BURLINGTON — Marlene Tromp, the University of Vermont’s new president, says she wants to prioritize in-state student enrollment, collaborate with the Legislature and city leadership, and plans to protect academic freedom in the face of the Trump administration.
Tromp, the former president of Boise State University in Idaho, took the reins in Vermont this month at a precarious time for higher education in the country.
President Donald Trump’s administration has targeted universities like Harvard and Columbia, cut federal research funding, and has cracked down on protests on campus.
Many leaders in higher education have resisted, and in June, hundreds of colleges and universities — UVM included — signed on to a letter protesting the “unprecedented government overreach and political interference.” Other institutions, like Dartmouth, have taken a more neutral stance.
Meanwhile, the University of Vermont faces its own challenges internally, including how it manages in-state versus out-of-state enrollment, how it balances its overall enrollment against the realities of the local housing market, and how it manages budget pressures and tuition rates.
In a wide-raging interview, Tromp spoke with VTDigger about these and other issues.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
VTDigger: This year, the university was designated as an R1 institution. But it coincided with the Trump administration’s pausing, terminating and just general disruption of federal research grants. Could you describe what impact that has had on the university thus far and how the university is working around that?
Marlene Tromp: I don’t want to diminish the real impacts that those disruptions have had and the ways in which that can have real impacts on people and on places. The work that was being done with those grants, it could be vital research to health care. It could be vital research in a community. Those kinds of things are real.
But it’s a really powerful moment — and this is happening now across higher education in the nation — for people to ask the question: Is this a time for us to ask questions about who we should be partnering with in order to make sure that the research that we do, that’s so valuable to the world, is well-funded and continues?
We’re also not being passive in the face of it. We’ve gone and met with folks, met with agencies and really tried to determine how we can work really actively to ensure that we restore as much of that funding as possible. But I think we have to really think carefully about going forward, how we partner, how we make sure that research is funded.
It’s real. It’s serious. We’ve had an awesome response here so far, and we’re looking forward, thinking about how we can get more creative going forward.
VTD: UVM has one of the lowest percentages of new in-state students of any large public university across the country. But last year, the percentage of enrolled in-state students increased for the second year in a row, bucking a longer-term decline in in-state enrollment. Is that a goal of yours, to continue to increase that, and how would you build off of that?
MT: For the (Vermont) students who choose to apply to college, so many of them apply here, and we accept a huge proportion of those students to UVM. But our population is so small that that really affects who comes to school. Even if we’re doing really well, proportionally, if other states were doing as well with in-state students as we were, they’d have a huge range of in-state students.
We’re actually helping to drive the economy by bringing students in from out of state. In fact, one of the most interesting things I’ve learned since I’ve been here is that for every Vermonter that graduates from UVM, two of their out-of-state peers end up staying and working in Vermont. It really helps for a state that has an upside down population (demographically), to drive the economy, and bring it vigor and vitality and new ideas into the state.
But the other part of your question, is that a priority to me? It’s absolutely a priority to me. Vermont and Wyoming are the only two states in the country that have a population smaller than Washington, D.C. The notion that there are talented people around the state who aren’t considering college or who aren’t considering UVM is significant to me.
The UVM Promise is a program that lets any family that has an income under $100,000, their students can basically come to school tuition free, and that means we’re really opening the doors for access. We want to make sure people know about that program.
But at my last institution, I built a lot of programs that were designed to really reach out into the state and make sure that students that were place bound had an opportunity to think about how they could still engage with the university.
While rural college attendance declined by about 50% nationally after the pandemic, we saw a 20% to 50% increase in those communities where we created a program that was about engaging in rural communities. So, I think there are some opportunities here to make sure people know that this is Vermont’s university, and we want those young people to come to school here.
VTD: Overall enrollment is increasing at UVM. But I wanted to ask about a law that was introduced this legislative session that proposed limiting enrollment to UVM when Burlington’s housing vacancy rate is below 5%. What do you think is the university’s responsibility in terms of managing enrollment against the realities of the housing market? How do you balance that?
MT: I do think the university has a responsibility to think about the community. I think it’s intimately connected to the community. I just met with (Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak) this afternoon, and she and I were talking about this very issue.
One of the things that I explained to her, and it’s probably something that you know about, is the demographic cliff. It’s the decline that we’re seeing in the pipeline of people who will age out (of) high school to be able to come to college. That percentage is declining over time, and (the decline is) the most significant in the Northeast.
There’s some states that are continuing to grow, like California, Texas, Arizona, Idaho, and those states are going to see less impact from the demographic cliff, because there’s so much in-migration to those states, but states around the Northeast are seeing actually a lot of out-migration.
We’re actually aiding the economy by bringing people in, but we also want to be really thoughtful to make sure that we have all the resources here that we need to serve the students, and that we’re partnering with the cities that surround us in ways that help us both thrive.
What happens in Burlington and South Burlington impacts the university and vice versa. In my conversation with the mayor today, one of the things we really talked about is, how can we be the kind of partners that help each other thrive. So that feels actually very exciting and positive to me, and less about a kind of adversarial relationship.
I did a lot of projects at my other institutions that were about how partnerships could actually increase housing options. We were partnering with the city of Boise, which was experiencing a lot of the same challenges. We were partnering with the city to think about how we could create projects that helped alleviate the stressors for both the city and the university.
VTD: That bill never made it far, but if it were to proceed, how would the university handle that?
MT: I would really want to talk to legislators to understand exactly what their concerns revolved around. Let’s actually work together and trace out where the concerns are, and think about how we can work together. I think that allows us to be responsive, and as a land grant institution, one of our great commitments is to the state, and to the well-being of the state, so I take that very seriously, and would want to think about: How do we work together to solve the common problems that we have.
VTD: Last year, the university increased tuition on both out-of-state and in-state students, the first time tuition had been increased for in-state students since 2019. University officials cited rising health care costs — like many other institutions in the state — and the school was forced to use reserve funds to fill a $10 million budget gap. Do you expect another budget gap this year, and do you expect to increase tuition again?
MT: I think we’re going to have to get all the data about our class, about what’s happening federally, because, as you noted, that’s a huge factor in how the university will operate. That’s a factor in our budget.
Whenever it’s possible, I don’t want to raise tuition. Nationally, what’s happened in the last couple of decades is states’ dollars, their public money coming into public universities, have decreased because they’ve had to spend money on a lot of other things. A lot of state monies have gone into things like corrections, health care. So, more of that cost is borne by students and their families. I’m very keenly aware of that.
We have to be really sensitive to those costs because we want to ensure that students have access to education. We also want to give them the best quality education that we can, and it is incumbent upon us to be as smart and creative financially as we can be, so that we can find ways to create efficiencies, reduce our own costs, so that we can become more and more efficient, so we’re not passing on the inflationary costs that every entity in the country has experienced.
We saw record inflation and didn’t even raise tuition here during that period of record inflation. It was only when it became absolutely necessary. I have a lot of respect for the people who made those hard choices to keep those tuition dollars flat. I hope we can continue to do that as much as possible, but as all these things are changing and factors are rolling in, we’re going to have to assess that. But we’re going to keep looking for ways to be really efficient.
VTD: UVM is the second largest employer in the state. When you were officially announced, the university was in a hiring freeze. Is the university still in a hiring freeze?
MT: Everything goes back to that first question you asked: Until we have a little more clarity about what’s going to happen with the federal funding dollars, we just want some of the dust to settle. We realize we may not have absolute certainty about what’s happening, but until some of that dust settles, I think it would be premature for us to lift the freeze.
VTD: There’s been some layoffs recently. An op-ed we published written by co-presidents of UVM Staff United — signed by a coalition of unions — called into question about a half dozen layoffs in various departments at the university. Could you respond to that? And maybe speak to the general economic climate around hiring and employment at the university, and where you draw the line in terms of cuts to staff and employees here?
MT: For me the priority is to care for our community in the best way that we can. We don’t want to create a situation where we have some costs that escalate so much that people can’t afford their own health insurance as these costs escalate.
It’s not a dualistic situation, where we either support our employees or we don’t. There’s so many factors, and it matters to me to be in dialogue with our unions and with our staff association and our faculty association, and to really create some transparency around budget issues so people actually have a deep understanding of how the university is making decisions.
Part of the reason it’s important to me to build a strategic plan is so that we’re all on the same page as a community, and understanding what our priorities are, and caring for our community is one of those priorities
I’m really sensitive to those issues, and nobody wants to go through the loss of people’s jobs. It’s hard on them, it’s hard on their families, it’s hard on the larger community outside of the university. But we don’t know what we’re up against. We have some really challenging issues on the national front that are putting a lot of pressure on the university, but I hope we can bring people together in a dialogue to talk about those.
VTD: I asked you this when you were announced as president, but to put it more pointedly, I’m wondering how much the political climate in Idaho motivated you to search for other jobs? And did the political climate of Vermont specifically draw you here and motivate you to pursue this role?
MT: I’m very conscious about how the institution that I served for a long time is implicated in your question. I felt very fortunate to serve there for six years. And I am so grateful to be in a place that cares so deeply about education and believes in education, and I feel so grateful to be in a place where people care about other people as a very high priority.
I feel really excited to be in a place that values public education, that values higher education, and so for me, it’s a thrill to be here. There’s challenges in every environment. I just went and spoke at a program for new university presidents where I was one of the speakers, and one of the questions people asked in a dozen different ways during that session was, help us understand how what you saw can help us understand what’s happening nationally right now.
We have an obligation to really deeply understand and to move nimbly as we move forward, and so I’m grateful to be in a place that’s committed to those kinds of things.
VTD: I did want to bring up some criticism you faced in your previous role, as detailed in a ProPublica story, that you capitulated to pressure from right-wing state lawmakers around DEI policies. Now that you’re here, in a state with a less hostile Legislature, would you operate differently? And what is your stance on DEI policies at the university, considering that that federal threat still looms?
MT: If you look at the period when that story was written, it was when the very first anti-DEI, anti-CRT legislation was being written in the country. And at that time, I don’t think anyone thought that that was a real threat, or that it was something that could really undermine the functioning of a university.
It comes from a specific moment in time, and it was written by somebody who was from a very progressive place, who had never seen those kinds of things happening before. Now, I think everybody in the country understands: We’ve seen universities make changes that people could have never imagined years ago.
We never compromised on serving our students, serving our faculty or serving our staff, and I am so proud of that because it was a very, very challenging period. There were stories circulating about the university, what our motives were, what we were doing, and we worked really hard, because the misconstruction of what we were doing on campus was so damaging to the university. So, we worked really hard to educate people, and we saw a lot of minds changed over those six years about the services that we were providing and the support that we were giving our students, faculty and staff, and the impact that was having.
I am really grateful that now I’m in a place where there’s people who really don’t see the work that we’re doing to serve our community as somehow disadvantaging other people. That’s an amazing context to operate in. But it was tremendously stressful and tremendously hard to face the mischaracterization of our work all the time.
I wish that there was a more rich national conversation right now because I think it becomes so polarizing so quickly, and it took years for us to help communicate with people in Idaho about what we were really doing.
Things have happened so fast nationally. It hasn’t given people a lot of time to even have the practice of having those conversations. But I believe universities are the place where just those kinds of conversations should happen, and so I think there’s a real opportunity, and I think the University of Vermont can be a real national leader in helping people understand how democracy works, what it means to be engaged in serving people, what freedom of expression and academic freedom are, and I think we can take a step up onto the national stage to do that work. That’s one of the things that excites me about the University of Vermont.
VTD: Students last year camped out on campus to protest the conflict in Gaza. How would you handle a similar protest, one that specifically violates university policy? Would you discipline students for that and how would you handle that type of situation?
MT: I can tell you what my philosophies are because I think so much depends on the specifics of what happens. We met with student groups across the university when I was president at my last institution, and we said, ‘We want you to have the opportunity to express your perspectives. We believe in freedom of speech and academic freedom,’ and there were state laws that prohibited some activities, and we wanted to educate them about the state laws because we wanted them to feel safe too.
We also recognize that there can be powerful collisions when people disagree. So one of the things we were very concerned about was making sure people really understood the (state) laws in our case and the policies that we had on campus. We often reached out to make sure that we were communicating those things with people, but we kept a lot of really open dialogue.
VTD: What would your stance or your strategy be if the Trump administration were to attack the University of Vermont?
MT: My priority is to protect academic freedom, freedom of speech, the work of our faculty and staff, and our students.
A lot of times that filters down to individual choices. So for example, does the faculty member think that what they’re doing is so important they need to take a stand? I want to support that.
I want to protect people’s academic freedom to make those choices, and that’s the hill we have to stand on. That’s what makes universities what they are.
