Current News

Vermont Business Magazine On Thursday, Champlain College will celebrate the grand opening of a state-of-the-art esports arena at its Miller Center Lakeside campus in Burlington. The new facility is home to Champlain’s varsity and club esports teams. In addition to supporting students in competitive play, the esports program paves the way for students to learn about and gain experience in the multi-billion-dollar video game industry, and cultivate skills in related fields such as marketing, graphic design, broadcast media production, communication, business management, and more.

Vermont Business Magazine Refugees making their home in Vermont will now be able to access in-state tuition rates at all Vermont State Colleges system institutions, thanks to an expansion of Act 166 of 2022. Act 166 updates residency policies to ensure that refugees making their home in Vermont can access in-state tuition rates at the Community College of Vermont. The Board of Trustees of the Vermont State Colleges adopted and then expanded this initiative to apply to all Vermont State Colleges institutions. Effective June 1, 2022, refugees living in Vermont and attending Castleton University, Community College of Vermont, Northern Vermont University, and Vermont Technical College will pay in-state tuition rates. This policy will be upheld when the new Vermont State University launches in July of 2023.

Vermont Business Magazine The Agency of Commerce and Community Development has announced that it received a $249,000 exporting grant to assist small businesses in the state. The grant is awarded through the U.S. Small Business Administration's (SBA) State Trade Expansion Program (STEP), a federal-state partnership initiative to increase the number of small businesses exporting their products. Vermont’s exports and imports accounted for approximately $5.8 billion in 2021; international trade accounts for 17 percent of the state’s gross domestic product.

The Vermont State Police Westminster Barracks is investigating an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon that occurred earlier today on Interstate 91 southbound near mile marker 35 in the town of Rockingham. Members of the public should be aware that an unknown, dangerous subject is at large in the area. The incident occurred at about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022, when an unknown individual struck and slashed a member of a construction crew working on a project on the interstate. The suspect then ran into the woods following the assault.

Income Data Provided to Support Universal School Meals, Other Education Programs

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Agency of Education (AOE) is encouraging all families with school-aged children to “Fill the Form,” by returning a request for information on household income by October 1, 2022. These data, collected by individual school districts and reported to the Agency, are used to administer Vermont’s new universal school meals program, as well as secure funding from the federal government for a broad range of education programs.

VermontBiz Richard Bliss is a LinkedIn expert and social media coach, not a paleontologist. However, he warns business executives who give little thought to their LinkedIn profiles that they are in danger of turning themselves into dinosaurs.

"Your inability to master a 21st century communication tool calls into question your ability to lead a 21st century organization," Bliss states bluntly.

Many people meet these days through social media, Bliss said, "and that means we have to start thinking as leaders and solopreneurs that our digital presence defines who we are long before we are able to reinforce it with our physical presence."

Vermont Business Magazine Norwich University’s School of Architecture + Art begins this year’s lecture series during Homecoming with a presentation by Jesse Tyree of black dog DESIGNS LLC; presentations by Undergraduate Student Research Fellowship Awardees Alyssa Brink and Giselle Maroki; and School of Architecture+Art Alumni Wall of Fame inductions and reception starting at 1 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 16 in Chaplin Hall Gallery.

Vermont Business Magazine The United States Attorney’s Office, the Vermont Attorney General’s Office, and the Rutland Area NAACP will be co-hosting a Hate-Free Vermont Forum in Bennington on September 28, 2022, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm. “The Forum aims to bring policymakers, stakeholders, and community members together for productive and difficult conversations that will work to reduce animus, discord, and misunderstandings,” said Co-facilitator Etan Nasreddin-Longo. “When we began these conversations in 2019, our goal was to take the pulse of Vermonters’ experience of discrimination. Much has happened since that time, and our hope is to engage and to listen to our historically-disadvantaged communities about what they view as the continuing and new problems in 2022.”

Vermont Business Magazine More than 200 people were vaccinated with updated bivalent boosters for COVID-19 at Southwestern Vermont Health Care’s (SVHC) COVID-19 Resource Center this morning. The clinic exhausted its supply of Moderna and will be offering Pfizer boosters only in the coming days. In addition, a limited number of Pfizer shots available for Thursday’s clinic has caused the health system to reduce clinic hours to 8 – 10 am on Thursday, September 15.

Vermont Business Magazine The Center for Agriculture and Food Systems (CAFS) at Vermont Law and Graduate School and national advocacy organization Farmworker Justice has released a report entitled “Exposed and At Risk: Opportunities to Strengthen Enforcement of Pesticide Regulations for Farmworker Safety,” which analyzes the regulatory structure currently being used to protect farmworkers from the dangers of pesticide use in agriculture. The report uses extensive research, interviews and stories from the field to document an extremely complex system of pesticide enforcement and illustrate how the cooperative agreement between federal and state agencies makes it nearly impossible to ensure implementation of the federal Worker Protection Standard.

Vermont Business Magazine Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) Tuesday on the floor of the US Senate urged support for Medicare for All following a recent poll showing America's dissatisfaction with what he called our dysfunctional and collapsing health care system. "Mr President, I understand that there is a lot that is going on in this world today. We’re worried about climate change. We’re worried about the terrible war in Ukraine. We’re worried about inflation and the fact that wages are not keeping up with prices. We’re worried about massive income and wealth inequality and the increased concentration of ownership that we see in our country – among many other things. But the American people remain deeply concerned about an issue that by definition touches every single one of us – and that is our collapsing and dysfunctional healthcare system."