by Joyce Marcel, Vermont Business Magazine First of all, his name's not really “Jeb.” George B “Jeb” Spaulding is 65 but looks 45. He's originally from Massachusetts, but at an early age his heart adopted Vermont. Since then he has built an impressive resume in Vermont state government without ever seeking the limelight. It seems as if we've known him forever without knowing him at all.
Or maybe we remember him as the only politician — a 6'4” politician at that! — who ever wore stilts to a parade.
“I try not use them anymore,” Spaulding said. “At this stage of the game, with my memory, I don't want to be taking a chance and falling on my head on the pavement. But when I got elected to the Senate in 1984, it came to be 1985 and one of the biggest Labor Day parades in the state is in Northfield, which is in my district. And I said, 'God, I've got to be in the parade. But I don't want to be like a regular politician, just walking. I've got to think of something.' So my grandfather had passed away and at some point I ended up with a top hat and a long tuxedo and tails. Ding ding ding! Abraham Lincoln! So I bought an eight-foot 2×4. I cut it in half, built a little platform, wrapped myself with duct tape and learned how to walk on stilts the night before the parade. It went over really, really well.”
Spaulding has led a remarkable life under the radar. With a degree in communications from the University of Vermont, he co-founded Montpelier's WNCS-FM in 1976 and rode the growing wave of FM radio's popularity in the 1970s and 1980s before selling the station and cashing out.
He was an eight-term Vermont state senator who served as chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee. He's a former five-term Vermont state treasurer who left the state with the highest bond rating in the country. He was former Governor Peter Shumlin's secretary of administration.
And now, as chancellor of the Vermont State College System, he's reshaping state schools at a perilous and challenging time for higher education. The VSCS contains Castleton State College, now Castleton University, Lyndon State College and Johnson State College, now combined into a brand-new entity called Northern Vermont University, the Vermont Technical College, and the Community College of Vermont.
Altogether, Spaulding sits on top of a yearly budget of $170 million and has charge of 2,000 full- and part-time employees — “Roughly, about a thousand of each, I think,” he said. Together the schools serve approximately 12,000 students.
Vermont is near the bottom of the list when comes to state support of higher education.
“If we are to succeed in making it possible for all Vermonters to go to college, we must confront the clear connection between low State support for public higher education and low college enrollment rates,” Spaulding wrote in a commentary on vermontbiz.com. “When State support is low, tuition is high, students take on more debt or don’t go to college.”
Spaulding is determined to reverse this; he is passionate about his job and the state college system.
“I totally drank the Kool-Aid, as you can tell,” he said. “I knew what the big challenges were when I took this job. I really did look under the hood.”
Still, to hear Spaulding tell the story of his life, this high-power career sort of fell into his lap — he definitely has an “aw shucks” capability.
“I'm pretty lucky, I'm falling into all these things,” he told me. “My main mission was to be in Vermont. I wanted to be part of it. I know this sounds trite, but what I liked about Vermont is not so much its natural beauty but the people. The old-time Vermonters that you don't see many of anymore. They are basically live-and-let-live Vermonters. And I was enjoying it. Maybe they were a little bit libertarian, but they were also open-minded. I'm a big fan of Howard Frank Mosher, and those kind of characters — I really was attracted to them. So I said, 'Look, I want to be a Vermonter. I want to be part of the fabric of life in Vermont.”
And that's what he did over the next three decades. And it wasn't luck, but decency, integrity, talent and dedication that kept him going.
Shumlin, a close friend, says Spaulding “doesn't like to be noticed.”
“What people might not know about Jeb is that he has a super big heart,” Shumlin said. “What drives him is compassion and wanting to make a difference. He comes from a pretty unusual background. He comes from a very influential family in Massachusetts – Republicans – but what struck me about Jeb is that he went to the University of Vermont and got Vermont in his blood. He quickly came to understand Vermonters. He cared about making a difference for Vermonters who don't have a voice. He does it without attention. He never plotted to be in positions of leadership. The jobs happened because other people pushed him and believed in him. A lot of people from his position in life don't look at themselves that way. They think they're special. Jeb doesn't. He's incredibly effective and not particularly ambitious. And I don't want to say it in a negative way. He's driven more by wanting to be a quiet leader and make a difference.”
Spaulding's father, attorney Josiah Spaulding, who was described in his obituary by The New York Times as a “major figure in Republican politics in Massachusetts,” served as Massachusetts Attorney General, as chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, as co-founder of the famous Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Massachusetts and, in 1970, lost to Ted Kennedy in a race for the US Senate — at a time when, his son says, he was more liberal than Kennedy.
“A couple of years ago I found his brochure for the 1970 campaign and there was no question that he was to the left of Ted Kennedy as a Republican,” Spaulding said. “So a lot of the Republicans have changed.”
Spaulding's mother, Helen Bowdoin Spaulding, was no slouch in her own right. She was the founding board chair of the New England Aquarium in Boston. She was chair of the Boston Foundation. She was on the board of the Conservation Law Foundation. She was a trustee of Georgetown University, Boston University, and the University of Vermont.
She was a “hard-charging woman,” Spaulding said.
“I'm one of those people to whom much is given and of whom much is required,” Spaulding said on a bright summer day in his Montpelier office, with a view of the muddy Winooski River rushing beneath the window. In person he's healthy, tanned, polished, instantly likable and easily accessible.
“When I was growing up we would sit around the dinner table at night talking about politics,” he continued. “You know, some people actually don't like talking politics at the dinner table. But we had fiery conversations about the issues of the day. And it was ingrained in me by my parents that I'm supposed to give something back.”
Spaulding gave up both Massachusetts and the Republican Party when he fell in love with Vermont.
“My entree to Vermont was through Windham County,” Spaulding said. “My mother had two sisters. One had three boys roughly the same age as us. They bought an old farm in southern Vermont right on the border of South Londonderry, Winhall and Peru. It's called Winhall Hallow and it's still there. So we spent like 10 to 15 Christmases in a row there. I knew that I wanted to live in Vermont. I knew I'd never be able to be a Vermonter, but I wanted to be part of Vermont. So I went to the University of Vermont and stayed here.”
Spaulding likes to do his high-flying under the radar. As Shumlin said, “Jeb doesn't like to be noticed.”
David Coates noticed — and quickly. Coates is a retired managing partner at KPMG-Vermont and a man who has served as an economic advisor to every Vermont governor since Richard Snelling. He has known Spaulding since he was a brand-new state senator from Washington County. They have served together on many boards.
“I've known him almost all of his professional political life,” Coates said. “When he was a senator, I was a young whippersnapper walking the line for Associated Industries of Vermont. Taxes were important to me. I was on their tax committee. And then there was the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce board. We found out Jeb was one you could talk to, one who was trusted by the business community. I would testify and see him at functions and we became friends. He was one, if he told you something, he kept his word. He was a straight shooter. Unlike other politicians. Jeb took a while to make up his mind. But once he believed something, he didn't change.”
Coates was especially impressed by Spaulding's understanding of finance, especially his quick learning about bond ratings, when he became state treasurer.
“It was clear that this man understood money,” Coates said. “He understood the importance of having a good credit rating — a Triple-A rating. That was not his forte. He hadn't served as a CFO. The treasurer is a political position, but if you go in without the benefit of having a financial background and understanding the market, it's a real disadvantage. But Jeb is a quick learner. He learned the job quickly and was very, very good with the rating industry. I went down to New York with him to speak to the bond market. It's so important to have the treasurer understand the state's finances. That's what they expect. And then he has to get the governor up to speed. Jeb had great background being senator and treasurer. He handled it well, as Jim Douglas did when he was treasurer.”
At the time, the state was wrestling with unfunded pension and health care funds.
“Our unfunded liabilities for pensions and health care were increasing and we were on a path to – I thought – bankruptcy,” Coates said. “I got the governor, Jim Douglas, to set up the Commission on the Design and Funding of Retirement and Retiree Health Benefits Plans for State Employees and Teachers. He made Jeb the chair of it. We issued our report in December of 2009. Jeb brought us through a very sensitive subject, especially for the state workers and the teachers. We had several meetings and ended up in many four-and-three votes. At the end of the day, we used that report to make changes to the pensions and health care which were positive changes for the state of Vermont.”
According to Coates, once Spaulding hired (current Vermont State Treasurer) Beth Pearce, “she gave him a strong team” and made him an even better treasurer.
Pearce was a deputy treasurer in charge of cash management investment in Massachusetts when she did a job search and met Spaulding.
“Frankly, Vermont was on the list,” Pearce said. “I loved the quality of life. My dad went to the University of Vermont. My sister went to St Mike's. When I came up for an interview with Jeb, I had not met him before. After the interview, I said, 'This is the job I want. This is where I want to be.' Jeb's integrity and his agenda meant a lot to me. He was committed to environmental issues. Vermont was one of 11 states that in 2004 joined the Investment Network for Climate Risk. We also paid a lot of attention to pensions and how to fully fund them. These were issues — making sure people have dignity in retirement —that were important to me and continue to be important to me. I appreciate the opportunity Jeb gave to me.”
Pearce also commented on Spaulding's energy level.
“He's a pretty dynamic guy,” she said. “I used to kid around with him, because every day he'd be out there doing his push-ups and sit-ups before his 5-mile run. He never took the elevator, he always took the stairs.”
Spaulding still runs, but he swears he never did daily 5 mile runs.
“I probably run an average 3-4 days a week for 4-6 miles, plus I like to bike, and hike,” Spaulding said. “In the winter, I use the elliptical more and also like to cross country ski and snowshoe.”
Spaulding is also “very good at time management,” Pearce said. “He's a hard worker, he's energetic, he's very professional. He's committed to his agenda and gets things done.”
Spaulding met J. Churchill Hindes early in his career. Hindes, who this year was elected chair of the Vermont State Colleges System Board of Trustees, retired in 2015 as the Vice President for Accountable Care at the UVM Medical Center and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine. Previously he was CEO of the VNA of Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties and Vice President for Finance at Fletcher Allen Health Care.
From the start, Hindes was impressed with Spaulding.
“I was Governor Dick Snelling's Commissioner of Budget and Management and Jeb was in his early years as a Vermont Senator,” Hindes said.“In those early days, Jeb had already developed his reputation for calm, open consideration of the issues and a bias for collaborative decision making. I recall the senior people I worked with were quite interested in keeping their eyes on this young rising star.”
Early Life
That young rising star comes from bedrock New England stock.
“Family lore, and I think it might be true, is that the first Josiah Spaulding in my lineage was one of the first patriots, if not the first, to die at Bunker Hill,” Spaulding said.
His mother, Helen Bowdoin Spaulding, was a direct descendant of James Bowdoin, the second governor of Massachusetts and founder of Bowdoin College (Maine), as well as Alexander Hamilton, a founding father and first secretary of the treasury of the United States.
Spaulding's father's family came from Worcester, MA, but he was actually born in Washington, DC, while his father was overseas in Korea.
“My mother's family lived in Washington, DC and my mother was staying with them,” Spaulding said. “So I was technically born in Washington. And when my father came home, as a lawyer he did some work in Washington and came home to Massachusetts. So I was raised in Massachusetts — in Manchester and Cambridge.”
Spaulding has two brothers.
“It's all boys,” he said. “I have one older and one younger.”
His older brother is the long-time CEO of the Boch Center, formerly the Wang Center, in Boston. His younger brother is a lawyer and marine entrepreneur living in Portland, Maine.
As noted, Spaulding's father was a lawyer and a politician.
“He was the chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party,” Spaulding said. “He ran for US Senate in 1970, and in 1974 he ran for attorney general. He got more votes than the incumbent governor got in his election campaign that year. So, actually, it was an extremely close election. But no Republicans in Massachusetts won in 1974 in the Watergate era.”
Back then, Republicans were much more liberal than they are now. Spaulding's father wanted the United States to leave Vietnam. And it was a Republican, President Richard Nixon, who founded the Environmental Protection Agency.
“I'm not here to defend Richard Nixon,” Spaulding said. “But yes, my father was involved with politics.”
Spaulding's father and a group of friends started a rehabilitation hospital called the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Hospital, next to Mass General.
“There was a new concept of rehabilitation,” Spaulding said. “And then the federal government changed the reimbursement policies. So my father ended up taking on all the liabilities and the shares. So he ended up being the president and CEO of the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Hospital for a number of years. And then he had a heart attack in 1983 and was gone. At that point, my mother tried to run the place, and my younger brother did, too. But eventually Mass General bought it. The name was changed in my father's honor, and the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital became one of the finest rehab hospitals in the country. And so that's my father. He was a very special person.”
Spaulding' parents were not helicopter parents.
“My parents gave me and my brothers plenty of room,” he said. “And they didn't put a lot of pressure on me. That was interesting to me. I think about now, and how parents are so all over their kids. Both my parents really put a high premium on public service. We were supposed to give back.”
Radio Days
After taking a flier at the ultra-liberal Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Spaulding came to Vermont and settled in at UVM. He became deeply involved in the college radio station and became program manager. He also met his wife, Susan Spaulding, there.
“I was a communications major and very involved in radio,” Spaulding said. “I enjoyed radio because it didn't matter what you looked like. You dressed as you wanted to. I loved being on the air. I liked the music and I liked doing news. So programming is what I enjoy.”
But Spaulding was also interested in television and film.
“So after graduation, my girlfriend — who turned out to be my wife for a very long time — we thought we'd move to Los Angeles,” Spaulding said. “So we packed up and got to San Francisco. And we heard the weather forecast, with its pollution alerts and all that kind of stuff, and we said, 'That's that! Now we've got to go home.' I came home and worked at a radio station in Lewiston, Maine for a while. Then the FCC started selling new licenses for FM radio and my wife and I applied together. So in 1976, we started from scratch.”
WNCS-FM, now called 104.7 The Point, went on the air in 1976.
“When we were starting WNCS, we had to apply for a license,” Spaulding said. “No one ever thought that FM was going anywhere, really. There already was an AM station in town. If they had applied for the FM license they would have gotten it. But nobody else applied. People didn't realize the power of FM radio.”
The Spauldings were at the right place at the right time; FM radio was about to explode.
While Spaulding enjoyed being on the air, he knew it was easier to get people to be deejays and newscasters than it was getting people to do the back-office work— like meeting the payroll. So he gravitated towards management.
“So right away, I had to figure out how to make the business run,” he said. “I had to sell advertisements. And selling advertisements for a new radio station was difficult, to say the least. When you're selling ads for a newspaper, at least you can see the ad. With radio, if you're not listening at that particular time, you don't know it ran. So I ended up getting diverted to sales. Then my brothers and I got involved with a small group that had a station in Hartford, Connecticut and in Exeter, New Hampshire. I was just a partner. I was not actively involved.”
By the time the Spauldings sold the radio station, FM radio was in full flower.
“We did OK” on the sale, Spaulding said.
The Political Itch
One of Spaulding's most successful hires, by the way, was Bob Kinzel, now on Vermont Public Radio.
“So here's a true story,” Spaulding said. “There was a woman named Amy Davenport, and she was Bob Kinzel's wife. And she did a commentary series. We had commentators — some very liberal and progressive, some semi-conservatives. I liked to do different stuff. So Amy comes in one day says, 'Jeb, I'm going to run for the House of Representatives. And so I need to give up my airship.' Because in those days, the SEC didn't want you to have an unfair advantage. And I said, 'Just so we don't get in trouble with each other. I'm thinking I'm going to run for the House of Representatives, too. And I'm going to run as an independent.' And she said, 'OK. Well, thank you very much for telling the story.' Then I heard from a very well-established state senator who convinced me that a) it's more fun to be in the Senate and b) it's not that much more work. And she was basically right about more fun, but it was definitely more work. And she also convinced me that if I ran as an independent I would lose.”
It was time for Spaulding to pick a party. After Nixon and Watergate, it seemed like joining the Democrats was the best way to go.
“I chose to be a Democrat and ran for the state senate as a Democrat,” Spaulding said. “And I enjoyed it. And I won it. And I beat an incumbent — but a one-term incumbent.”
Running for public office had been on his mind for a while.
“I think politics was somewhat in my blood,” Spaulding said. “And both my parents put a high premium on public service. And then my father died of a heart attack in 1983 and nobody had a chance to say goodbye. Within the next year, I figured, 'Hey, wait a minute here — don't procrastinate. Because life can change on you pretty quick.' So that's why I said, 'If I'm going to do this, why not do it now. At that stage of the game, the radio station was doing OK, so I could put some time into campaigning. And it didn't hurt at that stage of the game, I was running from Washington County. The radio station was in Washington County. I sold ads to a lot of people. I was doing the news. People knew me. But I just wanted to do public service.”
Spaulding ran for the senate in 1985 and won. He served as a state senator from 1986 to 2000, being chairman at various times of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Senate Education Committee, the Joint Fiscal Committee and the Joint Administrative Rules Committee.
During that time, he was also appointed by Governor Madeleine Kunin to be a trustee of the New England Board of Higher Education and a commissioner of the Education Commission of the States.
Spaulding also picked up a true friend and mentor in the Senate by being a mentor himself.
“I was a new senator from Windham County and he kind of took me under his wing,” Peter Shumlin said. “He had a lot of confidence in me and we became close friends.”
After the Legislature passed civil unions in 2000, Democrats were voted out of office in droves. Shumlin was part of a group of Democrats working to take back the Legislature, which they did in 2006.
By then, Spaulding was ready to go back to private life.
“And Shumlin said, 'If you run for re-election you'll get the majority, and I'd like you to be chairman of the Appropriations Committee,'” Spaulding said. “I said, 'Well, I haven't done that before. So I'll try.' And sure enough, we won. Some people say Peter promised that job to more than one person. I don't know if that's true, but it never crossed my mind that he wouldn't follow through. Peter always followed through with everything he'd ever said he'd do with me. I never saw him not follow through. So I stayed.”
“Jeb did a fabulous job,” Shumlin said. “Then he had enough of the Senate and went back to private life.”
Spaulding said he loved serving in the state senate.
“First, it was part of public service,” Spaulding said. “The greatest things, to me, are that we did Act 60 to try to equalize educational spending and we did civil unions. I was pushing for same sex marriage instead of civil unions. I did TV shows, I wrote op-eds and stuff like that. But we accomplished a lot anyway, and civil unions was a good step forward. And look at us now!”
Replacing Spaulding as Washington state senator was a new guy named Phil Scott, who would go on to have a successful political career as lieutenant governor and governor.
“So, yeah, I'm responsible for him getting in there, and I don't feel bad about that,” Spaulding joked.
During his last few years in the senate, Spaulding was part-time director of the VAST program (the Vermont Academy of Science and Technology at Vermont Technical College). When he left the senate he worked in the Department of Education, where he was recruited by his friend David Wolk, then the Commissioner of Education.
Then Jim Douglas decided to run for governor, leaving the treasurer's job open. And Shumlin's long arm reached out to Spaulding again.
“I'd watched Jeb handle the state budget,” Shumlin said. “He's bipartisan. He's incredibly intelligent. Mostly, he has great judgement. I called him and said, 'You gotta go do it!'”
Running for office was not on Spaulding's mind.
“Pete calls up and says, 'I'm supposed to run for governor. But I think I'm going to run for lieutenant governor. Because Jim Douglas is going to run and it's going to be a primary.' I jokingly said to Pete, 'You know, I'm not real happy working in the bureaucracy over here. I think maybe I'll run for lieutenant governor too. We'll have a primary.'”
Without missing a beat, Shumlin said, “Don't even think about it. You should be state treasurer.”
Spaulding parried with, “Why would anyone want to be state treasurer?”
Shumlin came back with, “Well, because you chaired the Appropriations Committee. You started your own business. You understand finance. It's an important position. It's not overly political and you're not a political person.”
Spaulding's reply was simple: “Nice,” he said. “I never thought of that before.”
A few days later, Howard Dean called Spaulding and told him he had to run for state treasurer. The push was on.
Shumlin eventually ran for lieutenant governor and lost to Brian Dubie. Spaulding ran for state treasurer and won.
He faced a steep learning curve.
“When I was chair of the Appropriations Committee. I didn't really recognize the serious implications of underfunding our pension plans,” Spaulding said. “When I got to the state treasurer's office and was responsible for those, I really did my homework. I realized, 'Wait a minute here, this is critical.' And by the way, since I was state treasurer, we've been funding them a whole lot better.”
Spaulding enjoyed the treasurer's job.
“It was a wonderful, wonderful eight years,” Spaulding said. “I learned a lot about pension funds and bonding and retirement systems. I was really enjoying myself. I really got out and started talking to people. But the glad-handing part of the job is not my specialty.”
The scariest time for Spaulding was the 2007-08 recession.
“It was the great implosion,” he said. “You saw the power of your pension funds down by a billion dollars. They've recovered by now. They've gone up significantly. But that was a pretty scary time.”
Although some people urged Spaulding to run for governor, his experience in the treasurer's office had shown him that the job was not for him.
“Being the state treasurer, you get to a certain point where you can actually see what it's like to be governor,” he said. “The compromises that are necessary? And the fund raising that's necessary? I don't want to be governor. So I sort of crossed that off the list and said, 'Well, I actually think Peter Shumlin has something to add to the state of Vermont.'”
Secretary of Administration
In the 2010 election, Shumlin won the governorship and Spaulding was elected to his fifth term as treasurer. He was just settling back into the job when — you guessed it! — Shumlin called again.
“He tells me I should be his Secretary of Administration,” Spaulding said. “I hadn't thought of that, either. So Peter Shumlin — he convinced me to stay in the chair of the Appropriations Committee. He then convinced me to run for state treasurer. He then convinced me to be Secretary of Administration. That's a pretty interesting story. But you know, I told Peter Shumlin I would accept the job as his secretary of administration, but I would never accept another job unless he gave me a direct order. And he never did, and I never have. I appreciated that about Pete.”
Spaulding said the Shumlin administration was defined early on by Tropical Storm Irene.
“I think Peter Shumlin was at his best when he was out there leading the people, consoling the people, being creative about how we should respond to this,” Spaulding said. “I think he really enjoyed it, even though it was a pretty hairy time.”
Spaulding ran point for Shumlin on single payer health insurance, a promise he made when he was running for governor and one in which he deeply believed. David Coates was appointed chair of the Single Payer Task Force, and Spaulding was assigned to the committee.
“This man took the heat,” Coates said. “We decided it was better for me to not go to the Legislature. We weren't sure how the treatment would be. So Jeb had to do all the testimony. He took so much heat on both sides, especially when we came up with the unanimous decision that we would not recommend it.”
To do single payer health insurance, the state needed more people, Coates said.
“We needed to be a bigger state,” he said. “Vermont was too small. We didn't have enough people to insure. Vermont was nothing more than a medium-sized city. We pretty much knew that going in and we tried our best, but we couldn't make it work. And Jeb took the heat. Because the people who wanted it didn't care what the cost was.”
Another hard moment came when Spaulding had to ease Secretary of Human Services Doug Racine out of his job.
“That's a hard one to think about,” Spaulding said. “I don't want to say anything but the absolute truth. I was not alone. I was just one person in the room when it was suggested it might be a good idea for Doug to do something different. I was there. The governor was not there.”
All in all, though, Spaulding enjoyed his new job.
“It was really pretty cool to have access anytime you want to the governor,” he said. “To be able to make your case. To see what it's really like. And I think that anybody who takes a position like governor — or, I imagine president if they're serious about it. To watch up close and not to be involved in the politics of the party.”
The State Colleges Call
Spaulding planned on remaining as Secretary of Administration through Shumlin's tenure as governor, but another job beckoned.
Spaulding had met the future chancellor of the state college system, Tim Donovan, around the time he started the radio station. They remained friends as both men dug into their careers. And then, when Donovan was planning to leave the job at SCV, he started putting pressure on Spaulding to take his place. It was another job Spaulding hadn't thought of before.
“I'm pretty lucky,” Spaulding said. “I'm falling into all these things.”
By this time Spaulding knew many of the players in the state college system.
“All these people involved with the Vermont State Colleges decided what they needed at the time was somebody with good executive management skills, communication skills, and who knew his way around the political system in the state,” Spaulding said. “They were not looking for someone on the traditional trajectory, which would be academia.”
He began the new job in 2015. From the start, he had the feeling he would enjoy it.
“When I was in the state senate, before chairing the Appropriations Committee, I was chair of the Senate Education Committee for a number of years,” Spaulding said. “I went back to UVM and got my Master's Degree in education and education administration and planning. So obviously, I had an interest in it. And I had worked in the Department of Education as the director of career and technical education. But I didn't really know what I was going to contribute to the Vermont state colleges, and I didn't fully realize the challenges that were facing all colleges and universities.”
To put it bluntly, this is a terrible time for colleges — apart from the first-tier, exclusive, heavily-funded elite ones like Yale, Harvard, Williams, Bennington, Middlebury and the like. Tuitions are sky-high, students are dwindling and competition for the remaining ones is fierce. On-line universities and state colleges are duking it out in national television advertisements.
“The Vermont State College system was sailing directly into the eye of the storm faced by small public college systems nationally, and especially in New England,” said Hindes, the president of the VSC board of trustees, describing the situation when Spaulding arrived.
“You have a shrinking, aging enrollment pool,” Hindes said. “You have tight state budgets, fierce competition by peer entities, and everyone trying to devise the quintessential new mousetrap that would bring their college stability and sustainability.
“Add to this an understandable expectation that the VSC needed to do something differently rather than continue to plod along. And then of the five VSCS entities, only one had stability in its president's office —CCV. The presidents at Johnson and VTC were new. Lyndon's president was about to announce his leaving. Castleton's was sending similar signals.
“Jeb's measured but change-oriented approach was just what the doctor ordered. His apparent disadvantage of not coming from 'within the academy' proved quickly to be the much-needed potion: fresh appraisal of issues, obstacles and opportunities coupled to a cool, level-headed decision-making style and an uncanny ability to quickly forge constructive working relationships. He was also willing to acknowledge what he didn't know or understand and patiently listened until he understood.”
Cheerleader for the State College System
Hindes said that Spaulding has already made the VSC stronger.
“First and foremost, Jeb moved quickly to build a bright, highly talented team in the Chancellor's office and developed effective operational relationships with the presidents of Johnson and Lyndon and CCV and then recruited excellent matches for new leadership at Castleton and Vermont Tech,” Hindes said. “He made good use of his campaigning skills to become a visible, popular and trustworthy ambassador for the VSCS. He made the first calls; then sent, in a most respectful way, a clear message that there was new leadership at the helm.”
Spaulding passionately believes in the importance of the state college system.
“I'll give you two examples that illustrate the power of Vermont State Colleges,” he said. “For one, there's a guy named Jay Fayette who is president and COO of PC Construction, which is the outgrowth of Pizzagalli Construction. It's the largest construction company in Vermont and it does business all over the East Coast. Jay tells the story of how he was second from the bottom in his high school. He didn't think he was going to be able to go to college. So he was working in construction and getting laid off every winter the way people do, and eventually he figured out that he needed to go to college. And he ended up at Vermont Tech. It took him a year of taking non-credit bearing courses to be able to start to get grade credit, but he did it. And you know there's no way that he could have been able to go to college anywhere else.”
The second example he gave involved David Silverman, currently president of Union Bank.
“I don't know where he went to college the first time, but it didn't work out,” Spaulding said. “He eventually got into Johnson State and now he's a bank president. I doubt he would have been going to college anywhere else. We have selectmen who went to one of our schools. If you're going to get a blood test or a colonoscopy, the nurse or phlebotomist is usually from one of our colleges. We're all over the place.”
Spaulding called the VSC system “the linchpin for upward mobility for a decent life.”
“Vermont state colleges confer more associates and bachelor's degrees to Vermonters than all of the other colleges and universities combined,” Spaulding said. “We annually confer 60 percent of all the bachelor's and associate degrees awards in the state to Vermonters. Close to half of our students — still, in this day and age — are the first in their family to go to college. And they are often of very limited financial means. Some of them didn't succeed in K-12. And in any case, most of them have children or come from families that are struggling with drug addiction. And we take most of them. We sometimes have to say, 'OK, you got a little work to do before you can come here.' But if it wasn't for one of the Vermont state colleges, they would not have the opportunity to go to a postsecondary education.”
Spaulding likes to point out that people with a college degree earn more money. They vote more often. They have longer lives. They get in trouble with the law less.
“And if you don't go to college, the odds that your children are going to go to college are a lot less,” Spaulding said. “We are critical to Vermont's economic future.”
Consolidation is a big part of Spaulding's strategy. On July 1, Lyndon State and Johnson State were officially blended together into Northern Vermont University.
It was a brutal decision to have to make.
“Regarding Lyndon and Johnson being unified into Northern Vermont University, that concept was developed in concert with our Long Range Planning Committee about a year after I joined the VSCS,” Spaulding said. “I do think it is accurate to say that the unification concept and adoption was driven by the chancellor. Once the decision was unanimously approved by the board of trustees, the leadership for unification appropriately shifted to President Elaine Collins. When we made the decision to unify, we announced concurrently that Elaine would be president of Lyndon State College and Johnson State College in the transition and president of Northern Vermont University post transition. That was a smart move. Of course, if unification resulted from the chancellor’s leadership, then if unification turns out to be a bust, which I don’t believe will be the case, the chancellor will have to take responsibility for that too.”
So far, the plan has had some success.
“The first year, we saved over a million dollars in administrative costs,” Spaulding said. “That's money that can be put into the student experience. We have faculty working together. The business programs are already merged, so students have access to more professors than they did otherwise. The travel programs are more robust, as they've got more students that can fill them in and allow them to run. People might call unification a merger, but that would have made it a lot tougher. Somebody in the banking industry said to me, 'Those bank presidents that had the foresight and the fortitude to make decisions soon enough are the ones that are still here and growing. And the ones that didn't aren't here’.”
The VSC has to be willing to change, Spaulding said.
“In Vermont, roughly 40 percent of the students that are graduating from high school have no plans for any postsecondary education,” Spaulding said. “One of our strategies is to work with partners like the Vermont Student Assistance Program to get more students to go on to college. If they do, they'll come to us. And we have to really beef up our retention. Retention is the quickest way to improve your bottom line. It's not to have to bring in new customers, but to keep our existing customers. And we've got work to do there.”
Consolidating Lyndon and Johnson was a huge and painful task.
“The point of unifying was to make sure that we're spending as little on administrative costs — as little on things that don't matter to students — as we could,” Spaulding said. “And then put those limited funds back into improving the student experience. We had to lay some people off. That's really not a pleasant thing to do. But when Green Mountain Keurig lays some people off, or My Web Grocer does, or Dealer.com does, it doesn't mean they're going out of business. It means they're going to pull out new product lines, or they might have to insert other product lines. GlobalFoundries is hiring at the same time as they're right-sizing in other areas. That's just the way it is.”
More consolidation is coming.
“That's a big priority,” he said. “We're working hard to consolidate business functions and shared services. We already do a lot of that and have done a lot of it. Right now, for example, we're working pretty hard at consolidation of payroll right now. We only have 12,000 students total. So how many payroll directors do you really need for that? And some people think that we're getting tough. But I say, 'Look, if we want to thrive in the future, if we want to add employees, then we also have to be able to cut certain areas right now. If we can actually save money on business functions, we can put it back in developing new certificate programs or new majors. And we can promote those. That's all for the good.”
Spaulding is also looking to secure more money from the state as well as from grants and philanthropic funding.
“State funding for sure,” Spaulding said. “But after 30 years of things going in the same direction, and also given how tight things are, they're not going to be easy to turn around. I hope they can. We're going to work real hard at it. But I'm not banking on them for the future.”
With low state support comes high tuition.
“We have some of the highest public tuitions in the country,” Spaulding said. “It's getting to be more and more common that we will hear from Vermonters who would like to go to one of their state colleges but are going out of state, even to independent colleges, because it's cheaper. That's wrong. That's counterproductive on every front. But that's one of the realities we faced.”
The state colleges are economic drivers for their areas, Spaulding pointed out.
“Where would Johnson and Lyndonville be without Lyndon State and Johnson State?” Spaulding asked. “Now we have the Northern Vermont University. Or where would Rutland be without Castleton? Where would Newport be without a Community College of Vermont located there? So we're not only critical for the larger state economy for helping to bend the curve of social services by providing people with postsecondary education, but we provide individual Vermonters with opportunities that they wouldn't otherwise have. And we're the economic and social hub for a lot of rural parts of the state.”
Keeping the system going requires, among other things, a certain amount of political skill. After all, the state keeps cutting its funding.
“In the 1980s we got roughly 50 percent of our revenues from state appropriation,” Spaulding said. “It's now down to 15 or 16 percent.”
Defunding the college system has been going on for a long time; Shumlin was guilty of doing it when Spaulding was his secretary of administration.
“Well, it's been going on for 30 years,” Spaulding said. “And I wasn't the governor then, and I had responsibilities for a lot of other things. Now I am the chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges system. You learn something when you move into a new position. When I became state treasurer, people would say, 'What were the requirements to be the state treasurer?' I jokingly said, but it's true: 'You had to be able to get one more vote than the person who was running against you.' That's the requirement. And now that I'm the chancellor, I'm going to be making the case for additional state funding.”
The VSC might have the dubious distinction of getting one of the lowest amounts of state support in the country, but Spaulding points out it is still funded to the tune of $29 million a year.
“We should be getting a lot more,” Spaulding said. “But you would have to have a pretty big endowment to throw off $29 million every year.”
No matter how dire the situation, don't expect the state to “ride to the rescue,” Spaulding said.
“Yes, part of our strategy is to get additional revenues out of the state,” he said. “But you know, around this country, higher education is receiving less funding. And I cannot in good conscience pin the hopes for the future of the Vermont State College system on changing that. We're going to need their help but we have to do it ourselves.”
Smaller birth rates mean fewer college students down the road, Spaulding said. And the demographics are going to get worse.
“A lot of prognosticators are thinking that a lot of colleges are going to close in the coming years,” Spaulding said. “And some experts think that's starting to happen now. But we're not going to lose one of them, by the way. None of our schools are going to close. I would say to people, 'Look, you know I can't tell you whether Community College of Vermont is going to continue to have 12 locations. It may have 10 locations, or 15. But the Community College of Vermont is not going anywhere. Castleton isn't going anywhere. Northern Vermont University may have three campuses or two or maybe they'll just have one. But Northern Vermont University will survive. So will Vermont Tech. Our mission is to make them thrive, not just survive.”
Some colleges are discounting their tuition in order to attract students.
“The average discount in independent colleges is about 50 percent,” Spaulding said. “How long they can stay in business, I don't know. Part of my strategy is going to be outlasting them.”
Competition is incredibly intense. Next door in New York State, the State University of New York offers close to free tuition for residents.
“And then you've got new players online, like the University of Phoenix,” Spaulding said. “So it's a wicked challenging world out there in higher education. And guess what? That brings opportunities.”
Vermonters need to understand just how good its state colleges are, Spaulding said.
“We are trying to increase our visibility, so that Vermonters understand just how good the Vermont state colleges are and how great our faculty is,” Spaulding said. “Our teachers like to teach. And we participate in national and international student exchange programs. Our students can go to hundreds of universities and colleges around this world, at in-state tuition here.”
Spaulding believes that publicity will help the VSC expand its customer base.
“If our traditional customer base is getting smaller, we need to look at a non-traditional customer base,” Spaulding said. “That means adults and Vermonters who are not looking for a full degree. They might be needing more short-form and flexible work and meaningful credentials. CCV has a new certified bookkeeper credential. Lyndon has a new national hospitality certificate. CCV in Windham County is working with the Brattleboro hospital to do a medical assistant certificate. Lyndon State College has had one of the premier atmospheric sciences meteorology programs in the country. And it attracts people from all over the country. I firmly believe it will attract more students as the Lyndon Atmospherics Program at Northern Vermont University than at Lyndon State College. And I think there is definitely a marketing piece there.”
Despite all the challenges he faces as chancellor, Spaulding is reliably upbeat.
“We're not crumbling,” he said. “We're experiencing the same challenges that the other colleges and universities are. But I'm totally confident in our future. The only thing that would really threaten our future would be if we just try to wait it out or wait for the state to save us. Or wait for the world to get back to normal. We're not going to do that. We're around for the long run. We have to be.”
The Future
The future for Spaulding is the present. He said he's over politics and he loves his job.
“I hope to be doing this when I'm 70,” Spaulding said. “I'm fortunate in that my health is good and my energy level is good. I love what we're doing. I feel like we're making progress. We've got a great leadership team.”
When Spaulding looks back on his career, he can see how big a part chance played.
“I didn't know I was going to be chancellor,” he said. “I didn't know I was going to be secretary of administration. I didn't know I was going to be state treasurer. I didn't aspire to any of those things. So who knows what's next? Honestly, I think given that you never know what's coming down the road. I tell younger people that when the door of opportunity opens, go through it. Even if you're worried about it. The moment you stop going through the doors of opportunity, they're not going to open. So who knows. But my hope is that I'm going to do this and see what happens. All I wanted to do was be a Vermonter and be part of the state of Vermont. I love the state of Vermont. And I can't believe how lucky I am to have opportunities to play some small part in a number of different roles.”
Joyce Marcel is a journalist in southern Vermont. In 2017 she wasnamed the best business magazine profile writer in the country by the Alliance of Area Business Publications. She is married to Randy Holhut, the photographer who took the photos for this story. He is also the news editor/acting operations manager of The Commons, a weekly newspaper in Brattleboro.