Finance Division First Quarter Update
I have just returned from an Executive Council retreat and am excited for Robin’s leadership and to help the Finance Division support the goals of the college. We are starting to see the early results of some of those goals with the opening of the newly renovated Trail Room. The Trail Room is beginning to expand hours; swing by for a slice of pizza at lunchtime and stay tuned for additional hours and services as Bon Appetit is able to add staffing. I’m anxiously awaiting the expansion of service to include local, on-tap beer! Another exciting development is the completion of the new parking lot on the graduate campus. We expect to be ready for day-time parking September 26!
Thanks to everyone for your continued hard work and dedication to the college. I especially want to thank those of you who have assisted in the aftermath of the tragic accident on our campus on August 29. I extend my gratitude and support for your service. Please continue to take care of yourselves and each other.
Please read through the department reports from your Finance Division colleagues for valuable updates and information. As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions.
Best,
Andrea
Facilities
An intensive summer of projects tackling challenging deferred maintenance issues, building assembly improvements, and new construction is almost behind us. About two thirds of our FY23 capital expenditure is completed, and we are shifting some focus to assemble project plans for the coming FY24. Visit this page and follow L&C’s social media channels for updates.
Comings and Goings:
Our Director of Facilities Operations position remains vacant. The job posting has been reworked, and with some luck, we may have a hire by November. We welcome two new grounds keepers, K’myn and Bryce, to the team starting on September 6. Their contribution will be tremendous as we expand from only six grounds staff to eight, allowing us to refine assigned zones and make our grounds even more beautiful. One of these positions is replacing Erik Olson, who decided to resign in July in search of something new.
Transportation and Parking:
The transportation and parking group has been moved to the VP of Student Life division, and will now report up through the Director of Campus Safety. The office has moved to the Campus Safety offices near Gate 3. Facilities will continue to support Transportation and and Parking with administrative support, fleet support, and of course, coordinating carefully on construction impacts to roadways and parking lots.
We were lucky to be able to extend our lease agreement with St Mark’s for their 50-spot parking lot. We have access to this lot for overflow once again, through December 15. The new graduate campus parking lot at Gate 8 has made great gains, despite a four-week permit delay. The lot is now expected to be available for campus use Monday, September 26, for daytime use only while we finalize our lighting program.
Capital Projects:
The Templeton renovation has reached a major milestone, with completion of Phase 1, the Trail Room. Phase 2, which opens student-organization spaces on level two areas, is on schedule to open on September 28. The new game room, student engagement, and College Outdoors offices on level two will open with the new level three front entry. The project continues on track with the opening of the new addition and front entry, and all other spaces, for mid-to-late December. Templeton Way pedestrian plaza is expected to reopen fully on October 28.
Stewart and Odell has a new roof and exhaust ventilation duct system. The contractor completed the first phase of the larger renovation project and has now paused to allow us to occupy the building this fall semester. We will begin with the larger building renovation in December.
Huston Sports Complex renovation is working through design phases. We are currently targeted to begin work May 2023, with a September 2023 goal completion.
McAfee Mailroom is complete and operational, though a new mail or package solution is still under consideration.
Several ADA projects have been completed with a new, accessible dressing room in Fir Acres, concrete paving in the Albany quadrangle, concrete paving at Pamplin, and a number of new door operators to help improve our accessibility on campus.
Corbett House first floor is now open and being used for instruction!
Grad Commons, aka Corbett House Circle, will begin construction September 27 with new pedestrian pathways, plantings, and gathering spaces. The Commons will become the southern start of the ‘spine of the college’ as envisioned by the campus master plan.
Roofing Projects:
- Flanagan Chapel has a beautiful new tile roof, matches the Greg Pavilion for the first time, and received important but small improvements to the cupola stained glass windows and snow breaks on the highest peak
- South Chapel roof replacement is in the planning stages.
- Evans Hall roof is approximately 75% complete.
Sustainability
The Sustainability Office, in partnership with the Bates Center, held a sustainability focused internship class over the summer term completing in early August. Students held a variety of positions in renewable energy to regenerative agriculture fields in both for-profit and nonprofit institutions (learn more about the student experience). Have a student who might be interested in this program? Know an employer who would be a good match? Please let us know (sustainability@lclark.edu)!
With funding from the NW5 Engage Grant, representatives from the Lewis & Clark Sustainability Council, the University of Puget Sound, and Portland Public Schools, held a course planning workshop for both high school and college students. The workshop was focused on a course idea we are calling Become a Community Climate Leader. This would be a collaborative course between community partners and NW5 higher education institutions, and would be focused on providing youth with the skills and knowledge to be climate justice activists and practitioners in their communities. Our next steps are to apply for additional funding to fully develop the course in the next year to two years. Big thank you to Joel Martinez and Julia Unangst for helping us receive and implement this grant!
Lastly, we continue to work on the implementation of our Climate Action Plan including our energy efficiency program. Our superstar student intern, Elijah Black, prepared various energy efficiency educational materials for NSO and RA training this summer (and a really fun Kahoot!). We’ll continue to do energy efficiency training into the fall, hoping to build up a Climate Ambassador corps of students to support energy conservation activities across campus. If you’d be interested in joining our Energy Team or would like to have us talk with you about what you might do in your office or department space, please reach out to Sustainability Director Amy Dvorak.
Financial Planning and Analysis
During summer months, the Financial Planning and Analysis team looks both backwards and forwards. We review, analyze, and report on the prior year (FY22) while monitoring enrollment for the new year (FY23) and modeling scenarios for several years out. Summer is also a time when we can take a deeper dive into specific areas of the college budget to better understand the challenges and opportunities we face. This year, we were also able to assemble budget training materials for new managers.
Business Office and Student Accounts
Comings and Goings:
The Business Office welcomes Matthew Johnson as the department’s staff accountant. Matthew brings a breadth of skills and experience to the role including those acquired in his most recent role with the local nonprofit Ride Connection. Chase Layne, student account specialist, left SDAS in August. The department is now in the process of hiring for its student account coordinator and a student account specialist.
Kerry Barnes has accepted a new role as director of Student and Departmental Account Services. Kerry has been serving as interim director since June 2021, and contributed in multiple progressively responsible roles during her 20+-year tenure within the department.
Congratulations, Kerry!!
Business Office:
The Business Office completed final audit fieldwork during the month of July, and has closed our books for FY22. Annual financial statements are being finalized for acceptance by the college’s Audit Committee in October.
Student and Departmental Account Services:
The migration of student billing, student payment plans, student refunds, and payment forms to Nelnet has been completed. The new platform went live as of June 1, with ongoing updates to improve the presentation of student account details being deployed over the next few months as enhancements are rolled out by the vendor.
Information Technology
Comings and Goings:
We are sad to say goodbye to our dedicated team members, Patrick Ryall, director of IT operations and Robbie Booth, technology technician. After a combined 36 years of service they are off to enjoy retirement. A replacement for Robbie is almost hired and Patti is assuming Patrick’s role until we can formalize the transition.
We welcome Aurelio Puente, our new Educational Technology Specialist. He is joining us from Claremont Mckenna College and we are very excited to have him onboard. The EdTech team is also welcoming Angelina Almukhametova in September. Angelina will be working with the graduate school and IT to continue the support Patti provided in the past in our shared position.
Enterprise Applications
Enterprise Applications continue to make progress on a comprehensive plan to reduce storage in Google, while preventing data loss and developing alternative storage solutions. We are happy to report that we have reduced our overall storage by 50 TB (a 38% reduction in our overall storage) since the start of Q1.
Slate Advancement officially went live on June 1, 2022 which culminated a year of software implementation planning and support to make sure the project met Advancement’s needs and timeline as they moved from Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge system.
Enterprise Applications also built a Salesforce Constituent Relationship Management platform for CCE at the Graduate School - they had been using Raiser’s Edge and needed a new solution. We are currently working on implementing Salesforce Marketing Cloud to meet all of their email marketing and communications needs.
Educational Technologies
The college’s learning management system, Moodle, received a facelift on August 10th. The latest version of Moodle has a new contemporary interface, intuitive tabbed navigation and a redefined course experience that makes it easier for faculty to create and edit courses and for students to reduce distractions and prioritize course work.
After 8 years and more than 5 miles of posters printed, we’ve replaced our trusted Canon poster printer in the Resource Lab to accommodate the ongoing poster needs of the campus community.
Information Security
Planning for the rollout of multi-factor authentication (MFA) is on-going. This effort will increase the security of college, employee and student data. The IT department has been testing the selected application in various scenarios. More detailed information on the MFA rollout will be provided to departments as we expand the effort.
We are also developing cyber security training materials and programs to be shared with the campus community.
Information Systems
Extensive work was completed to identify and delete over 5000 dormant (suspended) Google accounts. In support of the storage limits, we are cleaning out old accounts and eliminating potential risk. Given the complexities surrounding data loss, the group is helping inform other areas to assist decision-making and planning for the future implementation of storage quotas.
Working closely with SecureAuth, application administrators and vendor partners migrated all single sign-on [SSO] applications from on-premise equipment to a new cloud-based appliance. This will not only support the MFA rollout but allow greater flexibility and redundancy for the future.
Infrastructure/Operations
The Infrastructure team wrote and published an RFP for outside contractor consideration to upgrade and replace all fiber-optic cabling on the 3 campuses. After several meetings with vendors, evaluating each proposal, and individually scoring the proposals, the contract was awarded to DCTEch Inc. Work will begin in the Fall of 2022 and take place over the year.
Academic Operations spent the summer upgrading technology in classrooms and event space and supporting the selection of technology solutions for the Templeton renovation.
