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President's Message
April 2012
(…or living with the one that someone else designs for us!)
I’m not a big fan of “fate”….
Perhaps you will recall that scene from the first Matrix movie. In that penultimate moment right before he offers Neo the opportunity to escape the “Matrix,” Morpheus asks “Do you believe in fate?” and Neo responds with an emphatic “No” – not because he has any proof that fate doesn’t exist but because he doesn’t like the idea of not being in control of his own future. And, like Neo, I can’t prove that fate doesn’t exist, but I do know that living as if it doesn’t provides me with many more opportunities, and gives me great hope… and it seems to me that opportunity and hope is always something we could use more of here at LBCC.
“Designing Our Future” is a matter of choosing not to believe in fate; of choosing instead to believe that most of our future is determined by our own choices and not by the circumstances that surround us. It’s a matter of focusing our attention on the things within our realm of control and not on the things that we too often see as controlling us… because the control of our future will be determined by which of these gets there first.
With this in mind, I’d like to highlight some of the ways we at LBCC are “taking control.”
- Strategic Investment Funds: For this current year, and for the years in the foreseeable future, we at LBCC have established a Strategic Investment Fund – approximately 1% of our General Fund set aside to help us make “tipping point” investments in a future that is ours to determine and that helps serve our purpose of “an education that enables all of us to participate in, contribute to, and benefit from the cultural richness and economic vitality of our communities.” Here are some of the investments we are making.
- Advising/Destination Graduation: National research and early local findings of Foundations of Excellence (FoE) show that engaging students during their first-year of college, and providing them with sound academic advising, are critical to student success and completion. A group of LBCC contracted faculty proposed an approach to accomplish this by tying the current first-year experience course directly to academic advising. With the support of the strategic investment fund, Destination Graduation has been redesigned to include a faculty driven, academic advising program, as well as establish consistent, predictable, and uniform advising across campus. In its new form, Destination Graduation is a one-credit college readiness course designed to prepare students to succeed and to help them establish a long-term relationship with a faculty academic advisor.
- Math Reorganization: With the support of the strategic investment fund, we will be filling a currently vacant math faculty position, thereby enabling the Math department to research a variety of promising practices that help students successfully navigate developmental math. Improving math placement test accuracy is another focus of the project.
- Library (Integrated Library System): Again, with the support of the strategic investment fund, Library faculty will convert to a more efficient integrated library system that will improve library work flow, save resources that can be used to expand other library services, improve library services to students, and make possible collaboration with Albany and Lebanon libraries to expand access to materials for LBCC students and people in our community. This new library system is being developed in partnership with the Albany Public Library and the Lebanon Public Library.
- Web Services: LBCC will build a suite of web-based services that will lead students down a pathway to completion. The system begins with an interactive prospective student portal and communication system that begins with an online assessment of individual interests and needs. The goal is to help prospective students solve the problems and make the decisions that increase their chances of success before enrolling. Another component of the project is development of a current student portal that will allow students a single sign on to their web-based tools, a place where they can have customized information and communication channels based on their interests and needs, and provide the college with a means to get crucial information about deadlines and support to students as they need it.
- Achieving the Dream: LBCC has been invited to be part of the soon-to-be announced 2012 Achieving the Dream (AtD) national cohort, joining more than 150 community colleges nationwide that are already a part of the AtD network. AtD is a logical extension of LBCC’s Foundations of Excellence (FoE) work in that FoE focuses on the first-year experience of college students and AtD extends this work – and applies what we learn from FoE - to the entire student experience all the way through to completion. The strategic investment fund will support our participation in AtD.
- Feasibility study for Cyber Security Program: Cybercrimes have surpassed all other categories of property crimes (over $1 trillion dollars) in the United States and regional agencies don’t have many of the needed skills to protect themselves. Two years ago President Obama issued an order to assess the status of our nation’s cyber security readiness. As a whole, the country failed the assessment. The field of cyber security is developing into a standalone profession and considered by the federal government as one of the fastest growing fields. This project, funded through the strategic investment fund, will investigate the feasibility and potential focus of a cyber-security program at LBCC.
- Future Capacity: With the increased national attention being given to a community college education and the State’s goal of having at least 40% of Oregon’s citizens achieving an associate’s degree or a CTE certificate, we know that program capacity in some key areas will help us to better serve the needs of our communities. Paying special attention to the areas of manufacturing and industrial technical skills, health occupations, and lower division support of our OSU/LBCC Degree Partnership Program, we are planning ahead and working to shape a future that is focused on purpose.
- Advanced Transportation Technology Center (ATTC): As a result of some very good institutional planning, some strong business interest, and significant community support, the ATTC is getting closer and closer to becoming a reality. The result will be a significantly enhanced opportunity for our students to become skilled in servicing the growing array of alternative fuel transportation technologies, as well as an opportunity for us to expand other critical Technical programs into the space vacated by our transportation programs.
- Nursing and Allied Health Teaching and Learning Center: The fastest growing area of occupational opportunity is health care, and we at LBCC want to make sure that our students are well equipped to fill these positions as they grow in number and in complexity. A new Nursing and Allied Health Teaching and Learning Center, bringing our current programs together at one location, will help create efficiencies of delivery as well as a “cluster” of health occupations faculty, staff, and students that will serve as the incubator for the new programs in our future that for now we can only guess at.
- Benton Center: LBCC Students already represent over 80% of all the Degree Partnership Program (DPP) students at OSU, and President Ed Ray tells me that he would like to DOUBLE the number of OSU students who start their 4-year program with two years at a community college. Being the preferred provider of those first two years will require an expansion of our capacity in Corvallis and so we are investigating the options we have for expanding the Benton Center, including opportunities that may exist for us in the Cannery Mall – the building that until recently housed Borders Books.
- Wild Thinkers Forum: If fate is not to be our “fate,” we will need to plan our future before it is planned for us. This is the goal of the Wild Thinkers Forum – to develop and then exercise our capacity to get out ahead of our circumstances so we can discover and define for ourselves the means by which we can help build the better communities of which we are a part, and to which we are committed. In his book Disrupting Class, Clayton Christensen tells us that “For America to stay competitive – academically, economically, and technologically – we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence, reevaluate our educational system, and reinvigorate our commitment to learning.” In other words, our future is not about being smaller or bigger, nor is it even about being leaner or better funded. Instead, it’s about being fundamentally different. It is about being committed to an education that is defined by the needs and interests of those we serve – our communities and the students who are its citizens – and not by the models or systems or structures we currently use to provide that education. Wild Thinkers Forum is not an answer to fate… it is instead a “weightlifting program” that will help us develop the collective muscle we will need to build a future that defies it.
With sincere hope and gratitude to all of you at LBCC who share in this vision of communities and lives made better through the hope and opportunity that education can provide.
- Greg
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