Nine months after coming into office, President Daniel Mark Fogel was inaugurated Friday in Patrick Gym in front of the Governor, dignitaries, faculty and students.

Fogel became the 25th President of UVM last year, and even within his first year on campus, has moved to put forth his plan, including buying Trinity College, plans for an Honors College, and unveiling his vision for the next 10 years of UVM, which includes the new student commons.

The crowd was full of faces known to Vermont, including Governor Jim Douglas, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, U.S. Representative Bernard Sanders, Vermont State Senator James Condos, Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle, Vermont State Colleges Chancellor Robert Clarke and past UVM President Edwin Colodny.

Also at the inauguration was the head of the Board of Trustees, C. Dean Maglaris.

“Dan Fogel is the leader who can take us all into the higher levels of esteemed academia whether it’s in the ranks of public or private.”

Leahy spoke of the relationship between UVM and Vermont.

“The University needs Vermont.”

Current Louisiana State President William Jenkins was at the inauguration, along with delegates from 68 other colleges and universities.

In Fogel’s speech, he began with thanking and speaking of his family, and then moved on to a general discussion of universities. At one point in the speech, he mentioned his vision, which has been received negatively by some here at UVM.

“Putting out a detailed vision statement for the future was an act of great joy, of creative energy, and perhaps of foolhardiness,””said Fogel in his speech.

“We envisioned the University of Vermont as the nation’s premiere environmental university, as one of the nation’s great centers of research in the life sciences, medicine, and health, and as an innovative exemplar of the value of liberal education that would attract some of the nation’s brightest students

and faculty to UVM, the nation’s smallest land grant institution with a medical college, offering all of the resources of a great research university combined with the human scale, flexibility, and responsiveness of the old New England college we were over two hundred years ago at our founding and that we continued to be throughout the early decades of our history.”

Fogel also spoke of some of the accomplishments he has brought to UVM since taking office.

“Well, a lot has happened in the last nine months to move us toward the goals outlined in the vision statement,” said Fogel.

“The University purchased the Trinity College campus. The faculty, after some twenty years of discussion, approved the creation of an Honors College, and the Board of Trustees sealed that approval just yesterday afternoon. We have set a campus master plan afoot, have completed a thorough-going reorganization of our division of Development and Alumni Relations, have created a division of state and federal relations aimed at enhancing the University’s connections with the communities we serve in Vermont and beyond, and have rapidly advanced the process of creating a student union, the University of Vermont Student Commons, that will be a vital center of community at UVM and that will help to place UVM in the forefront among its peers in the quality of student life.”

Fogel went on to address some of the other aspects of UVM, including faculty and students.

“Our wonderful faculty, having recorded over a hundred million dollars in external awards annually for the first time ever in the year that closed last June 30, have been regularly featured this year in Fortune, the Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, the Atlanta Constitution, the Christian Science Monitor, and on and on (the list is nearly endless).

“Student interest in UVM is surging, with applications up twenty-five percent in the last two years, and with quality indicators shooting up too-for instance, the 33 point jump in the SAT scores of Vermont applicants for admission next fall. Applications to the graduate school, too, are up a whopping forty percent this spring.” Fogel was optimistic about the goals his administration has set for the university.

“And so pride in the people of UVM is the keynote of everything I have to say to you today, and I will move on rapidly to close with an affirmation that possibility, the sense that we can in fact achieve the high goals we share for the University of Vermont, is becoming probability.”

Even though the inauguration happened on Friday afternoon during classes, many students still showed up to Patrick Gym to watch the festivities.

“I thought the inauguration was phenomenal,” said Marget Brue, the new student trustee.

“I was really excited to have been there to see beginning of what is going to be an amazing era for UVM.”Student Government President Jon Badaracco presented Fogel with a gift from the students, a part of the old Billings Student Center before it burned down.

“I feel that inauguration was a great event,” said Badaracco.

“It was a milestone for the University as it inducted its 25th President and a moment of great pride.”

Thanks goes to Wes Tank-Day who also helped on this article.