UVM president asks legislature to back campus priorities, including $15M for multipurpose center

University of Vermont President Marley Trump told the Senate Education Committee on Feb. 5 that the university’s fiscal requests mirror the governor’s proposal and would support financial aid, medical education and a stalled multipurpose center on the Burlington campus.

Trump said the administration seeks a 3% inflationary increase in the university’s general fund appropriation to preserve need‑based aid, maintain Larner College of Medicine tuition discounts and support extension programs across Vermont. "We ask for a 3% inflationary increase for the general fund appropriation," she said.

The president also requested $1,000,000 a year for five years to expand the UVM Cancer Center’s programs into rural communities, saying the aim is to reduce long patient travel times for infusions and other treatments. "We want to reach out with that cancer care so that we're touching more parts of the state," she said, noting patients sometimes travel two to two‑and‑a‑half hours for care.

Trump outlined a separate $15,000,000 state ask to help complete a multipurpose center whose foundations and steel were installed before the pandemic halted work in 2019. She said philanthropic commitments from private donors and a proposed match could bring about $55,000,000 in private funding, and that state support would close the remaining gap. "If the legislature sees fit, that would bring us to 55," she said, describing donor pledges and a potential match.

Senator Hirsch told the committee he had a "visceral reaction" to the stadium‑style funding request given competing statewide priorities such as health care and school construction. In response, Wendy Kernick, UVM’s government‑relations representative, said the governor proposed using the Higher Education Trust Fund—a one‑time estate tax windfall—rather than the general fund to support the project. "It's not general fund money," Kernick said, adding the trust fund had received an approximately $26,000,000 windfall this year.

Trump framed the multipurpose center as an economic development project the state would not regularly fund: the site already has foundations and fabricated steel in storage, and the facility would create large‑scale indoor event capacity and campus wellness spaces. She said the university would prefer philanthropic funding to preserve debt capacity for academic facilities and that trustees have previously approved the project.

The committee did not take any votes during the briefing. Trump and UVM staff said they would follow up with more detailed budgets and metrics as needed.