On Feb. 9, UVM President Marlene Tromp announced the university’s new strategic plan, “Green, Gold, and Bold,” establishing UVM’s priorities around student connection, values-driven learning, community partnerships and campus community.

In a new approach to implementation, divisions across the university are working to identify how they can best align their work with this plan, Tromp said. 

“In a time of challenge or crisis, or when things are evolving, which is happening in higher ed right now, you really need to know what your priorities are,” Tromp said. 

The purpose of a strategic plan is to clarify a university’s goals and evaluate its existing strengths, said SGA President Kennedy Connors. 

“The strategic plan impacts all of us. It especially impacts our student body as it sets forth what’s to come as a university,” Connors said. 

Connors served on the Strategic Planning Committee, a group of 30 faculty, staff, administrators and two students who worked closely with Tromp to develop the plan. 

Katie Shepherd, Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee, said that this new plan is different from UVM’s previous strategic vision in how it was developed and how it will be implemented. 

“Our current strategic plan was, by design […] meant to be a community endeavor,” Shepherd said.

Before “Green, Gold, and Bold,” UVM’s previous plan was called Amplifying Our Impact. 

“[The previous plan] was not developed collaboratively, and I don’t know that students would really be able to say what it was,” Shepherd said. 

Shepherd hopes the plan will reach students to help them understand what the goals of their university are, she said.

Tromp began developing the new “Green, Gold, and Bold” plan as soon as she accepted the job at UVM. She then asked senior leaders to reflect on challenges, opportunities and aspirations for the university, she said. 

She also used an AI model to read every website with a uvm.edu anchor and every social media post about UVM, especially posts by UVM affiliates, faculty, staff and students. The AI model searched for three concepts mentioned in the posts: challenges, opportunities and aspirations, Tromp said. 

Based on this information and on conversations with leaders from each UVM college, Tromp created what she called a “zero draft,” the initial outline of the strategic plan.

The Strategic Planning Committee then revised Tromp’s “zero draft” over the course of five months, Shepherd said. 

The committee then held “listening sessions,” incorporating feedback from over 1,000 people across UVM, Shepherd said. 

In these sessions, the committee heard from faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students, Connors said. 

“It means that the plan we have today is really a reflection of so many different aspects of campus, not just the 30 of us who were in that room writing it.” Connors said. 

Gail Shampnois, director of the Office of Student and Community Relations, said that she was delighted by this new university-wide collaborative approach to strategic planning. 

Shampnois, who has worked at UVM for 34 years, said the new strategic plan is different from past statements because the planning committee actively sought out feedback from across the university. 

“It’s different to me in the fact that Our Common Ground values are really leading so much of the way we do the work. And I feel like that hasn’t always seemed that prominent,” Shampnois said. 

Shampnois hopes the strategic plan continues to inspire interdisciplinary collaboration across UVM, she said.

“As we go forward, I’d love more of these conversations. Like, now we have the plan, what’s the next step?” Shampnois said. 

The next step is the implementation phase.

“It comes with a charge, which we did not have before, for each college and most of the major administrative units to develop what we’re calling strategic alignment plans,” Shepherd said. 

The “Green, Gold, and Bold” alignment process invites each unit to evaluate how well its current practices align with the principles of the strategic plan, Shepherd said. 

“Colleges will be asking themselves, ‘what do we currently do, and what could we do better?’” Shepherd said. 

The goal is for divisions to complete the initial drafts of their alignment plans by Sept. 5, 2026, Shepherd said. 

Kirk Dombrowski, UVM’s Vice President of Research and Economic Development, said that the Office of Research is still in the beginning stages of creating its alignment plan. 

“Part of the strategic planning process is really a time-out to say, ‘What do we have that we really want to bring forward and focus on?’” Dombrowski said. 

Dombrowski said that his division will look mostly at pillars two and three, which address values-driven learning and community partnerships. 

Over the course of spring 2026, university divisions will continue to develop their strategic alignment plans, reflecting on how they can best match their work with the plan’s vision, Shepherd said.

Once strategic alignment plans are developed, divisions will share their plans so that the public can view the tactics they are using. Divisions will also annually report their progress on achieving the goals set out by the strategic plan, Shepherd said.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 12:27 p.m. on March 29 to include an updated link for the Amplifying Our Impact strategic plan.