We, the undersigned, are recipients of the University of Vermont’s highest awards for teaching, scholarship, and community commitment.

Our group includes winners of the George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award, the Kroepsch-Maurice Award for Excellence in Teaching, the University Scholars Award, the Glen Elder Leadership Award, and faculty occupying endowed and Distinguished Professorship chairs.  Each of these are university-wide awards and recognize the highest levels of pedagogical, scholarly, and institutional achievement. 

We are concerned about the recent decisions, made under the supposed financial exigency caused by the pandemic, that will result in the reduction of more than seventy lecturers to .75 of their expected full time teaching load.  The financial result of these cuts is a 25 % loss in pay for these colleagues, and the academic result is the loss of upwards of one hundred classes. 

The bulk of these classes are taught by lecturers—many of whom have taught here for decades—and several of these lecturers are winners of the Kroepsch-Maurice Award cited above.  

In public, UVM praises “academic excellence,” but over the recent years the administration has been increasingly devaluing faculty expertise and educational funding.  The COVID response appears to be an intensification of this trend. These cuts are accompanied by increases in workload demands for all faculty, TT and NTT alike, with consequential pressure on research and time to work with students in need.

If the university continues on this path of indifference to the deep ecology of learning and teaching, it will face recruitment and retention problems with both students and faculty that go far beyond the impact of COVID. 

The cuts the UVM administration has chosen to make—to faculty whose courses are core requirements for all UVM undergraduates, whose courses in many cases are necessary to meet the needs of majors and minors, and whose courses are filled to the brim and receive top evaluations from students—assure that come next year, students’ needs won’t be met.

Such cuts thus imperil UVM’s deeper sustainability. If the administration was sincere about student needs, they would engage in meaningful dialogue with faculty and make any cuts at the highest level and the farthest removed from students and the university’s teaching, research, and service missions. As a land-grant institution, UVM has a duty to sustain and support our communities.

The inequity of the administration’s plans in a time of crisis undermines this commitment and UVM’s duty to Vermont’s communities.

We are calling on President Suresh Garimella, Provost Patricia Prelock, UVM administrators and Deans, and the Board of Trustees to act on the principles of sustainability and equity when considering any measures responding to COVID and planning the future of UVM. 

1. Make any cuts progressive, rather than regressive. 
2. Recognize and sustain our investment in the long-term institutional memory and knowledge residing in all of our faculty and staff. 
3. Reaffirm the role of faculty governance.
4. Allow an independent audit of university finances to ensure institutional transparency. 
5. Reaffirm the values of Honesty, Equality, Accountability, and Responsibility that are ingrained on the granite stones outside the Davis Center.

Lastly, and most importantly, we demand that in a time of crisis the University act as a single entity. We cannot make financial and institutional decisions under the IBB model that forces units to compete against each other. Just as we the undersigned are representative of the entire UVM community, we also share a single University budget and must respond to the crisis accordingly. 

As with the rest of the country, COVID has not just created inequities, it is revealing inequities that have existed for a long time. We believe the other side of COVID is that it has revealed opportunities for just change that addresses standing inequities and creates a more sustainable and resilient UVM and community. 

Eve Alexandra, Glen Elder Leadership Award 2017

JB Barna, Glen Elder Leadership Award 2018

Philip Baruth, Dean’s Lecture Award 2010

Mary C. Burke, Glen Elder Leadership Award 2015

Jeff Dinitz, Williams Professor of Mathematics 2016-2019, University Scholar 2008-2009

Sue Dinitz, President’s Distinguished Senior Lecturer Award 2017, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 1995

Patricia Erickson, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2008, NACTA 2006, Carrigan Award 2012, CUPS 2007, STA 2009-2017

Tina Escaja, Distinguished Professor 2019, University Scholar 2015-2016, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2013, CAS Dean’s Lecture 2010

Alec Ewald, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2008

Elizabeth Fenton, Glen Elder Leadership Award 2013 

Sean L. Field, University Scholar 2018-2019

Toby Fulwiler, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 1993

Michael Giangreco, University Scholar 2013-2014

Robert Gordon, University Scholar 2007

Nicholas J. Gotelli, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2018, University Scholar 2005, CAS Dean’s Lecture 1997

Huck Gutman, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2004, Kidder 2005

Adrian Ivakhiv, University Scholar 2019-2020, Steven Rubenstein Professorship 2016-19

Major Jackson, University Distinguished Professor & Richard A. Dennis Professor of English

Keith Klepeis, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2015

Matt Kolan, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2016

Lokangaka Losambe, The Frederick M. and Fannie C.P. Professor of English 2011-present, University Scholar 2014-2015

Tony Magistrale, Kidder 2001, University Scholar 2010-2011, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 1997, CAS Dean’s Lecture 2003

Dennis F. Mahoney, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2001-02, CAS Dean’s Lecture Award 2008, Wolfgang and Barbara Mieder Green and Gold Professor of German 2013-17, Robert V. Daniels Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Education 2014

Frank Manchel, University Scholar 1997-1998, CAS Dean’s Lecture 2000

Kathleen Manning, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 1992

Juan Maura, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2005

Cristina Mazzoni, Wolfgang and Barbara Mieder Green and Gold Professor of Romance Languages,  University Scholar 2012-13, CAS Dean’s Lecture 2004

Todd McGowan, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2003

Maria Mercedes Avila, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2015

Dianna “Annie” Murray-Close, KM 2019, Kidder 2018, CAS Dean’s Lecture 2016

James Murdoch, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2017

Garrison Nelson, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2009, CAS Dean’s Lecture 2013, Inaugural Last Lecture 2018

Angela Patten, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2012

Bob Pepperman Taylor, University Scholar 2016, Kidder 2016, CAS Dean’s Lecture 2016, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 1995

Kelly Rohan, University Scholar 2017-2018

Valerie Rohy, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2006, CAS Dean’s Lecture Award 2012, University Scholar 2019

Erik Ruggles, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2019

Lisa Schnell, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2008

Kathleen Scollins, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2016

David Scrase, University Scholar 2004-05; CAS Dean’s Lecture 2002

Stephanie Seguino, University Scholar 2012-13

Lance Smith, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2018

Alan E. Steinweis, Raul Hilberg Distinguished Professor of Holocaust Studies

Mark Stoler, Kidder 1984, University Scholar 1993, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2006, CAS Dean’s Lecture Award 1992

Richard I. Sugarman, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 1989, Kidder Award 2oo7

Diana Yiqing Sun, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2006

Sarah E. Turner, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2016

Ray Vega, University Scholar 2015-2016

Melissa Willard-Foster, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2017

Sean A. Witters, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2014 

Alexander (Sandy) Wurthmann, Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award 2009

Asim Zia, University Scholar 2020-2021, Vogelmann Award for Excellence in Research 2020