The story
Founded by Ira Allen in 1791.1
History
18th century
The University of Vermont was founded as a private university in 1791, the same year Vermont became the fourteenth U.S. state. The university enrolled its first students ten years later.
19th century
Its first president, Daniel C. Sanders, was hired in 1800, and served as the sole faculty member for seven years. Instruction began in 1801, and the first class graduated in 1804. In 1865, the university merged with Vermont Agricultural College (chartered November 22, 1864, after the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act of 1862), emerging as the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College. The university was granted 150,000 acres, which it sold for $122,626. Much of the initial funding and planning for the university was undertaken by Ira Allen, who is honored as UVM's founder. Allen donated a 50-acre (20 ha) parcel of land for establishment of the university. Most of this land has been maintained as the university's main green, where stands a statue of Allen.
The citizens of Burlington helped fund the university's first edifice. When it was destroyed by fire in 1824, they also paid for its replacement. This building came to be known as "Old Mill" for its resemblance to New England mills of the time. The Marquis de Lafayette, a French general who became a commander in the American Revolution, while in Vermont laid the cornerstone of Old Mill, which stands on University Row along with Ira Allen Chapel, Billings Library, Williams Hall, Royall Tyler Theatre, and Morrill Hall. A statue of Lafayette stands at the north end of the main green.
UVM was the first American institution of higher education with a charter declaring that the "rules, regulations, and by-laws shall not tend to give preference to any religious sect or denomination whatsoever".
In 1871, UVM defied custom and admitted two women as students. It was the first American university to admit women (1875) and African Americans (1877) into Phi Beta Kappa, the country's oldest collegiate academic honor society.
Justin Smith Morrill, a U.S. Representative (1855–1867), and Senator (1867–1898) from Vermont, author of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act that created federal funding for establishing the U.S. land-grant colleges and universities, served as a trustee of the university from 1865 to 1898.
20th century
In 1924, UVM's WCAX, now called WVMT, sent out the first radio broadcast in Vermont. It was run by UVM students and faculty before being sold in 1931. WCAX is now the call sign of a commercial television station. A new radio station was set up in 1955, dubbed WRUV. It currently runs an FM broadcast at 90.1 MHz and an internet stream at wruv.org. The station, run by students, faculty, and local community members, dubs itself Burlington's Better Alternative. It is known for playing a wide range of music, boasting "the largest catalog in the State of Vermont" at over 50,000 albums.
In the second half of the 20th century, UVM gained a reputation for its political activism, and struggles ensued on campus between student and faculty activists and the university administration. In 1953, the university's board of trustees ousted Alex B. Novikoff, a tenured professor and cell biologist in the College of Medicine, over his association with the Communist Party. In March 1957, student protests against a motel owner who refused service to an African-American woman led the Vermont General Assembly to outlaw discrimination in public accommodations. For 73 years, UVM held an annual "Kake Walk" where students wore blackface, until the practice was abolished in 1969 under pressure from the student body and the community.
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In 1972, the board of trustees intervened again to deny tenure to Michael Parenti, a popular Marxist political science professor who drew ire from the authorities due to his participation in anti-war demonstrations. The board overrode the recommendation of the faculty, the deans' council and the administration. Parenti later brought a federal suit against the university, which was settled out of court for $15,000.
In the 1980s, the university faced increasing pressure from the student body to divest from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa. Student protests against investment in apartheid culminated in the construction of a "shantytown" on the green across from the Waterman building on October 12, 1985. On December 6, the board voted 12-7 to divest.
21st century
UVM has undertaken several other divestment actions due to advocacy from student groups, including divestment from "Sudan-friendly" companies in 2006, during the Darfur genocide, and divestment from cluster munitions and depleted uranium weapons in 2009, during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In 2013 and 2016, trustees rejected calls to divest from fossil fuels.
On July 1, 2019, Suresh Garimella was appointed UVM's 27th president. Under his tenure, the university faced record enrollment and a 50 percent increase in research funding to $250 million; however, he has been criticized for his public relations with students and faculty. In 2021, the university administration imposed budget cuts that terminated three departments, 12 majors, 11 minors and four master's degree programs in the College of Arts and Sciences.
In 2020, under pressure from a student campaign, UVM trustees voted unanimously to divest from fossil fuels by July 2023.
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation into the university's response to antisemitism on campus based on a Title VI complaint filed by The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish on Campus. The investigation concluded in April 2023, after the university and the Office of Civil Rights settled in a voluntary resolution. A press release from the Department of Education stated that the university failed to adequately respond to incidents. University administrators denied the allegations, insisting that they responded appropriately. The university agreed to adopt new practices around bias reporting, edit their discrimination and harassment policies, and provide extra training to staff and students, but it did not adopt the demands of the complainant. The Department of Education did not make a finding of guilt or wrongdoing or create new federal policy in closing the investigation.
In October 2023, UVM's Division of Safety and Compliance abruptly canceled a planned guest lecture by Palestinian author Mohammed El-Kurd, citing an inability to provide adequate "safety and security" for the event. An investigative report by Seven Days found no evidence of threats related to the event.
The university's graduate students voted to unionize with the UAW in March 2024. In April 2024, UVM's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine established a protest encampment on the Andrew Harris Commons, demanding transparency in the university's endowment and divestment from "all weapons manufacturers, Israeli companies, and companies involved in the occupation of historic Palestine." They also demanded that the university cancel a planned commencement speech by Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
2024 NCAA Men's Soccer Championship
On December 16, 2024, the UVM men's soccer team defeated the Marshall University to win the 2024 NCAA Division I men's soccer tournament. This is the first championship appearance and win by any UVM Division I sports team. It was also the first national championship for any America East team in history.
1990s
In 1995, the Environmental Council at UVM was established to fill a gap regarding a bridge between operations and academics on campus greening issues. The council's first project was to hear presentations from the various environmental programs on campus to provide a baseline scan of campus operation environmental impact. Greening UVM was published in 1998 by the council to establish a baseline on the environmental impact of the campus' operations. During the same year, a recycled paper policy was created and was implemented in 1999. As a community stakeholder in the Lab-XL project, the Environmental Council received an EPA grant to support the Tracking UVM project and publication to assess the relative environmental impact and community interest in laboratory chemical waste. Tracking UVM, a follow-up to the Greening UVM report, was published in 2002 and reported on the environmental progress of the university from 1990 to 2000. The University of Vermont's commitment to tracking its environmental performance was recognized in 2004 with Vermont's Governor's Award for Environmental Excellence for this 2002 environmental report card. Tracking UVM is one of the first report cards that track the environmental impact of campus operations in an institution of higher education.
2000s
In 2005, UVM's President Daniel M. Fogel signed the institution's Green Building Policy. The recycled paper policy was updated in 2006 after two students pushed for the university to commit to purchasing 100% post-consumer, chlorine-free paper for routine copying and printing.
In 2007, President Fogel signed on to the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment. In 2008, UVM dissolved the Environmental Council and established the Office of Sustainability that supports sustainability planning on campus, connects operations with academics, and tracks sustainability efforts.
2010s
In 2011, UVM released its Climate Action Plan to the American College & University President's Climate Commitment. The Climate Action Plan focuses on the direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions from the institution's operations. The target dates for UVM's Climate Action Plan were 2015 for 100% carbon neutral electricity (Scope 1) and 2020 for carbon neutral heating, cooling, and fleet (Scope 2). UVM aims to target the net zero emissions for its "Scope 3" sources by 2025.
In 2012, UVM became one of the first institutions nationwide to end the sale of bottled water on campus and mandate that one third of drinks offered in vending machines be healthy options. During the same year, UVM's Board of Trustees passed a resolution to earmark $13 million for the fund, making it the largest challenge to date. Harvard's $12 million green loan fund had been the largest. In March 2012, UVM became fifth school in the nation to sign the "Real Food Campus Commitment", pledging to purchase 20% "real food" by 2020. In April 2017, UVM announced it had surpassed this goal and set a new goal to source 25% "real food" by 2020.
The Certification for Sustainable Transportation (CST) was founded in 2012 to help improve economic, environmental, and energy efficiency within the passenger transportation sector. The CST is a direct outgrowth of work that began at the University of Vermont in 2005 and now houses the eRating certification, driver trainings, and an array of awareness and education programs. It is a nonprofit operating out of UVM's Extensions office.
In May 2015, UVM introduced a sustainability requirement for all undergraduates, allowing students to choose from pre-approved sustainability classes.
From Wikipedia’s article on University of Vermont, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5