Board Report – July 2012

Report from Lane Community College President Mary Spilde
To the Lane Community College Board of Education
July 16, 2012

Congratulations to Sharon Stiles and Rosie Pryor for your election as chair and vice chair. I'm looking forward to a productive and exciting year. I also want to thank Susie for her past year and second term as chair. You've done an exceptional job, and I just want to thank you for your leadership and support.

I want to thank Team Lane for getting us successfully through U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials as the official training site. Special thanks to Chris Hawken, Grady O'Connor, and their army of volunteers. We received numerous compliments on our athletic facilities, beautiful campus and friendly and helpful staff and students. Thanks also to Public Safety, Facilities and Marketing, and Pat Albright for the nice story about our track upgrades in the official Trials program. Thanks to Gerardo Cifuentes, Brett Rowlett and the numerous volunteers at our booth in the festival area outside Hayward Field. Finally, congratulations to Cyrus Hostetler for making it onto Team USA despite breaking his javelin in two on his first throw, and later injuring his left knee. Cyrus got his start in track and field right here at Lane.

I was pleased to present medals to women heptathlon winners with six-time Olympic medalist, Jackie Joyner-Kersee.  It was a thrill.  

Congratulations to KLCC for winning five Public Radio News Directors, Inc., awards from its annual competition. KLCC is judged in Division C: Small News Staff. They won first place for commentary, first place for spot news, first place for breaking news, second place for spot news, and second place for writing. They do a first-rate job, and we are lucky to have them in our community.

Kudos to Greg Evans, faculty member at Lane and founder of our Rites of Passage program. He's also a board member for LTD and just received the American Public Transportation Association Outstanding Public Transportation Board Member of the Year award. It's good to see Greg is getting some well-deserved recognition this year. You may recall that in February, he received the 2012 Trailblazer Award from the Oregon Northwest Black Pioneers association.

Kudos once again to Chief Financial Officer Greg Morgan, Rose Ellis and Cathy Nolan in the budget office for earning the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada, for the seventh year in a row.

A Lane student who uses the pen name Savanna Lilly won third place in the national League for Innovation literary competition for her essay titled, "Code of Honor, Code of Ethics." Thanks to instructor Will Fleming for coordinating our submissions and to Tamara Pinkas for representing us on the League.

Our Phi Theta Kappa chapter earned the Two-Star Chapter distinction, bringing us closer to the ultimate Five-Star distinction. This honor recognizes the chapter's efforts to reach out to more students, provide personal and professional development opportunities, work with administration, and be active on campus and in the community.

We have good news this last month in that a week after fifteen global banks were downgraded, Lane Community College's bond rating was upgraded from A+ to AA+ long term rating.  Our credit rating was upgraded from A+ to AA-.  As a result of our bond rating and the work that has been done over the last few years to improve our ending fund balance position and the good bond market in recent weeks, instead of realizing $38 million for the bond, we realized $44 million while keeping the rate per thousand of assessed value at .25, which is what we pledged to the voters when we passed the bond.  

On the legislative front, the U.S. House and Senate finally agreed to extend the current interest rate of 3.4 percent for new federally subsidized Stafford loans for an additional year.  Thank you to our Oregon Congressional delegation for their work and support of this issue.  

Earlier this month, a Federal District Court struck down a major portion of the Department of Education's "gainful employment" regulations.  Issued last year, gainful employment rules were aimed at restricting career training programs that are not providing students with successful outcomes.  

On June 20, we hosted State Representative Phil Barnhart for a town hall meeting on campus to introduce his constituents and local business owners to representatives from some of the lesser known state agencies/programs.  Issues such as preventing identity theft, Oregon's Healthy Kids Program, and the fiscal conditions of Oregon counties were discussed.  Thank you, Brett, for organizing this.

You may have heard a collective groan statewide on June 19 when the Institute for a Competitive Workforce, an affiliate of the US Chamber of Commerce, issued a report called "Leaders and Laggards" that gave Oregon community colleges poor marks for cost effectiveness. The report was based on IPEDS data that counts degree completion but disregards non-degree seeking students and services important to the community college mission such as GED, English as a Second Language, Adult Basic Skills, and others. IPEDS does not account for the high percentage of students who transfer to Oregon University System (OUS) institutions without an associates' degree, nor does it count dual enrollment and similar programs, and it does not reflect the differences in OUS and community college missions. The report did not consider our student success initiatives or our strong partnerships with OUS schools and did not show that many OUS resident students have taken at least one class at a community college, or that our enrollments have increased nearly 30 percent while state appropriations have declined by more than 20 percent. We did not get local calls but the report was in the Salem Statesman Journal and the Oregon Community College Association provided us with talking points.

It's been busy on campus. Last month, we hosted guests from Australia and Scotland who were here to learn more our sustainability initiatives.  We also hosted stakeholders from Oregon community colleges and universities for a convening on 40/40/20 and Achievement Compacts. The ideas and comments will be passed on to the Oregon Education Investment Board and the Post-Secondary Achievement Subcommittee.  It was the beginning of a conversation, not the end, and we will certainly have more of them.  

I had an opportunity to see Dale Parnell and bring him up to date on what's going on at Lane. He is not able to come to campus right now.  He is primary caregiver for Beverly, who has had a stroke and some surgeries.  I took a Powerpoint to show him all of the things the college is doing.  He recapped the story of hiring Ed Ragozzino, and he was very sorry that he missed the dedication of the Performance Hall.  We had a good visit, and hopefully we can get him back to campus before too long.  
 
I would like to remind you that the Rites of Passage Capstone ceremonies are tomorrow, Tuesday, June 17, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Longhouse. It's a nice event and worth attending.

Also, mark your calendars for the grand opening for Titan Court, which will be some time on the morning of Tuesday, September 18.  We will get further details to you as they develop.

Enjoy your summer.