The University of Vermont abruptly fired about 10 people in its Center for Health and Wellbeing on Monday.

UVM officials said the move, which targeted positions in education and outreach, is part of a reorganization aimed at integrating counseling and psychiatric treatment with substance abuse support services.

The change will remove barriers to access, vice provost for student affairs Erica Caloiero wrote in an email to some staff members early Monday afternoon.



“Positions in Education and Outreach that do not provide front line care will be discontinued, as will three management positions, in order to elevate talented functional leaders to have direct interface with the department’s head,” Caloiero wrote.

The university gave the staff members no notice, said Rep. Troy Headrick (P/D Burlington), who works in UVM's Center for Student Conduct and said he knows many of the affected workers well. They include a recovery program director, a health and sexuality educator, a mindfulness program coordinator, and a communications manager, according to Headrick and the staff union, UVM Staff United.

“They were blindsided,” Headrick said on Wednesday. “They got to work on Monday and were told, ‘Your final day is 30 days from now, but don’t bother to come to work in the meantime.’”
UVM was closed on Wednesday for Juneteenth, and Adam White, executive director of university communications, said in an email that he was traveling and wasn’t available to comment.

UVM Staff United, which represents six of the people who lost their jobs, is formulating a response. The university doesn’t appear to have violated the staff contract. Copresident Ellen Kaye noted that the union and university have been in contract negotiations for more than three months.

“This is really interesting timing,” Kaye said on Wednesday. “We’ll stand up for them, and we’ll use whatever tools are at our disposal to hold the administration accountable." She also said, “This is unjustifiable given that we have got 29 vice presidents earning hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.”

A few hours after announcing the terminations, Caloiero sent an email announcing that UVM had hired a new executive director for the Center for Health and Wellbeing, Blake Reilly, after a national search. Reilly, who will start at UVM on July 22, “brings with him a plan for improved efficiency and effectiveness for CHWB,” Caloiero wrote. In that email, she didn’t mention the job cuts.

Anxiety and depression are common among college students. Headrick said UVM's counseling and mental health services are already stretched thin.

“Talk to any student, and they will tell you about the long wait times and how hard it is to maintain a relationship with a counselor when you get one,” he said. The fired workers, he said, were dedicated to mental health-related education and services.

“This has eliminated the general well-being outreach and education in a nonclinical setting," he said.