Board Report – October 2010

Fall term is off to a good start thanks to the hard work of many people.

As you just saw on our walk-about, Facilities and IT crews once again completed a tremendous amount of work to finish upgrades and improvements in time for classes. Campus looks great and operations are going very well.

Thanks also to Facilities and to Public Safety and our Lane Community Cares volunteers for helping with first week parking. Lots filled about 9 a.m., a little earlier than last year. Parking has eased up, and it appears students are using alternatives like taking the bus and carpooling so our messaging is getting out and students are supporting our sustainability objectives.

Thanks to the Smoking Task Force and College Council for carefully developing our new tobacco-free campus policy. We are seeing very high voluntary compliance of 95 percent or better. The designated shelters in the parking lots are busy and we are strategizing how to better manage these locations. We will be adding more signage and we need to address the issue of parking lot litter. Otherwise the change is going very well. The task force did a great job of getting the word out including a fun rap video on our web page that's getting lots of attention and laughs.

Two additional kudos for Public Safety: On Friday night of the first week of classes, Officer Bill Speicher found a suspicious device taped to a toilet in Building 19. He followed emergency response protocol to evacuate the building and alert law enforcement. The device was found to be fake and everything was over without incident within a half hour. Then, on Monday morning of this week, again in Building 19, a fire alarm went off due to a smoke smell. The building was evacuated and Goshen Fire responded. Some people attempted to re-enter before an all-clear was given so Officer Jim Harris used our new remote keyless entry system to lock the building. This prevented any further re-entry before it was safe. The all-clear was given within a half hour.

Some of this extra activity is the result of yet another enrollment increase. Overall, registrations are up 4.2 percent. Credit-only registrations are up 5.6 percent. That gives us a fall term headcount of about 15,000, including about 12,000 on main campus.

We have final enrollment reports for summer. FTE was up overall 16.9 percent. Credit-only FTE was up 18.5 percent and non-credit FTE was up 8.8 percent.

The week before classes was just as busy. In-service was invigorating and well attended, and I especially want to thank Vice President Sonya Christian and her team, and my own team, for all their work. Thanks to board chair Tony McCown for his welcoming remarks and to Susie Johnson, Pat Albright and Bob Ackerman for attending.

Let's take a minute to watch one of our in-service videos titled "I Am Lane" created by one of our newer staff members, Steve Barth. It has been edited to one minute and is available for presentations if you’d like to show it.

After in-service we celebrated the very grand opening of the Health and Wellness Center. I want to thank Foundation director Janet Anderson and her staff and volunteers for a wonderful event. I especially want to thank the donors for bringing this $16 million education and training center to our students and community. We had a great turn out and lots of media.

In the past month I attended a number of meetings and conferences, including speaking at the US Department of Education sustainability summit in DC - Roger Ebbage was also there; the League for Innovation board meeting in North Carolina; the American Association of Colleges and Universities meeting in DC; and the American Association for Sustainability in Higher Education meeting in Denver including a joint session with the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment. Closer to home, I presented at Florence Rotary, gave the keynote address at the Eugene Chamber of Commerce Emerald Business Awards, and attended the inauguration of Dr. Joseph Womack, the new president of Northwest Christian University.

We continue to have a lot of media, and I had a couple of especially nice clips to send home to my mum in Scotland, including a feature in Eugene Magazine and another in The Register-Guard's Blue Chip business publication. I interviewed with The Washington Post for a story on unemployment and what people are doing to get back into the workforce; we don't know when this will be published. I interviewed with the National Wildlife Federation for a report it's doing on sustainability and workforce training, and I taped a Comcast Newsmakers interview.

Speaking of sustainability, Lane is included in the just-published Peterson guide titled "Green Careers in Energy." Lane is listed in the top "25 Two-Year Schools with Great Green Programs" and I have a chapter in the book on the "Role of Community Colleges in Creating a Workforce for the Green Economy."

Last Tuesday, President Obama and Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden hosted the first ever White House Summit on Community Colleges. Nearly 120 participants from community colleges, businesses, philanthropies, and federal and state government discussed challenges and best practices to increase the number of students who graduate from public two-year colleges. Much of the discussion focused on the importance of education to the economy. Materials from the summit are available on the White House website. I interviewed with Inside Higher Ed about the summit's purpose and emphasized how community colleges educate more than 46 percent of the nation’s undergraduates yet continue to be inequitable underfunded when compared to four year institutions.

Here in Oregon, State Treasurer Ted Wheeler has recommended that the Legislature halt all new borrowing backed by the state’s general fund. He is concerned that declining revenues and past borrowing might lower Oregon's credit scores and increase future borrowing costs. Based on the latest revenue projections, Wheeler has asked the Department of Administrative Services to reconsider the timing of some projects that have already been approved but for which the bonds have not yet been issued. Our downtown campus project falls into this category, but legislative leaders indicate they do not intend to suspend projects already underway.

Other news on the state front is that new PERS rates have been received for the next biennium. They are a significant increase over the current biennium.

The Lane Council of Governments (LCOG) Board of Directors met on campus on September 30. State Senator Floyd Prozanski and State Representatives Nancy Nathanson and Jean Cowan were their invited guests and discussed budget challenges facing the next Legislature. Thanks to Tony McCown and Brett Rowlett for being our ambassadors at this event.

Yesterday was the official deadline to register to vote in this November's general election, and ballots should be in the mail by the end of the week. Congratulations to ASLCC and the other student organizations for their efforts in this year's voter registration drive. Also, thank you to the faculty and staff who assisted with the effort. This year's drive registered 3,474 students, making it the largest vote drive at any Oregon community college and the second largest statewide, second only to the University of Oregon. Kudos to Mario for his op ed published in both The Register-Guard and Oregonian. The students have gotten great publicity. I also want to point out that Mario was elected chair of the Oregon Student Association board, the first community college student body president in that position.

I'd like to note that Greg Evans was elected to the American Public Transportation Association Executive Committee. Greg serves on the LTD board and coordinates Lane's African American student program.

I am pleased to announce that our new executive dean of academic affairs is Don McNair, who has been serving in that position in an interim capacity. We had a great pool, and Don came out on top, so he will continue in that role.

We are mourning the loss of Kris Tupper, coordinator for the Dental Assisting program, who passed away in September. She had been with Lane since 1978. There is a memorial fund in her name at Selco Community Credit Union for anyone who wishes to make donations to assist her family with expenses.

One of our aviation graduates, Ryan DeChent, recently was awarded the Army's Distinguished Flying Cross for bringing 21 service members to safety after his Chinook helicopter was struck and damaged by a rocket-propelled grenade while on a mission in Afghanistan. Ryan earned his associate of applied science in flight technology at Lane and also his private pilot fixed-wing license and private pilot helicopter license. He now serves the US Army as a Chief Warrant Officer 3.

I hope to see many of you at our premier fundraising event, the Harvest Dinner, on October 27 in the Center for Meeting and Learning with guest chef Mary Karlin of the Ramekins Culinary School in Sonoma, California.

I'd like to conclude my report with a follow-up to last month's block party fundraiser for our downtown campus, at which $3,500 was raised for the new building. I'd like to invite special guests to come to the podium and tell you about it. With us tonight is Sean Kern-Craft of Ambrosia Restaurant and Heather Upton of Nick & Nora's. Sean was the creative genius who led the effort. Thank you, Sean and Heather.