Finance Division Spring 2024 Update
Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Operations Andrea Dooley welcomes new employees and provides an update on capital projects, sustainability, and IT initiatives.
Best,
Andrea Dooley, Chief Financial Officer and Vice President for Operations
Facilities Services
With the ice storm in January, winter showed up just in time for spring semester. With hundreds of hours of Facilities labor, many tons of ice melt, and finally some help from mother nature, the campus was open and operational. We lost a dozen massive trees, and were thankful that we had removed a handful of trees we were cautious about just the week before. With some seventy-degree days now in our rearview mirror, the grounds are coming alive, and summer-based capital projects being carefully planned for months are on the horizon.
Employee Comings and Goings
To help us achieve our capital projects we welcome Julie Bunker, who is just starting at the end of Q3, but brings great depth of experience in the built environment. She is a great new addition, and we’re excited to help facilitate another great year of campus improvement. Also this quarter, the Director of Facilities Operations position was vacated by Todd Yuratich and Ian Gadberrry and K’myn Pettitt Delia have vacated their respective positions. We are eagerly reaching out to the job market to fill vacant roles, and are hopeful to attract great candidates. It’s all hands-on-deck to keep the basic facilities services operational, and the fabulous facilities team will work hard to keep up expectations until we can fill vacant positions.
Capital Projects
The Huston Sports Complex renovation was delivered just in time for the first games of the season for L&C Baseball and Softball to be played on home turf.
Hammock Grove Project is complete and open just in time for the improving weather. The natural black locust posts are considered the strongest, most durable, and sustainable wood available, and we now have a great designated space for hammocking and slacklining.
Many of the FY25 capital projects are queued up with design and engineering in full-swing. It will be a very busy summer of exciting improvements that many may never see to appreciate, but are extremely important. They include Olin roof, Miller and Fields Elevator Modernizations, multiple HVAC projects, industrial size dishwasher for Fowler, and pesky water intrusion and building envelope corrections. One of the more obvious projects all will see include the start of a reimagined lower estate garden, improvements for bike parking, a new Tri-Met bus stop, as well as further storm drainage and roadway improvements.
Sustainability
Spring brings a number of events and activities to the Sustainability Office, notably Earth Day at the end of April. See the complete list of Earth Day activities.
Outreach
April brings a sustainability-themed takeover of the Lewis & Clark homepage! The student profiles are particularly inspiring. A big thank you to Caitlin Peel, Devan Freeman, and the whole Comms team for this work!
Curriculum and Career Prep
We are actively assisting students to find internships and job opportunities beyond LC, through the Bates Center Sustainability Internship course as well as general recruitment. If you have students interested in working in the sustainability or energy field, please send them to the Sustainability Office.
Operations and Climate
The Sustainability Office received an in-kind grant to continue our decarbonization studies at the grad and law school. We look forward to completing a deeper dive into these mechanical systems and developing a better understanding of what decarbonization may look like in these facilities.
Business Office and Student Accounts
Employee Comings and Goings
This quarter brought about some changes within the Business Office team. After 11 years of service, Becky Monteith has announced her retirement from her Accounts Payable Specialist role. Always the team player, Becky has agreed to extend her time with LC to continue to support the AP process while we work to implement Chrome River. Additionally, Travis Ables, Assistant Controller, announced that he’ll be leaving the college prior to the end of the fiscal year. During his year in the role, Travis has been an integral part in modernizing processes within the Business Office, and his expertise will be greatly missed. We wish Becky and Travis all the best in their future endeavors. Finally, the Business Office is excited to welcome Gen Okugawa and Sharon Brenier to the team to support operations during this staffing transition. Gen and Sharon will be valuable assets as we work to close out FY24, and to move forward with new process implementation.
Business Office
The Business Office completed 2023 1099 filings, and preparation of the FY23 990 tax filing. The team is now preparing for the upcoming 403(b) plan audit, and working through various account reconciliations and reporting requirements as the end of FY24 rapidly approaches.
The Business Office continues to move forward with the system design and testing for Emburse Chrome River. A variety of users from throughout the college have assisted with testing the submission and approval workflows within the integrated invoice and expense management solution. System configurations are being finalized, and administrator training is in process. User training is expected to begin in May in preparation for the system to go live at the start of FY25. Training opportunities will continue throughout the summer and the start of the academic year to allow multiple opportunities for users to get acquainted with the new system, and to refresh themselves on things after a restful summer break. More on this to come, so stay tuned!
Student and Departmental Account Services
Student Accounts completed 1098-T reporting in January. The department is working with Admissions, Registrar’s Offices, Financial Aid, and various other departments to address the impacts to admitted students resulting from FAFSA delays.
Financial Planning and Analysis
This spring, we have been finalizing details of the FY25 operating budget. This work includes revising assumptions, updating department-level budgets, and consolidating information from the three schools and Common Services. Enrollment continues to be a challenge at all three schools. However, with several years of successful financial results generating solid surplus balances and a strong institutional balance sheet, the College will continue to invest in strategic initiatives while focusing on good expense control. Deans and VP’s worked closely with their teams to develop the budget that will be presented to the Board in early May. Department budgets will be loaded and available in Colleague Self-Service in late May.
Information Technology
Educational Technologies
The annual Faculty Technology Showcase on December 14 featured 11 faculty and four staff presenters. Highlights include Gen AI applications in education, use of 3D-printing to create custom instructional materials, and practical applications of digital tools and resources such as podcasting kits, digital social annotation, and the Ear Forest.
We kicked off spring workshops with a faculty-focused in-person Moodle Crash Course session. The team collaborated with faculty to offer several curricular workshops on topics as varied as podcasting, using generative AI, scientific imaging, video editing, and multi-channel audio editing. Of particular note, Aurelio Puente offered an eight-week “AI for Creatives” course through the Bates Center and presented to the Board of Trustees about the experience.
The team also collaborated with several departments on engagement events. Highlights include supporting Brightsign players used for immersive 3-wall projection displays in the Arnold Gallery (Art Department), Moss Week events (Watzek, Biology, Student Clubs), and Harnessing the Potential of AI (Data Science). We also had a successful call for participation for the second annual R lab student photo contest. Work on printing and installing the winning photo contest entries will continue into the next quarter.
Enterprise Applications
Enterprise Applications led the Student Digital Experience Working Group, which created and delivered an in-depth, research-based report to the Committee on Student Success. This report included recommendations to improve the student digital experience and was followed by meetings with committee leadership and vendor demonstrations.
We are also leading a re-implementation of Lenel, our ID card and access system. We have identified a list of needs and desired improvements and will work with Campus Safety and vendors to enact changes, make process improvements, and create documentation and training materials for Campus Safety staff.
Infrastructure and Operations
The infrastructure team is busy planning the implementation of new network switches for all residence hall locations in order to recognize the new fiber installed this summer by DCTech. In addition, new core data-center switches and layer three routers are in the planning stages for implementation.
In our Service Desk, 1658 tickets were received and 1589 of those were resolved in Q3. 63.37 percent of these tickets were resolved during the first contact with the clients. The average resolution time was one day, 19 hours, and 1 minute. 84 percent were generated via email and 16 percent by phone. The highest ticket counts were related to hardware (26 percent), software/tools (22 percent), account related (18 percent), and services (16 percent).
Institutional operations is planning for and in final testing of a Windows 11 computer image for use on newly acquired institutionally owned windows computers.
The newly installed digital signage in Fowler has been used daily. Students have been seen using the digital signage in the Trail Room to great effect. Academic Operations has continued the signage conversation with Student Engagement and will work to add additional student connectivity to displays in the future. After our successful signage implementation, numerous departments have reached out to Academic Operations to talk about and plan upcoming installations for departmental events in various academic buildings.
The Academic Operations and Institutional Operations team are working with Student Engagement to identify technology for the Hu Media Lounge in Fowler. This two-step project will add additional displays to the room, as well as offer multiple connection points for students to use while bringing their own devices or holding their own small events.
A new version of the classroom system has been deployed into Fields 204. Academic Operations will be gathering feedback from faculty before moving on to plan the replacement of other classroom systems. The goal of the new design is to simplify the system while keeping ease of use and accessibility a priority.
Information Security
In the fall IS launched the first ever mandatory cybersecurity awareness campaign. The campaign was wrapped up in March with 100% participation. We thank the community for participating in this important effort to protect LC digital assets.
Information Systems
The Information Systems team worked closely with GSEC and Law School Registrars to implement electronic transcript ordering and delivery services, and assisted Law Admissions as they upgraded to a new admissions management platform.
The team is partnering closely with the Office of Financial Aid in support of the many changes being made by the Department of Education’s FAFSA Simplification project. This is an ongoing effort which began in late summer 2023 and has significantly altered the timelines for processing the incoming class for Fall 2024.
