Board Report - October, 2006
Report from Lane Community College President Mary Spilde
To the Lane Community College Board of Education
October 17, 2006

It seems like just yesterday since the beginning of fall inservice and yet, here we are already in the fourth week. We had a very productive inservice week. I want to thank Susie Johnston and Jay Bozievich for attending the all-staff gathering. My speech was entitled: “Sustaining a Learning College: Harsh Realities and Hopeful Possibilities.”

Following the all-staff gathering, we divided into groups to discuss our mission, sustainability and work process redesign. The information gathered at those meetings will be compiled and used as we go through the year. Faculty presented their sabbatical reports, and, as always, it was an interesting insight into the work that faculty do when they are on professional development leave. Vincent Tinto had a very good session with faculty around student success. He was very impressed with our faculty and staff, commenting on the extremely positive and innovative approach in spite of our budget challenges. We also had an interesting session on instructional redesign. The steering group has been selected that will shepherd the work over the next year.

Reimbursable enrollment was up 5.7 percent last year. This was due to the tremendous effort by many people here at the college. The rest of the state was down 1.2 percent in reimbursable FTE. That bodes well for us as we go into the funding formula. It will not affect us immediately, but over time we will see the benefit. As you know, we went into the enrollment decline first, and I think we have come out of it first. If we keep up that kind of momentum this year, given some changes that are likely to be made in the funding formula, that will really help our financial picture, which as you will see later, we really need to have happen.

Summer enrollment was up 21.1 percent over last year, which is a total of 173 FTE. Credit FTE was down 2 percent, and non-credit FTE was up 85 percent. Professional technical supplemental was up 147 FTE this year.

Remie Calalang has been selected as the coordinator of the new Lane County Teacher Pathways program. Lane and seven other institutions (University of Oregon, Pacific University, Northwest Christian College, Lane ESD, and the Eugene, Springfield, and Bethel school districts) are members of this consortium dedicated to the development of bilingual/bicultural teachers. Many of their students take their first college classes at Lane, and Remie will spend a good portion of her time on our campus this year shepherding those students. Remie also works at Bethel as the multicultural liaison.

College Finance has started on on-call consultant service, so people can either e-mail or call if they are having problems in finance or budget and have access to immediate help with their finances.

The Banner Finance ODS system is up and running and can be learned from an online tutorial. ODS is the way we get reports from Banner. In an effort to continue to be as transparent as possible regarding the budget, we will allow faculty and staff access to the financial data with participation in some very short trainings. The Banner data needs to be translated into information that is useable, and that is what the ODS system does. While we want to give access, we want to also make sure that employees take responsibility to get trained so that the information they find will have some meaning.

KLBR went on the air to serve central Oregon, the sixth station in the Lane network.

Bookstore has reduced wait time at cash registers by at least half as of the first two days of book sales for Fall Term.

The number of unique (each person counted only once no matter how many times they logged in) accesses to ExpressLane on the first day of classes Monday set a new record at 6491. Last year at this time the number was 5782.

Also, we have started to collect student e-mail addresses so that we might be able to communicate with them better. Less than 18 months ago, less than 20 percent of our student records had e-mail addresses in Banner. That number is now over 45 percent and the numbers for currently active students are going up even faster.

Tamara Pinkas and I attended the League for Innovation in Community Colleges meeting in Cleveland. It was a good meeting with much useful information shared. Tamara and the representatives are initiating a major initiative on diversity. I am now vice-chair of the League board, which suggests the huge turnover that has occurred in League presidents over the last few years.

Susie Johnston and I attended the Association of Community College Trustees conference. I attended some very interesting sessions, one in particular that I think will help with the board’s initiative to connect better with the community. We heard the United States Secretary of Education talk about her Commission’s report and her expectations for higher education.

I have been on the speaking circuit, including Learning in Retirement, Springfield Chamber of Commerce, South Towne Rotary, Twin Rivers Rotary and the Young Women Entrepreneurs. My remarks appeared to be warmly received.

Jay Bozievich and I met with the editor of The Register-Guard. I want to thank Jay for the excellent job he did in representing the board and the college.

I have been meeting with a number of leaders in the philanthropic community to test our case for the Capital campaign. All have said it is a very compelling case, and we should go for it. We received very good advice from many of them about how we should approach the campaign and how to make giving to the college more sustainable over time. The Foundation Board will be finalizing the campaign at the beginning of the year.

The Oregon Small Business Development Center Network hosted accreditors last month. From all accounts, the visit went very well, and we should see a positive report in the next few weeks. As the host college, we rely on our partner community colleges and universities to operate solid SBDC’s that meet all the standards, and it appears that is happening.

I was interviewed by a Chronicle of Higher Education reporter who was doing a story on investment in higher education and Ballot Measure 48. He interviewed me about our budget challenges regarding state support. Of course, I told him that I could not take a position on the ballot measure, but using the figures provided by Oregon Community College Association I was able to share the impact. He was doing a comprehensive story including the sponsor of Ballot Measure 48, so I don’t know that Lane will be a prominent part of the story. Since his visit here, I have been invited to the Chronicle Business Summit next June to speak to business leaders about the disinvestment in higher education and how community colleges are dealing with it.

Lane Community College has won the Outstanding College or University Program award for 2006 from the National Recycling Coalition. The award will be presented at the coalition's conference October 22 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Lane Community College is one of four winners, and the only community college, to win a Campus Sustainability Leadership Award from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, presented at the association's conference in Tempe, Arizona on October 5. The other winners were the University of British Columbia, Berea College, and Warren Wilson College. Lane was commended for several achievements: a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050; energy conservation; purchasing 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources; targeting LEED Certified standards for all new buildings; funding for integrating sustainability concepts into curriculum development; participation in the City of Eugene's Sustainable Business Initiative; and employing a full-time sustainability coordinator.

Bert and Loy Dotson have set up an endowment to "to help students succeed in mathematics by providing tutoring, tools and other forms of assistance." This will provide between $800 and $1000 per year and will pay for one student tutor for a term. Bert Dotson was the very first employee hired by the college in 1963 to organize the bond measure and the relationships with the school districts.

We should note the passing of Joe Romania who, with his partner, donated 127 acres to the college.

A fine example of Lane’s innovation during these budget challenges is the ArtWorks Initiative, which is an integrative arts learning initiative of the Arts Division. ArtWorks helps educators and community members become partners in understanding and promoting the importance of integrative arts learning to education across all disciplines at all levels. The primary goal of Artworks is to help develop integrative arts learning programs as essential, core curricular components of education that facilitate advancements in intelligence, creativity, problem solving and academic, professional and life performance and achievement across disciplines and professions. Lane Artworks instructors are working with a broad coalition of arts organizations and K-12 schools in and beyond Eugene. The ArtWorks coalition will initiate a new Integrative Arts Program at an open symposium November 30 and October 1 at Lane.