The University of Vermont has leveled up when it comes to its standing as a research institution. 

The college announced on Thursday that it’s joining 187 other universities in being considered a R1 institution, a designation given by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The R1 category — short for Research 1 — is for institutions with “very high research spending and doctorate production.”

This puts the university in a position to attract and retain more talented early-career researchers and make grants look more appealing to funders, according to administrators.

“Being out on the road (recruiting), the first thing you’re asked by an early-career faculty member with a good resume is, ‘Are you R1?’” said Kirk Dombrowski, the vice president of research and economic development at the university. “When potential graduate students come to see if they’ll like a PhD program, they say to us ‘Are you R1?’”

Now, the university can answer “yes” — an answer it hopes can help researchers see the university as a place where they can build a robust professional career on-par with what they could do at any of the nation’s best research hubs.

Part of why the designation helps bolster the institution so much is because it elevates the status of researchers’ grants, according to Richard Page, the dean of the university’s Larner College of Medicine.

“Every time someone writes a grant, the environment is one of the categories that’s assessed. Being R1 takes it to another level,” Page said. It ensures a researcher’s “ability to make the case that (the National Institutes of Health) or other funding agencies or foundations are going to invest and believe that the science can be accomplished here.” 

The designation comes as the Trump administration’s attempts to pause federal research funding through the National Institutes of Health and other grant-making agencies have cast scientific institutions into limbo and uncertainty about the future. The Larner College of Medicine garnered more than $100 million in research grants in 2024 — $50 million of that comes from the National Institutes of Health, Page said.

Yet administrators and researchers were undeterred by the uncertainty surrounding research funding. Federal court injunctions on the president’s attempt to stop funding  have allowed things to continue as normal for the university, Dombrowski said.

“We don’t actually have any formal bank cancellations yet. We’re at full speed,” he said. “A lot of it is performative rhetoric. We haven’t seen the concrete pieces, and when we do, we’ll adjust.”