Inservice 2014: The State of the College Address
The Big 5-0 Celebrating our Past; Shaping our Future
BEATLES TWIST & SHOUT CLIP WITH THE QUEEN
SLIDE WITH FALL COLORS
Good Morning –Jim Rogers
I love the way a new day feels
Those few months when
Yesterday's memories
Are slept into a docile file for later.
When rest gives new birth to new eyes
That see a life with energy and hope
And a chance to try again.
So, good morning and welcome, and here's to this new day! I always love the energy in the room as we connect with colleagues, and the burst of energy that hits the campus when students and the faculty come back. It's great to see all of you - the faces of the people who make Lane such a great place. This is one day when we can celebrate all of our accomplishments with joy and look forward with curiosity and perhaps some apprehension to what the new academic year will bring. This year is especially auspicious as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Lane Community College. The big 5-0 – celebrating our past, shaping our future. I feel so fortunate to be able to share this time with you and to share another academic year, now my fourteenth, as your president. Don't know about you, but I am revved up and ready to go.
SLIDE WITH COLLEGE IMAGES
So here goes – the State of the College 14.0.
Section 2
Gratitudes and Welcome
I want to express my appreciation to everyone who worked over the summer to close out last year and prepare for the new academic year. That takes a lot of work! Our classified staff and managers, in particular, work year-round to assure that summer school happens and that we are ready to go for fall term. I also want to thank the faculty, many of whom may have been off campus but were still engaged in reviewing curriculum and practice and getting ready for the new year.
I had a busy summer but did have an opportunity to get away a bit. Like many of you, perhaps, it's the time in my life when I am caring for elders, and I am learning so much from this experience. As usual, I made my annual sojourn to Scotland to take care of my mother. SCOTLAND SLIDE At 97, she is amazing; her physical health is failing, but she is as sharp as a tack. We had many vibrant discussions about the then upcoming election on Scottish independence – with me the "firrener" an aye vote and she, the 97 year resident a no vote. She has very strong opinions about this. Of course we now know the outcome of that election. SIMPSONS CARTOON I am disappointed but also thrilled that 80% of voters turned out. Imagine if we could accomplish that in this country!
SLIDE - ROAD WITH FALL COLORS
A special welcome to all of you who are with us for the first time. Could everyone who has joined the college since this time last year please stand? Let's welcome them. We are so glad you are here and wish you a long and successful relationship with the college. Please reach out to them over the next weeks and months to introduce yourselves and make them feel at home.
I would like to welcome our board members who are here today. Our elected board does a great job on behalf of the community and provides solid and stable leadership for all of us. I especially want to thank Pat Albright for stepping up to be chair. Pat has had a long and successful career in education.
And thanks to my in service team of Elizabeth Andrade, Jessica Braun, an amazingly talented graduate of our multi-media program, Joan Aschim, Tracy Simms, and Donna Zmolek. I'd also like to thank the Inservice Planning Committee members for their many and varied contributions to this year's Fall Inservice effort. And of course, my fashion consultant....Rodney Brown.
SECTION 3 – KUDOS
But before we look forward, let's take just a few minutes to look back at last year. Wow! 1969 PHOTO Fifty years since the voters of Lane County wisely decided they wanted a community college. It is important to take some time to celebrate what is right with Lane and to recognize the many people that have contributed to these accomplishments. I'd like you, for at least today, to reflect on your own best work. For it is all these individual and collective acts that make up the fabric of Lane Community College.
Even if what you were thinking about is not reflected in these upcoming slides, what is important is that you recognize that you accomplished something and made a real difference. It may have been in a quiet way, unobserved by most, but that doesn't make it any less important. So let's take a look at some of the highlights from last year.
RUN HIGHLIGHTS POWERPOINT VIDEO
Absolutely amazing! I do want to give an additional shout out to the winners of the Faculty Recognition Awards and would ask that you stand if you are here.
SLIDE OF WINNERS
Robert McLauchlin – Language, Literature & Communication
Andrea Ciaston – Art & Applied Design
Indira Bakshi – ESL/ABSE
Mari Good – Computer Information Technology
Thomas Blickle – Health Professions
Tamara Pinkas – Cooperative Education
Let's give them another round of applause.
And also to our classified employees of the month. Our classified staff individually and collectively make this place hum, and let's recognize our awardees again.
If you could please stand at your place as I say your name.
SLIDES – PICTURES OF CLASSIFIED STAFF OF MONTH
November 2013 – Jeff Hanson, FMP
December 2013 – Lisa Rupp, Public Safety
January 2014 – Elizabeth Andrade, President's Office
February 2014 – Annie Caredio, Enrollment Services
April 2014 – Jeri Steele, Foundation
May 2014 – Sharon Daniel, Human Resources
June 2014 – Jackie Bryson, Career & Employment Services
Please join me in giving a round of applause for the monthly recipients.
As notable as those achievements are for our monthly recipients, each year we identify that one individual to be the Classified Employee of the Year. It is my great pleasure this year to name the 2014 Classified Employee of the Year. SLIDE OF JEFF HANSON, would you please join me at the podium to receive this well-deserved award while I share a bit about you with your colleagues?
Here are some quotes from the nominations:
Jeff's performance and willingness to take on new responsibilities rises to meet emerging challenges and opportunities. He figures out ways to go through or around barriers. Jeff has rewritten the book on customer service. Everyone that has ever worked with him knows that he has an unprecedented commitment to providing the best possible maintenance or move experience for those he has served. One nominator wrote "Thank you is not enough to tell you how much you are appreciated."
Please join me in honoring the 2014 Classified Employee of the Year.
FILLER SLIDE
Finally, we don't have any formal recognition for managers, but they also pulled their weight last year, so I would like to recognize them for everything they did.
Now I would like to present a special award to Elizabeth Andrade. Unfortunately, Elizabeth is ill today and cannot be here to accept the award in person. This special "President's Award" is to recognize all of Elizabeth's efforts in leading a courageous pursuit of a cultural competency policy. Because of her perseverance and leadership, the policy is now a reality. Congratulations, Elizabeth.
SLIDE OF MT HOOD
I want to take just a moment to acknowledge the passing of some of our own:
Former faculty and staff:
Elizabeth Paul, Math Resource Center
Gerry Rasmussen, Vice President
James Britt, Board Member
Larry Romine, Board Member & Public Relations Director
Roland Meyer, Advanced Technology
Lyle Cunningham, Housekeeping
Muriel Almyra Sands Peterson, Dental Hygiene
Harry Rice, Science
Erik Humphrey, Criminal Justice
Peggy Sherman-Hill, Flight Technology
David Walton, Information Technology
Tom Taylor, Information Technology
Milt Madden, Social Science
Nancy Hart, Disability Resources
PHOTO OF MAYA ANGELOU
When great trees fall,
Rocks on distant hills shudder,
Lions hunker down in tall grasses,
And even elephants Lumber after safety.
PHOTO OF A GREAT TREE
When great trees fall In forests,
small things recoil into silence,
Their sense Eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
The air around us becomes
Light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly,
See with A hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
Examines, gnaws on kind words Unsaid,
promised walks, never taken.
Great souls die and
Our reality bound to Them takes leave of us.
Our souls,
Dependent upon their Nurture,
Now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, firmed And informed by their Radiance,
Fall away.
We are not so much maddened
As reduced to unutterable ignorance
Of dark, cold Caves.
And when great souls die,
After a period peace blooms, slowly and always Irregularly.
Spaces fill With a kind of
Soothing electric vibration.
Our sense, restored, never To be the same, whisper to us.
They existed, They existed.
We can be. Be and Be.
Better. For they existed.
A fitting tribute, I hope, to the great Maya Angelou who passed away this year as well as all of these people made a tremendous contribution to the college. They will be sorely missed.
So that's a look back. What a year! To all of you: bravo, and thanks for continuing to go above and beyond to serve our students and the community.
Section 4 – 50 years
We can't let this moment of our 50th birthday just slip by. Think back to 1964 – if you were alive then
SLIDE OF MUSTANG
CLIP FROM THE BEATLES APPEARANCE ON ED SULLIVAN 50 YEARS AGO
CIVIL RIGHTS SLIDE
It is fitting that in the same year that the Civil Rights Act was passed, Lane Community College, dedicated to serving the most under-represented, the most under prepared, the most first generation and the poorest students, was founded.
50TH SLIDE
So let's walk across the bridge from the past to the future by contemplating our fiftieth birthday for a moment. What you just saw regarding last year is replicated throughout the years and decades since some very smart leaders decided Lane County needed a community college. In past speeches I have quoted Emily Dickinson's poem, We Dwell in Possibility and certainly in the run up to the creation of Lane and ever since, that's exactly what we have been doing.
"Higher education in our nation is confronted today with tremendous responsibilities. Colleges and universities are burdened by great overcrowding and a shortage of teachers. Most importantly, however, we are challenged by the need to insure that higher education shall take its proper place in our national effort to strengthen democracy at home and to improve our understanding of our friends and neighbors everywhere in the world."
Doesn't that sound as if it was just said yesterday? In fact, President Truman wrote these words more than 60 years ago in Higher Education for American Democracy, a report that would forever change the course of community colleges in America and the course of Lane County.
50TH SLIDE
In 1947, the Truman Commission called for the creation of a new higher education sector: "a network of public community colleges that would charge little or no tuition, serve as cultural centers, be comprehensive in their program offerings with an emphasis on civic responsibilities and would serve the specific needs of the areas in which they were located" (AACC). Since that time community colleges, including Lane, have been dwelling in possibility—in the possibility that an open door of access to higher education could strengthen American democracy, the economy, and our citizenry.
Lane County residents saw that unique possibility and made a huge investment in us.
In 1987 another report: Building Communities: A Vision for the New Century was published and laid out a blue print for building community and creating a climate for learning.
And most recently: Reclaiming the American Dream, A report from the 21st Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges.
50TH SLIDE
The report focused on the "Three Rs" of reform: Redesign, Reinvent and Reset. These are defined as a redesign of students' educational experiences, a reinvention of institutional roles, and a resetting of the system to create partnerships and incentives for student and institutional success.
"We need to completely reimagine community colleges for today and the future," said Dr. Walter G. Bumphus, AACC's president. "It is important that college graduates be not just globally competitive but also globally competent, understanding their roles as citizens and workers in an international context. In today's knowledge economy, intellectual capital is a nation's greatest, most renewable natural resource."
Bumphus went on to say, "Higher education is struggling with low student success rates and employers complain about inadequate student preparation for the job market. Our underinvestment in higher education not only wastes our human capital, it threatens U.S. global economic leadership, contributes to the erosion of our middle class, and calls into question the viability of the American dream, with its promise of upward mobility for each generation."
Clearly we are part of a national movement that opens the door to higher education as a right for all not a privilege of the few.
So let's just take a look at a snapshot of our 50 years.
50TH YEAR VIDEO
If you'd like to see that again, you can go to our 50th Anniversary website at http://www.lanecc.edu/50. Furthermore, you can go to the website to read favorite thoughts and stories of Lane Community College members or to post your own memories. There will be a whole series of events throughout the year starting with the kick off celebration on October 15 at 4 p.m. The Governor will be here, and you are all invited.
Since 1964 together, we, and many before us, have built an amazing college and community resource. Board member of the League for Innovation, receiver of multiple awards and grants that have placed us squarely as one of the leading colleges on the national scene. Just yesterday it was announced that Lane was one of sixteen colleges selected as a Leader College by Achieving the Dream; we were recognized for our work in retention of students. We join a cadre of some of the best colleges in the country for our student success work, and I'd like to thank all of you because we are all involved in the success of our students. In the coming weeks there will be an announcement about another national award for the college, but we will have to wait until that is public. Individuals across the college have been recognized for outstanding scholarship, teaching and leadership. Other colleges see Lane as an innovative leader; they copy and steal all our best ideas; they ask us for commentary in the national press; they watch what we are doing. This kind of reputation took fifty years to build and as we look to the future we need to assure that we continue to be an exemplary community college.
Okay, you have been sitting for a while now, so it's almost time for a stretch break.
STRETCH SLIDE
Once we start to look ahead at what's on the plate for this year, you will get exhausted pretty quickly. Sometimes it feels too hard and we feel too weary, we all experience "stretches" during the school year, excuse the pun, when the grind of daily routines take their toll – working at a feverish pace, overwhelming demands, work never done, papers to grade, budgets to balance, contracts to settle, floors to be mopped. But we must remember that our students can be turned off so easily, and we need to be alive in this work so it is important that we each take care of our own health and wellness. In the spirit of strengthening our bodies and deepening those squats, let's direct our attention to Wendy and the Lanedellas to take a one-minute stretch break.
MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS CLIP FOR WENDY AND THE LANE-DELLAS TO DANCE TO THE STAGE
FILLER SLIDE
Section 5 – The Future
As we look ahead to the next fifty years we need to be careful that we continue to build on the possibility and ideal held by our founders. Some things never change. The way we exercise what we do has to change, but the values and ideals are, in my opinion, more important than ever.
Elizabeth Andrade suggested that after an especially tough year, we should remind ourselves of our vision, mission, and core values. She created the concept for this video we are about to watch.
VALUES VIDEO
FILLER SLIDE
Over the years we have tweaked our vision, mission and core values but they have proven to be pretty enduring.
Even with such a great foundation we face many challenges:
Continued attacks on public education evidenced by disinvestment, performance based funding schemes, doing more with less. SLIDE - DEFEND
Completion agenda writ narrowly focusing on degrees and certificates that ignore the broad mission of community colleges – disaggregation of our mission SLIDE - COMPLETION
Influences of those outside of higher education imposing some not so well thought out ideas with too many people jumping on the bandwagon without the academic research and thinking to back it up. SLIDE – STUDENT DEBT
Student default rates- the cost of higher education even at Lane that puts too many of our students into indentured servitude for life and puts the responsibility on us when we have no reasonable ability to deny a loan. SLIDE – CHARLIE BROWN
Many of these notions are what economist Paul Krugman calls zombie ideas- ZOMBIE SLIDE - statements that can be disproved and have been authoritatively discredited but retain, nevertheless, a life of their own; statements that for political reasons get rolled out at opportune or inopportune moments. Paul Krugman calls them zombie ideas because the statements are dead – they just don't know it yet. For example, performance based funding is being used as a method to "incent" us to focus more on student success. Duh! At Lane and across the country, we are all doing even more to balance access with success. Performance based funding is definitely a zombie idea. It's not real, it doesn't work, it's dead, but it doesn't know it yet so we will have to deal with it.
There are many challenges out there that we need to face head on together. Yet, internally, we spend too much time fighting with each other and not telling the whole story leading to divisive and unproductive outcomes. And we've got to fix that.
Internally, we have a governance system that has not lived up to its promise and a financial situation that requires attention. I don't see state funding changing anytime soon.
FILLER SLIDE
Each of these challenges and many more require a lot of thought and discussion and action, much more than we have time for today. We must think and work together to have these discussions. Failure to do so is a high stakes game that will impact all of us. I don't want to say much more about these issues today but I commit to having a meeting within two weeks to drill down in these issues and share what I know about them and how they might affect us.
WENDELL BERRY QUOTE SLIDE
In the meantime, today, I choose in Wendell Berry's words to "Be joyful though I have considered all the facts."
Let me talk for a few minutes about what is immediately on our plate this year and then I'll make a few remarks about the future.
You'll recall that the student default rates for Lane's federal financial aid loans rose above 30% last year. The college and the Financial Aid office are doing all that we can to investigate those numbers and to educate our current students who are taking loans about financial literacy and debt repayment.
Accreditation – Institutional assessment; all of us are evaluated on our collective response to the standards and eligibility requirements. The self study is complete and I would like to thank Maurice Hamington for taking on the leadership of this monumental task with Heather Ryan and Ce Rosenow and the many others who have been involved. It's a good analysis of where we are. Our evaluation team will be here on October 29 and will be around campus verifying that what we say about ourselves is accurate and deciding to what extent we meet the standards. I expect we will receive a few recommendations that will provide the opportunity for us to further improve.
Legislative session/funding - There have been many organizational changes at the state level. We are now officially attached to the Higher Education Coordinating Commission which has been given many authorities by the legislature. Governance of community colleges is not one of them. We need to be vigilant that they remember that. One of their tasks is to make a recommendation to the Governor on funding for higher education. They have done so and it is woefully lacking. $519 million for all community colleges – an increase over the current biennium, but well short of the $650 million we need if we are going to make progress on the 40-40-20 goal. More on that in the new few weeks.
Foundation - We have quietly launched our second major gifts campaign we are taking phased approach with the focus now being raising about $6 million of the CLASS project; then scholarships and a new Culinary and Hospitality Institute. Stay tuned!
CLASS project – Todd Smith and Russ Pierson are doing a great job of communicating about the project. It's a massive undertaking. We will complete the project by next fall at this time and when we are done we will have a fabulous facility but leading up to that there will be inconvenience, noise and dust. Please be patient, be aware of those who might be unduly impacted, for example, veterans who might be jumpy if there is excessive noise.
Cultural Competence professional development - A team of faculty, staff and students, chaired by Jim Garcia, Elizabeth Andrade and Siskanna Naynaha have been working over the summer to develop a framework and curriculum to implement the policy passed by the board last year. We will be launching the program this year.
STRATEGIC ISSUES LIST
In addition, this year we will be having a series of issues forums. The idea is to take some of the big issues that are affecting us and provide a forum for dialogue among anyone who is interested: asking questions about what this means for us and how we might respond.
In terms of the future:
SLIDE OF SUNRISE
We will look again to Maya Angelou
On the pulse of Morning
Lift up your eyes
Upon this day breaking for you.
Give birth again To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most Private need.
Sculpt it into The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning
To focus on the big picture for a moment -I am unsure about what the future will hold but I am absolutely sure about one thing:
BOB DYLAN – TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN'
– if we choose to work together and focus on thinking and action, we have the capacity to shape our future. If we choose to work together we can collectively create a future worth being part of and we have the opportunity to do that right here, right now. Despite the many challenges that we have, all of you and those before us have made Lane a great institution. But I am well aware that it can be lost in a moment – a controversy, a bad decision, so we must celebrate our past but also understand that we cannot stay in the past; even as we celebrate 50 years of Lane, we cannot rest on our laurels. We must look to the future and think about what we want to the college to look like fifty years from now and start to head in the direction of our preferred future. So the end of those fifty years really just marks the beginning.
Our current strategic plan expires in June of 2015 and so the board is leading a planning effort to develop a new plan that will start us down the road to the next fifty years.
There will be multiple opportunities for all college engagement in addition to the external community conversations that the board will be having over the coming months.
Because the future is a measurement of time consisting of long-term and short-term intervals, it is best approached through our planning efforts that make the same distinction. We will need to develop long-term goals because we also function in a dynamic environment where change has become a more constant variable, it is important for us to follow strategic paths of a more immediate nature in addition to our long-term mission.
In addition to our long-range directions, Lane will identify strategic directions for the next few years. In so doing, we will be able to fine-tune its efforts, take advantage of new opportunities, and adjust to the vicissitudes of the surrounding environment in a strategic manner.
But let me just share a few of the things I think we will need to pay attention to.
We probably all have a wish list of things that would make our work life more engaging. Maybe we can get some help from our Genie:
CLIP FROM ALADDIN
FILLER SLIDE
We must continue to focus on student success and despite the zombie ideas I mentioned earlier really move the needle on our view of student success – definition. This past fall, Lane served almost 12312 FTE. We need to let that sink in. In the past 49 years, LCC has grown from 764 FTE to 12312 FTE students. They represent the extraordinary diversity of our community—regardless of the demographic—and there is enormous power in this diversity: it forms the crucible of ideas that strengthens Lane. The richness of college life has grown over the years in proportion to the multiplicity of cultures and perspectives found within our walls. Each comes to the college with goals and aspirations, seeking our assistance in a quest to achieve a better future.
So here's what I am thinking about....
We must continue to be a premier liberal education institution capitalizing on our amazing arts and sciences programs.
We are firmly committed to the principles and scope of a college experience grounded in the liberal arts and sciences, believing that it provides the foundation essential for success in a world in flux. The Association of American Colleges and Universities recently noted, "In recent years, the ground has shifted for Americans in virtually every important sphere of life—economic, global, cross-cultural, environmental, civic. The world is being dramatically reshaped by scientific and technological innovations, global interdependence, cross-cultural encounters, and changes in the balance of economic and political power."
We share AAC&U's belief in the power of a practical and even non-traditional approach to liberal education, one that empowers learners and develops the skills today that will be necessary for the world tomorrow. We know that the most important skill any student can take from Lane is the ability to learn and the most critical value is the love of learning.
Mary Oliver wrote in The Summer Day: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" So many students give us their one wild and precious life. Her poem asks a basic question about human identity, purpose, and direction that is at the foundation of liberal education.
And, when these and so many other students come to Lane, they will find not just a community of learners but a world of ideas. "If we are to maintain our place at the forefront of the world's institutions of learning, we must truly be universities and colleges of the world. . . . we must internationalize our mission—our learning, discovery and engagement" (NASULGC, Task Force on International Education).
Any meaningful discussion of internalization intersects with global responsibility.
And, global responsibility intersects with sustainability. At Lane, sustainability is not just a jargony buzz word. Responsible environmental practice guides our day-to-day operations and sustainable concepts are integrated into the curriculum by faculty.
In November, Lane was honored by the US Green Building Council Center for Green Schools with their leadership award.
GREEN BUILD VIDEO
CAREER TECHNICAL FILLER SLIDE
We must offer exemplary career and technical education – constantly scanning the environment to see where the jobs are and redesigning to assure our students are absolutely prepared.
We must more fully embrace technology, using it to best advantage to serve those digital natives that are already coming our way and want high quality online courses, using the best pedagogies possible.
Perhaps we need to be a job creator as well; participating with our partners in economic development in a more active way. For example, building on our exemplary culinary and hospitality program to offer food production kitchens where people can use the bounty of Oregon to develop food products and we can help them with marketing and business operations and branding and distribution through our existing business and small business development programs, Creating businesses – think Euphoria, Glory Bee, and all of the business we have helped succeed.
Connecting with our community through lifelong learning offerings, plays, athletics, KLCC, college preparation.
These sound a lot like our core themes do they not?
But even doing all of this is not enough.
We need to affirm a shared vision of higher education that is coherent, principled and forward looking. Advances in efficiency, agility, transparency all of which we are working on, will count for little unless they serve a vision that promotes the strengthening of higher education and aligns the value of higher education with the public interest.
FILLER SLIDE
Lots to think about and do and there will be ample opportunity to do so in the coming months and years. For me, it boils down to a few big, hairy ideas:
Inclusive excellence – an excellent learning experience for every single student
Student Success – amazing outcomes, not because of a zombie idea, but because our students deserve it.
Great teaching and learning. William Butler Yeats famously said that education is not the filling of the pail but the lighting of a fire. Let's light the fire for our students.
Global and community responsibility – think sustainability, Peace Center, United Way
As an aside; stay tuned for our Employee Giving campaign too United Way and our own Foundation coming to a department near you soon.
Also, the Peace Center is hosting the Buffalo Field Campaign on October 6 at 1 p.m. in the Longhouse. This is work being done to protect the last wild herd of buffalo. Isn't it fitting they will be in our Longhouse?
But with all of the work that needs done, we need to stay positive:
CLIP FROM FERNGULLY Sometimes, I feel like this!
So how are we going to move forward?
SLIDE OF FIRST TWO LINES FROM RUMI QUOTE
Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
There is a field. I'll meet you there. SLIDE
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn't make any sense.
Peter Block in his book Community – The Structure of Belonging talks about the social fabric of community being formed from an expanded shared sense of belonging. It is shaped by the idea that when we are connected and care for the well-being of the whole that the civil and democratic society is created. It occurs in an infinite number of small steps, sometimes in quiet moments that we notice out of the corner of our eye. He suggests that the one key question is: How are we going to be when we gather together? Weaving and strengthening the fabric of community is a collective effort and starts from the shift in mindset about our connectedness.
Communities are built from the assets and gifts of their citizens, not from their needs and deficiencies. Organized professional systems are capable of delivering services but only associational life is capable of delivering care. Sustainable transformation is constructed in those places where citizens choose to come together to produce a desired outcome. We have chosen to come to Lane to serve our students and community.
The payoff begins the moment we stop believing that problems reside in others and they are the ones that need to change. It's human nature to assign to others certain qualities that have more to do with us than them. If we do not take back our projection a new context and conversation is not possible. The essence of our projection is that it places accountability for our future on others. Let's take this on ourselves. This is the payoff of stereotyping, prejudice and a bunch of isms that we are all familiar with. This is what produces the other. Projection denies the fact that my view of the other is my creation. I've thought a lot about this over the summer after last year. Each of us plays a role in what we have created here at Lane; each of us has the opportunity to create an alternative future.
Restoration and reconciliation begin the moment we take back our projection. This is a key to transformation. The moment we choose to change the conversation, transformation happens.
Block suggests that shifting the context from retribution to restoration will occur through language: from problems to possibility, from fear and fault to gifts, generosity and abundance, from law and oversight to social fabric and chosen accountability, from corporation and systems to associational life and from leaders to citizens.
The restorative community comes from making this choice to value possibility and relatedness over problems and self-interest. What can we create together is a key question. Restorative community is created when we allow ourselves to use the language of healing and relatedness without embarrassment. It recognizes that taking responsibility for one's own part in creating the present situation is the critical act of courage and engagement. It is to have faith in our own capacity to create a preferred future.
Accountability is the willingness to care for the whole. Restoration is about healing our fragmentation and incivility. It is only out of this healing that something new can emerge. The aspect of community that gives it a new possibility is the conversation it chooses to have with itself. Jane Jacobs, a world expert on neighborhoods, when asked why she thought Portland, Oregon, has been so successful in creating a habitable community said the only unique thing about Portland is that Portlanders love Portland.
PORTLANDIA CLIP
They should come to Eugene. They would find a lot of good material here.
FILLER SLIDE
I believe that we who work at Lane love Lane the way Portlanders love Portland – the magic ingredient is here. The future of community then becomes a choice between a retributive conversation – not a problem to be solved but a restorative conversation a possibility to be lived into.
Conventional thinking about communal transformation believes that focuses on large systems, better leaders, clearer goals and more controls is essential and that emphasizing speed and scale is critical. Instead transformation occurs when we focus on the structure of how we gather; when we work on getting the questions right when we choose depth over speed and relatedness over scale. Transforming action is always local, customized, unfolding emergent. My role as a leader is not to drive change but to create the structures and experiences that bring everyone together for conversation and dialogue, and that is what I will strive to do this year.
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
There is a field. I'll meet you there."
We can do this. Howard Zinn said, "Small acts when multiplied by millions of people can transform the world."
Gary Snyder said: An ethical life is one that is mindful, mannerly, and has style. Of all moral failings and flaws of character, the worst is stinginess of thought, which includes meanness in all its forms. Rudeness in thought or deed towards others, toward nature, reduces the chances of conviviality and interspecies communication which are essential to physical and spiritual survival. We can do this.
The real work – Wendell Berry
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
We have come to our real work
And that when we no longer know which way to go
We have begun our real journey
The mind that is not baffled is not employed
The impeded stream is the one that sings
FLUTE MUSIC FOR HOPI ELDER STORY
SLIDE OF DEER
A Hopi elder speaks:
You have been telling the people that this is the eleventh hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the hour. And there are things to be considered...
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden
It is time to speak your truth
Create your community
Be good to each other
And do not look outside yourself for the leader
Then he clasped his hands together, smiled and said, This could be a good time
There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are torn apart and will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above water. And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.
The time for the lone wolf is over. Gather your selves! Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we have been waiting for.
We are going to need the grace to design and sustain a community of meaning and hope, a community that will offer all members the opportunity to learn and grow, to make a contribution, to be seen and recognized for who they are and what they bring. We are going to need people of good will. And we must recognize that while we have been undergoing relentless budget challenges, for our students, it is their moment in time for learning, and we need to assure that their moment is the best it can be. Though it may be hard we need to serve them well with optimism and a focus on what they need to fulfill their dreams. It is amazing how small acts of optimism can become a force.
We are Lane Community College. Student Success starts here. I believe this college is a storehouse of miracles, and if we keep our eyes peeled and listen with care, we can see the moments of wonder and transformation right before our eyes. They are always there waiting to be seen and savored.
I am not a surfer, but alchemy hour is the magical time of the day when the ocean waves swell perfectly for surfing. They have the most to offer but they will not last long. This is one such alchemy hour for the college. The waves are high. Let's make sure it's a good ride.
Here's to the next 50 years. Thank you.
SURFING SLIDE AND CLOSING SONG: SURFIN' USA