Chair Robert F. Cioffi used a Chinese proverb – “May you live in interesting times” – to open his remarks to the Committee of the Whole at the Oct. meeting of the UVM Board of Trustees on Friday.

“Mission accomplished,” he added a beat later, to laughter in the crowded gallery of the Grand Maple Ballroom in the Davis Center, where the meeting took place.

Over the course of the board’s three-day meeting, trustees deliberated on a variety of strategies the university will employ to navigate through the interesting, uniquely challenging times that UVM – and higher education generally – confront in an environment of ongoing economic stagnation, significant demographic shifts and paradigm-shifting new information technologies.

In response to one element of that environment, the long running economic malaise, Interim President John Bramley stated in his report to the board that this year’s tuition increase should not exceed 3.5 percent. The tuition rate is officially set in the May meeting.  In last year’s May meeting, trustees had asked the university to find ways to curtail steadily rising tuition and fees.

“Our current and prospective students and their families are facing high unemployment, housing and mortgage challenges and a stagnant economy,” Bramley said.  “They are in no position to accept or manage high tuition increases.”

Unzipping SIP

The committee spent much of its time hearing a presentation from Provost Jane Knodell on progress that has been made with the Strategic Initiatives Project,  a series of interrelated  efforts – three about academic quality and the research enterprise and two about revenue generation and reallocated spending – designed to help the university identify resources for the priorities, goals and objectives established in its strategic plan. The work is critical  in an era of financial constraints and increased competition for students.  

All of the initiatives within the SIP –  from Research and the TRI, Diversity and Internationalization, and Student Success and Satisfaction to Net Revenue Enhancement and Cost Structure and Productivity Improvement – are reaching milestones within the next few months.  Many will be submitting final proposals and “pro formas” outlining detailed financial forecasts, and/or suggesting what ideas should be pursued and why.

Knodell devoted special attention to  the work of the Cost Structure and Productivity Improvement team, which will seek to create more efficiencies within business operations, the co-curricular experience and direct support of the academic experience through consolidation, reengineering of support processes and other measures.

Knodell also described how the Strategic Value Assessment of academic programs, a key element of the team's work, will unfold. In the coming months, academic programs will be evaluated both on their strategic value – how they align within the university’s  entire array of academic programs and strategic goals  – and their financial contribution.

The key to the strategic value half of the equation, Knodell said, will be to “get the criteria – and the metrics to measure them – right.”

To spur this deliberation, the administration will meet with the Faculty Senate executive council and the full senate to continue discussions on the topic that began in September. Department chairs will also have an opportunity to shape the criteria in a town meeting hosted by a panel of university distinguished professors and university scholars.  

The administration will couple the strategic value of a program with the  financial contribution  it makes, and will group programs into categories based on their combined strategic value and financial attractiveness.

After all this work is done, Knodell and her team will ask the campus community to consider the implications of the data and to think critically about the array of academic programs UVM offers and how the university can best achieve the educational distinction and distinctiveness that is essential to student, faculty and staff success.

Overall, the SIP aims to create $36 million in investment capacity over the next five years. Both Bramley and Richard Cate, vice president for finance and administration, sought to clarify for board members that the figure should not be construed as a deficit.

“This is not filling a hole,” Cate said. “We are creating a capacity to do things we want to do.” SIP is the successor to the enrollment growth strategy of the last decade, which nearly doubled the university’s general fund, but has run its course, Cate said.

Distance learning expansion near

One element of the Net Revenue Enhancement effort within the SIP – distance learning – was elaborated on in both the Educational Policy and Institutional Resources and Budget, Finance and Investment committee meetings.

In the BFI meeting, Cate addressed the topic. Although UVM has offered modest online offerings since 2000, including a certificate in sustainability in 2010, it is now considering entering into a larger scale, multi-year contract with Bisk Education to offer online professional master’s degree programs, Cate said. He stressed the importance of differentiating online programs from traditional ones and attracting students that the university “otherwise wouldn’t reach” to help “diversify our revenue stream.”

UVM would split revenue with Bisk, which would handle infrastructure and pre-screening, both of the roughly 300 to 500 students needed in two years to launch the endeavor and of future applicants.

In the EPIR session Patty Prelock, dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, gave a demonstration of the look and feel of the software UVM uses to deliver distance education. The course she focused on has been developed as a pilot for the new endeavor: a grant-funded small-scale distance masters degree in Speech Language Pathology, designed to address the extreme shortage of speech language pathologists in Vermont.

Prelock demonstrated how the online tools work to ensure academic quality and student engagement. “I knew students better in online learning,” said Prelock during the discussion about pursuing distance courses. “You can just sit in a classroom. Online you have to engage. You have no choice.”

When the Committee of the Whole reconvened on Friday at 3 p.m., they were joined by about 75 faculty, students and staff members expressing disapproval of high tuition increases, administrative severance packages and inadequate faculty and staff raises. They left the
room waiving signs and chanting as trustees went into executive session.

In other developments at the meeting:

• Board chair Cioffi reported that the presidential search is on schedule, and that the pool of interested candidates looks strong. The presidential search committee will be meeting over the next few weeks to narrow this pool to a list of semi-finalists with the intent of bring 2-4 finalists to campus in late January.
• Interim President Bramley announced the launch of a new summer series modeled on the Aspen Institute, “aimed at transforming the quality of life and economy in Vermont and the nation through sustainable, systemic approaches to our food system, our  health, and science and technology.” The first event, in the summer of 2012, will focus on the Vermont Food System. “I am confident that this can grow into a signature UVM activity, that will attract significant sponsorship and support  and demonstrate what being a 21st century land grant institution actually means,” he said.
• Committee members voted to raise summer tuition by 5.8 percent to maintain the 15 percent differential between summer courses and those in the fall and spring semesters. The increase of $25 brings tuition for in-state students to $456 per credit hour while an increase of $63 for out-of-state students brings their per credit hour cost to $1,151. The vote also included an all-inclusive fee for the U.S. Sino-Pathways program.
• BFI also approved a recommendation that $3 million ($1.5 million in each of FY ‘12 and FY ‘13) of the current $8.5 million balance of the unrestricted loan fund be transferred to the UVM Foundation to help cover the cost of increasing staff and funding the upcoming capital campaign. The proposal also calls for an additional transfer of $1.5 million to the foundation from the UVM general fund in FY 2014.
• Committee members were told that the university’s debt ratio is .052 under its self-imposed cap of .06, but that the level of the viability ratio at .71, is out of compliance with the policy, which calls for a ratio of at least .8. Trustees did note that the viability ratio has improved in each of the past two years and that it has not been an issue of focus with the rating agencies. Trustee Sam Bain reported during his Investment Subcommittee update that the university’s endowment grew by 23 percent during FY 2011, placing UVM among the top three percent of Cambridge Associates’ clients. 
• EPIR also discussed a one-year extension of the U.S. Sino Pathways Program contract with Northeastern University and Kaplan, which recruit Chinese students to UVM, and will now add Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia to their recruiting territory.  According to Chris Lucier, vice president for enrollment management, the program serves the dual purpose of internationalizing the campus and maximizing tuition development. Of the two cohorts UVM has welcomed, this year’s has shown significant improvement over the first. The sample size, Lucier said, is too small for a quantitative assessment, but faculty and administrators are seeing more social and intellectual engagement, with participation in activities such as ballroom dancing and outing clubs, two students in the Honors College and one an SGA senator.
• The board approved annual deferred maintenance funding on Phase II of Mason/Simpson/Hamilton.
• The General Education committee of the Faculty Senate has chosen to focus on one of the six identified learning outcomes at a time, beginning with Communication and Information Literacy, given the consensus for an emphasis on writing.
• The chair of curricular affairs committee, Cathy Paris, reported that the name of the Department of Romance Languages had been changed to the Department of Romance Languages and Linguistics.