To honor our 25th anniversary, I’ll be sharing a series of reflections on our journey and accomplishments over the years. Stay tuned as I share more stories, insights, and memories from the past 25 years.
– Dennis Kane, Executive Director
2025 marks VT Higher Education Collaborative’s 25th year in operation. It is hard to believe that the first time I wrote those words was nearly 25 years ago while working to implement requirements of Act 117 of the 2000 legislative session as Director of the Family and Education Support Team of the VT Department of Education (DOE).
Act 117 Prompts VT-HEC Formation
Act 117 required the DOE to form partnerships with higher education, school districts, and other organizations to develop statewide programs to increase the availability of qualified staff in critical need areas, including special education. This new entity would also provide increased training opportunities to teachers, administrators, para-educators, etc. to help ensure that the educational needs of all students are met – a huge mission. The partnership formed to tackle those requirements became VT-HEC and the rest, as they say, is history.
VT-HEC’s first efforts were focused on increasing the numbers of licensed special educators but soon expanded into other critical need areas such as early education, secondary school improvement, health education, and much more.
VT-HEC Becomes Independent Non-Profit
After 9 years of operation connected to the DOE, VT-HEC became an independent non-profit corporation (VT-HEC Inc.) dedicated to pursuing a similar mission. We have successfully navigated the changing education environment ever since and what a long, strange trip it has sometimes been.
By the time we became a non-profit organization, we had already seen more than 300 folks complete the Special Education licensing program, plus more than 100 complete the Early Education endorsement program.
TASS – Teaching All Secondary Students
In 2010 we were also well along in our TASS program. TASS was an effort at whole school improvement utilizing what we have learned about the brain and learning to enhance education in those schools by providing professional development and coaching to teachers, and support to school leaders. TASS worked in over a dozen middle and secondary schools. TASS assembled an amazing team for this work that turned out to be among the best work we have ever done.
More Professional Development Offerings
In the early 2010s, we increased our effort to provide professional development offerings in addition to our licensing programs. We had always dabbled in this arena offering workshops on Vermont Interactive TV (remember that?) and a growing number of in-person workshops. In those pre-COVID years we offered between 60 and 80 days of professional development a year all over the state.
COVID = Virtual Everything
In March of 2020 COVID hit and in a matter of weeks, just as in schools, everything changed. Suddenly, we were in a totally different business with everybody and everything online. It had been true from the very beginning that all of our success depended on the quality of our staff, instructors, and presenters and it proved doubly true now as those folks turned on a dime, finished the year online, and began planning for the next year in a whole new way. We only had to cancel two events that spring!
In some ways we may have been better prepared than other organizations to deal with this challenge. We had always been something of a virtual entity. We didn’t have an office for many years, we hadn’t invested in one building for classes and presentations, rather we rented space all over the state and had meetings in each other’s houses. As technology advanced, we had already put coursework and workshops online, so we had something of a head start.
COVID = Changing Needs
COVID seemed to change everything: many people really liked not having to drive for hours to get professional development and we could now provide offerings to all corners of the state; other folks sorely missed getting together in person, networking, and learning with colleagues. Everybody knew how to use Zoom to some degree, and everyone seemed to have a few embarrassing stories to tell about not being muted at just the wrong time, or the time their kids or their cat invaded a meeting.
Meanwhile, the needs of the field were changing dramatically, from how to address academic loss to dealing with trauma, stress, and anxiety for students and school staff. Plus, there seemed to be shortages of staff everywhere you looked. For us, despite VT-HEC producing additional special educators for almost 20 years, those shortages were as bad as ever. What more could we do?
Addressing Post-COVID Needs
Thankfully, we have been blessed with staff that could meet the challenge. To address post-COVID needs we:
- continued to provide remote offerings to maximize accessibility
- increased availability of recordings to provide even more flexibility
- established new partners to deal with trauma and stress
- offered a greater variety of live events in different formats and times – as short as an hour and running late in the afternoon
- developed initial licensing programs in special education and early childhood special education
- increased our capacity to handle greater numbers by doubling the number of courses offered in special education.
There is much more to the story of getting to our 25th year and we expect there will be much more to come moving forward. Before I close for now, on behalf of our entire staff we want to thank all of you who have worked for us and with us, and the thousands who have come to our workshops and taken our courses. We would not have lasted 25 years if you hadn’t. We are proud of our accomplishments and privileged and honored, really, to have supported all the dedicated people who work so hard to benefit Vermont’s kids.