At its May meeting, the UVM Board of Trustees approved a three percent tuition increase, and continued its commitment to offset rising tuition by increasing financial aid 7.7 percent. Approximately one-half of all tuition increases goes toward increasing financial aid. As a result, the net revenue tuition increase is only about 1.5 percent for FY 2017. For instance, this year financial aid gifts lowered the sticker price for tuition, fees and room and board for Vermont students from $27,918 to $18,469 with 43 percent of in-state students paying no tuition. Board materials show that UVM has the next to lowest average tuition and fees increase (3.1 percent) over the past three years among a set of comparator private and public colleges and universities.

The board also approved an FY 2017 general fund budget of $348.5 million.

In the Budget, Finance and Investment committee meeting, members authorized $1.625 million to pay for a new UVM Rescue Facility to be located to the south of the existing facility adjacent to the parking lot at 284 East Ave. The new 4,437 square-foot building will be paid for with funds from the President’s Strategic Initiatives Fund ($300,000); FY 2016 General Fund utility savings ($400,000); and Rescue Funds on hand, including those from UVM Rescue revenues, gifts, and the Student Government Association ($925,000). UVM Rescue will pay back $700,000 to the President’s Strategic Initiatives Fund and the General Fund over the next 10 years with revenue generated by the more than 1,300 calls it responds to each year.  

During the academic presentation at the Committee of the Whole, trustees got an overview on UVM Rescue from students Mike Barnum, Olivia Snyder and Joe Lahey, who volunteer for the organization, a state certified Advanced Life Support ambulance operation run entirely by students 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. UVM Rescue’s primary function is to provide emergency medical care to all of campus, UVM Medical Center Helipad, and the University Health Center. The 40-year-old SGA-sponsored organization also serves as secondary ambulance for Burlington, South Burlington, Shelburne, Winooski, Richmond and other local communities as part of a mutual aid plan.

The students explained that the current building only has room for one of their two ambulances, forcing them to park the other outside reducing the value of the $200,000 vehicle. Additionally, the old facility has only two bunk beds despite six students often working at the same time. The new facility will include two heated service bays to accommodate the two ambulances; spare equipment storage; crew quarters to accommodate up to eight people overnight including a kitchen, toilet and showers, and lockers; a small conference/study room; workout area; laundry and supply storage; a charting room; and a multi-purpose common room. All areas will be equipped with a public address system used by UVM Police Services to dispatch the on-duty crew as well as wireless ports for computer access.

In the Educational Policy and Institutional Resources committee, trustees learned of an innovative new Academic Success Center opening in the fall semester of 2016, to be located next to the Career+Experience Hub in the Davis Center.

The new center will bring together the Orientation Program, a new First-Year Experience Program, a new centralized Advising Center, TRIO and Upward Bound programs, the Learning CoOperative (tutoring services), and the ACCESS Office (Disability Services) with dual reporting lines to the Vice Provost for Student Affairs and the Associate Provost for Teaching and Learning.

An Advising Center, staffed by a program director, program coordinator and a team of peer advisers made up of students, will also be integrated into the new office. 

The Advising Center will be staffed in part by specially trained student peer advisers employed by the Student Government Association, and supervised by Advising Center staff. The peer advisers will help to meet students’ general advising needs.

In addition, the SGA is launching a peer mentors pilot program in the Department of Biology, the Grossman School of Business, and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, trustees learned. The peer mentors will provide first-year students with guidance specific to their school/college’s experiences and academic programs. The peer mentors will support the first-year students during their transition to university life by promoting informed academic decision-making; connections with co-curricular and extracurricular opportunities; connections with the many resources available to students; and by providing a personal connection with an upper class student. The peer mentors program will be expanded to other schools and colleges in the future with modifications based on knowledge gained from the pilot. By 2019 the SGA will employ more than 170 peer mentors across every college/school and department at UVM. At full implementation, every incoming first-time, first-year student will be paired with a peer mentor of their same major.

In other news

Budget, Finance and Investment Committee

• Deferred maintenance continues to be an ongoing challenge for the university and was a major point of discussion among committee members. UVM has an estimated $351 million backlog in facilities and related infrastructure, according to Sightlines, a consultant hired by the university. Committee members discussed ways to increase its annual operating budget allocation of $7 million a year to offset a projected backlog of $376.3 million by the end of FY 2018.
• The Investment Subcommittee reported that the university’s endowment stands at $435 million as of April 30, 2016. 
• Rich Bundy, president and CEO of the UVM Foundation, told committee members that fundraising for the Alumni House and STEM facility remains strong. He said $9.4 million has been raised toward the non-debt fundraising goal of $11.2 million for the Alumni House. The Foundation has secured $7.5 million for the STEM facility and expects to raise the majority of the remaining $18 million in non-debt funding through donor funding.

• The committee approved resolutions creating more new academic offerings than at any other meeting of EPIR in recent memory. The new programs included a B.S. in Food Systems in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; a B.S. in Economics in the College of Arts & Sciences; an M.S. in Medical Laboratory Science in the Graduate College; a certificate of graduate study in Epidemiology in the Graduate College; a minor in writing in the College of Arts & Sciences; and a minor in Jewish studies in the College of Arts & Sciences.
• The committee approved a recommendation from Provost David Rosowsky for a reorganization within the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. The engineering departments (Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering) will again become stand-alone departments rather than being programs under a School of Engineering, a structure that was in place prior to 2005. Having a program director report to a school director who reports to the dean had resulted in some inefficiencies. Program directors lacked the authority and clearly defined responsibilities attributed to department chairpersons, which are necessary for accreditation, resource management and the supervision and mentorship of faculty. The school-within-a-college structure is an anomaly among universities; the goals of the 2005 restructuring – to promote interdisciplinary teaching and research, to give the engineering programs a stronger and more unified focus, and to better position the college to attract students and faculty – can be achieved within a more typical structure.
• In his annual report to the committee, Vice President for Research Richard Galbraith provided a by-the-numbers portrait of the office’s accomplishment. Figures for fiscal year 2016 that he cited included $132,292,800 in extramural funding received; $765,000 awarded in competitive intramural funding; 1,150 sponsored projects submitted; 80 invention disclosures from UVM faculty and staff; 74 patent applications filed, with 13 patented granted; and five start-up companies formed and 12 commercial agreements (half in Vermont).