Board Report - January 2010

Welcome, everyone, to 2010. Happy New Year!

Our first weather closure of the winter was Friday afternoon, December 11, due to freezing rain. Our LaneAlert messaging system helped us quickly inform students and employees.

First-day registrations are up for credit around 21 percent over last year, and headcount is up about 16 percent, showing that enrollment demand is still very strong.

Our most exciting first-day event was the broken hot water main in a Science building storage room, which produced steam mistaken for smoke at first. Public Safety and Facilities responded and now our Science folks are doing some early spring cleaning. This shows that that we still have plenty of deferred maintenance to do, even though we’re about 75 percent complete on state funded projects.

Voters will soon settle Measures 66 and 67. Last week, Secretary of State Kate Brown visited the campus to encourage students to register and vote, and she spoke with students in Stan Taylor’s Peace & Conflict class, and ASLCC. I met Kate later in the week at another meeting, and she was very impressed with our students and promised to come back. I have attended debates on the measures. You passed the resolution supporting them. Thanks to Chair Pat Albright for his letter to the editor. As you know, the Register-Guard supports the measures, while The Oregonian opposes them.

Last month, President Obama signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2010, which included all remaining budgets before Congress for the current fiscal year. The agreement increased the Congressional appropriation for Lane’s nursing program to $500,000, more than originally anticipated. Special thanks to Congressman Defazio and Senators Merkley and Wyden for their efforts.

The American Graduation Initiative was put on hold during the health care reform debate but should start moving fairly soon. It appears now that the Senate may consider the bill in February, allowing community colleges a great opportunity to advocate for passage while in Washington for the AACC-ACCT Legislative Summit, which several of us will be attending.

Another bill before Congress that we are following carefully is HR 4196, the Community College Emergency Stabilization Fund Act. This bill now has 335 co-sponsors and would make $700 million available to community colleges to maintain, or hire more faculty and staff to assist with skyrocketing enrollment.

I would like to thank the more than 300 employees who contributed over $108,000 during the annual employee campaign, our best effort yet. $79,000 was directed to the Foundation, and $29,000 to United Way. Special thanks to campaign chair Cathy Lindsley, ALS Dean, and Kathy Thomas from the Foundation.

We have less than $500,000 to raise to meet a Kresge Foundation challenge grant for the new Health and Wellness Building. We need to raise this by March 31.

I would like to thank Hamilton Construction for donating $100,000 to the Opening Doors Campaign.

Lane seems to be lighting the way for Eugene downtown. Our downtown campus project made it into the top ten stories of 2009 in The Register-Guard, and Mayor Piercy won cheers and applause when she mentioned Lane in her State of the City address. Things are moving along. As you know, last month we hired Gerding Edlen as our project management firm for this first phase, and after an open bid process, I approved Roberts and Sherwood, and SRG for Phase One of the conceptual design. Roberts and Sherwood are in Eugene and designed the new Eugene Library. SRG is in Portland and designed our Health and Wellness Center.

KLCC completed a digital broadcast upgrade for its Eugene transmitters. Upgrades for Florence, Roseburg, Reedsport and Bend will follow. If you have a digital radio you will now get a clearer signal, especially in remote or rural areas.

We are responding to a letter to the editor criticizing wait times in student services. Kate Barry is contacting the writer and submitting a response letter. Our wait times reflect high enrollment, an increase in financial aid applications (80% of students who walk in require financial aid assistance), walk-in students who are unprepared, and understaffing resulting from years of state funding cuts. We are constantly looking for ways to improve this, including promoting early orientation and encouraging students to complete processes earlier.

Our annual financial aid and scholarship workshop, titled, “How To Pay For College In One Day,” will be Saturday, January 30, in the Center for Meeting and Learning. I hope you can drop by.

Last week, Sonya Christian and I participated in a panel with the joint boards of education and the Oregon Business Council at Portland State University to discuss learning outcomes.

Gubernatorial candidate John Kitzhaber was on campus today to roll out policy on jobs in Oregon. Kitzhaber is working on his education platform and will be unveiling that in February. We expect to see good news for education support.

We have received the report from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities on our interim accreditation visit. The good news is that we have no recommendations, and the commendation we received was for our stewardship of the College’s financial and physical resources.

Finally, I want to warn you that sometime tonight, we will be informed of the outcome of tonight’s women’s basketball game going on right now in the gym next door. The Titans are aiming for their 73rd consecutive home-game win. That’s the best home game winning streak in the nation in college basketball. KMTR is doing live coverage of the game.