President’s Report – September 2015

Welcome everyone to fall term. I hope you’ve had a good summer with lots of rest, relaxation and sunshine.  I’m looking forward to the year.  We’ve got a lot of important work to do, and I know that with all of the wonderful faculty, staff, and students that we have at Lane, we’ll get it done. 

I’d like to welcome our new Torch editor, Andre Casey.  Andre has a degree from Southern Oregon University and has come back to Lane for graphic design.  He has some really great plans for the Torch to bring it into the digital age.  I’m looking forward to working with Andre and his staff.

The Center remodel is nearly complete.  There is a lot of excitement created by the new open spaces and all of the light shining in on the heart of the main campus.  It’s incredible the work that has been done.  To have this building will help the students to achieve their dreams and goals.  You’ll recall that the completion date was supposed to be in January, but we will be moving in within the next couple of weeks.  There is a fairly long punch list that will be completed during fall term, but we are really grateful to Lease Crutcher Lewis for getting us into the building early. 

Marketing and Public Relations have developed a number of pieces of material to help students orient themselves to the new Learning Commons - signage, a fun passport where students can go around and get stamps from each department, and a brochure on the Learning Commons that shows a map and all of the services that will be available. 

I’d like to congratulate Jennifer Frei for stepping up to the interim position of Executive Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, taking Maurice Hamington’s place. She brought great energy to Social Science as dean, and we’re really happy to have her skills on the executive team.

Enrollment reports are showing some improvement in the decline trend. Most recently, total registrations for fall classes are down 13.3 percent compared to a year ago at the same time. That’s still a challenge, but it’s an improvement. We are working hard to turn things around.

This summer we attended the OCCA board retreat at the Oregon Garden, and I attended the Oregon President’s Council retreat at Clackamas Community College. I will be attending the League Board meeting in Toronto next week.

Quite a few things went on over the summer that I want to mention briefly:

A Digital Humanities Institute was organized by faculty member Anne McGrail, whose good work earned us another National Institute for the Humanities grant that helped fund our Digital Humanities symposium on July 15. Participants were from all over the country and the symposium was enlightening. 

We also had another great Al Fresco outdoor dining event on July 29. Thanks to faculty Joe McCully for writing it up in a review in The Register-Guard special publication called “Tastings.”

The executive team hosted an ice cream social for staff who were still around on July 30. It was hot and a good day for ice cream but it was so hot we had to quickly move the event indoors to keep everything from melting. Thanks to the Center for Meeting and Learning for accommodating us.

Eugene’s Digital Dojo Coding Team Project was named the Community Broadband Digital Equity Project of the Year by the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) Board of Directors.  The Dojo launched last fall as a pilot program partnership between Lane, the City of Eugene, and Eugene School District 4J. Located in Lane’s Downtown Campus, the Dojo is a nationally connected and locally developed open source computer coding program enabling middle and high school students from multiple cities to receive code training in a college environment.  The Digital Dojo partnership brings together instructional specialists with expertise in computer science from LCC and 4J and a state of the art classroom in LCC’s Downtown campus with funding from City of Eugene telecommunications project program funds and critical participation from LCC, UO, area schools, and area tech businesses.

Kudos to Florence math instructor Robert Estill. This summer he was honored by the Oregon Youth Authority as Volunteer of the Year for a Camp Florence for at-risk youth.

Congratulations to instructor Stacey Kiser who was named 2015 Two Year College Teacher of the Year by the National Association of Biology Teachers. She will receive her award at a ceremony at NABT conference in Rhode Island in November. 

I am sorry to note the passing of Barbara Baker, Continuing Education coordinator for the LCC Florence Center. Barbara had many friends and fans and will be missed.  The Lane family also lost former employee, Reba Morrison, of Creswell. She was a longtime sign language interpreter.  Bob Ackerman’s mother also passed away a few weeks ago at the ripe old age of 103.

Lane received a $182,000 grant from the Walmart State Giving Program to support the Ready to Work project. The project will help 100 area residents with barriers to employment to build their work readiness skills and participate in effective job search activities.

The quarterly state revenue forecast was released August 26. General Fund revenues dropped $56 million due to slowing tax collections.  Collections have since picked back up, growing rapidly to start fiscal year 2016.  Overall, the outlook for the General Fund and Lottery resources remained relatively unchanged.  General Fund revenues exceeded the 2% kicker threshold by $111 million (0.7%), resulting in a kicker credit of $402 million.

As I’m sure most of you know by now, Dr. Nancy Golden stepped down as the state’s chief education officer at the beginning of the month and is making her second attempt at retirement.  Lindsey Capps, the governor’s education policy advisor, has stepped in as interim.  Governor Brown has indicated that she intends to choose a permanent successor, but it’s unclear what the scope and timeline will be. 

The Higher Education Coordinating Commission has convened a workgroup to advise staff on recommendations for the Oregon Promise program.  The HECC will need to adopt administrative rules and directives pertaining to the overall design of the program within the next month. 

Earlier this month President Obama announced the creation of the National Advisory Board for the College Promise Campaign.  The Board, which will be chaired by Second Lady Jill Biden, will also include AACC President Walter Bumphus and ACCT President Noah Brown among others.  The College Promise Campaign will promote America’s College Promise (ACP) programs and advocate for strengthening the federal government investment in post-secondary education.  Rather than promoting one type of Promise program, the College Promise Campaign will provide information on a broader vision of a variety of tuition- and debt-free college programs and best practices.

Last week, the White House in conjunction with the Department of Education released its College Scorecard. The College Scorecard, which is the product of President Obama's proposed Postsecondary Institution Ratings System (PIRS), provides prospective students with a consumer information tool to gather information and compare institutions of higher education. Information found on the site includes graduation rates, net price, earnings, and federal loan repayment rates.  AACC and ACCT have already raised concerns with the metrics used, and said this reaffirms the need to establish a federal student unit record system to better track outcomes of community college students.  (Example: Lane is listed as a rural institution, the UO is listed as urban.)  Additionally, the White House said it was dropping its two-year effort to create a college ranking system.

The Department of Education also announced last week the use of Prior-Prior Year tax information for the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) starting in October of next year. This means that students will be able to submit a FAFSA earlier, and more FAFSA filers will be able to use the IRS data retrieval tool. Presently, students and families are often unable to import their tax information into the FAFSA because their prior year tax information is unavailable.  This change will make it easier for students and families to file a FAFSA.

In the media:  our Biology instructor Pat Boleyn got a wonderful piece on television about her grant funded work to study the declining western bumblebee population; Health & PE Dean Chris Hawken interviewed on KVAL regarding our new contract with Adidas; Interim Science Division Dean Paul Ruscher and retiring Dean Sarah Ulerick talked about our Geology and Watershed Science classes on KEZI to provide more insight on news about Earth Day concerns and the impacts of drought and climate change; and Vice President Dawn DeWolf talked with the RG’s Blue Chip publication about career and technical trends. I did some interviews as well, with Eugene Weekly on free community college proposals, and with the Register-Guard on state funding.

Titan Court is sold out.  On a recent list of the many student housing projects in Downtown, there was one other housing complex that was 100% leased up, and we were second.  Many other places were considerably far behind us.  I want to thank our International Program which really helped us fill all of our units. 

On Thursday, September 24, we will hold our all-staff inservice.  Dr. Gus Balderas, new 4J Superintendent, will talk with us, we will have some information from our Rites of Passage program, and then I will give our state of the college address.