BOARD REPORT - SEPTEMBER 2013

Good evening. I hope everyone's had some time off.  This summer, I had the opportunity to see my son get married in my own backyard, and I visited my mother in Scotland. 

Congratulations to Dave Willis, Health Pierce and our custodial team for logging 277 workdays without a time-loss accident. This is a remarkable record.

Nine of our Public Safety officers have completed EMT training here at Lane. Five are licensed and certified, and the rest soon will be. This increases the level of care while waiting for campus Health Clinic staff or local firefighters to arrive on scene, especially after hours and weekends. Funding for the training was provided by a Hope Grant facilitated by EMT instructor Cory Miner. Kudos to Public Safety Chief Jace Smith for his leadership.

I think we're nearly done with the 30th Avenue road construction. Thanks to Brian Kelly, Dave Willis, Dennis Carr, Jace Smith, Russ Pierson, and Joan Aschim for quickly developing a communications channel with Lane County so that we could give timely heads-up to our students and staff about traffic issues. 

Thanks to Bill Schuetz, Thad Cowdin and all IT staff in who took one of our closed Fridays this summer to upgrade our data systems. It was a massive project. Congratulations also to Alen Bahret. Thanks to his work, our track and field now have laptop wireless service, which won a special recognition from Campus Technology magazine.

I am sorry to note the passing of Nancy Rogers in late August. She worked in Student Financial Services from 1977 to 2010. LCCEF is planning to plant a tree in her honor.

Lane has won an Apex Award of Excellence in the category of Education and Training Campaigns, Programs and Plans for the Lane Preview Night campaign. The Apex Awards are an annual global competition for business, nonprofit, and agency communicators. This is the 25th year of these awards. Judges evaluated 2,400 entries. Kudos to Tracy Simms for her leadership of our award-winning work.

The Downtown Campus won first place in the Mayor's Choice category, chosen by Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy, at this year's People's Choice Award from the American Institute of Architects, Southwestern Oregon Chapter, in conjunction with the American Society of Landscape Architects, Willamette Valley Section. Winners were announced last Friday at the City Club of Eugene.  The Downtown Campus also won second place in the Public Institutional Architecture category.

College Database has recognized Lane as one of 50 colleges committed to saving the planet. They researched thousands of academic programs from top schools. They called out our Energy Management and Renewable Energy Technician degrees as standout programs. College Database is an online resource for college-related data and rankings information. Kudos to Jennifer Hayward, Roger Ebbage and everyone who contributes to sustainability at Lane.

I interviewed with Community College Times and Community College Journal recently. The Times did a feature on how community colleges are stimulating urban renewal. Our Downtown Campus was the lead story. The Journal interviewed me for an article offering advice for new, incoming presidents. That story also was excerpted in the Times.

Hats off to Brett Rowlett for leading our Eugene Celebration team and thanks to everyone who volunteered, including Pat Albright for helping staff our booth, and Marleena Pearson for helping find ambulance drivers for the parade. We were a major sponsor this year. With the LCC stage next to our Downtown Campus and the KLCC stage on the other end of Olive Street, we were highly visible.

I'd like to welcome our 200 or so students now on campus through Eugene School District 4J's Early College and Career Options program. We are going to use the ECCO program to develop a model that will allow us to eventually offer Early College opportunities for high school students from across our district. This work is being led by Deron Fort in High School Connections and is funded by a $100,000 grant from the Next Generation Learning Challenges program through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. You may recall from Deron's presentation to the board a few months ago that research shows that high school students who have significant, positive, credit-earning educational experiences on college campuses are more likely to graduate from high school, go on to college, and persist toward a college certificate or degree.

We're also part of a new partnership that has launched Connected Lane County, our Regional Achievement Collaborative Pilot program. It is one of 11 regional partnerships across the state that will get a little bit of funding from the Oregon Education Investment Board. The local collaborative will take a leadership role and will help meet key student outcomes such as preparing children for kindergarten, creating opportunities for high school students to earn college credit, and ensuring smooth transitions into career and college. We are working in support of Oregon's 40-40-20 goals of higher attainment for all students by 2025. The collaborative includes school districts, higher education, and early childhood partners. This is work that I started with Greg Rikhoff and UO President Lariviere in 2010. 

Tonight's agenda gives us time to talk about our anticipated enrollment drop this year. While that decline is likely to be serious, I just wanted to share a bright note. Our International Program expects to see an increase thanks to improved retention and recruitment efforts. We expect to see headcount from 350 to 400 this fall, compared to 265 in fall 2012. Kudos to Jennifer Falzerano.

Here's another good number. Titan Court is now 96% leased for fall term. Kudos to Jenette Kane and Campus Advantage for their outreach and innovations such as leasing blocks of rooms to the UO. So far the residents are about 70% from Lane, 29% from the UO, and 1% are NCU. Many are dual-enrolled. About 30% are international.

A special thanks to Facilities and Public Safety for a blazingly fast response to a kitchen fire we had in one of the units last week. No one was hurt and all the systems worked well. We did sustain some water damage in four units from the sprinklers, but mitigation is already underway.

Governor Kitzhaber may call a special legislative session later this month to try and get his "grand bargain" passed. Another run at a "grand bargain" on PERS reform and new revenue could boost education budgets for K-12, community colleges and universities. The Governor would like to see additional funding for community colleges to help eliminate or flatten future tuition increases.

The Oregon Senate met yesterday and earlier today to confirm a list of agency appointments submitted by the Governor.  I would like to congratulate ASLCC Vice President Anayeli Jimenez, who was selected to represent community college students on the Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC), and former ASLCC President Merriam Weatherhead, who was appointed to a four-year term on the Student Access Commission. It's good to know Oregon students will be represented well on both of those commissions.

As you may remember from our last meeting, interest rates for federal student loans were set to double for the upcoming school year. 

Last month, President Obama announced his latest plan to make college more affordable. In general, the plan focuses on increased consumer information for students, technological innovation to lower the cost of education, shortening time to degree, and steering student aid and other resources on the basis of institutional performance. A number of the proposals require Congressional approval, and House Republicans have already indicated their opposition.  However, other parts the plan can be implemented through the Department of Education. Many of the specific details were not included, so we will be watching this closely over the next few months and have more for you in future reports. 

I will be attending the fall League board meeting in Dallas, and then the ACCT Congress in Seattle. I look forward to seeing several of you there.

Fall in-service is Thursday of next week, September 26. I am delighted that our keynote speaker will be Nancy Golden, now the state's interim Chief Education Officer. The board is invited to help us kick off the new year at this annual event.

And finally, I'd like to introduce our new Executive Dean of Student Affairs, Kerry Levett, and our Vice President of College Services, Brian Kelly.