systems in which we operate is hard to sustain and very difficult to change without addressing some of that complexity. We also are not planning to close any specific campuses and we also are not expecting additional resources from the legislature. The legislature has given us a specific amount up front that they intend for us to use for transformation and that's our goal is to work within that amount that they've given us. It doesn't mean that we won't have other things down the road that we need additional resources for but that's the guidelines that we're using for today. The other thing that we felt was important just to put out there is that we need to get away from the idea that we need to have customized business processes at each of the different locations and campuses and as we look ahead to the transformation work we know that we're gonna get the best quality and sustainability out of consolidating and aligning processes where we can so that we have a single way of doing things. It doesn't mean we won't have a flavor for this kind of student or that type of program but the way that it's constructed today and architected within our systems is not sustainable. So those are the things that are in scope and out of scope for this work and I'll just pause here in case anybody has any questions on that. Okay, so in terms of getting started coming in and taking a look at what's already been happening with transformation it's clear that a lot of transformation work has already been going on. A lot of the some of the teams are further along in this work than others but really our intent in coming in from a project management approach and putting a little bit more structure in place is really to support and not replace the work that's being done but as I talked about earlier it's also to make sure that we're taking a student-centered approach which means that we need to take a cross-functional approach. Most students when they interact with the institutions are doing it in a way where it's not clear to them that they're dealing with this department or this function often they're just trying to get their problem solved or their plan created or other things like that and those interactions involve often touches to many different departments and many different functions. And so as we've been thinking about the transformation we've been trying to organize the work where possible in a cross-functional way that takes advantage of those linkages and ensures that we're not missing any dependencies that are important for us to manage throughout the process. So to do that we're launching these cross-functional teams that are aligned to each of the core processes and I'll talk about what those four things are in a minute. We're also introducing two key project management tools so that we can gain some consistency and discipline about how we're managing these different projects. It's tempting to jump in with a lot of different project management tools and schedules and timelines and time sheets and all of that sort of thing. But before we introduce too much complexity in the process we're trying to get clarity on a few things so that we can move ahead in a disciplined way. And then the other thing that we're being very cognizant of is the need to sequence the work load so that the key leaders across all functions and that includes faculty, it includes staff and others across the institutions. As we do the work there's additional things that need to get done and we need to make sure that we have the capacity to do that. And in a lot of cases that means sequencing the work or being clear on scope about where we can and can't make progress at each stage. So one of the things I just wanted to highlight here a decision that we made is that really for the first year of transformation we're gonna be focusing on the work to combine the student experience and academic operations for the new combined entity. And that doesn't mean that we won't include folks from CCV on the teams because in many cases there are some of the subject matter experts that we need to think through how we're using the systems and other things. But for the most part they're there to help us identify areas that could share in commonality of process and then also to just share best practices about how they may be using the systems to support students or faculty in a particular way. So that's kind of the priorities for us in terms of getting started. And I just wanted to pause here for a moment if there's anybody that wanted to raise their hand or have any questions specifically related to that slide. What does NCE mean? That's an excellent question and I apologize if I jumped ahead on that. NCE is just a shorthand for new combined entity. I think most of you are aware that as we combine VTC and Castleton and NVU we're actually creating a new university. And so with that we're still trying to do some work to identify the right name and brand identity and other things that will be put forward for the new combined entity. But in the slides where you see NCE that's what we're referring to. Rich go ahead and ask your question. So I hate to keep beating this drum. So what does it mean then to focus on the student experience for the new combined entity without talking to students? I guess I just wanna, I'm trying to understand what the student center focus means. Yeah, that's a good question. And I think that we're trying to ensure that we're using the voice of students where it's the most useful. In my past work, keeping students at the center of the work has been important in almost everything that we do and yet keeping them involved in a sustained way over a long period of time is complicated. So we're trying to make sure and I think through the student advisory council will make sure that we can plug them in and get them involved in how we're designing this work going forward. What we mean by student experience is really the non-academic experience that they have. And it involves things like admissions, it involves enrollment, it involves student and residence life, it involves athletics and other aspects of their college or university experience. And we have a lot of work to do even before we get too involved with students in helping with the design to understand even what we're doing today. And often even with the same objective and in mind to serve students, we've done it three or four different ways. And so really the discovery work that we're engaged in now is to get some clarity around sort of what are all those pieces before we get into detail about how we're gonna design it to meet the specific needs of students. So that's the philosophy that we're taking in this approach. And we'll obviously plug students in as quickly as we can but we felt it was important to engage students as they're coming back to campus and coming back to school because that's when they're gonna be most able to provide clear and meaningful input. And the other thing, Rich, I'll just throw out there is if there are other ways that you think we should be collecting student input or there's things that you think are important about the student input that we need to make sure that we're doing as we go. I definitely invite you to share those with me or with others on the team. Cause I think the thing that we wanna make sure is that we're doing it in a way that we're taking into account how students wanna interact and the experience that they're trying to gain from the institutions. All right, so the scope of transformation and if you watched the Board of Trustees presentation or other scenarios where I've given this portions of this discussion before, we've talked about kind of the scope and how it does cross all of these cross-functional core process areas. So the four areas that we're focused on right now are student experience, academic operations, administrative operations, and workforce development. And so those are all the different aspects where we're putting together a core team to really understand again what processes we're currently engaging in, what are some best practices in this area that we should take a look at and then incorporating feedback from other stakeholders into how we actually design the work that we do. And then in the process of doing that, also make sure that we design the systems to support that work and configure the systems in a way that is both efficient within the systems perspective, but also able to adapt to the specific needs of students and programs. So that's the work that we're engaging in at kind of the highest level. Moving to the next slide. In terms of selecting teams, so how do we sort of organize ourselves around this work that needs to be done across these four areas? And as I mentioned before, one of the things that we were particularly focused on was making sure that we had good representation. It's tempting to wanna make sure that everybody in the organization and across the system is involved in the transformation and we all are to some extent, but we wanted to make sure that the teams themselves were of a size that we could really get some hard work done, but at the same time wanted to make sure that we had appropriate representation across the institutions that were gonna be coming together as well as the different functional experts that we needed to have be part of the process. So we really wanted to make sure that we had that right representation across the different institutions and the right functional expertise. We also wanted to make sure that we made clear to the people serving on the teams that they have a dual role. They're not only representing their institution and their function on these transformation teams, but they're also then a full participant on these teams and able to share back with their institution and their function some of the work that's going on to again gain input and feedback as we go. But within all of that, we also have to make sure that we're aware that we're doing this in the context of the fact that we're continuing to work as existing transformations while we're doing, but existing institutions while we're doing the transformation. And so that just means that we need to be aware of people's capacity and where necessary provide some additional capacity to different people and departments to make sure that we can accomplish the work that we need to do. I would say if you're not already part of a team, there's gonna be other chances to plug in and have a chance to have input. As I mentioned, with students and others we're gonna have specific groups assembled, but also transformation itself is gonna be a long process and more people will have the opportunity to participate as we go. Yeah, I have a question, comment here, Wilson. This seems to be repackaging the same old methodology, make the cuts in staff and faculty positions first. Cutting these student facing positions is most disruptive to the educational experience of students. I still don't understand how this is student driven. Where's the same critical eye at administrative positions? Okay, well, I'll address this the best I can and if others have a thought on it. I'm not sure exactly what methodology has been used in the past. What I will say is that we've been intentional in constructing these teams to not assume that there's any sort of org chart implication to these teams. These teams are being organized around doing the work. And so there's not an intentional element to say, okay, we need to cut the people here or add the people there or other things like that. We're trying to understand what work needs to be done, how we need to organize that work. And then we'll get to the point of determining what's the best way for us to structure ourselves to get that work done. So it may not feel like that to people. And I guess I'd be curious if there are specific things that you think are driving that. I think one of the things that I'm concerned about and I know a number of people are concerned about is some people make the decision to leave and we need as many people as we can to be part of this transformation work. And if anything, we need to add some capacity to get this work done. So we will definitely be dealing with administrative positions and how to organize administrative work to get this work done. We'll also be looking at staff, we'll be looking at faculty, we'll be looking everywhere to make sure that we're structuring the work to provide the best student experience and the best academic experience. So I think it's too early to know exactly how that's gonna play out in terms of staff and faculty at this point. Yeah, I guess I would just add that, I mean, there hasn't been any determination about termination of positions or cuts of positions at this point. Obviously we recognize that there will be impacts down the road. Again, at this point, we are seeing a fair amount of attrition and we're trying to cope with that as best we can to make sure that as Wilson was referring to before that the work that needs to be done to keep the institutions up and running continues while we're also in the process of transforming. So there is no plan at this point to be cutting staff or faculty position. So I'm not sure where that's coming from. This is, that's not what these project teams are going to be doing. That's not what they're focused on as I think Wilson explained. Okay, I have another question. So all the team members have been invited to participate. Are the names of the people serving on the teams going to be available? Absolutely, so that's actually gonna be the next slide, Martha, so I appreciate you asking that question. And as I mentioned before, we're gonna be assembling a core team and sub teams for each of the four core processes. The only two that we've launched so far are student experience and academic operations because those in many cases define the work of the other administrative operations group and then workforce development will also be coming along but we're in the process still of completing workforce 2.0 and so that will be coming at a later time but it is a high priority to get it started as well but what I am able to share with you is the structure for the student experience and the academic operations. And as I indicated before, the folks that are on these teams have kind of a dual role. One is to serve on the team but also then to make sure that they're representing their institution and function as well as communicating back to their institution and function as we go and complete this work. So this is the student experience team structure. The core team is in the middle and that's sort of the coordinating group that helps to set the priorities, helps to set the overall scope of the work that's getting done and then helps to provide direction to the sub teams that will be helping us to do discovery around the different processes that support the work as well as the design and development work once we get to those stages. So as an example, some of these teams are a little bit farther along than others. There's already a brand identity team that's working and preparing to get involved in some research and some listening sessions across a wide variety of stakeholders, et cetera. So there's work underway already there but in most cases, the core teams now are sort of establishing their charter, establishing their priorities and then we'll be kicking off the sub teams here as over the next couple of weeks. So I can read this question in the chat. How has the decision made as to the makeup of the athletics work group? It seems glaring that the athletic directors from Lyndon and Johnson were not included in the team and in fact, nobody from within the Lyndon athletic department is included. In terms of discovery, Lyndon and Johnson have already navigated the waters of operation, separate operations, separate NCAA athletic departments within the same institution and experience that would seem valuable to bring to the table. Speaking from Lyndon's perspective, over 40% of the incoming class consists of recruited student athletes. So that is also an important perspective to have at the table as the work goes forward. I can respond to that. So again, there is some turnover in the athletics departments at Johnson and Lyndon at the present time. So Jonathan Davis has been identified to represent NVU. This is a team that will likely be expanding. As you can see, there are not that many folks on it. So I think as Wilson was explaining, some teams are further along than others. And again, these are not set in stone, these teams. There may well be other people at it. There may be people for whatever reason, switching out. But this is where we currently are at. But we do recognize that from the athletics departments at NVU. So we are aware of that issue and that's why Jonathan is currently listed as being on that team. And I would also say just in discussions about this that student residence life is a very broad area as well, as well as athletics. And as Sophie said, our intent was to sort of put some initial team members together. And then as they begin work, we'll be expanding the membership of those teams to bring in expertise in certain areas where we know we need to address different approaches and different ways of doing the work across different campuses and different institutions. So more to come on those. And you'll see that at the bottom of each of these team slides, there's a date and time of sort of, when it was most recently updated. And we do expect that as we go through this work, partly as a function of how the work progresses and we need different kinds of expertise at different times. But also we will have some difference in who's on which team from different institutions as we go through the academic year and the workflows that the institutions change as well. So let's move on to academic operations. And again, this is a similar approach. We've got a core team that's helping us to set the priorities here. And then as we go, then we'll be convening some of these other teams to help put definition to some of the discovery and some of the design and development work that we undertake as we go through this process. Many of you, if you're part of the faculty or you're part of the academic organizations at your institution, you'll know that there's already a lot of work going on and a lot of the complex work that needs to sort of precede all of this is the program array work that's going on over the summer. So you see at the top of the slide there, we've got the program array work groups as well as the academic governance planning group that are gonna be providing input into this process as well. And those groups are already formed and work is already happening this summer. But as we go into a lot of this work then, it's about how we're structuring ourselves and structuring the work to get to the new combined entity program array and then how we're structured to support that with different services for faculty, service for students and advising and academic support, et cetera. Question, when will faculty receive updates regarding this academic optimization work? And I see that my team member there, Yasmeen is here and she's the lead for this academic operations core team but also very involved in the program array work. So if you don't mind, Yasmeen, I'll let you answer that question. Sure, and thanks Lisa for asking it. So the deadline for the summer working groups to put forward their proposals, which is really part of the discovery phase in project management world is August 9th. And what we're planning to do is sort of do a presentation back out to the group that anyone can attend that will on August 16th to sort of share the results of that work. And I believe the academic governance planning group is also trying to get their first stage work done as well to be able to share at that meeting. So August 16th is our goal for that. Thanks, Yasmeen. So in addition to those teams that we just took a look at, there were a few, what I would call sort of project management related roles that we need to fill as we go through this work. Cause a lot of this work isn't just understanding what we're doing but it's also designing new processes and ways of doing things. So there's really four roles that we're adding to this work to ensure that we can keep things moving smoothly and that we get to the end result that we're looking for. So obviously, project manager is one of the key roles and I'm obviously serving in that capacity. But we also are gonna be adding a business and process to analyst role that really helps the teams get to an understanding of what the current processes are and how to optimize those and consolidate those into a single process. We're also engaging a business intelligence lead, somebody that really makes sense of the data that we have across the organization and how that data interacts with the different processes that we have, how we collect the data as part of the process and how we use the data coming out of the process is really important for us to understand and having common definitions for the data across the organization. So a lot of that work is yet to be done but now is the time to do it as we're really getting down into the details of the process and the systems to support the process. And then finally, we have a financial analyst role that will help us to evaluate the alternatives and options that we have of structuring this work and really getting to how do we invest in the right places to make this work as effective as possible and ensure that we have the resources deployed in the right places for the students and faculty and others that are gonna be doing this work. So in terms of the work itself and the process we're gonna use to get from point A to point B and C and beyond is a stage gate process and for those familiar with the project management world there's a lot of different ways to approach the work and structuring the work but for an institution like ours or a set of institutions like ours, a stage gate process works well because there's so many different stakeholders and the work is very complex and involves a lot of specialized work and getting the work done. So the way a stage gate process works is as you go through each stage, the teams work on their approach, they work on documenting their proposals or things that they're doing and then when they get to the end of that stage they get together with the stakeholders and sponsors and say, okay, here's where we've gotten to here's what we're doing, are we ready to move to the next stage? So that's kind of the way a stage gate process works. And so the five stages that every project will go through is a discovery phase, a design phase, a development phase and a launch phase and then we'll have a review phase at the end where we learn from what we've done and can take that forward into our next cycle of innovation and change. And so as we go through discovery which is the phase we're really kicking off now it's really trying to understand what it is that we do, how do we do it, what could we do, what are some other evidence-based best practices we could use in doing this work and supporting students and faculty, et cetera. And then we'll obviously document that and use that then as information moving forward to really the design phase where we have to come together and say, okay, based on what we know, based on what we've learned, here's how we're gonna design our processes and systems to support the work. And then once we get through that phase it's really doing the development work often very technical or specialized work that needs to actually do the development work and then we'll be ready to launch. And so it may seem like a long process but as you get into the work each of these stages goes pretty quickly. And so as the project manager what we're really trying to do is to make sure that we understand what are the interdependencies of the different teams and where do processes intersect? So for example, as the student experience team is defining the admissions process and how that should work and other things they'll also need information from academic operations in terms of the program array and other program information that students will need to make the decision about attending our institutions. And so that's the work that needs to happen sort of in between the teams and that's what we're gonna be working on aligning as we go throughout this process but this is the overall sort of high level schema of how that all works and the different stakeholders and sponsors will stay up to date as it goes but we'll have the opportunity to each of the stage gates to have good visibility into what's happening and what's going on. And to ensure that we have good communication about all of these things there's two project management tools that we're starting with. And that's not to say we won't do more in the way of project plans and timelines and all of those things and sort of behind the scenes or within the project management area but the two big documents that we're expecting the teams to take on right away are a team charter so we can be clear on the purpose of the team the membership of the team what the key objectives and priorities are what are the deliverables and making sure that we're putting a good set of direction out there for these teams to work on and that they're also able to have a clear understanding of what's in scope and what's out of scope as they engage in this work. The charters also include things like guidelines and norms for the team to use for decision making and other things like that but it's really just essential to have these teams have a clear expectation of where they're going. Then the second document that we're implementing also is a project status dashboard and that's an opportunity for each of the teams every couple of weeks to put forward information about what's been accomplished what are the priorities for the next period how are things going so far? Are there any things that need to be addressed? Are there any questions that need to be answered or decisions that the sponsors or stakeholders need to make in order for the team to move forward? And so as I said those will be prepared every couple of weeks and then shared with the sponsors and stakeholders. So even between stage gate meetings we'll have an opportunity to make sure that there's good communication and that we have visibility to how things are going. Now you can see there's sort of a red yellow green rating on how we're doing on each of the projects and each of the subtasks and deliverables and from experience I'll tell you that teams have a hard time sort of embracing the red yellow green because they want everything to be green but one of the things we're really reinforcing to the teams is that what we really need is transparency around what's going well and what's not going well and if we can understand where we have challenges and where we have big rocks that need to get moved that helps us then to make sure we've got the right resources deployed and that we have the right contingencies in place for things that may not be going as planned. So any questions initially about those two tools? And once we start getting some of these completed then those will be available so people can see what those things look like, okay? So as I mentioned early on too it's not just the charters and the dashboard but the other thing that we are being explicit on in each of the charters is the governance structure for the teams and each team's governance structure might be slightly different. This is sort of a generic example but what's important to recognize on these teams is that this is a chance for people who are actually doing the work and understand how the work needs to get done to debate different options, come up with solutions and then put those solutions forward to the stakeholders and the sponsors for approval. In most cases, the teams really are not the ones deciding how we're gonna do things but they're putting forward the plans and suggestions. In some cases, the team will put forward a couple of different options for the stakeholders and sponsors to debate but it's really getting comfortable with your role as a team and realizing it's your responsibility to be able to both have your team hat on as well as your functional institution hat on as you're sort of debating the different options and putting forward the recommendations. We have a question. We have teams, sub teams, sub sub teams. At what level do people have use these tools, submitting forms? I probably didn't read that right. I think the question was, do all the sub teams and teams need to use these forms in this process? And what I would say is we want all the core teams and most of the sub teams to be using these tools and the process as we go forward. Now, there are some work groups that are not the ones that are going to do the work and I won't call them teams because they're groups that have formed sometimes organically or over some period of time to deal with different sorts of topics. And those work groups may be consulted on different things and may provide input but they don't necessarily need to operate as a cross-functional team with a charter, et cetera. But we do need enough visibility to the work that's going on at the sub team level to have a clearer sense of what's happening overall with the core process team. So we are going to be putting these in place and it will take us a while before we get everyone to the same place. But even with some teams that have been operating for a while, I think there's some ambiguity around are we doing this for the new combined entity or are we doing this for our existing institutions? And so getting clear on the purpose for each team and kind of what the charge is is an important part of the process. And I and others will be helping to work with the sub teams to kind of get some of that stuff in place. It doesn't mean we can't get started on some of the work but we need to make sure that we're being disciplined enough that we're not creating rework for ourselves or a lack of communication where we need to have better communication. So what are the next steps? We now have a student experience core team and an academic operations core team that have had a couple of meetings and really over the next meeting. So this week we're really planning to sort of finalize the initial version of our charters and get started on the work. And the work at this point is to establish a timeline and really understand the deliverables for each stage so that we can plan our workout over the next, several months and then begin to define the core cross functional processes and sub processes so that we can do the discovery work most immediately because that's really where we are is needing to figure out what's happening and what are we doing across our different institutions so we can in the next stage define a common approach. And as part of that we're doing some research to determine best practices and other things as we go. So our goal this week is to get the charters initially drafted for those two groups and then begin providing some guidance to the sub teams and convening the sub teams to do the discovery work related to their area of expertise. So if you're on a sub team I would watch for communications over the next week for those teams to get kicked off as well. And then for those of you who aren't on the teams or even if you are on the teams kind of the next steps to keep in mind are definitely stay up to date on the bi-weekly transformation update communications periodically visit the transformation page on the BSC website. And then definitely connect with your peers at your institution or function who are participating on the teams provide input and feedback when engaged and definitely keep coming to events like this and other places. I'm certainly available for people to connect with if you have specific thoughts or suggestions. And as I said, I think it was in response to Rich's question. If you have thoughts or ideas about how to get a particular group of students or others involved in providing input and feedback I would definitely encourage you to reach out and make that suggestion because we don't always have the right answers but we certainly are trying to organize this work in a way where we get as much input as we can in a constructive way and can really put things in place for students and faculty and other stakeholders as we go. I have a question in the chat. What is being used as the best practice standard? Yeah, that's a good question. And I would say we haven't set out a particular standard I think we would like our best practices to be evidence-based and that there's a lot of people trying a lot of different things out there but they don't always get measured as to how effective they are. There won't always be an objective standard out there of past evidence. So in some cases, and this may be true even of later optimization stages but we may need to pilot some things and see how they work. We may need to put together our own research to try and determine what's the right way to approach a specific problem. And I know that there's a lot out there for example in scholarship of teaching and learning about different approaches to delivery and different approaches to teaching across different modalities, et cetera. But some is more evidence-based than others and I think we need to sort of come to terms with that. We don't have a particular standard as it relates to that. But we are gonna have some frameworks in place as we go. So for example, we talked at the kickoff team for academic operations about needing to have a stronger diversity, equity and inclusion lens on how we're doing this work. And so we're putting together a work group that's gonna help us develop a framework that we can use to evaluate some of the proposed processes and practices that we'll put in place as we go. So I think there's definitely gonna be an opportunity to look and say, okay, from this lens, how does this fulfill best practices? How does it fulfill accessibility and affordability and all of the different objectives that we have as part of transformation? And so as we do the stage gate meetings, that's when we'll be able to evaluate how well we've matched the different frameworks that we'll be using. But again, in my earlier comment, if you have a particular standard that you think is effective for best practices, we'd love to hear it. So that concludes the specific slides and things that we wanted to share. But again, now's the chance to ask questions. I would also just highlight that I have two other open office hours, virtual office hours sessions this week. I believe one's on Wednesday and one's on Friday. So if you wanna ask questions and get answers in a more informal setting, those are open and available. And I think the specific links of those were in the last transformation update as well. But do we have any other questions today? How's the time to raise your hands if you have any or go ahead and put them in the chat? I saw somebody raise their hand and then took it back down. I'm giving this opportunity to put it back up. Ask your questions. I have one in the chat. What models have you drawn on to structure this transition? Seems complex. Yeah, no, that's a good question. And I would say it does seem complex and it's complex in part because the work we do as academic institutions and higher ed is complex work. What I will say is that there's a lot of different project management methodologies and ways of structuring this work. And I won't go into all the details of different things that we considered. I think sort of the fashionable thing these days is to do things in agile project management methodology, which is more incremental in that you kind of are building things as you go. And that was really not the right approach for a project of this magnitude. But as we get further into the process of transformation and have an initial foundation established, we may in fact move to a more agile approach to how we optimize and improve our processes because it's a little bit more nimble. It's a little bit more effective from a sort of culture of innovation perspective. But the task that we're trying to take on today to combine different universities into one and then align the resulting university with the community college and the all the systems to support it and everything is a complex task and a complex operation. And I've been involved in projects like this in the past and this sort of a cross-functional approach ensures that we don't have disconnects between functions. I think often organizations try and address change in functional silos. And while that may be very quick and efficient from the perspective of addressing a functional need, it doesn't necessarily address a cross-functional need. And also is that much higher risk of having then disconnects across functions and in particular with the systems. And so in many cases we're doing one of the hardest things which is trying to redesign processes while also needing to design and redesign systems as we go. But we're not implementing a new ERP system or something else that would add that much more complexity to what we're doing. We're trying to work within systems that we have and optimize and gain some consistency. So we're fortunate in that our institutions already use a common student information system and marketing system and some other things. So it's not so much implementing new systems that is aligning to consistent processes within existing systems. Not seeing any other, oh, nope, here's one. When you consider student experience, how do you plan to assess the value of what for lack of a better term would be called school spirit, a sense of community and love of place? Love of place. Yeah, no, I think that, and that's something we've already started to talk about is how do we build that in a way that not only creates a strong student experience and into the future, but also honors the student experience and the identities of the institutions that have come before and I think that sort of addressing that balance and then also making sure that we really have a compelling mission and vision for the new combined entity is really at the core of what we're trying to do to create that identity, create that sense of belonging, create that sense of engagement on the part of students. And so one of the things that, you know, it's within the academic operations area, but one of the things that we're actively working on right now is trying to get some definition around the mission and vision for the new combined entity so that that can serve as a guidepost as to how we build that experience, both the non-academic experience as well as the academic experience to create something that's unique. And I think that one of the most important things in terms of the success of where we are as Vermont State Colleges into the future is creating that unique identity that people can say, ah, yeah, I wanna go there because of this and then there's something unique that they can hang their hat on, there's some school spirit and there's some other things that are part of that as well. He adds it may be less about building it and more about preserving it. That may be true. And I think we'll learn a lot of that as we go through the research and we really are getting to the core of what people are seeking when they're seeking to come to one of our institutions and how can we honor that and be clear about what it is that we have provided as well as where are we going and what opportunities do we have to sort of continue to innovate around who we are and what we can be? I would just add, I think some of that works also going to be done through the Vision Point marketing team that's going to be working with our communities and with students as they look about branding and identity moving forward. So there will be a lot of audience research and participation in that as well. And one of the research points that they're engaging in or will be engaging in is listening sessions with the different stakeholders to understand what those core elements that are unique today and could be unique as we go forward. And Talisa's question about rebranding whether it's individual campuses or the entire VSC system, it'll be in between, it'll be for the new combined entity for the new university. So the three institutions, but we also do want to be thoughtful about retaining what's best about our individual existing institutions that are going to be part of the new university. So that probably will be one umbrella brand but then there may well be sub pieces to that whether it's related to programs or locations. So it won't just be a cookie cutter, it'll be more complicated than that. Okay, well, unless there are any additional questions, thank you very much for attending this afternoon. I really appreciate your time and willingness to engage on this important topic. And as I said, we have some additional office hours sessions coming up this week. And if you have any other thoughts, always feel free to reach out to me with other thoughts and ideas as we go. We don't have all of everything figured out but we're certainly interested in in getting input and feedback as we go. So thank you.