Board Report – December 2010

First I would like to welcome our new Public Safety Director, Jace Smith. He has vast experience both in higher education, health care, and safety and security. Welcome to Lane, Jace! We’re really glad you are here.

Lane has been invited to collaborate in a study by the Sustainable Endowment Institute that will be a one-of-its-kind analysis in how to fund green initiatives on campus. The study will feature Lane’s Energy Conservation Fund and share best practices among colleges. It will be published in early 2011.

The State Accident Insurance Fund is giving us a dividend of $59,667, a reimbursement on our premiums, for our outstanding safety and workers compensation claims record. This is in addition to another dividend of over $50,000 given to us in the past year. Everyone at Lane deserves credit for emphasizing safety and minimizing work-related injuries and illnesses.

We celebrated the long awaited grand opening of our Native American Longhouse last week. I want to thank everyone who attended. Special thanks to Donna Koechig for her leadership of this project, to the Longhouse Committee for its months of planning and fundraising, and most of all to our students for making this dream come true. We are also grateful to the Spirit Mountain Community Foundation for another $20,000 grant for audio-video equipment.

On the same day as the longhouse grand opening, a retirement celebration was held for Florence Center Director Bob Purscelley. His retirement will be official at the end of this month. We will miss him for his tireless enthusiasm for Lane and the Florence Center.

Although receipts are still being tallied, I’d like to congratulate the We Care Committee for helping raise more than $95,000 so far in the employee giving campaign. Special thanks to campaign chairs Carol McKiel and Patty Parks, and to Janet Anderson and Tiana Marrone-Creech of the Foundation.

I would like to commend Elizabeth Andrade of the President's Office. She has been appointed to serve on the City of Eugene Human Rights Commission. Elizabeth is chair of Lane's Diversity Council.

Governor-elect John Kitzhaber announced Monday that I will be co-chairing his Post Secondary Education Team along with Duncan Wyse, president of the Oregon Business Council. Springfield Schools Superintendent Nancy Golden and former Republican-gubernatorial candidate Ron Saxton were selected to co-chair the team addressing elementary and secondary education issues.

The December Revenue Forecast released on November 19 contained some good news: For the first time in over two years, the quarterly forecast is up by $61.9 million (and up by $69.7 million including projected lottery increases.) The increase in revenues is the result of a change in funds withheld by individuals for estimated April tax payments. The forecast also included news that the budget gap for the upcoming biennium has widened again by $272 million (or $266.8 million including increased lottery resources).

Oregon House Democrats selected Representative Arnie Roblan to be their Co-Speaker-nominee for the next legislative session. He is expected to share duties with Republican House Leader Bruce Hanna. Dave Hunt is expected to remain as House Democratic Leader. Party leaders continue to work on details for how committees will function. On the Senate side, Peter Courtney is anticipated to remain Senate President.

There have been some significant developments on the higher education governance issue that we discussed at length last month. The Legislative Workgroup on Higher Education met on November 19 to hear reactions to LC 2861. Subsequent to that meeting, the co-chairs of the workgroup, Senator Hass and Representative Read, requested a meeting with community college advocates. The meeting was extremely productive, and we have made significant progress on the bill. As a result of the meeting, Senator Hass and Representative Read agreed to remove from the bill all changes to community college governance and leave community colleges under the Board of Education. However, both legislators stressed the need for a venue at the state level for deliberate discussion and recommendations for state investment of money into post-secondary education to further the state goals.

Last week, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which was tasked by Congress and President Obama to address our nation's fiscal challenges, released its report. The Commission was charged with identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run. Of note, the report stated that increased funding should be focused on "high-priority investments America will need to remain competitive, such as increasing college graduation rates."

One more time, I want to thank our students and staff for preparing and serving food at the Annual Whiteaker Community Dinner, and for their successful sleeping bag drive. You can read more about that in the monthly highlights in your packet.

I will just mention that last month I attended the annual conference of the Oregon chapter of American Association for Women in Community Colleges. Next week, Brett, Susie in her OCCA role, and I are registered to attend the Oregon Business Plan Leadership Summit in Portland.

I think everyone is aware of the college's decision to cancel a new non-credit class titled "What is Islam" in order to more carefully consider, in consultation with our faculty, how best to provide students a rich learning experience on religious topics. It was a decision that was made with due diligence, taking into account many perspectives and issues, including academic freedom, impact on our community, and intellectual inquiry. Ultimately we concluded that, in the context of recent events in Corvallis and Portland, the reasonable and thoughtful thing to do was to take a step back and give ourselves time to give more thought, more consideration, and more care to how we want to provide a learning experience on delicate subjects such as this. We are not stepping away; we're stepping back. The college began this process of thoughtful consideration not in response to pressure from any outside group, but because of the college’s responsibility to make sound instructional decisions based on its mission and core values and on student, college and community needs.

It seems that two groups that I’d never heard of before last Thursday are making demands on the college. While it seems there might be a political agenda here, it is our job to focus on an educational agenda. Since cancelling the class resulted in news coverage and public input in support of and in opposition to the decision, it underscored the importance of the topic and the need for the college to carefully and thoroughly discuss how best to provide a rich learning experience. In fact, the response we have had makes me even more sure that it makes sense to take time to develop the kind of academic exploration we believe is needed. And this is why we have engaged our faculty in the discussion.

Some ideas under discussion include holding academic colloquia open to the public, inviting visiting scholars, or scheduling additional credit classes. As an educational institution, we do have a responsibility to discuss delicate and perhaps controversial issues, but in doing that we want to assure that we create an environment that is academic balanced with multiple perspectives. So in closing, I would just like to say we did not cave to pressure from any outside organization calling for the college to drop the class, nor will we succumb to demands to reinstate the class. Lane's instructional decisions have been and will be based solely on the best interests of Lane’s students and the community.

I'd like to note that earlier today the college's Diversity Council passed a resolution supporting the college's decision to take appropriate and thoughtful response to the issue and also committed to work with the college at this teachable moment to do what is best for students, community, and the college. I'd like to turn it over to Sonya Christian, our chief academic officer, for a moment to make some comments.

Sonya Christian:
Academia is an appropriate environment to discuss controversial and delicate issues, whether those of economic justice, racialism or the role of religion in society. The academy is a place where deep intellectual engagement occurs, an environment free from fear that is dedicated fully to learning, to the expression of multiple perspectives, to a diversity of ideologies, allowing students to stretch their thinking and wrestle with new or difficult ideas.

As Chief Academic Officer, it is my personal responsibility to ensure that this is the case at Lane Community College. We have a comprehensive mission and, as an institution by design we support scholarly activity and a balanced approach. We have credit courses that are the core of the curriculum, rigorously vetted by the curriculum committee, with faculty selected because of deep academic training. We also offer non-credit classes to serve the community, taught by community members and taken by community members for a multitude of reasons, both personal and professional. Deans and directors are constantly creating, opening and canceling classes of both types; a routine part of their roles as managers of their departments.

The class in question was a new non-credit class, proposed by an individual from the community, and which was canceled for the winter term. The academy has ultimate responsibility over its curriculum and its personnel – we are not coerced by external agencies and remain true to our mission, core values and purpose. Two of our faculty in the religious studies program, Jeff Borrowdale and Cliff Trolin, along with Ken Murdoff, Division Dean of Social Science and myself, are starting to engage a larger group of faculty in this conversation. In the winter and spring we will be organizing academic colloquia and seminar series aimed at providing conceptual clarity, answering questions, and addressing issues. These colloquia and seminars will provide an opportunity for multiple views to be expressed and examined.

It should be noted that Lane routinely offers courses in Religious Studies. One of the courses is Religions of the Middle East, where Judaism, Christianity and Islam are treated in equal segments, where faculty conduct panel discussions and regularly bring in Muslim students to participate as panelists. The introductory courses of our religious studies program at Lane are broad, deep and robust, and are recognized as being so by faculty from the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.

By engaging in what the academy does best, the college and community at large will have a forum both to speak and be heard, to understand and be understood in an area where the ideas expressed can sometimes be challenging and demand the best of us.

President Spilde:
I will conclude my report with best wishes to all for a safe and peaceful holiday.