On anniversary of controversial merger, VTSU officials say they’ve turned the page

RANDOLPH CENTER, Vt. (WCAX) – It’s been one year since the Vermont State Colleges campuses merged to form Vermont State University to address millions in debt and declining enrollment. Faculty and university leaders say while it has been a bumpy year, they feel like they’ve turned the page and are looking forward to year two.

Engineering department head John Kidder and his peers have been on the front lines of the merger of Castleton University, Northern Vermont University, and Vermont Technical College.

“It’s been somewhat tumultuous going through that,” Kidder acknowledged. “The faculty, while we had a common catalog and a lot of common ground and common practices, they were still very different institutions, and so there’s been some work to pull that all together. I would say the faculty has done a great job at pulling it all together.”

Kidder says some of that tumultuousness is connected to leadership changes, including two new interim presidents after previous former president Parwinder Grewal stepped down suddenly in April 2023 after less than a year in office. “I think that at times it’s felt like we haven’t had the leadership we need, and the vision we need,” Kidder said.

Interim president David Bergh joined VTSU at a time when leaders faced backlash for ongoing cuts to programming. The state invested $200 million into the merger with the promise that the university would cut spending by $5 million a year.

Bergh says they met that goal. “Financially, as we’re working to reduce our expenses and our budget, we’re on track and we’ve made progress there,” he said. The cuts came from letting go of many faculty members as part of the university’s plan to reach financial stability. “It takes time to work through that as an institution, and you know, those are some of the hard choices and decisions we had to make to be on track to reach our fiscal goals and to meet our responsibility to the state.”

The system also struggled with declining enrollment over the past decade, but vice president of enrollment Maurice Ouimet says numbers are trending upwards again. “We’re excited to report that we’re seeing positive growth trends in our new student enrollment at this point. We’ve been trending from three to as much as six percent ahead and we’re currently hovering around five percent increase for new students for the fall,” he said. Ouimet says he thinks many students needed a year to see how the merger would work out and now he’s hopeful the numbers keep trending up.

Kidder says now that the first year is over, he’s excited about what’s ahead. “I think it was wise for us to go into that direction, because higher education is really in flux right now. So, it’s an exciting place to be and I think we stepped out and were proactive about it,” he said.

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