Board Report – October 2008

Report from Lane Community College President Mary Spilde
To the Lane Community College Board of Education
October 8, 2008

As you can imagine with all the turmoil in the financial markets, we are keeping a close eye on what is going on at the state level. I am hopeful that there will be no change to our state allocation for this year, but it all depends on how bad things get and what the November forecast looks like. The governor will use that forecast to develop his budget, and it is looking to me that we will have to manage our expectations about what is possible next session. It’s not that we won’t work hard to make community colleges a priority, which they should be when we are in a recession, but I think it will be very difficult to get a 10 percent increase, let alone the $621 million we requested. We will bring a projection in November and go from there. Given the unknowns regarding the budget, the best thing we can do for ourselves right now is work to pass the bond so that our facilities expenditures are covered.

The year got off to a good start with division meetings, all staff gathering and other in-service events. There is a great deal of positive energy around the college. We have challenges ahead, but there are wonderful things going on.

Academic and Student Affairs (ASA), the area formerly known as Office of Instruction and Student Services, has one single priority in helping students achieve their dreams and that is enrollment growth, which translates into access for students. The ASA team, Sonya Christian and her Executive Deans, staff and Division Deans will be laser focused on this goal.  They will do it through growing
new programs in lower cost areas, online expansion in niche areas, and retention.  There has been a
lot of activity in these areas over the summer.

The Strategic Investment Fund (SIF) is a one-time grant for $632,000 from the State, which will help us provide statewide educational opportunities for students, through online methods, in the areas of health care and sustainability—which are in high demand in Oregon.  The idea with this money is we must have statewide impact while increasing our enrollment. The programs participating in this grant are: Respiratory Care, Physical Therapist Assistant, Energy Management, and Water Conservation.  Courses in nursing, Advanced Technology and Science are also part of this project. 

The design for implementing this initiative is research-based with the appropriate connections to institutional support structures and one-on-one support structures.  The fifteen faculty involved with this project will work with an instructional designer and a programmer to move learning from the traditional environment to the online environment.

Lane has been trying for several years to get a Title III grant.  We finally did it!  The grant was written under the leadership of Aaron Shonk, Anne McGrail, Mary Parthemer, and Sonya Christian.  It is a $2 million grant for five years.  This grant is focused on the student success initiatives at Lane, including the development of a comprehensive first year experience for students and learning communities. It will take many of the initiatives started by the Strategic Learning Initiative and SAGA to the next level.

We received close to half a million dollars for three years from NSF to develop three computer science courses in Second Life.  Second Life® is a 3-D virtual world created by its Residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe.  Jim Bailey, CIT faculty, is the principle investigator for this grant.  Jim will be working closely with Mark Williams and Sonya Christian in exploring development dollars to fund the expansion of this learning forum to other disciplines.

The Disabilities Resource Center received over a $1 million grant from the Department of Education.  Project ShIFT, Shaping Inclusion through Foundational Transformation, is a research demonstration grant that will improve the quality of higher education for students with disabilities by providing social model education, technical training and support related to universal design of instruction for faculty and staff. 

Technology services have been consolidated under Sonya Christian.  I hope you understand that asking Sonya to provide leadership for technology is an intentional act. It’s not that the Instructional Technology Division hasn’t been doing a fabulous job with constrained resources, but we want to integrate instruction and infrastructure so that everyone understands the importance of technology to our future and that technology exists in the service of learning.

Our Athletics programs are being led by our fabulous women’s basketball coach Greg Sheley. If he can do for Athletics what he has done for women’s basketball, we will be in great shape. Cross Country and Soccer have started their seasons and have record number of participants. All of the coaches are very excited to get started and are looking forward to their upcoming seasons. Women's Basketball's home winning streak is still alive and is at 63 consecutive games.  The last home loss was December 6th, 2001.  This is the nation’s longest current home winning streak at the collegiate level. We have 18 people committed to be Athletic Leadership Committee members and are looking to do great things with this group.

We are doing some very exciting exploration with the University of Oregon School of Architecture to have graduate students do a Design Studio that focuses on our land assets and helps us see what we could do to use them productively. This will build on the great work that Facilities Council, with leadership of Margaret Robertson will do this year in developing design principles. We will talk with you more about that in November.

A great deal of work is going on to provide information about our bond measure 20-142.  It’s about replacement, renovation, renewal, upgrading of facilities we already have, not adding new buildings. It’s about replacing forty year old infrastructure. It’s intended to keep the tax rate about the same—25 cents per thousand—because we will pay off the old bond before we levy the new one. We are simply asking taxpayers to keep doing what they are already doing. This amounts to about $50 for a $200,000 home, or $1 a week. Even if your home is worth $500,000 we’re still talking about $125 a year, or $2.40 a week.

I’d like to share an advertisement for the bond that was sponsored by the Lane League.  The ad shows both mayoral candidates who may not agree on everything, but they both agree on supporting Lane’s bond measure.  This picture came from a press conference held on Monday at the Downtown Center. 

Last year the Management Structure Work Group reviewed the management structure and made several recommendations. I asked them to come up with a structure that did not spend more than we were already spending for managers, and the board approved the structure in March. The most striking things about the organizational chart is the number of interim positions we have. Some people have retired; some have moved on to further their professional career goals. We simply don’t have the capacity to fill all the positions in one year, and I want to save some money from vacant positions so we will be strategically filling these positions over the next couple of years.

This year we are launching a leadership development program for managers, faculty and classified staff who want to explore leadership. Forty-three people applied for twenty slots. We increased the number to twenty-five, and the program will start on Friday. We plan to make this an annual program to build our own capacity for leadership.

Just a reminder that you will be having a strategic conversation with the Foundation Board during the work session in November. I am proposing that we invite the architects for the Health and Wellness building to present their work so far to both boards. Then we can have round table discussions with the Foundation Board members.