Vermont Business Magazine The University of Vermont’s Board of Trustees today approved a general fund operating expense budget of $379,560,000 for fiscal year 2022, which starts July 1. Last February the board approved President Suresh Garimella’s proposal to freeze tuition for the coming academic year. It will be the third consecutive year tuition levels have remained the same. At the February meeting, the board also approved Garimella’s recommendations to reduce the student comprehensive fee by 2.2% and to freeze next year’s room and board charges at their current rates.
Today trustees also took actions resulting from a university-wide initiative to regularly and systematically review all low-enrollment/low graduation programs to better align resources with strategic priorities, and to enhance UVM’s long-term financial sustainability. “An equally important reason for curating our degree offerings is to ensure that we are providing our students with an array of properly resourced programs that can maintain strong enrollments, and to foster the vitality necessary to achieve a high-quality academic experience,” said UVM Provost and Senior Vice President Patty Prelock.
The first actions to reach the board as a result of the program-review initiative included board approval of the terminations of 16 Secondary Education minors in the College of Education and Social Services (CESS); the termination of the Sustainable Landscape Horticulture major in the College of Agriculture as Life Sciences (CALS); and the termination of the Dietetics, Nutrition and Food Sciences major in CALS. However, while these majors have technically been terminated, the educational programs have been realigned in the departments to better serve students. The Nutrition and Food Sciences major now includes three concentrations, one of which is dietetics. Similarly, sustainable landscape horticulture majors are still available under a newly named major, Agroecology and Landscape Design.
Trustees also heard an update about the College of Arts and Sciences’ low-enrollment program review. Following discussions with faculty, most program changes will be uncontested.
In keeping with the university’s goal to strategically invest in forward-looking programs of interest to students and that leverage academic strengths of the university, trustees approved the creation of a certificate of graduate study in CESS in Resiliency-based Approaches with Families, Schools and Communities; and the creation of a micro-certificate of graduate study in Agroecology in the Graduate College.
Apart from examination of individual academic programs, trustees heard an update regarding work on a potential academic reorganization that will consider alignments that capitalize on the university’s strengths and academic and research synergies while ensuring a sustainable future for the university. The goal is to optimize for years to come the education the university provides to its students and the research and scholarship it shares with the state and with the world.
The board also heard from Garimella—and public health and infectious disease experts Jan Carney and Beth Kirkpatrick—about UVM’s comprehensive response to the pandemic. They highlighted the importance of putting research into practice; and the role that public education, collaboration, advocacy and clinical work played in creating a robust strategy. And they credited UVM’s plan—which included extensive mandatory testing, creating a culture of social distancing and mask-wearing across campus, de-densification, ongoing collaboration with government entities, and consistently following the science—with successfully keeping the university open and surrounding communities safe.
The university’s overall positivity rate was 0.21% out of more than 400,000 tests administered during the academic year. UVM’s biweekly positivity rate was significantly and consistently lower than the state’s.
Source: UVM Burlington, 6.4.2021