Faculty $90 Million Immediate Impact $50 Million Endowment $40 Million It takes an outstanding faculty to educate outstanding students, and recruiting and retaining exceptional professors is as challenging as recruiting and retaining superlative students. An agreement reached in 2003 raised UVM faculty salaries substantially, and ensuring that compensation remains competitive is a high priority. As enrollment rises, the University will also support the salaries of sixty new professors that UVM plans to hire by 2009 to preserve its highly favorable 16-to-1 student-faculty ratio. (Among peer institutions, UVM has the highest percentage— 54 percent—of classes with fewer than 20 students, and the lowest percentage—8 percent—of classes with more than fifty students.) UVM faculty members already do their part by generating significant private support for the University through gifts, grants, and contracts expected to total some $50 million over the life of the Campaign. Endowing academic chairs, professorships, and visiting lectureships will provide an additional—and permanent—margin of excellence with support not just for salaries but also for the research, scholarship, and creative activity of UVM’s most distinguished faculty.