The annual VEOP conference had been scheduled for October at Vermont Technical College. Like so many other things during the pandemic, it was postponed. It was replaced by a VEOP Day of Celebration to be followed by a series of spring online workshops. On January 10th VEOP current and past members gathered online to celebrate our success, to announce annual awards and to hear about the current state of college access in Vermont.
Four awards were presented:
The VEOP Achiever award was presented to Danielle Hume, a former Upward Bound participant at NVU Lyndon
The VEOP Educator of the Year award was presented to Wayland Cole from UVM Upward Bound
The VEOP New Professional award was presented to Jessica Smith from VSAC GEAR UP
The Carolyn Donahue Friend of Equal Opportunity Education award was presented to Peg Hale from Lyndon Institute
Participants also heard from staffers from our delegates in Washington and got an update from the Council for Opportunity in Education.
The highlight of the day was the presence of former recipients of the Jack Anderson Distinguished Service award. This award was established in 1998 to honor the contributions of those people dedicated to college access in Vermont and northern New York. Jack Anderson received the first of these awards and shared his experience with Upward Bound in the early days of the program. Ted Turkle, Karen Scott, Katherine Veilleux, Monica Sargent, Sigh Searles, Charles Castelli, and many others joined to share their stories of the early days of Trio and GEAR UP programming.
At this point the VEOP conference is scheduled to be in person next fall, pandemic allowing.