“How do you talk about the arts?” UVM’s vice president for research, Richard Galbraith, asked in introducing the third in a series of academic presentations to the UVM Board of Trustees on the university’s teacher scholar model, this one highlighting the creative arts. Teacher-scholar presentations at earlier board meetings – on science, technology and medicine and social sciences and humanities – were engaging but traditional testimonials to the power of the model from faculty and students seated at a table facing board members.
The answer, he told the board during an interlude at last Friday’s meeting, is that you don’t. “If you’re going to showcase the arts, you need to experience them, see them.”
See and experience the arts the board did, who, along with a large audience of UVM faculty, students and staff, sat spellbound during an ambitious, 45-minute series of performances, three months in the making, featuring a small army of faculty and students artists performing jazz and classical music, displaying paintings, dancing, reading poetry and prose, acting and screening short films — to intoxicating effect.
The extravaganza, titled The Voice That Is Great Within, took place in the Sugar Maple ballroom adjoining the Silver Maple Ballroom in the Davis Center, where the board meeting took place. It was produced by Theatre Department chair Gregory Ramos.
The event underscored the “essentialness of the liberal arts” at UVM and in higher education as a whole, UVM president Tom Sullivan said in remarks that followed the performances.
“If you look at the words in the title of the show, the most important one is ‘within,’” he said. The liberal arts and the arts can help us understand “the nature, the purpose and the meaning of life. The within. The physical, the emotional and the aesthetic. That’s very, very powerful.”
Comprehensive Campaign Update, Arts & Sciences/IBB Discussion
Earlier in the day, at the Committee of the Whole meeting, UVM Foundation CEO Shane Jacobson gave an upbeat presentation on the progress of the university’s $500 million comprehensive campaign. The university has come within about $17 million of its goal, a full year ahead of schedule, he said.
There was more good news. Gifts that are moving through the pipeline from prospects who are in different stages of the giving cycle, Jacobson said, have grown nearly six-fold since the campaign began in 2011 to over $340 million.
“That’s a very positive signal to me that we continue to have great capacity as we move forward,” he said.
The board also heard a discussion – within the context of UVM’s Incentive-based Budgeting model, under which the university has operated for three years – of the financial challenges facing the College of Arts & Sciences.
A leadership team that included President Sullivan, Provost David Rosowsky, Bill Falls, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Alberto Citerella, university budget director, Stacey Kostell, enrollment management vice president, and Alex Yin, director of the Office of Institutional Research, provided context and outlined the challenge, which Citerella demonstrated is independent of the widely used budget model: that declining enrollments in the arts and humanities – a national trend – are responsible for the college’s financial position.
As at other schools, UVM’s College of Arts and Sciences is “facing head winds – or gale winds,” Falls said. Incentive Based Budgeting isn’t a solution, he said, but it does provide a “challenge to create new ideas.”
The college needs to “innovate toward what students are going after,” Falls said, citing as an example the new interdisciplinary major, Health and Society, that will be offered by the college beginning in the fall.
“We need to find those experiences where students want to be involved, especially when they are interdisciplinary,” he said.
Update on Proposed LCOM, Psychological Sciences Facility; 2.9 tuition increase; Torrey Hall Renovation
In the afternoon, the full board also heard an update on the proposed Larner College of Medicine and College of Arts & Sciences Department of Psychological Science Biomedical Research Complex, encompassing both a total renovation of the Given Building and the construction of an integrated new research facility nearby.
Schematic design is underway for the approximately $90 million project and should be complete by the October meeting, when the board will also see a detailed budget for the project.
If fundraising goes as expected, the project could receive board approval in February 2019, break ground as early as a year later and be completed over the next four-and-a-half years.
The board also approved the FY 2019 general fund budget totaling just over $370 million. The budget includes tuition increases of 2.7 percent for out-of-state students and 2.8 percent for Vermonters – the sixth year in a row tuition increase have been held to 3 percent or lower – bringing the total cost of tuition to $40,176 and $15,936, respectively. The total cost of attendance (including tuition, fees, room and board) will be $55,008 for out-of-state students and $30,768 for in-state students. However, the average net price students pay after all gift financial aid is factored in is about $16,600 lower for out-of-state students and $11,500 lower for Vermonters.
The budget also includes a 1.0 percent base budget reduction for administrative units and a 2.0 percent salary increase for non-represented staff.
Both the Educational Policy and Institutional Resources and the Budget, Finance and Investment committees heard an update on the renovation of Torrey Hall from Bob Vaughan, director of capital planning and management. A fire severely damaged the building in August 2017, while miraculously leaving internationally significant collections of plant, insect and animal specimens housed in the building nearly untouched. The collections are being housed elsewhere on campus while the building is refurbished.
Vaughan said that insurance money would be used to renovate Torrey’s electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems, and to add a sprinkler system, but that $6.3 million total would be needed to rebuild the interior, which was destroyed – a “black hole,” Vaughan called it — and to build an adjoining stair and elevator tower. The full board approved the project on Saturday. The work will occur in two phases. Work on the building’s systems will begin next spring. The second phase will start after the first phase is completed and a combination of gifts and grants is secured to fund it.
In other news:
Educational Policy and Institutional Resources Committee
- Associate Provost for Teaching and Learning Brian Reed, Vice Provost for Student Affairs Annie Stevens, and UVM Internship Coordinator Amanda Chase gave a presentation on UVM’s student internship program, which has grown dramatically in response to student demand in recent years. Stevens described the many ways in which the university has worked to standardize internship offerings across academic units, which has led to a more consistent, high quality student experience, and to integrate internships into students’ academic experiences. But the internship program still faces a number of challenges, the group said. One of the primary ones is finding the funding to support students in unpaid internships, which less affluent families have difficulty affording. The university has raised $300,000 in funds to support students in these internships, a great success, but student demand for these funds has increased 40 percent this year, creating a shortfall. Provost David Rosowsky said the administration will look for ways to fill the gap. UVM’s internship record compares favorably to national figures, Chase said. Sixty-seven percent of UVM students have at least one internship experience before graduating, compared with 48 percent nationally, and 67 percent have paid internships compared with 65 percent nationally. The university will continue to build its internship program, she said, given national figures showing the positive impact of these experiences. Students who have internships, she said, are hired faster than students who don’t and received job offers 28 percent higher on average.
- Creative Communications Director Amanda Waite presented a range of updates about progress on UVM’s communications goals, as well as updates on a number of new initiatives. These included: newly created print pieces that showcase academic offerings at the university; a family of logo templates to be utilized campus-wide for consistency; a new online video series (“Live at 5”) that spotlights faculty for prospective undergraduates; an international marketing campaign on behalf of the Graduate College; success in national media reach and an opportunity for researchers to learn from and network with a top science reporter, Tim Appenzeller, news editor of Science magazine; and a new online campus map that creates the opportunity to showcase the university in novel ways.
Budget, Finance and Investment Committee
- A renovation of 439 College Street (Phi Delta Theta Fraternity), which will provide housing for students, will be funded entirely with $2.4 million in gifts. Committee members also approved $2.0 million in gifts to complete the Multipurpose Center project for costs associated with design, development and permitting.
- Shane Jacobson, president and CEO of the UVM Foundation, told committee members that $8.6 million of $11 million needed in non-debt funding for the Ifshin Hall project has been raised. As of May 17, 2018, the UVM Foundation had received commitments and receipts totaling $10.8 million for the STEM facility with a remaining debt goal at $15.2 million, he said.
- The Investment Subcommittee reported that as of March 31, 2018 the university’s endowment had reached $524.5 million.
The consent agenda for the board meeting is available here.
Source: UVM News