Board Report - November 2009

I’d like to begin by remembering that a year ago today, local voters approved our $83 million bond renewal, and the nation’s voters elected Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States. Both signaled a new era of investment in community colleges and in Lane.

You know that federal support for community colleges is packaged as the American Graduation Initiative (AGI) and that legislation is still in the U.S. Senate. A draft of the Senate language is expected later this month. We are working with Senator Merkley’s office to address some of the concerns in the House language; he is advocating strongly for us, primarily for the match requirements for federal grants.

U.S. Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter talked about the AGI at the Oregon Community College Association conference at Lane last week. Thanks to Pat Albright, Sharon Stiles and Susie Johnston for attending the conference. The event went very well, and our staff received much praise for making it a success.

Also presenting at OCCA was Oregon Speaker of the House Dave Hunt. He talked about the importance of community colleges in the economy and the upcoming tax measures. After Speaker Hunt’s presentation, he was joined by Representatives Phil Barnhart and Terry Beyer for a tour of stimulus-funded deferred maintenance projects and the Health and Wellness site.

Barnhart and Beyer will be back on November 16 for a Town Hall meeting on education issues, which will be held at 11:30 a.m. in the boardroom. Senators Bill Morrisette and Floyd Prozanski, possibly Chris Edwards, and Representatives Val Hoyle and Nancy Nathanson will also attend, and we will have another deferred maintenance tour afterwards.

The state has asked us to articulate the impact of a 5 percent funding cut in case the January tax measures fail. That would cost Lane about $2.9 million. In addition, all state agencies have been asked to project the impact of a 10 percent cut; one scenario assumes that community colleges might take a greater reduction based on the old and egregious assertion that we can always raise tuition when K-12 cannot.

Locally we have several things to celebrate:

Donna Dubois, a teacher at Camas Ridge in southeast Eugene, was named Oregon Teacher of the Year. She has mentored many of Lane’s teaching Cooperative Education students.

The Center For Learning Advancement was honored by the Springfield School District and Willamalane for offering after-school GED and ESL programs in Springfield schools.

The Mid-Willamette College Fair last month drew about 1,200 students and parents, and 77 colleges and universities.

The Harvest Dinner was another sell out with 356 attendees, and we were just $3000 short of our $200,000 goal, which is pretty remarkable in this economic climate. There were many generous donors, including Harry Ritchie's, which gave every woman who attended either a pearl necklace or bracelet. Most important, people had fun, and we made lots of new friends for the college.

Your packet has facilities updates, but I will note that the Health and Wellness building appears on track for a possible Gold certification as the first LEED building at the college, according to our preliminary LEED scorecard. Several meetings with donors have been held over coffee in the construction trailer on site to see the progress.

We are about to publish an RFP for downtown project management services. We hope to hire a firm at the December board meeting. Then we’ll do an RFP for an Architectural Design Team and hope to hire a firm after the January board meeting. Both proposals move us toward a feasibility study that we want to complete by early April. We will need to discuss the findings of the study before the next steps are determined.

We have extended the free bus pass for employees through December and may offer it again winter term. We also broadened the student bus pass to include credit students who take classes only downtown; previously, these students were not eligible for the pass.

Our Health Clinic has seen some cases of influenza-like illness, but we have not experienced a significant impact on classes or operations. We have dispensed seasonal and H1N1 vaccines. There is little prospect at this time of obtaining further seasonal vaccine, and we do not expect to receive more H1N1 vaccine for some time, nor enough for everyone who wants it.

In media activity, Lane’s summer youth academy in weatherization is featured in a U.S. Chamber of Commerce publication called “Thriving in Challenging Times: Connecting Education to Economic Development through Career Pathways;” also, the Opening Doors campaign is featured in the October-November issue of the Eugene Chamber’s "Open for Business" magazine; and, I interviewed with Fortune Magazine about Lane’s leading role in green jobs training.

I presented the keynote address at the National Council on Student Development conference in Denver, where I talked about “Growing a Culture of Sustainability.

Later this month, I will give the keynote address at the New Ideas in Education Renewable Energy conference in Albany, New York.

I attended Oregon State University alumni events last week and was honored to be named a 2009 OSU Alumni Fellow.

Next week Brett and I will attend the AACC Washington Institute which is a training for community college advocates on working at the federal level.

This week we are focused on our interim accreditation visit and again, I’d like to commend Vice President Christian and her staff and the accreditation team for a remarkable job preparing for this visit and moving the institution towards its goals. Thank you to Roger Hall, Pat Albright, and Tony McCown for meeting with the accreditors.

You might have noticed the cutout people climbing a mountain under a starry sky on the boardroom’s west window. They were created by our Achieving Dreams Employee Campaign team. Each figure represents 25 pledges, and each star represents $1,000 in donations. We’re about halfway through the campaign. So far we have 50 stars, and we’ve collected more than $50,000. We’re at about 18 percent staff participation, with a goal of 51 percent.

Other events to note are the Oregon Diversity Institute tomorrow, and the annual OSAA high school state cross country meet this Saturday. On Sunday, we will host a White House Community Conversation with Juan Sepulveda, executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. We have invited 100 members of the community to attend. I hope you can attend the Shining Star scholarship reception on November 16.

I will close by wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving. I am personally thankful that I will be taking some vacation time that week.