President’s Report - October 2015

Over the weekend I had multiple conversations with colleagues from UCC, and on Sunday the board chair called to ask if Lane would take a team of people down to help.

Brian Kelly, Dawn DeWolf, Kerry Levett, Helen Faith, and Sharon Daniel went down on Monday.  Chris Hainley came on Tuesday to help with Financial Aid.  Debby Ganser and Susan Shipp, both faculty counselors, one experienced in crisis counseling and another in grief counseling, met yesterday with about 60 of the faculty members to help them think through how to deal with their own emotions, how to deal with students’ emotions, how to deal with emotions in front of students in the classroom, and how to think about their syllabus now that they’ve lost several weeks, and they’re going to be dealing with lots of students in trauma.  Starting tonight, some of our Public Safety officers will be providing additional support. 

We think we don’t have much, but when you go to a rural community college and you overlay that with a tragedy, you see why they need help from other colleges.  The Oregon Community College Association has contacted community college employees and retirees to continue to help for the next four to six weeks.  The UO incident management team arrived on Friday.  They were amazing at helping Umpqua get through the initial stages.  They left and passed the baton on to us.  The community resources have been amazing, such as the US Public Health Service members who work in the federal government all over the country and are deployed for events such as this.  We have affectionately been calling them the Blue People.  They have been providing counseling for everyone that needs it; they did so for the tragedies at the Boston Marathon and Sandy Hook.  Vice President Kelly has been doing the business side, Vice President DeWolf has been handling academics, and Executive Dean Kerry Levett has been handling the student affairs and federal resources.  The staff from Lane will be helping for a while.  All of Oregon’s community colleges have stepped up.

The UCC faculty and staff are back on campus.  An all-staff meeting was held today.  It was an amazing event.  It has been helpful to get information from what has happened; UCC has become a learning lab for everyone else.  The days we have spent there will serve us well. 

We had our own vigil here at Lane on Friday.  Unfortunately, I was at the League for Innovation board meeting in Toronto and couldn’t get back.  I prepared a statement which was read at the vigil.  We thought it was important to provide an opportunity to be together.

Please note that the American Association of Community Colleges has called for a National Moment of Silence on Thursday, October 8, at 11 a.m. Pacific Time.  We will join in that moment. 

If you’re on social media, please use the hashtag #IamUCC to further show your support as our neighbors at Umpqua try to heal.

We can expect challenging conversations ahead about campus security, locally, statewide, and across the nation. I hope these discussions will lead toward campuses that are safer and welcoming and focused on learning.

In-service seems a long time ago now, but I do want to thank Tony for his welcoming remarks, and Phil, Susie and Rosie for attending, as well as City Councilor Chris Pryor and Greg Evans for his portion.  Our keynote speaker was Dr. Gustavo Balderas, superintendent of Eugene 4J School District, who talked about “cultural agility." The day provided many good workshops and opportunities to get ready for fall. I’m grateful to everyone who pitched in and want to give a special shout out to Donna Zmolek for helping coordinate my part of the presentations.

Our CLASS remodel has been a hit with students. Please mark your calendars for our grand opening, or grand re-opening, on January 27.

We ended the first day of classes with reports of a fire at Titan Court, however, it turned out to be smoke from a dryer motor in the 4th floor laundry room. Public Safety, Facilities and the Fire Department responded immediately and the students evacuated in good humor.  I especially want to thank Public Safety officers Chris Hanison and Jake Ryker for their immediate and effective response. 

The Week 2 enrollment reports show that our gap has narrowed to an enrollment decrease of 10.2 percent. I am optimistic that we will reach our budgeted target of 7 percent by the end of the academic year.

Our efforts to lower the student loan default rates continue to pay off.  Our rate is now 27 percent.  Last year, it was under 30 percent; every year the clock restarts when we are below 30 percent. 

Thanks to the high safety performance by several college departments, Lane will receive a dividend check from SAIF for over $100,000 this month. Combined with the college's low workers compensation claims experience for last year, we will save more than $180,000 in workers compensation payments this year.

Our marketing efforts are helping close the enrollment decline. Please enjoy our new view book that you will find at your places. Also at your places is the September issue of Blue Chip published by The Register-Guard. It includes a story about our ongoing review of career and technical education.

We are preparing for an Oregon Small Business Development Center Network accreditation visit on November 2. I’d like to thank Mark Gregory and Sandy Cutler for their work on this. This review is conducted every five years by state and deputy state directors from the national Small Business Development Center.  A summary of the accreditation report should be available for board review during the first quarter of next year.

Next week I will join some of you at the annual Association of Community College Trustees Congress in San Diego.   I expect there will be discussion about the Umpqua tragedy. 

Congress approved a short-term Continuing Resolution to keep the federal government open and funded through December 11. Now they are focused on electing a new Speaker. You are aware that John Boehner made a surprise announcement to resign at the end of this month. House Majority Leader, and former community college trustee, Kevin McCarthy, is currently favored to be the next Speaker.

Also earlier last week, ACCT released a new report, “A Closer Look at the Trillion: Borrowing, Repayment and Default at Iowa’s Community Colleges.” The report uses data from all 16 community colleges in Iowa to examine characteristics of borrowers and defaulters to help colleges and policymakers better understand and prevent behavior. It’s available on the ACCT website.

Tomorrow is the Foundation’s Celebrating LCC in Florence event, which sadly I will not be able to attend, and our annual premier fundraiser, the Harvest Dinner, will be October 28 on main campus.