UVM interim president outlines enrollment metrics, nursing consortium and three funding requests to Senate Education Committee

Patty Prelock, interim president of the University of Vermont, told the Vermont State Senate Education Committee on Feb. 7 that the university is “stable and continues to thrive” while outlining enrollment, workforce and research priorities and three formal funding requests to the Legislature.

Prelock summarized student‑level metrics, workforce partnerships and new initiatives, and asked the committee to support a 3% increase in UVM’s base funding in the governor’s budget plus two one‑time allocations: $1 million for the Tech Hub (to be matched by industry) and $5 million spread over five years for the Vermont Cancer Center initiative as the center seeks National Cancer Institute designation.

The nut of Prelock’s message was financing for statewide workforce and research needs. She said UVM is prioritizing affordability through its UVM Promise program, expanding nursing capacity through a proposed nursing consortium with other Vermont institutions, and investing in research and workforce pipelines tied to semiconductor manufacturing and rural cancer care.

Prelock said the university enrolls 3,664 Vermont residents—about 25% of the student body—and that “46% of our Vermont undergraduates attend tuition free because of the direct financial support we provide.” She added that 91% of Vermont students receive some scholarship or financial aid and that Vermont‑resident student retention stands at roughly 93%. On graduation timing, she said 70% of students finish in four years and roughly 80% complete within six years.

On affordability, Prelock described UVM Promise as a program that covers tuition for Vermont households with incomes at or below $100,000, and said the university increased that eligibility threshold from $75,000 last year. She said the program makes direct support available to more than half of Vermont households and called it central to UVM’s strategy for keeping students in state.

Addressing the statewide nursing shortage, Prelock described a planned consortium that would include UVM and other public and private institutions across Vermont. She said the consortium aims to expand capacity by sharing clinical simulation facilities, aligning admissions pathways (including pathways for students with bachelor’s degrees in other fields), and seeking federal seed funding to develop the consortium’s structure. “We have more students than we could take,” Prelock said, and she described efforts to double nursing output for the state within five to ten years; she said some programs already outgrew existing certified simulation lab capacity.

Prelock said UVM has submitted a federal funding request to seed the nursing consortium for one year and is exploring residency programs and employer partnerships so graduates can move directly into paid positions at Vermont hospitals and health centers. Committee members asked about admissions criteria, clinical lab capacity and incentives to retain graduates in Vermont; Prelock replied that the university is exploring residency placements, repayment programs and local hiring partnerships but did not list statutory incentives.

On workforce and industry development, Prelock requested $1 million in one‑time state funding for a Tech Hub tied to federal awards and private matches. She said the Tech Hub dollars would support workforce training in gallium nitride semiconductor applications and that GlobalFoundries and other industry partners are part of the matching strategy. “This is to create semiconductors,” she said, and framed the request as investment in both economic development and education pipelines, including STEM outreach and K‑12 robotics programming.

Prelock also described a $5 million request over five years for the Vermont Cancer Center to strengthen rural cancer research and care and to advance an application for National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation. She said NCI designation would allow the center to qualify for certain federal research funds that are currently unavailable to it. The cancer funding request, she said, is focused on cancers with higher incidence in Vermont’s rural communities, mentioning melanoma, lung and breast cancers as priorities.

Prelock outlined a new university‑wide planetary health initiative intended to coordinate research, education and community outreach across centers and institutes, linking environmental stewardship to public health outcomes. She cited campus research on nature’s effects on blood pressure, wildfire smoke and childhood asthma, algae blooms and water quality, and forest impacts on child nutrition as examples of interdisciplinary work the initiative will connect to policy and workforce training.

Committee members asked about marketing and recruitment, dual enrollment and summer programming; Prelock said UVM is centralizing summer programs and dual enrollment to expand recruitment and early‑college pathways and that the university has increased outreach to out‑of‑state and international students as part of a broader enrollment strategy. She said increasing out‑of‑state enrollment helps subsidize in‑state tuition support but emphasized efforts to retain graduates in Vermont.

Prelock closed by noting prior legislative support for scholarships, agriculture extension and the Larner College of Medicine, and asked senators to consider the three asks: a 3% base funding increase, $1 million for the Tech Hub (matched by industry), and $5 million over five years for the Vermont Cancer Center’s NCI pathway. She said the university will continue pursuing federal funds for the nursing consortium and other initiatives and welcomed further discussion with the committee.

The committee did not take any formal votes during this appearance; senators posed questions and requested additional detail on percentage breakdowns and program administration.