The launch of the public phase of UVM’s $500 million comprehensive campaign dominated campus last weekend, and even the Board of Trustees meeting made way for pomp, circumstance and a series of major campaign-related announcements.

The Friday board meeting, normally an all-day affair, adjourned shortly after 1 p.m. so trustees could make their way to the Kalkin Hall courtyard, where President Tom Sullivan announced the largest gift in the university’s history: a $20 million donation from alumnus Steven Grossman to UVM’s business school, renamed the Grossman School of Business. Speaking to a large crowd of students, faculty and staff in the Davis Center atrium later in the afternoon, the president made public for the first time the campaign’s $500 million goal and added that the university had nearly reached the halfway mark, with $248 million in gifts to date.

The board’s abbreviated morning session was highlighted by a capital projects update made by Bob Vaughan, director of capital planning and management, and Richard Cate, vice president for finance. The report included a multi-media presentation on the construction progress of the STEM complex and new residence hall in central campus with live video from a battery of webcams stationed around the construction sites. Trustees had been informed at their May meeting of the new construction projects that would get under way in the summer.

At the conclusion of his report to the Committee of the Whole, President Sullivan summed up the optimistic mood of the board meeting, and the weekend, by saying, “This is an exciting weekend, but it’s only the beginning of the transformation we’re seeing at UVM.”

Budget, Finance and Investment committee

BFI Committee members were given a report by the Investment Subcommitee on the performance of the university’s endowment, which stood at $451 million as of June 30. Recent market volatility, however, brought that figure down to $433 as of Aug. 31, despite a return of 1.0 percent for the year and a 6.74 percent return for the past 10 years.

Committee members discussed amending UVM’s Cash Management Policy to the Cash Management and Liquidity Policy to reflect liquid funds that are unrestricted, unencumbered General Fund Net Assets that will be used to meet the Minimum Liquidity Target. The reason for the change is to ensure that the university operates with an adequate level of institutional liquidity to minimize risk associated with temporary, unforeseen financial needs.

A resolution was passed to authorize the use of $2 million of unrestricted Residential Life plant funds already on hand to pay for a much-needed renovation of Converse Hall. The project is designed to mitigate any potential negative impacts that could occur as a result of vibrations stemming from the UVM Medical Center’s infrastructure improvement project to their new Inpatient Building addition.

Committee members also voted to approve the following resolutions for recommendation to the full Board:

• Maximum off-campus temporary housing room rate was set for FY 2017 at $9,316, for an increase of 3.5 percent.
• Summer Session tuition was set at 30 percent below that of the previous spring semester, bringing the per-credit hour cost for in-state students to $428 and the per credit hour cost for out-of-state students to $1,081.
• Tuition and summer program fees for Summer Global Gateway International students was set as follows: Students entering the three-semester program commencing in the Fall of 2015 or the two- and three-semester programs in the spring of 2016 will pay $26,450; students entering the two-semester program commencing in the summer of 2016 will pay $26,738.

Educational Policy and Institutional Investment committee

Highlights of the EPIR meeting included the following:

Faculty Senate Curricular Affairs chair Cathy Paris gave an overview of a new minor in sports management in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. The minor was approved by the committee and the full board.

Provost David Rosowsky continued his EPIR tradition of highlighting one of his Academic Excellence Goals for committee members. His focus this meeting was on goal #4: Increase Interdisciplinary Teaching and Research. Rosowsky said interdisciplinary teaching was “baked into the ethos” of UVM, stressed the importance creating more of it and said that UVM’s new Incentive-Based Budgeting model will provide the incentive for that to happen. For the research portion of the presentation, he turned things over to Richard Galbraith, vice president for research. Galbraith told trustees about two newly created programs that will foster interdisciplinary research. The Faculty Advising Network, or FAN, brings faculty from different disciplines together informally with the goal of sparking collaboration. The Fostering Interdisciplinary Scholarship, Arts & Research grant program, or FISAR, provides funding for interdisciplinary research.

For the details of the annual Information Technology Report, Mara Saule, chief information officer and dean of libraries, and Julia Russell, associate chief information officer, referred trustees to the printed report that was in the board materials. They spent much of their presentation highlighting the work UVM’s EPSCoR office has done to make the university’s high speed Internet 2 connection available to citizens and institutions in the state, focusing on three interesting examples. Through the Vermont Department of Libraries, 47 libraries across the state are now using the network. The Vermont Young Writers project has accessed it for training and to share student work. And via the network, the Burlington music non-profit Big Heavy World facilitated an interactive jam session between musicians located in Burlington and Chattanooga.

Gayle Nunley, director of global education initiatives, gave a brief update on UVM’s international education efforts. Increasing international student enrollment is one of the university’s strategic goals. Through various initiatives, including the Global Gateway project and direct recruitment of international students, UVM is well on its way to achieving its goal of seven percent undergraduate international enrollment by 2018, Nunley said. In an earlier report Stacey Kostell, enrollment management vice president, told committee members that international undergraduate enrollment has reached 5.7 percent when Global Gateway students still in their first pathway year are counted.  

Read the complete consent agenda of all actions approved at the October board meeting.