Holger Hoock admits his most recent job change was a “slightly unusual” move. Leaving the University of Pittsburgh, a school with the highest level of research classification and a member of the American Association of Universities, he joined the University of Vermont as its first full-time graduate college dean in June 2023.
Vermont’s flagship public research university, then and now, has fewer than 1,700 graduate students enrolled, according to university data, and remains an R2 institution — much less lauded than the top-tier R1, or “Research 1” designation from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.
But Hoock, in an interview with VTDigger, said the move was an opportunity “to actually relaunch and build” a graduate school that, coupled with an ever-growing amount of research funding, could soon compete with peer institutions.
Some would argue the university already competes. UVM is expected to attain R1 status later this year, university officials said, putting it in the same category as schools such as Tufts University, the University of Notre Dame and the University of Michigan.
Starting later this summer, Hoock expects to unveil the graduate college’s first-ever strategic plan. The initiative is part of UVM’s larger goal to increase the ratio of graduate students to undergraduate students, which would mean increasing its graduate student population to 3,000 students in five years.
It marks a continued push by the university to strengthen its research funding, while concurrently enhancing their focus on graduate and Ph.D. offerings. School officials argue that shift will provide a direct benefit to the region — meeting its land grant mission to provide economic and workforce development.
“We have an opportunity, and we think responsibility, to provide relevant advanced degrees … to meet the educational aspirations and workforce needs in the state and beyond,” Hoock said.
But while the university turns its focus toward graduate education, the region’s tight housing market remains an obstacle. The housing crisis, and the strain that UVM’s student population has on the local housing supply, has led to clashes between the university and the city of Burlington over on-campus student housing for undergraduates.
The school’s undergraduate population, city officials have said previously, occupies much of the city’s short supply of housing stock. An increase in graduate students in the region could exacerbate those tensions.
“The chronic shortage of housing has serious impacts on so many issues facing both Burlington and UVM: rents, housing quality, home ownership and economic development,” Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak said. “Our center city neighborhoods are strained by these conditions and families are being pushed out of our community as a result.”
‘It’s worth noting just how small we have been until now’
Under the strategic plan, the university would nearly double its current graduate student enrollment numbers — which increased modestly over the last three decades — while keeping undergraduate enrollment at its current level. That would bring its ratio of graduate students to undergrads more in line with its peer research institutions, university officials said.
Enrollment numbers from the last 20 years show UVM’s undergraduate enrollment increasing steadily, while the number of graduates has not. There were 1,232 graduate students in the spring 2004 semester and 1,592 in spring 2024. In that same period, undergraduates increased from 7,427 to 10,925.
Recently, the trend has accelerated. Since spring 2020, the school’s undergraduate population has grown by nearly 900 students, while the number of graduate students has remained stagnant.
“It’s worth noting just how small we have been until now, compared to many — most, I would say — of our peer institutions,” Hoock said, “both in the absolute number of graduate students and, if you look at the ratios, the proportions of the overall student population that are graduate and professional students.”
He pointed to the University of Connecticut as an example, which this year enrolled about 30,000 undergraduate students and 8,000 graduate students.
“That is more commonly the proportion,” Hoock said. “You really expect a quarter to a third of overall enrollment (to be graduate students). We’re aiming at this point to get to 20%, which seems to me the right target at this point.”
Frank Cioffi, a member of UVM’s board of trustees, considers the university’s goal “fantastic news,” but cautioned that efforts to build housing should be tied to the school’s growth path.
“This could be incredible for the university long term, for the economy, for everyone,” Cioffi said. But, he cautioned, “if UVM is going to grow, then now is the time when housing needs to be growing right along with those plans. This should be a very synchronized plan of student growth and of housing growth for students.”
A draft agreement between the university and the city that was presented to the Burlington City Council in December would have committed the school to increasing on-campus housing if it enrolls more undergraduate students. But the measure wasn’t taken up by the council at the time and has yet to be taken up by the new council and new mayoral administration, which took office in April.
“Students are a huge part of making Burlington a vibrant place,” said Council President Ben Traverse. “They need housing though, and both the city and the university have a responsibility to address that need. To be continued.”
”It’s a recognition of what’s already happening’
UVM should have been made an R1 institution a decade ago, according to Kirk Dombrowski, UVM’s vice president for research and development. The only reason it wasn’t, he said, was because of the Carnegie Foundation’s “peculiar” classification system.
Because UVM has not offered doctoral programs in the humanities and social sciences, the school has remained an R2 institution. (Carnegie’s lowest classification is R3.)
That will likely change soon. In the fall of 2023, the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation announced a “more transparent” methodology for R1 designations. Under the new thresholds, schools with $50 million in total research spending and 70 research doctorate offerings will be classified R1.
UVM cleared those requirements, and now draws in over $230 million a year in research expenditures.
Much of that progress is attributed to Dombrowski, who was first hired for the new position in April 2020 and has been credited with turning UVM into a “research powerhouse,” as Seven Days reported in 2021.
Even before Dombrowski’s arrival, the university drew in $181.7 million in sponsored research funding from governmental sources in fiscal year 2020, which surpassed the previous year’s amount by $37.4 million.
Seventy percent of the research expenditures on campus, meanwhile, were in the school’s College of Medicine, Dombrowski said. That college now maintains about 35% of the research enterprise on campus, with the bulk of the growth in research expenditures coming from the other colleges, he said.
The College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, he said, now raises $26 million a year in research funding — up from $8 million in previous years.
“A lot of what we’ve done is get the research going across the rest of the campus,” Dombrowski said. “There were a whole bunch of really talented, excited faculty members who were looking to do this kind of work and just didn’t have the same support system that they might have at a bigger university. So, when we put that support system in place, it just unleashed a whole bunch of talent and ambition.”
UVM’s recent increase in research expenditures has already had an impact on the broader region. Dombrowski pointed to GlobalFoundries and UVM being jointly designated as one of 31 “tech hubs” by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, which unlocked millions in federal grant research for semiconductor technology.
Dombrowski said the Carnegie Foundation will conduct R1 assessments in the fall, while official announcements are expected by the end of the year. University officials will certainly celebrate, he said, but he noted that it is “a recognition of what’s already happening.”
What an R1 designation says to potential faculty and students, Dombrowski said, is that “this is a top-flight research ecosystem.”
“In certain ways, it’s only announcing what you’ve already done,” he said. “It is a recognition that you’re a top-tier research university, and that opens up opportunities for larger efforts.”
‘Our futures are linked’
Now, the goal is to both draw in students seeking opportunities at large research institutions, while figuring out “how we continue to make this research an opportunity for the undergraduates who are here,” Dombrowski said.
Hoock, the dean of the university’s graduate college, said that while the university has seen a dramatic increase in its research enterprise, it’s “very unusual” that the university’s Ph.D. and graduate enrollment has remained flat.
“And so we’re essentially backfilling, patching up on that critical tier of the research enterprise,” he said.
Much of the work in the graduate college’s strategic planning process will involve growing its Ph.D. programs and professional master’s degrees, while creating new programs where there is a societal need, Hoock said.
Hoock did not disclose what new programs could be created, but pointed to examples already in place, like the accelerated pathway into a master’s of science in nursing, where undergraduates can work into a graduate program. Another example is creating a certificate in computer science education for students in the College of Education and Social Services to become specialized in teaching computer sciences.
“We are now a research powerhouse, and as a premier research university, we must grow our Ph.D. programs,” Hoock said. “They are integral. … We want to meet our responsibility to train the next generation of researchers, scientists and innovators.”
Officials say the plan to double the graduate student population may not necessarily translate to a one-to-one increase in overall in-person enrollment. Current undergraduate students may transfer into an accelerated master’s program, they said, while students from out of state may take advantage of online classes that the university hopes to create.
University officials say they are working to address any impact this increase could have on the local housing market. They pointed to Catamount Run, a new housing project in South Burlington’s City Center that will include 620 beds of housing specifically to accommodate the school’s growth in graduate and professional programs.
But city officials continue to have concerns about the school’s student population. Last month university leaders halted a more recent project, called Catamount Woods, that would have accommodated about 540 undergraduate students.They cited soaring construction costs and a lack of available labor.
With a vacancy rate for the area hovering around a meager 1%, the housing crunch limits the ability of employers — including UVM — to recruit and retain staff.
“This has negative consequences on our local economy and prevents young people from setting down roots in our community,” Mulvaney-Stanak said in an emailed response to questions.
Traverse, the city council president, and Mulvaney-Stanak said the university has not shared its specific goal of increasing its graduate school enrollment with them. Adam White, a spokesperson for the university, told VTDigger the opposite — that the city “is aware of our plan” to grow graduate enrollment.
The mayor, now two months in office, said the city has not yet taken up the draft agreement with the university but plans to in the future. The memorandum of understanding at the time required UVM to provide 1.5 beds per every undergraduate student enrolled above the fall 2023 level, which was 11,614 students. In return, the city would pledge to work with UVM to alter the zoning on three parcels where the school wants to build new housing.
“Our futures are linked, and it is my intention to resume conversations with the university regarding the MOUs with the city,” Mulvaney-Stanak said. “I’m confident that we can find common ground in a way that benefits both the city and the university, with tangible steps to address the housing crisis in our community.”
Dombrowski said he considers the housing shortage “a very serious consideration for our ability to attract graduate students.”
“The point is to change the ratio and to grow the graduate population and shrink the undergraduate population,” Dombrowski said. “To do that we have to be financially solvent and savvy. We have to offer an on-campus living experience that’s competitive with our peers. I think that everyone’s interests are in exactly the same place on this.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: UVM plans to nearly double its graduate student population as it nears ‘top-tier’ research designation.