U of O transfer joins Titan baseball
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Independent agency approves Lane’s accounting Taya Alami Reporter
Website changes slated for February debut
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Dean of Enrollment and Management Systems Helen Garrett brought in Ellucian to create software for tracking degree progress for students. Lane has worked with Ellucian since 2003 when Garrett oversaw the implementation of MyLane.
Lane has been working in tandem with Portland Community College and Central Oregon Community College in implementing the DegreeWorks software. PCC has used DegreeWorks since Fall 2010.
Cameron Hughey Reporter Lane’s Enrollment Services department is currently beta testing software that would track students’ degree progress in terms of learning, experience and cumulative credits. Dean of Enrollment and Management Systems, Helen Garrett, said the software DegreeWorks, is meant to offer students easy access to up-to-date information about their academic progress over MyLane, assisting academic advising. “This tool will put the resources in students’ hands,” Garrett said. DegreeWorks would give students the ability to independently plan without facing the problems they currently have when changing majors or finding out
where they stand academically. “I have to look for and write down what classes I am going to take for the next four years,” said Esau Gavett, a full time student in his second term at Lane. “(Lane’s) website is a f---ing mess. I’m paying two grand to come here and with all the technology there is, I think this should already exist.” Beth Landy, a Business and Elementary Education counselor, as well as an instructor for Career and Life Planning classes at Lane, called the software powerful and accurate. “Students won’t be taking classes they don’t need. This excites me as a counselor for students to be able to use this,” Landy said. “Academic advisers could focus on more complex issues. I
Featuring a presentation by emmy-nominated actor Giancarlo esposito. regular classes will not be held.
College audit comes back all clear
Lane rolls out new software to track degree progress
QUiCK FACTS: Degree Progress Software
LCC celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day
think it will increase degree completion, and I think students will be leaving with less debt.” Advisers can use their time more efficiently, she added. The budget for the project is $150,000, with one-third of the funding coming from the student enrollment fee and the remainder coming from a Title III grant, a fiveyear federal grant meant to address low rates of retention, graduation and transfer. The grant’s window opened in 2009. Despite the support, there will still be impediments to moving forward. All key administrators in the Office of Academic and Student Affairs in 2012 have either left Lane to accept a position elsewhere, retired or shifted to another assignment at Lane.
After an extensive independent audit of the previous school year’s finances, Lane has received a nod of fiscal approval. Kenneth Kuhns & Co., a Salem-based accounting firm, determined the college is at low risk for an audit. The firm also audits approximately half of Oregon’s community colleges. The college compiled its financial statements and notes into a single financial report. During Lane’s Jan. 8 Board of Education meeting, Kenneth Kuhns said the financial report was more extensive than most. “It’s a clean opinion, with no exceptions, on your financial statements,” Kuhns said at the meeting. Because Lane receives funding from the state and federal governments, it’s subject to a number of state and federal laws, Kuhns said. This includes the state’s audit law, which requires institutions like Lane to periodically submit their financial records to a certified public accountant to be audited independently. “I will say, about the financial records, they were well-maintained,” Kuhns said. “They were clean. There were no audit adjustments.” The statistical information and economic data the college submitted to Kuhns was not audited. “But we read a lot of that information, and we were happy with it,” Kuhns said. Kuhns’ report also determined that Lane’s financial office was successful in maintaining an environment that allowed its employees to keep accurate financial records. “Nothing came to our attention that causes us to believe Lane Community College was not in substantial compliance with certain provisions of laws, regulations, contracts and grant agreements,” Kuhns wrote in his report. Speaking publicly, Kuhns said the college ultimately spent approximately $3.3 million more than it took in last year, after a state community college support payment of approximately $6.4 million that was made too late to be included in the financial report.