Tim Donovan has spent 36 years with the Vermont State College System, and now serves as chancellor, work­ing out of a temporary office in Ran­dolph. (Provided) What’s the chancellor of the Ver­mont State Colleges doing in an of­fice in Randolph?

The one-word answer is: “Irene.”

Before Aug. 28, the VSC system employed 30 people working out of offices in Waterbury, in the state office complex near the Winooski river. Chancellor Tim Donovan can tell a horrific but inspirational tale of the overnight results of Irene, which idled all the VSC’s comput­ers just at the time when students were showing up in campuses and looking for their housing and course schedules.

In the wake of the disaster half of the staff moved to Randolph, taking up one floor of the Vermont Enterprise Center on Route 66, which is owned by Vermont Tech­nical College. Other staffers are working at various campuses or at home.

The staff hopes to move to new in Montpelier during the summer.

Donovan himself works a good part of the week out of his car, but he sat down with The Herald last week to introduce himself and talk about the state colleges.

He was appointed two and a half years ago, after eight years as pres­ident of the Community College of Vermont. The VSC, he explained, “has been my career” for 36 years, and indeed most of it was with CCV. He was hired by CCV founder Peter Smith in 1982 to establish the college’s innovative “assessment system,” whereby life experiences could be translated into college credits.

He retained a distinct perspec­tive from being part of “a college that functions at a distance,” he said. During his chancellorship, he has worked at consolidating such functions as payroll, purchasing, data ser­vices, the course catalog, and labor contracts—reaping, he be­lieves, substantial efficiencies.

Those efficiencies, he said, do not require a loss of the “brand identity” that distinguishes each college from the other.

“Vermont Tech is a different place than Castleton State Col­lege,” he said.

Indeed, Donovan opined, Ver­mont Tech’s recent trend toward offering four-year courses will not change its basic identity.

“I don’t see it as an abandonment by VTC of the two-year programs, but rather, a growth in the plus-2 program, he said.

Vermont Tech, like the whole VSC system, he noted, must strive to keep up its enrollments at a time that high schools in Vermont are graduating fewer students.

The key, he said, has been shown to be to motivate students towards college during their later high school years. That’s why the VAST program at Vt. Tech and other schools has been so important.