NU trustees decide to sell Vermont College, programs

By William Knox
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

The fate of Vermont College was finally decided by the Norwich University Board of Trustees on Saturday, Jan. 27, after a day-and-a-half of deliberation during a meeting in Washington, D.C.

Accepting the proposal of Norwich University president Richard Schneider, the board voted to sell all of the Montpelier and Brattleboro properties and programs as soon as an appropriate buyer could be found.

According to a university press release, the board has directed Schneider to immediately separate the academic governance of the two institutions and to begin the process of finding a buyer.

"It takes awhile to sort out how we separate these two organizations," Schneider said in a Monday, Jan. 29, meeting with staff and faculty in White Chapel on the Northfield campus. "But we're going to do it smartly and logically and orderly. The board said to do it with dispatch, which means don't take three years to committee and study it. Get it going so that the people in Northfield can start to worry about the mission here and the people at Vermont College can start to worry about the mission there."

Schneider outlined two guiding principles at the meeting which would be followed during the transition. He said the first principle was that the transition should be "transparent to the student body," explaining that this meant the quality of student services should remain the same through out the transition of "separating these two institutions and reestablishing Vermont College as a separate institution as it was in 1972."

Schneider also said in the Monday meeting that Vermont College will continue to "aggressively" admit new students during the transition and that all students presently matriculating at Vermont College will be able to earn Norwich degrees.

The second general principle Schneider stressed to the faculty was that the ideal situation was that all of the Vermont College programs would stay intact along with the property and would be sold to one buyer.

"I'm not going to cherry pick these programs," Schneider said. "I believe they're strongest if they remain as a community."

Schneider said that while the sale had been approved, "all the structure, all the governance that was in existence Friday is still in existence today," adding that changes would only happen in the organizations of the two institutions under the authority of his office.

"When the time is right, we'll change certain things," Schneider said. "But I've got to be in consultation with people before I do that. I'm not going to just do that unilaterally."

Schneider's first action has been to appoint Dr. Richard Hansen, Norwich University's Senior Vice President, as head of the Vermont College campus to "lead us through this period of transition." Schneider said his ultimate goal is to have Hansen spend his full time at the Montpelier campus by March.

Schneider has also met with the university senate to discuss how Vermont College is going to govern itself after it is separated from Norwich. He "envisioned" all essential administrative support for Vermont College, such as information technology, bursar, registrar, and financial aid continuing to be run by Norwich throughout the transition period and possibly beyond.

"I'm not going to separate until I know what I'm separating towards," Schneider said. "All that framework will have to be in place before I'd authorize separate governance."

In the best-case scenario, Schneider said that if the programs were highly successful after separate governance had been established, he could foresee not selling.

"I pray that's the case," Schneider said, "that the programs are so successful once they are separated, that growth like that could happen. But as of now, the decision has been set. I'm not going to play 'what if?' drills. I can't."

At the meeting with faculty, Schneider said he believed the transitional period could be as long as three years. "A year or two or three, whatever it might take," he said. "But I'm thinking it's going to be in that ballpark when, finally, Vermont College might be standing on its own. But the course is clear. A decision has been made. And now we are in the stage of spending all our energies designing an implementation strategy to find an appropriate buyer."

Schneider said the sale will be overseen by four university trustees: Fred Kreitzberg, board chairman; Fred Weintz, chairman of the investment committee; George Donovan, chairman of the facilities committee; and Beth Veach, a member of the academic affairs committee who is a graduate of the Vermont College ADP program.

The oversight committee has been given the authority to commit the institution to action by the board of trustees. Schneider said the asking price falls within the range of $15 to $20 million.

"At this point, we're letting the world know that we have decided to establish Vermont College as an independent entity, and we're open to any and all people who would like to talk with us about it," Schneider stressed, adding that he was also hoping some of the alumni would rise to the occasion and actually acquire some of the programs.

"Vermont College has many multimillionaire alums," Schneider said, "who, if they wanted to, could put a syndicate together and acquire some of the programs and then lease some of the property."

One point Schneider wanted people to realize was that the programs currently at Vermont College were not the same as those in place in 1972 when the NU purchased them.

"We had a very interesting conversation among the trustees," Schneider said, "because they all picture Vermont College in different ways."

Schneider said all the original two-year associate degree programs have since been eliminated with the final nursing program closed last year. All of the current programs were either purchased from Goddard University or created since the 1972 purchase of Vermont College.

Schneider said the endowment is currently being reviewed in order to identify what gifts will go with Vermont College after the sale. He said that the sale would enable Norwich to focus its energies on the full-time residents of the Northfield campus, but he said he also would like the Northfield departments to begin adult learning programs to replace those lost with the sale of Vermont College.

Schneider also said he foresaw the possibility of future partnerships between Vermont College and Norwich in the area of lifelong learning.

"We're going to continue with lifelong learning," he said. "We're making good progress there. It does support many of the things we have going on here as well as things we have going on at Vermont College. It might very well be that, after the two institutions are completely separated and established on their own, that it may be one of the areas where we partner together."

Schneider also emphasized that all current lease holdings on Vermont College would be honored.

The Northfield faculty in attendance at the Monday meeting seemed to readily accept the decision and what few questions there were had to be coaxed from the audience by Schneider.

"We're going to do this with great dignity and with respect for the histories of both institutions," Schneider said Monday. "In the end, when this is all done, I want to be able to look back and say 'they did it right.'"

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