harvest from LBCC farm and Hort program, photo courtesy of Amanda Cleland

flowers from LBCC farm and Hort program, photo courtesy of Amanda Cleland

Keep LBCC Hort and Crop Production

Deck: Linn-Benton Community College moves forward to eliminate horticulture and crop production department despite campus and community opposition

At Wednesday's Board of Education meeting, President Hamann was not able to fully answer Chair Jim Merryman's question regarding the relationship between Horticulture and Agriculture at LBCC.  

"I'm not the best person to ask," said Hamann, who made the decision to cut the Horticulture and Crop Production Department, one quarter of Ag Science faculty, and 31 classes in the Ag Science Department.  

The classes that stand to be eliminated are all five Crop and Soil Science classes, seven out of 11 Agriculture classes, two out of four Agriculture Business Management classes and all 17 Horticulture classes.

One of these Horticulture classes is Pesticide Safety.  

Benton County Fairgrounds employee and self-proclaimed "forever student" Harrison Williams said courses at LBCC have helped him at his job, including Horticulture 8.130: "Pesticide Safety" and Agriculture 250: "Irrigation Systems."  

"Pesticide Safety," said Williams, "works really well as preparation for the Oregon Applicator's License."  

"There is immediate added value after a term," said Williams, who took AG 250 Irrigation Systems this term and plans to put his project conclusions in the file at work.

"We needed to use a real site, so I thought... I'll use work!" said Williams, who said he looked at sprinkler prices and coverage in his project.

"It's penny-pinching, but we're a penny-pinching department.  It's our skill set.  It's what we're known for."

Although Williams' official title is a Business Assistant at the Fairgrounds, he said he spends just as much time outdoors as he does at the computer.  

For Williams, classes like "Irrigation" and "Pesticide Safety" give "a baseline of understanding"  of knowledge and vocabulary to translate assessments "so you know what's necessary, what's not."  

If the proposed elimination of two Hort majors and the Crop major goes through, Agriculture Science at LBCC will be left with two Ag Business programs and two Animal Science programs.  The Ag Business majors have only one required hands-on class, Crop and Soil Science 205, and it stands to be cut.  The Animal Science programs have no required soil or crops classes.

LBCC Ag Science, Horticulture Major Kylen McKinney said that he started studying horticulture because, "I like being outside and doing manual labor so I got a job in a nursery and fell in love with the plants." 

Both McKinney and Williams found out about the proposed cuts through word of mouth and spoke at the Board of Education Meeting which was standing room only, with 25 plus Agriculture Science, Horticulture students in attendance as well as community members, LBCC staff, LBCC alum, and fellow concerned students.

The LBCC student-body at large have not been notified of any of the proposed cuts as of this writing, although students who are majoring in Hort and Crop Production were notified of the impending cuts in the Mar. 15 letter from the dean of science, engineering and math, Kristina Holton, copied below.

Good Afternoon,

I am writing to you because you are connected with the LBCC Horticulture program, either as a declared major in the program or you have taken a significant number of credits within the program. You may have already heard that, given the college's current budget situation and the need to make reductions to find cost savings, the college is moving forward with suspending the Horticulture program, which includes the degree paths in both horticulture and crop production. This means that the program will no longer be advertised and will not be accepting new students. 

However, we will continue teaching courses within the Horticulture program, for at least the upcoming academic year (2019-20). It is our sincere hope that we can help current students complete their degrees and educational goals. In order to determine a plan for course offerings, we will need to better understand where you currently stand within the program, what you still have remaining and what your educational goals are. Our plan is to schedule a meeting with you where together we can look at your degree audit and determine what still remains in your degree plan. 

In the meantime, I encourage you to complete any courses you are currently taking, and continue with your plans and courses for spring term as they currently exist. We will reach out to you in the near future to schedule the planning meeting.

Thank you,

Kristina

--

Kristina Holton

Dean of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics

Linn-Benton Community College

Albany, OR 97321

(541) 917-4416

LBCC Administration proposes to eliminate its Horticulture Department

Students and staff found out this week that LBCC has plans to eliminate its Horticulture and Crop Production department and major.

LBCC Vice President of Academic and Workforce Anne Buchele discussed the proposed elimination of LBCC’s Horticulture and Crop Production department on Thursday.

“We are going through a variety of budget reductions,” said Buchele, “and we need to cut $800,000 [from the general budget] this year and $800,000 next year. We have a variety of reductions and everyone has not been identified yet but in looking at the data [we recommended] the Horticulture program for reduction.”

“We look at enrollment, graduation rates, and what the graduate would be able to do out in the labor force. It’s a decision to get to the reduction amount that we needed for this year,” she said.

The LBCC Board of Education’s next meeting is on Wednesday March 20 at 6 p.m. in the Calapooia Center, Room 103. The meeting starts at 6 p.m. Citizens who want to comment on the proposed suspension of the Horticulture and Crop Production Program or anything else at LBCC can sign in at the meeting at 5:40 p.m.

Buchele said that there is at least a $100,000 savings accomplished by eliminating the Horticulture and Crop Production Department. “It is a $251,000 program, and it’s one full-time faculty and one classified position and they would be let go the following year,” said Buchele. This would mean that current Horticulture and Crop Production students would be taught out through Spring 2020 but no new students would be taken on.

“If we lost all the students in the Hort Program, [and] we are not sure that would happen, then there would still be $100,000 savings; there could be more savings if students stayed.”

Typical classes taught in the Horticulture and Crop Production program include Landscape Materials I, also known as Tree Identification, Soil: Sustainable Systems, Irrigation, and Organic Farming and Gardening.

Regarding the state cuts that engendered this proposal and other cuts, she said, “We are already lean, our board members, our state legislators, our [LBCC] president are working hard at the state level to urge more in the community college fund.”

“I hate that it has to be all on the backs of students; you know, I’m from Ohio and we have a sales tax there,” said Buchele. Buchele sees in Oregon’s proposed budget cuts for higher education, signs that Oregon has not found a stable way of funding higher education.

Buchele was in her office on Thursday afternoon finishing up the day’s work and was able to meet and discuss the recent announcement by President Greg Hamann that LBCC is moving ahead to suspend the Horticulture and Crop Production Department at LBCC.

President Hamann’s formal announcement of all proposed cuts or reductions to LBCC departments will be emailed out to concerned people by the end of the day on Friday, March 15. This is a hard week said Buchele, noting that Horticulture is not the only department affected by proposed cuts.

Buchele said that cuts in program and staffing are ultimately President Hamann’s decision based on recommendations from the LBCC Budget Team, which is made up of LBCC staff VP of Operations Dave Henderson, Buchele, Jess Jacobs, Director of Accounting and Budget, and Margi Dusek, Manager of Accounting and Budget.

The team looks at the budget ramifications, makes the recommendations to President Hamann, and he decides on the cuts, said Buchele. Buchele said that the Budget Team did talk about what the impact of losing the Horticulture and Crop Production Department would be on the larger community, but she did not have any comment on the details of that conversation.

According to Buchele, the programmatic decisions of President Hamann are guided by the LBCC Budget Team, and those decisions are in turn guided by the big picture laid out by the LBCC Board of Education’s Budget Committee.

If the state budget cuts were found to be less severe, it is the LBCC Board of Education Budget Committee that would guide what the priorities would be, and President Hamann and his staff would make the specific decisions to carry out those priorities.

At this coming Wednesday’s meeting, the Board of Education’s comment period will be followed by board and campus reports, information on PERS, and votes on two resolutions: a proposed 7 percent tuition increase and a construction contract for seismic retrofit projects.

The LBCC Board will officially approve the overall budget in June.

At a Glance:
When: Wednesday, March 20 at 6 p.m. in CC-103
What: LBCC Board of Education open for comments.
Why: Citizens interested in commenting on the proposed elimination of the LBCC Horticulture and Crop Production Department can sign in at 5:40 pm. Comment times are each limited at the discretion of the board chair and are typically 3 minutes long.

Full Disclosure: The author of this article is a member of the LBCC Horticulture Club.

"I Am Not Invisible" women veteran's event at LBCC

Teri Bartlow, Jaya Lapham, and Jasmine Lumpkin pose with Maria Carolina Gonzalez-Prats, who is in one of the photos of the I Am Not Invisible campaign which was displayed in the LBCC library.

Veteran and Maria Carolina Gonzalez-Prats has a connection to LBCC besides being featured in the "I Am Not Invisible" photo exhibit that displayed at LBCC in February. 

Gonzalez-Prats is a long time friend of Javier Cervantes, Director of Institutional Equity & Student Engagement at LBCC.  Cervantes came to the Feb. 22 "I Am Not Invisible" meet and greet hosted by the LBCC Library at which Gonzales-Prats and Oregon Women Veterans Coordinator Elizabeth Estabrooks, who is also featured in the exhibit, spoke and answered questions.'

When Gonzalez-Prats first told Cervantes she was joining the military, Cervantes was concerned as a friend, but now, he realizes it was a great decision for her to join and she came back a better person. 

Now the two friends both are in higher education.  Gonzalez-Prats earned her Masters in 2008 with  a her thesis Through a Veteran’s Eyes: The Transition of the Army Leader into the Civilian Workforce and she is now working on a doctoral thesis. 

At the Feb. 22 event, Cervantes asked pointed questions from his armchair seat about Gonzalez-Prat's research for her current thesis, in which she seeks to verify the efficacy of the back to work programs in the military.  Cervantes' questions were intended to encourage audience participation in the research. 

Veteran Jasmine Lumpkin asked Gonzalez-Prat why the research will focus on a particular time-period of disengagement from the military, and Gonzalez-Prat appreciated the question, saying the time frame is to focus on the efficacy of a certain program and when it was introduced.
 

Wah Chang was asked by U.S. Dpt. of Energy to melt down uranium that later caused its workers cancer

One story that took a little digging to find out about at Ron Wyden's last Town Hall was the story of the retired steel workers from Wah-Chang.

Gary Steffy led his fellow retirees in handing a certificate of appreciation to Wyden, but maybe appreciation is not the only feeling the workers should be having for the U.S. Government and its representatives.

The original cause of the cancer many of the workers are getting was a request by the U.S. Dept. of Energy for Wah Chang and other factories around the country to melt down uranium.  In exchange, the Dept. of Energy offered an expensive machine.

But health doesn't come with a price tag, and the retirees are now faced with having to prove that they worked for Wah Chang to make themselves eligible for the health care the U.S. government is paying for.

Winter Clubs' Expo

Winter Clubs' Expo, photo courtesy of Council of Clubs

Ironically, the Club on Campus most likely to believe that Earth is a commuter stop in the road of life had the best slogan for LBCC’s Club Day: Campus Ambassadors member Steven Wood said that LBCC seems more like the Linn-Benton Commuter College than a Community College.  Wood said that although the club is religious, it welcomes all people.

The LBCC Commons cafeteria was ringed with tables and club members on Wednesday Feb. 20 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Even a dog was making the rounds with its owner.

From highly visible campus clubs like the Civil Discourse Club, which had brought their whiteboard which is usually displayed in Takena with them to the cafeteria, to the low-profile but highly popular Role-Playing Group, it was clear that the Campus Ambassadors aren’t the only ones trying to instill a little community into Linn-Benton Community College.

Active Minds, which promotes healthy active minds on campus, had a booth right next to the Adult Re-Entry Club, which encourages and supports students who are coming to LBCC as a second career.

And the International Club, supported by its International Ambassadors, advertised weekly meetings as well as a few international teas each term, plus its upcoming Talent Show.

So maybe none of this is ironic.  Maybe it makes sense that people whose religion seems to think Earth is just one stop on the big road of adventure ARE therefore relaxed enough to enjoy this stop.

And maybe people who’ve moved to the U.S. from a different country, with all the accompanying language difficulties, ARE best suited to host regular opportunities to eat and drink together, including a tea-time rivaled only by the Math Cafe’s always open door, because they know how important friendliness can be.

And maybe the relaxed fun-loving guys and girls of the Role-Playing-Games Club show us that fantasy CAN be the best way to connect with new friends at a school focused on practicality and reality.  Because for all the crap we give it, the small size and devoted faculty at LBCC truly do offer a community of opportunities, even if you have to dig a little to find them.

The 'Grunt' Film Project Focuses on stories of four OSU men who served in the military

Photo courtesy of The 'Grunt' film project's website

Jacob Mogler’s film The 'Grunt' Film Project looks at the post-war lives of four of his fellow veterans at OSU. Locals will appreciate the beautiful OSU backdrops.

The veterans’ stories show different ways to transition successfully back into civilian society after time in the military, including filmmaking, (Mogler is a veteran), theater, leadership in school and community, and mediation.

An important touchstone of the film looks at the high numbers of suicide among veterans and U.S. citizens in general. As the narrator and filmmaker, Mogler asks each of the four soldiers: Anthony Plant, Nivardo Gonzalez, Sean Maloy, and Steven Olson about suicide among veterans.

"Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” says Maloy, an affable-looking fellow who moved out to Oregon at the instigation of his friend Plant. The message is clear; it is important to find successful ways to transfer the leadership skills from deployment to civilian life, as challenging as that can be.

This showing of “Grunt” was put on by Jaya Lapham, Veteran Resource Coordinator at LBCC and Teri Bartlow, Veteran Liason to the Advising Center at LBCC.

The filming for most of the story is realistic/gritty, with the OSU vistas providing a welcome bit of greenery and spaciousness. The profiles of the soldiers are filmed in super detailed close-up, making the viewer feel almost inside the movie.

In the movie, Gonzalez talks about discovering meditation as a technique that not only helped him but also that he can share with others. Steven Olson, who came with Mogler to LBCC to talk with audience members after the movie, said that theater, friendship and getting a companion dog have helped him and fellow soldiers deal with PTSD from serving in the military.

After the talk, Olson jumped up on stage to see the sets for LBCC’s upcoming plays with Michael Winder, LBCC Events and Production Coordinator. Olson was a student here at LBCC and has continued in theater. Juliette, Olson’s dog, waited patiently, wagging her tail when he returned.

Among the most poignant of the questions after the talk came from a mother who is concerned about the imminent deployment of her son. Mogler gave her a link to the movie so she could show it to her son and Olson said, “Don’t expect anything. Don’t expect things to be different. Just let things happen organically. You’re going to be able to stay in touch with him. For me, it was so awesome to see my Mom at the gate, pulling out grey hairs [saying] ‘Look what you did to me.’“

The 'Grunt' Film Project will be showing again at LBCC on Monday March 18th at 7 p.m. in LBCC’s Russell Tripp Theater. These soldiers’ stories can spark important conversations about service in the military, and bringing those leadership skills and real-life experiences into higher education and ultimately into second careers.

LBCC Hort Club Meets Mondays at Noon in Greenhouse

A rock sculpture welcomes visitors to the LBCC Greenhouse

Are you interested in plants, mushrooms, gardening, vineyards, greenhouses, and/or small farms? “Everyone’s welcome,” said Horticulture Club President Sterling Guijar at a meeting on Jan. 17. Succulents, geraniums, and vegetable starts fill the Greenhouse. The Club has a plot in one of the Farm Hoophouses, too. Activities are every Monday at noon in the Greenhouse by White Oak Hall.

Student Leadership Committee earn tuition credits

Rocky the Roadrunner meditates, photo courtesy of Shelby Pick

Would you like to start next term with a free three credits coming to you?

Put on the Rocky Roadrunner costume. Talk to Barb in the Student Life and Leadership/Student Leadership Council (SLC) Office next to the Hot Shot Café. The office is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Rocky is one of about a dozen SLC positions opening up this term and all of them translate directly to free credits. For example, Krystal Madrinan is the SLC Wellness Coordinator, a part-time position, so she earned three credits last spring term during training, six credits for Fall, and six credits for winter. A full-time officer will earn double that.

Krystal puts in about three hours a week in the office and three hours per week in meetings.

Applications are being accepted now through the end of spring term for regular positions, both part-time and full-time. President and vice president applications are due by 5 p.m. Feb. 11; students are encouraged to serve a regular year first to learn the ropes before running for president or vice president.

Mural Brightens LBCC's Adult Re-Entry Center

Title: Leaving The Nest

Deck: Adult Re-entry Program is a bright welcome place for older-than-average students

Mural Brightens LBCC’s Adult Re-Entry Center

Mural artist JJ Bolden talks with attendees of the open house in the Adult Re-Entry Center.

A closeup of Bolden’s mural of Rocky Roadrunner.

If you are re-entering school as a second career and are older than 18, you might benefit from the Adult Re-entry Center, affectionately called “The Nest.”  

It is located past the Academic Foundations door in the top floor of the learning center.  There are snacks, a movie softly playing, and outlets for laptops. There’s also information about scholarships.  And brightening up the whole area is a beautiful brand-new mural by LBCC art student JJ Bolden.

Bolden was on hand to talk about his art at the March 6 Adult Re-entry Center open house.  Attendees crowded into the room to admire the mural and eat snacks, talking about art, and community.

Work-study students Greydi Olvera and Jennifer Justice were happy to talk about the new mural and the center.

“I love it; the bright happy colors make me really happy; it makes it more welcoming,” said Justice.

Olvera, who helped vote on this version of the mural, likes the representation of “the climb, the struggle.” In the mural, Rocky the Roadrunner grips a mountainside, eyes intent on an unseen peak, as a red glow of sunset illuminates the background.

“We have a Facebook page 'LBCC Adult Reentry Student Success Center' for the Nest started just to stay in touch with people who have gone through the Empower program or are starting the Empower program,” said Olvera.

“The Empower program is for students who have been out of school or thinking of getting into a second career,” she said. It helps with financial aid, class requirements, and computer skills.

It’s three separate classes for free that generate four college credits, according to Malinda Shell, faculty for adult re-entry and career pathways.

“It was super helpful,” said Justice.  “It just helps you figure yourself out a little bit.”

“We had someone from CWE-Cooperative Work Experience,” said Olvera. According to Olvera, sharing resources with other students was an important part of the class. “You don’t feel like you’re the only one” who is an older student.

For more information about this or other programs such as STEP (SNAP, Training and Employment Program) that helps students who are receiving SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) with tuition, books, supplies and transportation for certificate programs, contact Program Coordinator Malinda Shell at shellm@linnbenton.edu.

For more of JJ Bolden's art, see Instagram @Mutalist9