President's Report – June 2014
Welcome to Michael Weed as the new ASLCC President. We look forward to working with you in the coming year.
I'd like to extend condolences to all of the members of the Reynolds School District and their families after the shooting this week at the high school.
Summer registrations, two-weeks before classes begin, are down 36.9% compared to the same time last year. Fall registrations, for the fourth week, are down 17.4% compared to the same time last year.
The Foundation has awarded more than $630,000 in scholarships this year to 225 students. Thanks to Wendy Jett and her team and especially to all the donors who made this possible. I'd also like to thank Career and Scholarship Advisor Jackie Bryson for helping students find scholarships. Twenty-one Lane students will receive Ford Family Foundation scholarships for the upcoming academic year—these pay 90% of tuition plus living expenses and childcare. We have been tracking our students since 2005 and Lane students receive between 14 to 24 Ford scholarships annually. Also, the Oregon Student Access Commission (OSAC) awards $15 million in scholarship money throughout the state. Most of that goes to four-year institutions, but Lane students persist and receive more scholarship awards from OSAC than at any other community college in Oregon.
I believe I mentioned at a budget committee meeting that we won some of our financial aid data challenges and have reduced our default rate to 29.7%, under the threshold. We will not receive our final rate until September, but I am cautiously optimistic. Kudos to Helen Faith and her team.
Lane's commitment to safety has resulted in a nearly 20% reduction in our workers' compensation claims experience over the average of the past three years. This has saved the college about $100,000 annually in premium costs. Kudos to Facilities Management and Planning, Public Safety, Food Services, Center for Meeting and Learning, and the college Safety Committee.
Our athletes have been doing a great job. Lane swept the NWAACC Track and Field Championship for the second straight year. The Lane women swept the sprints, winning every race 800m and shorter. The team title for the men came down to jumping events: Lane placed in 17 out of 24 scoring spots. The men's Field Athlete of the Meet was Lane's Dakarai Hightower who set a new stadium, meet, and NWAACC record in High Jump at 7' 3 1/4". Finally our coach Grady O'Connor was again named women's team Coach Of The Year. Grady also received the Directors Cup from NWAACC in recognition of the Titan's outstanding year. Ten of our track stars are continuing on at four-year schools.
In baseball, all 15 of our second-year players will transfer to university next fall. The Titans placed third in the NWAACC tournament. Twelve players made it onto the All-Star Team and three were selected for the All-NWAACC Team. It was one of the Titans best baseball seasons so far.
In recognition of all of that, Greg Sheley was presented with the Director's Cup, so congrats to our athletes and coaches.
Congratulations to spring term Faculty Recognition Award winner, Tom Blickle. He is a nursing instructor in the Health Professions Division. There will be one more award later this week. Stay tuned.
Congratulations to Sharon Daniel, Classified Employee of the Month for May. Sharon started at Lane in June 2000. She is a Human Resource Analyst known for problem solving, compassion and good humor.
This year the Foundation presented three President's Circle Awards for Philanthropy. The award for an individual was presented to Jane King, a strong supporter of education and lifelong learning at Lane. The award for a corporation went to The Register-Guard for supporting scholarships at Lane and inspiring philanthropy throughout the community. The award for a foundation went to the Weyerhaeuser Giving Fund which has partnered with us for nearly 40 years. Thanks to Wendy Jett and her team for coordinating this recognition and thanks most of all to these community partners for supporting our students.
Congratulations to The Torch student newspaper which won 25 awards in the annual Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association Collegiate Newspaper Contest, including first place for general excellence. Writers collected 11 awards, photographers claimed six, designers claimed four, and editors claimed the remaining four.
Two Lane projects won awards at the recent AIA-Southwestern Oregon Design Awards event. Our Downtown Campus won a Citation for its urban response and consistent attention to detail from exterior to interior. Congratulations to Robertson|Sherwood Architects. Building 10 won an Honor Award, the highest award, in recognition of the challenges and complexity of the existing project, and the blending of the wood trusses and skylights. Kudos to Rowell Brokaw Architects. Both firms rightly acknowledged our own Lane Facilities Management and Planning team for their part in making the projects successful and inspiring.
Lane's Family Connections program helped organize a visit by Governor John Kitzhaber and Representatives Val Hoyle and Nancy Nathanson at a Eugene preschool as part of a campaign highlighting statewide efforts to improve early learning programs. Our program is often held up as a model for the rest of the state.
We had our employee recognition gala, which was great, celebrating long-term and retiring employees honored 102 staff, faculty and managers, including 38 with 10 years of service; 23 with 20 years; 8 with 30 years; 1 with 40 years (Jeanne Harcleroad); and 32 retirees. They set a high bar for the rest of us to meet. Thanks to Roxanne Watson for organizing this event.
I hope some of you have been able to witness the creation of a community sand mandala at our downtown Center for Meeting and Learning by visiting monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery. The event ends with a ceremony tomorrow evening at 6 p.m. Thanks to Donna Koechig for coordinating the event.
Also with Donna and her team's help, Lane co-sponsored the NAACP Memorial Day Celebration at Washington Park; the Divas Throughout the Ages Drag Show which was fabulous; and the Miss Aloha Hula visit and presentation of Hawaiian culture.
I want to mention that we were very saddened by the unexpected passing of Tom Taylor of Information Technology. Tom had been with Lane since 1985 first in Electronic Services and then IT. He was a master computer printer technician and a wonderful person liked by everyone. His family collaborated and we had a memorial in the longhouse for him. He will be missed.
One of our students, Doug Miller, was killed in a motorcycle accident in late April. Many of us knew him as a Student Services Associate, as well as an outstanding Respiratory Care student. He was almost done with his degree work, would have graduated on Saturday, so we are awarding our first posthumous degree which will be accepted by Doug's mother at graduation.
I am among the thousands mourning the passing of a wonderful educator and poet Maya Angelou. She was a phenomenal woman.
It was my pleasure to read to a group of kids at the annual Gift of Literacy held at Lane. Ty the Titan was there to help out, too, as was Board Chair Rosie Pryor. I always come away encouraged by how many future college students are right here in our community.
The May Revenue Forecast has been released, and the state's economists project that unemployment will drop quicker, state revenues will rise higher, and Oregon could hang onto a growth rate that's faster than the national average. Revenue is up $54 million for the current biennium and up $135 million for 2015-17. It may seem like a lot but we need all of that and more. It will still be another tough budget session. That's the good news. The new figures bring the state within $73 million of activating the "Kicker" for 2013-15, which would have an approximately $290 million impact on the state budget, but State Economist Mark McMullen says it's unlikely that we'll get there by next June.
Last week, Dr. Jim Middleton, president of Central Oregon Community College, was selected by the HECC to replace Gerald Hamilton as Commissioner for Community College Services and Director for Community Colleges and Workforce Development. Jim is officially retiring from COCC in September and will serve as commissioner on a part-time basis beginning October 13 to see us through the transition in June of 2015. He will be a great addition to the HECC staff.
Megan Debates, Congressman DeFazio's education policy advisor from his Washington office, visited campus June 2. She had the opportunity to tour campus, discuss policy issues in much more detail than we usually get in Washington, and had the opportunity to visit High School Connections and Early College and Career Options. Thank you Brett, Helen Faith and Deron Fort for helping arrange the visit.
Regarding the reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act, it appears Congress is ready to act. A bipartisan, bicameral WIA reauthorization bill has emerged from pre-conference negotiations occurring between the House and Senate. The final package has been introduced in both chambers as the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). It represents a compromise between the House's SKILLS Act (HR 803) and the Senate's Workforce Investment Act of 2013 (S 1356). The final package may be considered on the floor later this month.
On Monday, the President announced a plan to expand the "Pay as You Earn" (PAYE) loan repayment option to additional federal loan borrowers through executive order. The program allows students to cap their monthly loan payments at 10 percent of their discretionary income and has been available for students who received a disbursement on or after October 2011. The President's plan would expand the program to certain older Direct Loans that are currently ineligible, good news for many of our former students still paying off their loans. In conjunction with the executive action, it is also expected that the Department of Education will begin to renegotiate contracts with federal student loan servicers in order to provide financial incentives to help borrowers prevent loan delinquency or default.
We are in the midst of annual program graduations and celebrations. I hope to see all of you at college graduation on June 14 at the fairgrounds. You will need line up at 2:30 p.m. The ceremony begins at 3 p.m.
Our groundbreaking for our new Center for Learning and Student Success is Monday, June 16, at 10 a.m. We will meet here before we head to the site.
Note that we will be closed on Fridays for the summer from June 27-August 29.
Finally, I would like to recognize a very special employee who is retiring at the end of the month, Bob Mention. Bob was born in China, but spent most of his childhood in Los Angeles prior to moving to Eugene as a young teen. Following his freshman year at the University of Oregon, he served as a Marine till his selection for a Frank Lloyd Wright architecture fellowship. This led to Bob's graduation from the UO with a degree in architecture and lots of work in local architect's offices before he became a licensed architect and partnered with others to form his own firm in 1960.
With offices in Bend and Eugene, Bob was the architect of record for several projects throughout the state: from multiple university projects, including a donor box for the Duck Club at the east end of Autzen Stadium; to low-cost housing projects around Oregon; and from the Eugene Airport to multiple churches, including the noteworthy St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Milwaukie. Closer to home, Bob also designed a significant 1976 addition to Lane's Building 5 that would have included handball courts and an Olympic-size swimming pool if all the hoped-for funding had become available.
In the late 60s, Bob collaborated with Dale Parnell at the Oregon State Department of Education to produce a monograph on architecture for Career Education, and he also served as a member of the Lane Budget Committee. His work there led to an appointment to fill a vacant spot on the founding Board of Education. Bob chaired the hiring committee that brought President Jerry Moskus to campus, and he also led the committee that worked on the first bargaining session with the then-newly-formed faculty union.
Beginning in 1989 and continuing through most of the 90s, Bob served as a contractor with the Office of Foreign Buildings for the US State Department. His assignments took him around the world, including Budapest, Stockholm, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Yemen, Cyprus, Bolivia, Venezuela and Columbia, as well as his least favorite assignment ... in Washington, D.C.
Upon his return to Eugene, then Facilities Director, Paul Colvin, began a long and arduous process, convincing Bob to return to Lane—this time as the Bond Project Manager, a position he's held since 1999. While Bob was worried that the job would include more than its fair share of campus politics, Paul assured him that the Director would shield him from all that ... which Bob soon realized was hyperbole.
Bob's involvement at Lane has spanned from its earliest days when Ken Kesey applied to become part of the Board of Education and the Grateful Dead played to more than 7000 students here on campus, all the way to the present, with a beautiful new Downtown Campus, the Longhouse and Health and Wellness Building—and now a soon-to-be renovated Center Building—standing as part of his legacy. When asked to describe his personal favorite project, he noted how much he enjoys the view from his office in Building 7, looking out over the beautiful new soccer field and track, though he finally settled on the Lane Bus Station as his number one choice, enjoying deep gratification from all the students it serves daily.
Looking back over a long and storied career, Bob is able to say with a smile, "I have no regrets. I don't think I screwed up—and that's a great source of satisfaction to me."
That concludes my report.