Current News

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont State Colleges (VSC) Chancellor Jeb Spaulding confirmed today that Vermont Technical College President Dan Smith has accepted the job of President and Chief Executive Officer of the Vermont Community Foundation and will be leaving the college in August.  The Executive Committee of the VSC Board of Trustees will meet in the coming weeks to determine a leadership transition for Vermont Tech.

Vermont Business Magazine Burlington City Arts announced today the third recipient of the Herb Lockwood Prize - the largest arts prize in Vermont - is filmmaker Nora Jacobson from Norwich. Jacobson received the $10,000 prize during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon at The BCA Center. The Herb Lockwood Prize aims to reward the pinnacle of arts leadership in Vermont by honoring the state’s most influential artists. The Prize recognizes artists who produce significant work in the areas of visual arts, music, writing, drama, dance, film, and fine woodworking—while also having a beneficent influence on the Vermont community. The recipient of the 2015 Prize was fine artist and typographer Claire Van Vliet from Newark, Vermont. The 2014 recipient was actor/theater director Steve Small from Middlebury, Vermont.

Vermont Businesss Magazine The University of Vermont Medical Center released its 2016 Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) today, highlighting the issues that need special focus in order to improve people’s lives in Chittenden and Grand Isle counties. Socio-economic factors are the most important indicators for general health with the most elusive solutions. For instance, while high blood pressure and obesity are only somewhat higher among people living at less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level (versus those above), smoking (more than triple the rate), asthma (nearly triple), diabetes (nearly triple) and lack of dental care (more than triple) are significantly higher among that demographic.

Vermont Business Magazine Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) of Central Vermont has celebrated its first graduating class of moms and babies at the State House Cafeteria in Montpelier. Nurse-Family Partnership is a national, evidence-based program that supports first-time mothers with education and care to promote healthy pregnancies and empower women to achieve better lives for themselves and their families. Nurse-Family Partnership of Central Vermont is managed out of Central Vermont Home Health & Hospice (CVHHH) by Lorna Corbett, RN, BSN, CVHHH’s Maternal-Child Health Manager. There are four other NFP sites in the state, each run by a VNA.

Vermont Business Magazine Dr Esther Sternberg's best-selling book, "Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being" (Harvard University Press) inspired the Susan Sebastian Foundation to install original artwork in virtually every patient room in every hospital in Vermont. The just-completed installation of an estimated 400 works of art will be on permanent display in about 400 inpatient rooms at Vermont's 14 hospitals. This project, which took five years from conception to completion, may be the largest of its kind in any state.

Vermont Business Magazine Governor Peter Shumlin on Monday celebrated a law that establishes dental therapists as a new designation of mid-level providers that will expand access to basic dental care across Vermont. The governor signed the bill into law on June 2. The celebration of the new law was held at Vermont Technical College’s Williston Campus which houses the state’s dental hygiene program and will also create a new program to train dental therapists.

Vermont Business Magazine Becker’s Hospital Review announced Monday that the University of Vermont Health Network - Central Vermont Medical Center (CVMC), based in Berlin, was named to its “100 Great Community Hospitals” list for 2016. The monthly publication is the pre-eminent source of cutting-edge business and legal information for health care industry leaders. The “community hospitals” on the list all have fewer than 550 beds and minimal teaching programs, and are spread across the country. Regardless of their location, Becker’s regards them as a vital part of their respective communities.

CVMC's Waterbury ExpressCare. File photo.

Vermont Business Magazine US Secretary of Education John B King Jr has announced 10 winners in the $200,000 Career and Technical Education (CTE) Makeover Challenge at the Champions of Change for Making event, including Burlington Technical Center (BTC). The Challenge called for high schools to create models for transforming classrooms or other spaces into MakerSpaces - places where students create and learn through making, with access to the tools to design, build and innovate, while acquiring 21st Century career skills.

"Designing a collaborative space for students to create and invent is the intent for our MakerSpace,” Burlington Technical Center Director Tracy Racicot commented. “Bringing innovation to schools and creating a community of learners that identify and solve problems is key in preparing students for their future.”

Vermont Business Magazine New Hospital Safety Scores, which assign A, B, C, D and F letter grades to hospitals nationwide and provide the most complete picture of patient safety in the U.S. health care system, were announced today by The Leapfrog Group, a national patient safety watchdog. Brattleboro Memorial Hospital was one of 798 hospitals to receive an A, ranking among the safest hospitals in the United States.

Vermont Business Magazine Formal groundbreaking will take place Wednesday, June 22, as construction begins on the Jack Byrne Center for Palliative and Hospice Care, an advanced clinical facility to provide integrated, patient- and family-centered care for patients with life-limiting illness and complex medical needs and to strengthen palliative and hospice care region-wide. In March, Dartmouth-Hitchcock (D-H) Trustees approved construction of the Jack Byrne Center, pending successful fundraising efforts to cover much of the construction costs. Site preparation has been underway since May, and fundraising for both construction of the Center and accompanying programming has gained strong momentum and continues. Plans call for the Center to open in late 2017.

by John McClaughry The mere existence on our planet of the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch drives Sen. Bernie Sanders to torrents of outrage. They, according to Sanders’ imagination, are the secret owners of the Republican Party, the Tea Party (is that still around?), and a long list of organizations opposed to the Sanders agenda, such as the political action group Americans for Prosperity. This is amusing, inasmuch as the Koch brothers, being libertarians, couldn’t possible own the Republican Party that seems to have selected the eminent crony capitalist Donald Trump as its presidential nominee.

Vermont Business Magazine Known to everyone in town as "Deac," the City of Winooski announced today that City Manager Katherine Decarreau will be resigning effective August 1, 2016. Decarreau has accepted a position as Executive Director of Finance and Operations at the Chittenden Central Supervisory Union.