University of Vermont trustees have named Marlene Tromp, president of Boise State University, as the sole finalist for the same job in Burlington. Tromp will visit campus to meet with students, faculty and staff over two days this week, including a community forum at the Dudley H. Davis Center on Wednesday at 3 p.m.
She’s in line to become the 28th president of Vermont’s land-grant university. Tromp would replace Suresh Garimella, who resigned last August after five years on the job to become president of the University of Arizona. Since then, provost Patty Prelock has served as interim president.
Boise State is a large regional university with about 25,000 undergraduates and a nationally recognized football program. At UVM, Tromp would be in charge of a much smaller institution, with about half as many undergraduates and a lower sports profile. In a prepared statement, UVM trustees said more than 100 people expressed interest in the president’s job and 10 met with the board of trustees’ search committee.
UVM spokesperson Basil Waugh said Tromp wasn’t available on Monday for interviews.
Tromp has served at Boise State since 2019. Before that, she was provost and executive vice chancellor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She also served as a dean and vice provost at Arizona State University and began her career in academic leadership at Denison University.
She is a professor of English and a widely published scholar of Victorian literature and culture, a background that signals a course change for UVM’s trustees. Their last pick for the top job, Garimella, was a professor of mechanical engineering with extensive scholarship and distinctions in science.
In an annual address at Boise State in August, Tromp outlined record growth at the institution, which is located in one of the nation’s fastest-growing metro areas. Boise State’s enrollment grew 2.8 percent last year, she said, and its first-time enrollment of Idaho residents rose 20 percent.
Between 2019, when she started at Boise State, and 2023, Boise State’s four-year graduation rate rose 39 percent. Tromp has been working to increase research funding for Boise State to attain the coveted R1 research status, which denotes an institution with the highest level of research activity. UVM attained R1 status in February.
From early in her tenure at Boise State, Tromp has labored to protect diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in a Republican-majority state where lawmakers have long sought to suppress them. Her five years have been marked by fierce attacks on diversity and racial justice initiatives; in December, the Idaho State Board of Education passed a resolution banning DEI offices and initiatives in public universities.
Boise State had nine people working in its Gender Equity Center and Student Equity Center, which closed in November ahead of the expected crackdown on DEI initiatives, according to Idaho Ed News.
UVM has been much more welcoming of DEI initiatives. But a new president will need to confront difficult demographic and budgetary challenges, including a shrinking pool of high school graduates and skyrocketing health insurance costs that have created a $10 million budget deficit.
Last fall, trustees announced a 2 percent tuition increase for in-state undergrads, the first in five years, and a 4.5 percent increase for out-of-staters, who make up the majority of the student body.
Pointing to years of double-digit health insurance cost hikes, UVM announced a 60-day hiring freeze on March 5, though that doesn’t extend to the president’s job. Last week, the university said it is starting to see cutbacks in grant funding as a result of decisions made in Washington, D.C.
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