Board Report – July 2008

Report from Lane Community College President Mary Spilde
To the Lane Community College Board of Education
July 9, 2008

I would like to begin by recognizing Pat Riggs-Henson for her exemplary service as board chair this past year.  Congratulations to Susie Johnston and Pat Albright on the election of chair and vice chair.  I am looking forward to working closely with you this year.

We are busy closing out the year and gearing up for a new one.  There is a lot to do this year from the board perspective:  passage of the facilities bond, updating the strategic plan, developing our 2020 Vision, and the legislative session, so I expect a busy year.

I thought you might be interested in the Policy Packages that were approved by the State Board of Education for submission to the Governor for consideration in his budget.  As you can see, the support fund shows a large increase; there is focus on Career and Technical education, and over $95 million was requested in capital construction projects.  It would take about $60 million to include our project, so that is something we need to work on closely with our legislative delegation.

Once again, our students received national attention for their performance in the League for Innovation National Literary Competition.  Melanie Hyers won first place and $500 for her one-act play titled “Something Different for a Change” and Cheri Browne won second place and $200 for a short story titled “Nadia’s Fire.”  Both students were in Merry Caston’s WR 240 Creative Nonfiction class this year and wrote the winning entries as assignments. 

Lane students had a good showing in the Olympic Trials.  Current student athlete Cyrus Hostetler performed admirably on the big stage, placing eighth out of twelve in the trials and is ranked seventeenth in the nation.  He was one of only five college students in the javelin competition.  Former Lane Titan Tom Pappas qualified for his third Olympic team.  Lane facilities were used for some of the practice for the trials. 

Harland Yriarte, former Lane athletic director and long-time faculty member, was inducted into the NWAAC Hall of Fame at the end of the year banquet.  Greg Sheley continues to do excellent work in moving forward with an athletic leadership committee of local community members and staff to support our programs and has initiated several projects to improve and increase outside funding.  We will provide a report on Athletics in fall term. 

We continue to receive comments about the Register Guard articles regarding nursing and particularly my op-ed piece.  It was included in the Oregon Nursing Association statewide newsletter.

Similarly, Lane’s Small Business Development Center was highlighted in the national ASBDC newsletter.