President Hamann Appointed to Quality Education Commission

Greg Hamann

President Greg Hamann has been appointed by Governor John Kitzhaber to serve a four-year term on the state Quality Education Commission.

Dr. Hamann’s appointment makes him the first person on the commission who works outside of the K-12 education system. He will begin to serve on the commission this month.

Created in 2001 with a primary focus on K-12, the non-partisan commission is expanding its work to include pre-kindergarten through public higher education.

“This appointment is a recognition not just of my efforts and contributions, but of those of the entire LBCC community,” said Dr. Hamann.

The commission’s task is to refine and validate the state’s Quality Education Model (QEM), which was developed in 1999 to establish research-based connections between resources devoted to schools and levels of student achievement, and to guide efforts to adequately fund Oregon schools. 

The work of the commission, which meets once a month, includes evaluating educational best practices and determining the level of funding needed for Oregon students to reach education standards set by the state.

Dr. Hamann has been a statewide advocate for innovation-based reforms to increase college completion rates while reducing cost per completion. The goal is to create more opportunity for Oregonians to gain skills to contribute to and benefit from the state’s economic vitality.

Based on the QEM, the commission has determined that Oregon needs state funding of approximately $8.76 billion to fully fund the state’s schools for 2013-15. This is an increase of more than $2.4 billion over current funding levels.

The commission’s findings are presented in a biennial report to the state legislature for update and improvement to the Quality Education Model.

59 Years, Two People, One College

Chef Scott Anselm

Retirees Scott Anslem and Cindy Hogan will leave the college this month with a combined total of 59 years of service.

Scott has spent the past 27 years as the college's head chef and culinary arts instructor. He is retiring to the wilds of Alaska, where he will join his wife who is already there working for the state.

Scott's only plans so far are to really retire, something that seems a bit unusual here. He is looking forward to fishing, flying his plane, and cooking for his wife, which should be easy enough (wonder if he'll have portion control issues).

College Foundation friends Wayne and Joann Chambers recently established the Scott Anselm Culinary Arts Scholarship Endowment Fund to honor Scott for his years of dedication to students and the Culinary Arts Program. 

Cindy Hogan

With 32 years at the college, Cindy Hogan has been the fix-it queen for so many years in Media Services, it’s going to be hard to think of "who we gonna' call?"

Cindy has spent most of those years in Media Services troubleshooting classroom media equipment issues, bringing in new technologies, and videographing lectures, classes, and events.

Cindy also has earned two associate degrees and several certificates from LBCC, with more than 300 credits under her belt. She started taking classes at the college when she was 18.

Looking to retirement, Cindy hopes to take a trip to Germany in a few years, one of the “to do” things on her bucket list. Also on her list is riding in a hot air balloon. In the meantime, she plans to continue her and her husband’s hobby of restoring old cars, of which she has several in various stages of completion. She also looks forward to spending more time with her grandchildren and family.

Good luck to Scott and Cindy in their retirement. The college culinary world and college media users will miss you!

Interact Communications: What is Interact and How Will it Help the College Web Redesign and Rebranding Initiative?

Mark Mastej from Interact leads a focus group with, left to right,
Jeff Davis, Mary Browning, Joel White, Cyrel Gable, & Lin Olson.

Interact Communications provides communication services that are specifically designed with two-year colleges in mind.

LBCC hired Interact to help redesign the college website and college brand around our audience needs, including unique navigation, graphics and content. The goal is to help the college to get our message out to the community, and shape our overall image. (read more about Interact: www.interactcom.com/)

This week, Interact Communications is conducting the last round of focus groups to help with the work of rebranding, including college messaging, taglines, slogans and generally how we communicate with our students and community members.

The four groups include: local high school students; current students; a combined group of faculty, staff and management; and a combined group of business leaders, community members, foundation friends and college alumni.

Interact first visited LBCC in August to conduct focus groups involving more than 120 individuals including recent high school graduates, current LBCC students, college employees, LBCC alumni, and local businesses.

A second phone and online survey was conducted in September to measure public awareness and opinion of the college, including our current image. This data will be used to help the college select messaging that leads to greater understanding of the college.

Feedback from the focus groups will be used by Interact to set recommendations for a navigational structure for the new college home page, as well as a general list of college descriptors, taglines, slogans and general web communications.

The new website is scheduled to be launched after the end of the 2012-2013 school year. As the project develops, it will be shared with the college community for further feedback prior to launch.

If you would like to learn more about Interact and the college web and branding redesign project, contact Dale Stowell in College Advancement, 541-917-4

Ag Instructor Rick Klampe and Daughter Take Firsts in National Show

Ashley Klampe, left, and dad Rick Klampe with their
Reserve Champion Ram at the Expo in Kentucky.

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Animal science instructor Rick Klampe and his 13-year-old daughter Ashley recently participated in the North American International Livestock Exposition in Louisville, Kentucky, the largest and most prestigious livestock show in the United States.

The pair exhibited three head of Registered Polled Dorset sheep, one ram (male) and two ewe’s (female), as part of the National Dorset Show.

Their ram took first class in Winter Ram, and Jr. Champion Ram (age division), and Reserve Grand Champion of the Show. This same ram also took Supreme Champion at the Oregon State Fair.

The two ewe’s placed high as well, with one placing first in class for Early Fall Ewe Lamb, and a second placing first in class for Winter Ewe Lamb (she is twin to the ram), Jr. Champion ewe and Reserve Grand Champion ewe of the Show. The Early Fall ewe was also Champion ewe at the Oregon and California State Fairs.

The sire of these three sheep was chosen as National Sire of the year, the first time a sire to only three heads of sheep had ever won that status. Nice Job, Rick and Ashley!

Art Gallery Coordinator Rich Bergeman Lands Art Residency

Contributed story
Edited by Lori Fluge-Brunker

Sink Site by Rich Bergeman.

LBCC Art Gallery coordinator Rich Bergeman was chosen to participate in a four-week art residency at Playa in Eastern Oregon, a nonprofit organization supporting creative work in the arts, literature, natural sciences and other fields.

Stratton Root Cellar by Rich Bergeman.

Rich has spent the past several weeks working on a photo project in nearby Fort Rock Valley, where he is looking for homestead sites and early towns that sprang up in the early 1900s, only to disappear within 10-15 years when the realities of farming in the desert finally sank in for those early settlers.

"An area that now looks like a sparsely populated sage-brush covered desert for a brief time sported a dozen small towns and a couple thousand homesteaders," wrote Rich in a recent email. "Today it's hard to find a trace of any of that, so my project is to find what traces there are and make some pictures."

Rich actually began work at the college in 1976 as a media writer (writing press releases for the college) in what is now College Advancement, then moving to the position of public information coordinator in 1979.  He quit to, as he puts it, "regain my sanity" and get a master's degree at OSU, after which he promptly returned in 1981 to teach journalism -a job he held until his retirement in 2007.

"I was lured back to run the galleries part-time in 2009 with a package of incentives that included my own office (aka storage closet) and wastebasket," wrote Rich. "Overall, I guess that's something like 33 years. It's kind of depressing when you add it all up - I need to get a life!"

Located in Summer Lake in Lake County, Playa manages a two residency programs, and supports those who are committed and passionate about their work and who will benefit from time spent in Playa’s remote location. Fellowship Residencies are Playa’s primary program, which span two multi-month sessions each year.

For more information on Playa, visit: http://www.playasummerlake.org/

(Lori Fluge-Brunker is a communications specialist in the College Advancement Marketing office.)

Destination Graduation Update

By Susan McNaught

The first round of the new Destination Graduation, a one-credit mandatory class, got off to a great start this fall. We had 73 sections and about 1,220 students!

For most sections, the first day of class was on Welcome Day, planned that way to give students a chance to get acquainted and feel more confident maneuvering the system and the campus. Winter term, all classes will start the first week of regular class—nobody really wants to come back during Christmas Break!

The class met two hours a week for five weeks—the idea was to provide some transition and support early in the term so that students got off to a solid start. This structure will continue.  A few sections met for an hour a week for eight weeks because their program had some other scheduling. 

Students were provided course-books at no cost. While the class was only one credit hour, we packed as much as we could into the curriculum. The focus was on helping students get familiar with available resources on campus, establishing a relationship with an advisor, and developing an educational plan—a guide for the time students are here at LBCC, not just a schedule for next term. The idea is that long-term planning will help students be more successful - which is what DG is all about.

Faculty who taught DG in the fall will have the chance to come together to talk about what worked, what did not, and what changes they would like to see for next time. We will revise accordingly.

Most of the plans went well. There were some bumps. A major component of DG is the advising piece. All students were supposed to be assigned to an advisor and the original intent was that each DG instructor would have only his or her advisees in his or her class. That did not work; too many students needed different times because of work or class schedule conflicts. So DG sections turned out to be more diverse that we had expected.

The college purchased AdvisorTrac to help with assigning advisors, scheduling, & tracking visits to advisors. AdvisorTrac took more time to get set up than we had anticipated. Between these two bumps, advising did not go as smoothly as we had hoped. Next term will be better. AdvisorTrac will be in place, we have figured out how to make sure all students have advisors assigned, and we know now that students will not automatically have their advisor as their DG instructor. This may turn out for the better—they will have both their advisor and DG instructor going to bat for them!

All in all, this was a good start. The faculty members who taught DG this term deserve a special thanks for being willing to invest their time and effort into our first venture. They are the ones who made it fly.

For more information on Destination Graduation: www.linnbenton.edu/admissions/destination-graduation

(Susan McNaught is the associate dean of Academic Development, Communication Arts and Mathematics, and lead team member of Destination Graduation.)

Helping Students Achieve Their Dreams

By Dale Stowell

Linn-Benton Community College was a major step in achieving my dream. Now LBCC is part of a program that can measure if the things that contributed to my success can also help others through a national initiative called Achieving the Dream.

Achieving the Dream isn’t another project to add to our workloads. It’s a method that lets us measure whether ideas to increase student success or completion work here – and if they do work, who they work for. It also enables us to adjust to increase that success and broaden its reach for all kinds of people with all kinds of backgrounds.

The ability to do that is meaningful to me for many reasons. My own experience is one of them.

My success as a college student was far from assured. I didn’t even make the internal commitment to be a college student until two months after my high school graduation, and during my senior year, because of a lack of sophistication and knowledge, I hadn’t done even something as basic as taking the SAT to prepare for college entry. It’s fair to say that I wasn’t focused.

But that didn’t matter to the people at LBCC. I remembered that the journalism advisor at the time, Jenny Spiker, had visited my high school newspaper class in Philomath, and for that reason more than any other, I became a journalism major here.

I had a connection, and that connection deepened because I saw Jenny either in class or at the Commuter office every day. I developed a relationship with her and my teammates on the newspaper staff. Some terms I was a great student, and during terms when my life got in the way, I was a not-so-great student, but I was never anonymous or alone at LBCC.

Even when I didn’t believe in myself, people believed in me. The responsibility and accountability I felt in relationship to others kept me coming back every day whether I was tired or rested, struggling or excelling, or cheerful or depressed.

There’s research that suggests that this is a kind of experience that supports student success. When I look at Destination Graduation (DG), I can see LBCC actively trying to ensure this experience happens to more students, regardless of who they are or what program they choose.

In fact, DG looks similar to a program initiated and measured at the Achieving the Dream college I worked at before coming to LBCC. That initiative helped increase fall-to-fall retention by 10 percent.

Achieving the Dream will give us the tools to figure out if things like DG are working, and in what ways we can make them better. It can help validate – or help to refine – work that’s already been done through Foundations of Excellence, outcomes, the completion agenda, and others. We not only have two coaches from Achieving the Dream helping us, we have the experience of 160 Achieving the Dream schools from which to draw ideas and experience for what has and hasn’t worked.

Achieving the Dream is just getting started here. A data team is collecting three years of data so we can better understand the places we lose students. We are putting the pieces in place so we can begin to measure things, and pick out the key initiatives we want to measure in the next year.

If you want more information about Achieving the Dream, check out the New Directions page at http://www.linnbenton.edu/about-lbcc/new-directions. You’ll find an Achieving the Dream link and other information about the ongoing efforts to increase student success at LBCC.

You can find a list membership in the Core Team and the Data Team. Chances are you know someone, so feel free to ask them questions and learn more about this new support for student success at LBCC.

(Dale Stowell is executive director of Institutional Advancement, a member of LBCC ATD Core Team, and LBCC Alum.)