Board Report - November, 2005

Report from Lane Community College President Mary Spilde
To the Lane Community College Board of Education
November 9, 2005

Later in the meeting we will be asking for direction from the board for the 2006-07 budget process, but I want to briefly emphasize the importance of the set of decisions before the board this evening. The fact that the college is facing a $1.6 million deficit is very worrisome, to say the least. I keep hoping that for one year in my presidency I could report to you that we have a surplus and could balance the budget as well as fund additional initiatives. However, it just doesn’t seem to be in the cards! While I am recommending that we do not make recurring budget reductions for next year, I do think we need to start preparing this year for reductions for FY08. Failure to do so could result in the kind of situation I faced my first year as president, and I don’t think any of us want to relive an almost 10 percent budget deficit. As you know, there are only three ways to balance the budget –increase revenues, decrease expenses, or a combination of the two. While we will continue to do everything possible to increase revenue, it is a fact that the revenues are not keeping up with the expenditures. More on that later. I want to emphasize that projections are always subject to change as we garner more information, and this is especially true this year as these projections are pre-audit completion.

Sonya, as Accreditation Liaison Officer, has been working on assuring that work is underway to respond to the accreditation report and prepare for the progress report in 2006. The governance councils have responsibility for accreditation, so Sonya is reminding the councils of this responsibility. There will be staff liaisons working with the councils to make sure the work is done. For example, I am the liaison for Standard Six, Governance and Administration.

One of the concerns expressed by the accreditation evaluators in the October 2004 site visit was the lack of library service to outreach centers. In response, David Doctor, Librarian, began to develop a service plan and met with the directors of these centers. Publicity about the availability of class and individual library instruction to Florence and Cottage Grove began in Fall 2005 with a flyer and listing in the class schedule. David met with teaching faculty to apprise them of the resources available to faculty and students. He has since scheduled several one-on-one research appointments with students in writing and speech classes and is preparing instruction to speech and writing classes as well.

The Library's recent membership in the Orbis Cascade Alliance, with the ability to request any of 27,000,000 items at the click of a button, will greatly enhance the resources available to students and faculty not on the 30th Avenue campus. However, materials are currently dropped at the Library and must then be sent to the requesting outreach center. The library is investigating the feasibility of Florence and/or Cottage Grove acting as a direct drop site for requested materials; this would further enhance access to all in the college community.

A lot has been going on since the last board meeting. Some staff and Susie Johnston attended the Lane Metro Partnership Annual dinner; and we had the second annual Advisory Committee chairs meeting where I was able to share a few comments and the committees were able to share best practices. I have been meeting with the leadership of Peace Health regarding partnerships and as a result, we will be having a “summit” with Sacred Heart executive leadership to discuss the possibilities. The annual Classified Participation day was held, and we discussed professional development issues and how we can best develop the new POD unit of the college to serve classified staff needs. I met with Peterson Company to talk about a strategic partnership--they have 270 employees in Oregon and are looking to us to help them meet their growth goals by having us prepare workers. These are family wage jobs with good benefits. The Harvest Dinner was held, and it really was a wonderful event. We raised $132,000, but the net figures are not in yet.

I attended the AACC Commission meetings in Washington D.C. last week. It was excellent and very helpful to be on the front end of hearing about issues that impact Lane. For example, licensure issues and the degree creep for nursing and other allied health programs. It is projected that instructors in areas such as dental hygiene and respiratory therapy will need a bachelor’s degree within five years and a master’s degree within ten years in order to teach. There was some discussion of community colleges offering bachelor’s degrees, but the fear is that if we do so we will lose our unique community college mission. We also heard about the reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act and Carl Perkins bills.

Mike Rose, Sonya Christian, and I returned today from a two-day planning retreat organized by the OCCA. I think we did some good work, and Mike will report on that later.

I will be signing the final papers on the sale of the Cottage Grove Center tomorrow.

It’s that time of year again when Marie Matsen is going to hit you up for money! The Bookstore raffle helps students and their families over the holidays.

November 15th is National Community Education Day as declared by the National Community Education Association. Certainly it is part of our mission to provide lifelong personal development and enrichment. The Continuing Education Department at Lane supports the vision, mission, core values and strategic directions of the College. More than 100,000 Lane County residents have taken Continuing Education classes over the past seven years. Continuing Education has been working very hard to reinvent themselves in light of the changes in state funding, and they are definitely on the right track. I would like to commend the work of Continuing Education and acknowledge and celebrate November 15 as National Community Education Day.