Dear CNHS Community,

I am pleased to welcome new and returning students, staff, and faculty to campus. There is so much exciting news to share as CNHS greets our largest incoming undergraduate class in history – 280 students, including 154 future nurses!

We ended the last academic year on a high note, celebrating the graduation of 234 undergraduate students in exercise science, health sciences, communication sciences and disorders, medical laboratory science, medical radiation sciences, and nursing, as well as our final athletic training graduate. Our college's four-year graduation rate of 83% is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the entire CNHS community.

Since then, we received a $5.5 million grant towards the Osher Center for Integrative Health at the University of Vermont, part of a collaborative international network of ten academic institutions - ranging from Harvard and Northwestern to the University of Washington and UC San Francisco - in the Osher Collaborative for Integrative Health. This fall we welcomed the inaugural cohort of 17 students to our occupational therapy degree program, which just received a $5.75M grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to build new lab and classroom spaces. Major gifts officer Deb Dever brought in $5 million in philanthropic support for the college last year, well above our $3.5 million development goal.

Our two integrative health certificate programs have become minors. Our B.S. in Public Health Sciences program earned national accreditation from the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH), the independent agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education to accredit schools of public health and public health programs.

Over the past year our faculty published more than 50 peer reviewed articles in high-quality journals. More than 16 grant proposals were submitted, yielding $5.1 million in research funding. An additional $3 million proposal has recently been awarded to CNHS. Two new Green and Gold Professorships were established and awarded to Nursing faculty members Jennifer Laurent and Mary Val Palumbo for their research.

This month, an affiliation agreement was signed by University of Vermont Health Network, the University of Vermont Medical Center, University of Vermont Medical Group, Larner College of Medicine, and the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. One exciting and important feature of the agreement is a commitment from all of these entities to support our students’ clinical education. 

To reinforce the college’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, Juan Florencia joins us as this fall as our new Director of Inclusive Excellence, a role developed to promote academic and co-curricular engagement for all CNHS community members, centering those from minoritized groups.

And finally, the exciting new CNHS strategic planning process is well underway, and we look forward to continued participation representing all of CNHS to ensure the college continues on its remarkable path of success.

Best wishes this semester,

Noma