Board Report - May, 2005

Report from Lane Community College President Mary Spilde
To the Lane Community College Board of Education
May 11, 2005

Having just completed our first budget committee meeting of the year, I won't go into detail about the budget. However, I should provide a brief update about where we are. There have been no significant changes since we last met. The last projection approved by the board was based on $415 million and then the office of Community Colleges and Workforce Development provided figures based on $416 so that is what we used for the proposed budget. Things are quite tense in the capitol at the moment and while the figures continue to go in the right direction it has been suggested to us that the best thing we can do right now is to stay out of the capitol so that we don't mess it up! The funding distribution formula is going through the administrative rule process and there will be a hearing on May 16. We will be sending a letter expressing our support for the formula as proposed. In the long run it will benefit the college as it will equalize the amount per FTE every college receives from public resources.

The proposed budget is basically a maintenance-of-effort budget with no new recurring items other than contractual agreements. Over the course of the next few weeks, there will be changes to the proposed budget as things become clearer leading up to a budget hearing in June and a recommendation to the board.

I wanted to take a moment and share with you our Phi Theta Kappa chapter's success at the most recent regional convention. PTK is the honor society for two-year colleges. Our officers won a total of 13 awards, tying our best performance ever. We had distinguished officers, literary awards, and won the coveted leadership award for best overall leadership program. The chapter's induction will be held Friday, May 20 from 6-8 p.m., in the Student Life and Leadership lobby in Building 1. A silent auction and some socializing will lead into the formal induction which is an opportunity to recognize all of our members' academic achievements. I hope you will consider join us for this event. Thanks to Chris Culver who advises the PTK students.

Our forensics team participated in the National Individual Events Tournament in Kansas City. There is a rigorous qualifying procedure to attend this tournament and Lane's team was one of 95 competing. This speaks highly of the quality of our students and their coach, Andrew Kemp, who just completed his first year as a faculty member at the college.

We are about to do an assessment on the college governance system. Based on my own experience and after meeting with the chairs and co-chairs of the councils I am relatively pleased with the progress to date. Of course, the system is still in its infancy but I think you will see that much work has been accomplished. Perhaps in July, Jim and I as chair and co-chair of the College Council will be able to provide a summary report.

I attended the League for Innovation board meeting last week. It was a really good meeting with many ideas exchanged. I took forward the work we are doing on sustainability which you heard about last meeting. There was a lot of excitement and there is a plan for us to host representatives from each of the League colleges at Lane to talk about best practices and perhaps put together a consortium to develop a grant proposal to support this work.

A couple of weeks ago I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Stan Taylor's classroom to notify one of our students, Ephraim Payne, that he had been awarded the prestigious Jack Kent Cooke scholarship. You will recall that Alex San Pedro won it last year and is now attending the Pratt Institute of Design in New York. Twenty-five scholars were selected from 791 applicants. We are very proud of Ephraim. He will be attending the University of Oregon in the fall. See Ephraim's story and other success stories at 2011sitearchive.lanecc.edu/mpr/success/index.htm.

Athletics would like to announce the hiring of Shane Dasher as the head coach for the women's soccer program. Shane is an Ohio native who played three years of college soccer, as well two years professionally with the Cleveland Force of the Major Indoor Soccer League. Shane has also played internationally in Japan, Mozambique, South Africa and Sudan. He has over 20 years of soccer experience as a player and coach. Shane has also received a national diploma from the National Soccer Coaches Association of America.

Graduation is June 11. I look forward to seeing you at this joyous occasion.

Return to: Past communications from the President