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by Jeb Spaulding, Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges Of the 6,000 or so Vermonters about to graduate from high school, more than 2,000 are unlikely to further their education after June. They will join a growing cohort of young Vermonters who lack the credentials necessary to succeed in our economy. In fact, Vermont has the lowest college enrollment rate in New England. More troubling is that less than 40 percent of our economically-disadvantaged students continue on to college. A recent study by the non-profit Education Trust found that, nationally, 80 percent of young people from middle class families earn bachelor's degrees by age 24, versus only 11 percent of students in the lowest income quartile. The poverty rate is twice as high for those with only a high school diploma compared to a bachelor’s degree.

Vermont Business Magazine Governor Peter Shumlin today signed into law H.84, legislation that cracks down on online dating scams and provides greater consumer protections in a number of other areas. The legislation was a priority of Attorney General Bill Sorrell. Under the new law, online dating companies will be required to notify members of suspicious activity or when they are interacting with another user who has been banned from the site for potential fraud. Vermont is the first state to pass such protections. The move comes after the Attorney General’s Office investigated a number of cases involving online dating scams that resulted in Vermonters being ripped off for tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont Student Assistance Corp and State Treasurer Beth Pearce today announced that $4 million in local investment financing will be directed to lower the fixed rates on Vermont Advantage loans for parents and students, starting at 4.8 percent, the lowest rates ever offered. Nearly 70 percent of Vermonters pursuing a bachelor’s degree have student loans; the average loan debt for a college senior is about $29,000. Education loans are used to fund the difference between the cost of education and the various kinds of financial aid students already may receive.

“Vermont parents and students are shouldering a bigger burden of college costs than anywhere else in the country,” Pearce said. “I can’t think of a better local financing opportunity to invest in than our own Vermonters as they pursue education and training after high school.”

by John McClaughry The 2016 legislative session is now history, and it’s worthwhile to assess its production. My criteria include preserving fiscal responsibility, advancing liberty, limiting government, and thwarting various hungry special interests. The basic facts are readily available from the thorough reporting by VTDigger.org. First, the Legislature managed to balance the FY2017 General Fund budget, once again by raising taxes and fees by $28 million. Wary of any obvious tax and fee increases in an election year, the tax committees found a convenient target – the mutual fund industry, almost entirely inhabited by out of staters. Hitting it up for $20.8 million closed most of the gap, without arousing Vermont taxpayers. 

Vermont Business Magazine A relatively unknown molecule that regulates metabolism could be the key to boosting an individual’s immunity to the flu – and potentially other viruses – according to research reported today in the journal Immunity. The study(link is external), led by University of Vermont (UVM) College of Medicine doctoral student Devin Champagne and Mercedes Rincon, PhD, a professor of medicine and an immunobiologist, discovered that a protein called methylation controlled J – or MCJ – can be altered to boost the immune system’s response to the flu.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont’s congressional delegation – Senator Patrick Leahy, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Peter Welch – announced today that firefighters throughout Vermont will receive $679,285 through three federal grants. The three grants include $500,000 for a firefighting training simulator at Vermont Firefighting Academy in Pittsford; $142,858 for breathing apparatus for 20 firefighters in Bellows Falls; and $36,427 for firefighting hose and nozzles for firefighters in Springfield.

In a joint statement, Leahy, Sanders and Welch said: “These federal funds will help ensure Vermonters have well-trained and dedicated firefighters throughout Vermont.  Firefighters play an invaluable role in communities throughout the state and we are pleased to be able to help provide the resources they need to train and to safely fight fires.”

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont has the 15th-largest gap between senior citizens’ incomes and 45-64 year-olds’ incomes, according to a new Bankrate.com report. Financial experts’ rule of thumb is that retirees need 70 percent of the income that they earned during their working years. Vermont fell well short: Residents who are 65 and older have a median annual income that’s just 57 percent of the median annual income earned by the state’s 45-64 year-olds. Bankrate found that retirement incomes are exceeding the 70 percent target in just 3 states: Hawaii, Alaska and South Carolina. Senior citizens in 47 states and the District of Columbia aren’t replacing enough of their pre-retirement incomes, according to the new Bankrate.com (NYSE: RATE) study. Three New England states (Massachusetts #51, Connecticut #47, New Hampshire #46, Rhode Island #43) and New York (#42) were in the bottom 10.

Vermont Business Magazine Diane Imrie, the University of Vermont Medical Center’s director of Nutrition Services, has received a prestigious “Silver Plate Award” from the International Foodservice Manufacturing Association (IFMA). The award, commonly referred to as the “Oscars” of the food service industry, recognizes Imrie’s leadership in developing a model program to deliver high-quality, healthy and sustainably-produced food to the hospital’s patients and visitors.

UVM Medical Center Photo.

Vermont Business Magazine Vizient, Inc, the largest member-owned health care company in the US, has chosen the University of Vermont Medical Center to receive its President’s Award of Honor for performance-related achievements in supply chain during 2015.  To qualify for the President’s Award, organizations must be winners in at least two subcategories, which in the case of UVM Medical Center were overall supply chain excellence and sustainability excellence. The only other winner of the President’s award is the Yale New Haven Health System. Supply chain excellence plays a key role in the UVM Medical Center’s efforts to help control the cost of healthcare in Vermont and northern New York. In the past 5 years the Medical Center and its partners in The University of Vermont Health Network have collectively saved and/or avoided $40 million in the cost of supplies, purchased services and equipment acquisition.

Vermont Business Magazine Student-athletes from Vermont Athletic Academy brought their mindfulness practice to Burlington’s waterfront last week to volunteer with Healing Winds Vermont on behalf of cancer patients and their families.

Vermont Business Magazine The University of Vermont is organizing a free, online cannabis speaker series featuring five academic experts in medicine, botany, business, and policy. The series, presented by UVM Continuing and Distance Education and the UVM College of Medicine, will be May 25, June 8, June 22, and July 13. Featured speakers—all from UVM—include Monique McHenry, PhD, Karen Lounsbury, PhD, Kalev Freeman, MD, PhD, Wolfgang Dostmann, PhD, and Willy Cats-Baril, PhD.

“We strive to deliver accurate and up-to-date information to the public regarding the safety and effectiveness of medical cannabis as treatment for a variety of symptoms,” said Lounsbury, a UVM professor of pharmacology who co-directed Pharmacology 200: Cannabis Past, Present and Future (PHRM 200)—the first medical school cannabis course of its kind in the nation

Vermont Business Magazine Famed author Gail Sheehy spun out a commencement address to the University of Vermont's Class of 2016 that transported her audience back to the UVM alumna's own college days in the late 1950s, put them on the presidential campaign trail in 1968, and dared to ponder the essential definition of humanity in our technological age. Putting a new spin on French philosopher Rene Descartes' famous phrase "I think, therefore I am," Sheehy told the grads, "Today, we may better define what sets us apart as humans with a different declaration: 'I care, therefore I am.' Caring may be the key to establishing the unity of mankind."