Last week UVM trustees passed a budget, signed off on a 3.5 percent tuition increase, and engaged in provocative discussions about the university’s strategic initiatives and campaign priorities.

But as real as the accomplishments and meaty discussions were, a more human event might have overshadowed them.

The board meeting was the last for John Bramley in the role of interim president, a post he assumed last August at a time of institutional stress. In the ensuing year, Bramley provided steady leadership that propelled the institution forward, said board chair Robert F. Cioffi.

“It was a time of uncertainty and angst, with worries of losing the forward momentum we had enjoyed for some time,” Cioffi said in his chair’s report to board. “Fast forward to May, 2012. We did not lose ground or experience paralysis but instead, we have made significant strides forward.” 

Bramley followed Cioffi with his own report, which touched briefly on his accomplishments before the former provost, dean, and department chair, who arrived at UVM in 1990, exhorted trustees and UVM leadership to embrace the challenges higher education faces nationally and globally.

"We are in excellent shape, and I am very proud of the progress we have made. However, I am anxious about the future of higher education and our ability to adapt to the challenges predicted,” he said. “UVM will need a distinct identity, a demonstrated value and a competitive advantage to prosper in the new educational world.” 

Much of the Committee of the Whole meeting was reserved for an update report from Provost Jane Knodell on the Strategic Initiatives Project, or SIP, designed to give UVM just the market advantage Bramley said was needed, along with the financial resources necessary to bring about change.

Knodell had much to report.

Since the February board meeting, the long wish list of worthy ideas proposed by the SIP’s investment-oriented committees – Transdisciplinary Research Initiative & Research, Diversity and Internationalization and Student Success & Satisfaction/General Education – had been winnowed down to two or three proposals each, whose selection was informed by a community survey that drew nearly 1,000 responses, the Student Government Association’s 2020 Initiative Survey and input from the entire 47-member SIP team.  (For a list of the chosen initiatives, and other details, see the "AY 11-12 SIP Report.")

The Cost Structure and Productivity Improvement committee had proposed several ways to reduce expenses by centralizing or streamlining business processes, rethinking UVM’s administrative and academic structures, and assessing the strategic value and fiscal strength of various academic departments – an ongoing process. 

And the Net Revenue Enhancement committee had concrete proposals for expanding international enrollment and distance learning ready for incoming president Tom Sullivan’s study.

While trustees were by and large impressed with SIP’s progress, some wondered if the changes that program proposed were commensurate with the challenges the times present, which may call for radical new delivery systems.

“Part of the Student Success and Satisfaction committee’s charge,” Knodell said in response, “is to look at how to create high-engagement learning experiences that are effective and cost-effective. We’re also looking at how to create more value for residentially based undergraduate education,” she said.

But SIP is “not a revolution, it’s more of an evolution” characterized by “incremental change,” she said. Workforce modifications, for example, will be accomplished via attrition, with a large number of faculty and staff likely to retire in the coming years, and through reassignment. 

In other Committee of the Whole news:

• Provost Knodell and UVM Foundation CEO Rich Bundy gave an update to trustees on the university’s comprehensive campaign.  Since the campaign officially launched in July 2011, the university and the foundation have solicited funding requests from deans and vice presidents; filtered ideas based on the priorities of the Strategic Initiatives Project; briefed president-to-be Sullivan on initial results; and communicated decisions to campus. The campaign review team synthesized the results of its information gathering and prioritization efforts and has categorized ideas within the following broad categories: student support ($201 million); faculty support ($170 million); program development ($126 million); and facilities (between $75 and $100 million).
• Trustees heard an academic presentation from students in UVM’s Student Experience in Engineering Design, or SEED, program, which pairs teams of senior engineering students with real companies in need of design help. UVM is one of a relatively small number of universities in the country that requires senior engineering majors to put their learning into practice in a real-world, two-semester capstone project, said Domenico Grasso, vice president for research and dean of the Graduate College, who introduced the students. 

Budget, Finance and Investment Committee

The BFI committee passed a $299,575,000 fiscal year 2013 general fund budget that incorporated the 3.5 percent tuition increase and a 6.5 percent increase in financial aid. The budget numbers prompted a lengthy discussion about the long-term viability of recent increases in financial aid and their impact on tuition. 

Other features of the new budget, which increased 2.5 percent over the FY 2012 budget, include a 3.5 percent rise in room rates, bringing the total cost of a traditional double room to $6,650. Average meal plan rates increased 4 percent to $3,414, and student fees went up 2.3 percent from $1,896 to $1,940.

Richard Cate, vice president for finance and administration, asked committee members to pass a resolution approving issuance of up to $82.3 million of bonds to refund all or a portion of the Series 1998, 2002 and 2005 bonds, based on current favorable market conditions. The administration expects the refinancing to save $4 million over 25 years.

In other BFI news:

• Committee members voted unanimously to reaffirm divestment from Sudan as recommended by the Investment Subcommittee  and the Socially Responsible Investing Work Group (SRIWG).
• Cate informed committee members that Sodexo has been awarded the three-year UVM beverage vending contract beginning on January 1, 2013 as part of the university’s commitment to stop selling unflavored, non-carbonated bottled water on campus and to ensure that at least 30 percent of drinks offered on campus will be healthy drinks.
• Committee members received positive news from the Investment Subcommittee that the endowment was up 7.9 percent, and fundraising was at record levels.
• The committee recognized Associate Vice President Ted Winfield for his outstanding service to the university with a board of trustees resolution of appreciation.

Education Policy and Institutional Resources Committee

In the EPIR committee, Bramley provided an update on year one of a summer conference series he had proposed in the fall: an international food summit to take place on campus June 28.

“We’re creating some momentum for Vermont as a location for thinkers to talk about critical issues,” he said, “an Aspen Institute of the East of sorts.”

Bramley said the university was starting with a topic not only well suited to the priorities of the university and the state, but one that demands innovative thinking. “We see the challenge of feeding more than eight billion people in an economically viable manner as the challenge of this century,” he said.

Provost Jane Knodell discussed the revitalization of UVM’s existing Humanities Center to emphasize that the university values the outstanding research and faculty in the humanities. Vice President Grasso backed the point, saying that there has been a movement away from the widely advocated STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines to STEAM, adding the arts into the mix. STEM, he said, is a commodity easily outsourced. STEAM, with the arts additions “are our means of differentiation,” Grasso said.

Bramley joined the discussion, adding that 50 governors are calling for STEM-trained graduates (and noting that UVM provides a substantial number of engineers to the state, a fact on which “we get short shrift,” he said). “It is important for an institution like this to meet societal needs,” Bramley said, “but needs will change over time and we need holistic, integrated thinkers who can process information over time and come up with solutions; some will be engineers, some philosophers.”

Progress has been made in the area of general education, with writing and information literacy considered the most critical of the identified learning outcome goals and therefore the initial focus of SIP’s Student Success and Satisfaction/Gen Ed committee.

A pilot foundational writing program will be ready this fall for several sections of English I, College of Arts and Sciences Teacher-Adviser Program courses and Honors College courses. As students move beyond their first year, writing will be implemented in courses across disciplines for the remainder of their education here. The committee said one of the next goals is to determine if the process for developing the writing program is exportable to the other learning outcomes.

Brian Reed, associate provost for curricular affairs, addressed perennial concerns about access to the university for Vermonters with a number of salient facts. He itemized the large number of outreach efforts made by UVMs’ Office of Admissions and other departments to recruit Vermont students to UVM, and spelled out the ways in which UVM seeks to make itself accessible and affordable – beyond the 91 percent increase in financial aid that in-state students have received since 2006 – to all qualified Vermont students:

• gaining credit through advanced placement exams after taking college-level courses in high school;
• transfer credit;
• the academically talented high school student program which offers reduced course tuition;
• more than 100 online courses;
• Division of Continuing Education’s pre-college program and its Guaranteed Admissions Program.

In other EPIR news, the committee endorsed the following resolutions:

• a resolution approving the creation of an online, post-baccalaureate academic certificate of study for speech-language pathology assistants.
• a resolution approving the creation of an online certificate of graduate study in public health.
• a resolution approving the creation of a new astronomy minor.
• a resolution making the Vermont State 4-H Foundation an affiliated organization of the University of Vermont, which will allow the 4-H to keep its tax-exempt status.
• Reed updated the committee on the university’s voluntary effort to establish student learning assessment measures. The challenge launching the program this year was relying on student volunteers for testing, which produced an unreliably small sample size. Next year the test will be embedded in first-year courses across disciplines and made mandatory for a selected sampling of 100 students. 

Read a PDF of the consent agenda, itemizing all action items approved by the  board.