Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Operations Andrea Dooley provides an update including new employees, capital projects, and the disbursement of federal emergency funds to students.
Chief Financial Officer and Vice President for Operations Andrea Dooley
Facilities
The challenges of winter including freezing temps and heavy rains are almost behind us and Facilities Services staff are preparing for the busy construction and summer seasons.
Comings & Goings:
We welcome our new Assistant Director of Conferences and Events Daniel Eagle. Daniel has a great background for supporting events stemming from his time at Bon Appetit. The Conference and Events team is excited to have him on board.
Transportation:
Parking has been impacted by the Templeton renovation removing lower Templeton and Stewart Odell lots from our parking inventory. Templeton Drive is now off limits to unauthorized vehicles. Alternative parking options to reduce the impact of the situation have been implemented, including:
St Mark’s (across Terwilliger Blvd. from Riverdale High School at 9750 SW Terwilliger Blvd.) provides an additional 50 parking spots.
Parking at the grad school “overflow lot” has been enhanced for added space and usability.
Facilities reworked several locations to move facilities staff personal vehicles out of the central campus.
Pioneer Express service is available.
Capital Projects:
The Templeton renovation is now well underway with demolition complete and reconstruction of foundations and walls started. Permits were delayed by the City Building Department, which in turn delayed the work. This will impact when the renovated building will be returned to us for use, pushing us past the start of fall semester. Every effort is being made to recover the schedule, with new final delivery dates to be determined.
The tennis dome is now up and operational, almost one year to the day from the ice storm that destroyed it.
Stewart and Odell renovations have been approved by the Board. The renovation of the residence halls along with the addition of a new Campus Living Office will be the second step in the realization of the “Heart of the Campus” vision of our Facilities Master Plan. Work begins this summer to replace the roof system, will then pause for fall semester, and then begin fully in January of 2023.
Huston Sports Complex will get new artificial turf and restrooms. This work will likely be done in two phases, and not fully complete until fall 2023.
A new, permanent parking lot at the graduate campus will provide 82 spots to the campus community.
Roofing Projects:
Flanagan Chapel will receive a complete new tile roofing system following damage from the ice storm last winter. Scaffolding will be up around the building perimeter through the spring, and work will be performed as weather allows into the summer as we try to keep this important asset accessible for most events.
Fir Acres roof repairs are 99% complete, following a challenging October with heavy rainfall and wind. We will complete the roof this summer, along with new siding and a paint project.
Evans Hall will get a new roof in spring of 2023.
Watzek roof will get a large renovation to repair leaks and extend life, while managing stormwater more effectively.
Sustainability and Climate Action
Director of Sustainability Amy Dvorak and AVP for Facilities David Ernevad presented the Facilities components of the climate action plan to the Board of Trustees at the February meeting. The Board was actively engaged in the conversation and inquired about both fundraising opportunities and if we could move faster with our decarbonization efforts! The next phases of this program will include:
An engineering study completed by MacDonald Miller looking into the decarbonization options for the Central Plant
Launch of a Strategic Energy Management Program with the Energy Trust of Oregon
Significantly expanding the communication and feedback opportunities on the broader plan (e.g. transportation, purchasing, learning) through surveys, open houses, small group meetings, etc. If you are interested in hearing more about this work or would like to be more actively involved, please contact Amy Dvorak.
Beginning phases of fundraising for the plan
Financial Planning and Analysis
For the past few months, the Financial Planning and Analysis group has been focused on preparing the FY23 operating budget (2022-2023). This involves working with many departments to balance resources with institutional needs and priorities. We are nearing the end of this process and expect to present a budget to the Board of Trustees in May. Once approved by the Board, department budgets can be viewed in Colleague Self Service (accessed through WebAdvisor) by the end of May.
We also continue to monitor the current year (2021-2022) operating budget. With solid enrollment in the fall and good expense control throughout the year, the College expects to exceed its financial goals for the year.
Business Office and Student Accounts
Comings & Goings:
Chase Layne joined Student Accounts in December as a Student Account Specialist. The search for the Director of Student and Departmental Account Services position has been put on hold, and the posting will be revisited towards the end of the fiscal year. The Business Office will be posting for an Accountant position in preparation for Steve Kirkwood’s upcoming retirement this May.
Business Office:
The Business Office completed 20211099 tax reporting, and preparation of the FY21 990 tax filing. The team is now beginning preparations for the upcoming 403(b) retirement plan audit, and working through various regular reconciliations, and reporting requirements. The team is beginning preparations for interim financial statement audit work, and for fiscal year-end, which is quickly approaching.
Student and Departmental Account Services:
Student Accounts completed 1098-T tax reporting in January, and is nearing the end of the disbursement of federal emergency funds to students. The team has distributed $3.45M of the $4.18M in emergency funds awarded to the College to provide pandemic relief to students. $719K will be disbursed this month with the final $7k to be disbursed in early April.
Student Accounts also continues to work with IT and Nelnet to transition student payments to Nelnet’s Campus Commerce platform as our current TMS platform will cease to be supported by the vendor beginning in May 2022. The transition for student billing, student payment plans, student refunds, and the remaining payment forms to Nelnet is targeted to be complete by the end of spring semester.
Mail Services:
The Mail Room is now operating in the lower level of the McAffee building adjacent to the HR office. Although originally intended as temporary, the location is now planned as a permanent home with provisional design for a permanent conversion of the space underway.
Information Technology
Comings & Goings:
Information Security Officer found! Ann Harris will become our new ISO, she comes to us from University of Portland and is excited to learn her way around campus.
Enterprise Applications:
The Enterprise Applications team has continued to support the migration from Raiser’s Edge to Slate Advancement, which is expected to go live this summer.
Slate Law for Admissions is up and running. The EA team supported their move to Slate for fall 2021 applications and communications, with plans to expand to full use for the fall 2022 cycle.
We also continue to work with CCE to support them into a new solution with the cessation of Raiser’s Edge. The EA team is working with various stakeholders to identify new systems for student payment plans, payment portals, and internal IT support software.
Please help us spread the word to faculty at all three schools about the Annual Faculty Technology Institute we hold each May. We are looking for suggestions on topics to cover and accepting applications for the 2022 Deep Dive Project, a partnership with the Office of Student Accessibility on using technology to make online course content more accessible for all learners.
Quarter 3 began with our annual Faculty Technology Showcase on December 9. Presented in-person after being entirely virtual in 2020, the event featured five faculty, two CAS staff, and three IT staff presenters. For those who could not attend in person, faculty presenters completed video interviews which are available to view on theShowcase event website.
In preparation for the three-week online pivot at the beginning of spring semester, EdTech scheduled Zoom refresher workshops and conducted a full audit of our outward-facing Moodle and Zoom documentation pages. We worked with academic operations to create supportdocumentation for remote labsand kept the community updated onthe status of mobile labs. We will continue to support the project into Quarter 4 to establish checkout, reservation, and security procedures for the mobile lab. Additionally, we worked with academic departments to expandResource Labhours, increasing availability of specialized video production software and hardware for our users.
EdTech has provided both marketing and documentation to support theGoogle Spring Cleaning campaign. EdTech will specifically take the lead on outreach to faculty who may be at risk of losing data with the pending deletion of suspended accounts in June. We are also collaborating with Enterprise Applications to solicit faculty participants to pilot advanced features in Google Meet as part of the IT’s Workspace Plus evaluation.
Infrastructure and Operations:
The WiFi project continues on schedule and is expected to be completed by the end of the spring 2022 season. We have replaced all WiFi in the residence halls. Trouble tickets regarding WiFi service in the residence halls have plummeted, in spite of the delayed in-person start to the spring semester. WiFi services at the GSEC and law campuses have been completely replaced. At the Undergraduate Campus, WiFi replacement is complete for Watzek, Miller, Albany, Evans, and Griswold. Fields, BioPsych/Bodine, and Fir Acres Theater are nearly complete. Work will continue across the rest of the Undergraduate Campus with JR Howard during spring break and Olin after the conclusion of the spring semester. For more timely information, please frequent our project status page:https://www.lclark.edu/information_technology/infrastructure_operations/2021-wifi-infrastructure-refresh/
