Opening Day Address 2003-04

President Jean Floten

September 15, 2003

Welcome. Opening day is like starting a new chapter in a good book. As we turn over the first page, we wonder how the story will continue to unfold. As we would expect with any exciting ,mystery or adventure, our year will be filled with plots and subplots; joys and sorrows; trials and tribulations; protagonists and anti-heroes and many other interesting characters and events along the way. When we gather to plot the next chapter at the end of the year, we will find many surprises, even though we will have been here all along. The academic year at Bellevue Community College is our story, and we have a great deal to say in how it will develop.

It is a bright, crisp autumn day, this opening day of the 38th academic year of Bellevue Community College. Opening day affords the luxury of time to spend together. As we flash back to previous chapters and contemplate our future, our mood is charged with promise and anticipation, mixed with a little bit of anxiety as we greet colleagues, students and the new year. Our focus is centered on our work. There is no more important work: by developing students' intellect and resources, we prepare them for better lives and livelihoods. You know, it's really good to see all of you characters here, ready for another year. (I fear I may be getting carried away with my metaphor….)

I want to thank the Board members who are joining us: I also extend our heartiest welcome to the new employees who joined BCC this past year. Would you stand and be recognized? Let's give them a warm welcome! We wish you a fulfilling and enjoyable career at BCC. I urge everyone to greet these folks personally at the new employee reception Wednesday at 3:30 in the Garden Room.

We also commend our esteemed retirees who closed this chapter with BCC, after many years of excellent service. They are: Jim Bergstrom, Eleanor Brown, Gloria Campbell, Frank Fleming, Don Heins, Aimee Johnston, Jerrie Kennedy, Gene Malvino, Willa Mathison, and Joan Ubezzi who retired this past year and Neil Evans, Dale Gleason, Rob Jackson, and Carole Peterson, who will retire this quarter. If any of you are here this morning, please stand. Join me in providing a warm round of applause in appreciation for all these folks have contributed to BCC.

We bid a fond farewell to Nawang Dorjee, our first scholar in residence for the BCC Center for the Liberal Arts and welcomed our second scholar-and Fulbright Fellow, Dr. Stella Williams from Nigeria. Dr. Williams brings impressive expertise and we are lucky to have her. She will have a proper introduction later along with the opportunity to say a few words of greeting.

And there, colleagues, is our cast for the year. Let's once again welcome our new folks and commend our retirees.

Summer Improvements

The setting in any good story always contributes to the plot. A quick glance around shows our campus underwent some fairly amazing transformations this summer. In addition to becoming more lovely with plants and landscaping, our college

1. Received a new entryway that will be fully completed next summer when the City of Bellevue adds new traffic lanes to 148th.
2. Progressed with the A building remodel that will be completed in mid-October, ready for Winter Quarter occupancy of foreign language, Business Division, AHE offices and the Scholar-in-Residence, among others.
3. Excavated and formed up the new 720 stall parking structure. An April completion date is anticipated. It will provide much needed relief.

We will soon start to plan in earnest two additional projects, the "D" building renovation, which will be a huge project since it entails moving the library temporarily, and our next major building.

Knowing how difficult parking was for staff and students last year, this year we are controlling the flow of people onto campus by spreading the instructional schedule throughout the entire day and by promoting carpooling and mass transit. We added slots and will use all space we have, even grassed areas, on a temporary basis, during the opening weeks of classes. We have assigned staff to be on hand to help. Public safety will direct students and staff to available parking and Lois Harrison will facilitate car and van pooling and bus passes for students and staff.

Don Bloom and his capable crews deserve our best appreciation for ensuring all of these projects moved forward smartly. Don is one cool guy; he was on my speed dial all summer and he never broke a sweat!

Getting students enrolled and everything else in order for classes also took a lot of effort from our instructional, administrative and student services staff. Let's thank all of those who worked so hard to prepare us for fall.

I also extend my personal thanks to bargaining teams for the Faculty Association and Board of Trustees who through exceptional commitment and effort reached tentative agreement last Friday after a summer of very difficult bargaining. They did some very good work.

Address

Although it doesn't seem that long ago that we were reviewing last year's achievements, here we are, set to plunge into a brand new year, with about 22,000 students about to descend on the college. As I put these remarks together, I tried to envision a PowerPoint presentation with thoughtful quotations; but I couldn't do it. This year circumstances call for a far more direct and candid conversation. In the 38th chapter of BCC's history, we will confront some very real challenges and serious issues.

Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, remembered a very gifted teacher he had as a young student who had a way of delivering unforgettable lessons. One day she held up a large sheet of paper with a very small dot in the corner. When she asked the class what they saw, arms waved and students chimed, "A dot, a dot." After a couple of seconds, the teacher replied: "Students don't get so focused on the dot that you miss the big picture."

This is advice we will want to remember this morning. The dots on our page are our immediate trials-- budget shortfalls, cranky legislators, rival higher education partners, troubling public opinion and policy considerations, and increased competition for scarce resources. Although they present some very real challenges to higher education in our state, we will have abundant opportunities to influence them and I have no question that the final outcome will be positive for us. However, we will have some real work to do in a changing environment.

While little of what I will cover this morning might be news to you, what I hope to do is pull all the pieces together into a shared context for what will occupy our page this year. Taking the teacher's advice, we must never lose sight of the importance of our work and remember not to let the dots distract our vision or obscure the full page. Rather, we must keep our mission in full view as we find ways to build upon our many past successes.

Let's begin. There is a crisis brewing in higher education in our state, and we are in the thick of it. Washington's community and technical colleges, as well as the universities, are grappling with major challenges to student access and funding; and BCC is no different. These issues and our College's response to them will shape this year and much of the future.

The crux of the problem is basic - major cuts to everyone's operating funding - and of course that's no surprise. The legislature has reduced the operating budget for higher education over the last two years because of decreased state revenues. BCC's share has been a 9 percent reduction coupled with very limited 'enrollment growth. Backwards movement in budget and flat enrollments are things we haven't experienced in a long time, and they are happening at the same time higher education is experiencing the greatest demand for its services in our state's history on all fronts.

The number of high school students in the pipeline is incredible. We will see the largest high school graduating class ever in 2007-8. We are already experiencing that a higher percentage of these students opt for our services.

With Washington state's unemployment one of the highest in the nation, more people are turning to colleges to use their time productively and to retrain for new fields, such as health care occupations, where there are still good paying jobs.

Illiteracy continues to be the huge, silent problem for Washington state. King County alone has over 40,000 people classified as illiterate. There are more illiterate people in the state than the whole junior class in state universities and we can not afford to lose any of these people in the current economy. These people also need our services.

We confront serious capacity issues that won't stop any time in the near future. Enrollment demand is surging at the same time resources have flagged.

We are all aware that our base funding has been reduced as the legislature has struggled to bring the state's budget into alignment with falling revenues. One of the ways the legislature has compensated for reductions in educational funding is by charging students more tuition. Higher education is on a track of increased privatization - less support from taxpayers, more charges to students. Both state and national trend data show that public financial support has been on a steady decline for the past decade. Ten years ago, BCC students paid less than 25 percent of the cost of their education. Now, they pay half of what has been a steady increase in educational costs. Tuition and fees are escalating much faster than the CPI and this has evoked some serious consequences.

Newspapers everywhere are carrying articles that feature stories about frustrated parents and students lamenting that college costs are going up while their ability to pay is going down. This spring a bill was introduced in Congress that threatened to stop federal funding to colleges and universities whose tuition increases exceeded the CPI. There's a nasty cycle here. The hit to personal pocketbooks has prompted growing concern about higher education's cost management, which leads to negative public opinion, which results in reduced public investment.

Yet another contributor to declining public support is the growing tax sentiment, expressed through Tim Eyman, the "If I don't use it, I shouldn't have to pay for it" syndrome. Historically, most people have acknowledged that education is the cornerstone of a thriving democracy and an investment the public should support. Today, there is less willingness on the part of some taxpayers to provide support to any public investment-even education --especially if they question its soundness, costs, or personal benefit for the investment.

I have encountered this thinking in our own community. One incident happened just before the last legislative session with the editorial board of the King County Journal, a panel of local citizens and newspaper staff. I was there requesting media support for BCC's dislocated worker program. I advanced that people who had recently lost their jobs due to the failing economy deserved public support to retrain for new jobs; and our worker retraining programs had a extraordinary track record in getting people back into the workforce, most at higher wages than the jobs they left. Before I could even finish my comments a citizen member responded: "If the program is such a good deal, why shouldn't the students pay for it themselves?" There was concurrence from other citizen members.

Disagreement at this most basic level of public investment doesn't leave much room for discourse; but, it is indicative of where some of our public is in relation to tax-supported programs.

Business has expressed concerns about higher education that affects public opinion. Boeing's decision to move from the Puget Sound, for example, prompted serious scrutiny about our state's competitiveness. One of Boeing's chief concerns, echoed by other organizations like WSA, AEA, and Washington Association of Businesses, was the lack of responsiveness on the part of higher ed to serve employer needs. The number of people higher education is turning out, especially at the scientist and engineering level, they pointed out is not keeping pace with the needs of the workplace. Employers have had to import talent or move jobs to other parts of the country or world, for that matter. The gap between what higher education is producing and what is needed within our state to sustain, much less improve, our economy, is growing, they contend; and, further, Washington state needs a responsive system of higher education, the lack of which, they observe, has had a negative impact on the competitiveness of the state's economy.

Even though much of this responsibility is being laid at the feet of universities, it also pertains to community and technical colleges as well. Boeing contends and a recent survey conducted by the State Board confirms that businesses throughout the state see community colleges as difficult to access for training needs because there are so many of us with no single point of contact engaged in undue competition. We, too, have responsiveness issues.

Enrollment is another serious issue. Once the impact of enrollment lids is fully experienced, public concern and frustration will amplify. I can only imagine what will happen when individuals, especially parents of college-aged children, run up against a closed door. The impact of capped enrollments is just beginning to be felt by upper division students and will soon be faced by potential students everywhere at all levels in higher education. Our state has no plan for how this increased demand will be addressed or funded. This will become a very serious problem.

And there we have it: Higher costs and higher tuition; higher demand and enrollment lids; eroding public funding and growing negative tax sentiment; business' concern for workforce needs and a state in economic turmoil; and no plan for the future lead to a highly charged and competitive environment for resources that has the capacity to markedly change the nature of our work.

These issues have captured the attention of the Governor and legislature who are trying to refuel Washington state's failing economy. Three bills came out of the last legislative session that call for action this year on higher education issues. One grew from keen legislative frustration about the lack of a credible plan or meaningful coordination of higher education offerings and resources. The bill requires a reevaluation of roles, missions, funding and governance of all segments of higher education.

The second bill restricts state subsidized education for students to 125 percent of the credits required to receive a degree or certificate. This means when students reach the credit threshold, they will have to pay the total costs of their education.

The third bill initiates a pilot for performance-based funding in higher education. A model would be developed that compensates colleges and universities for what they produce, rather than what they offer. For example, if a college was given legislative authorization to produce 1000 transfer students, it would only receive funding for students who actually transferred up to that number. Initial implementation language of this bill also proposed "closing the open door" because it was no longer tenable to finance.

Fortunately, the language was been removed after a series of intense legislative work sessions, a harbinger of what is in store this year in many critical areas, such as funding, role, mission, accountability and governance-did I say funding?

A fourth effort is being led by Governor Locke, who has made education a top priority for his remaining time as Governor. He has committed Washington state to be one of four pilot states in a national study that will make recommendations on role/mission, resource allocation and governance of higher education statewide. This study will assess higher education needs (what to offer and how much) based on demography and citizen focus groups throughout the state; conduct a performance review that examines how well resources are allotted to be in alignment with public needs; and an evaluation of how effectively the system is governed to fulfill those needs. This study is being conducted by three prestigious groups -the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, the Education Commission for the States, and National Center for Higher Education Management Systems.

I personally think this effort has the greatest likelihood of producing change, because it carries the credibility of respected organizations and its recommendations will be data-driven and benchmarked to performance measures at other states. However, which of these efforts will take precedence remains to be seen.

Two things are certain: Higher education is under review. And, without money and with the perceived need for change, the outcomes will be either more regulation or redistribution of current resources or some combination of these, unless there is some significant new thinking.

The good news is that there is something new afoot. Several groups are coming together, that include the Governors Gardner and Evans and other education advocates groups, to determine the feasibility of a major public reinvestment act in P-20 education through a new tax plan. It is estimated that a new tax proposal might be taken to the legislature as early as January. To prevail, this effort would take significant statewide grass root support. If the proposal succeeds, there would be significant new revenues to invest in education at all levels. At a minimum, the measure will focus public debate about the state's investment in higher education and surface issues about capacity, responsiveness, and competitiveness. We will stay tuned to these developments.

The challenges we confront are not only external. Unfortunately, there is not a unified front within the higher ed community. In fact, we see some edginess developing between community colleges and universities that reflects the differences in our cultures, missions, and values. It is becoming apparent in discussions about the distribution of resources, tuition policy, and enrollment practices. We realize the importance of being unified, especially if we seek expanded public support, and we are working to find common ground, but it is tedious.

The most severe tension stems from the historical pattern of resource distribution. Higher education funding is based upon enrollment. The universities contend that the historical enrollment patterns haven't worked and it is time to change. They point out that community and technical colleges receive 60 percent of all of the state's higher education enrollments, which makes Washington state second in the nation in community college enrollments; yet, the state is almost dead last nationally in baccalaureate production. Universities are proposing that more enrollments should go for BA production.

The enrollment community and technical colleges receive is not all directed at baccalaureate production. The redistribution argument seems to ignore workforce and developmental education missions that are also crucial for the state. And, most importantly, by agreement, community colleges only receive 30 percent of all incoming undergraduate slots at universities; and, our students produce 41 percent of all of the state's BAs. We are very successful in transfer education.

The universities' argument is gaining ground with the business community who want greater BA production in the state and, frankly, I would agree that we need more. The problem is not how resources are distributed-it is our very success in turning out more qualified transfer students and university Juniors that need funded upper division enrollment slots in order to get the BAs they seek.

And, upper division access is not the only enrollment needed in the state. Just this morning, I looked at our figures. We are substantially over our state enrollment target with about 3000 students on waitlists. Demography shows dramatic surges for the next five to seven years in populations we know will create more demand for our services. The real resource question is how the state will deal with all of these burgeoning needs.

The other resource argument of universities is that the state should fund research as it is in other states. They contend that Washington is losing competitiveness by not providing state funds for research, because research is an important economic engine in creation of new jobs in emerging fields like biotechnology or life sciences that have long-term impact on the state's economy. This is certainly a compelling argument. But, community colleges too make substantial contributions in keeping Washington's workforce working. Both needs are vital to the state's economy.

These arguments focus on growing needs for limited funds among the segments of higher education.

The second area of concern is our respective views concerning tuition and affordability. Our university colleagues, especially at the research institutions, mindful that public financing is falling, have asked for differential tuition-setting authority. They expect to pass on more educational costs to students, especially in high demand areas, and are requesting higher amounts of financial aid to offset the sticker shock, especially for low income students. This is the high-tuition, high-financial aid model.

This may well work for them; however, research shows this model freezes out many students, especially students in the lower economic brackets. We believe the greatest contributor to access is an education that is perceived to be affordable. Historically, the legislature has adopted a single statewide tuition policy. We will want to monitor developments on this front to ensure that students are not frozen out of higher education, due to cost.

The third area, enrollment policies, stands to have he most significant impact on BCC. In recent years community colleges and the universities have relied upon over enrollment to meet the growing demand for enrollment, since the state has had inadequate resources to fund new enrollments, and it is becoming a very controversial issue. Last year, our system over enrolled by 10,400 FTEs and the universities by 6,600.

Research universities have announced they will no longer over enroll because it produced too many undergraduate students competing for too few seats at the upper division level; and, the practice diluted their base funding. On the other hand, many within our system argue that Washington state residents need to have educational access, and we should accommodate as many students as we can, rather than have them confronted by a closed door.

While limiting enrollment may be a proper approach for the universities, the strategy has significantly complicated issues for the community colleges. The UW, our primary transfer partner, over enrolled more freshmen two years ago which broadened the pyramid of enrollment that funnels into very limited upper division capacity. This pressure, when combined with community college transfer students, created a huge backlog of eligible transfer students and university Juniors waiting for limited spots. As you have probably learned from local media, there is now a two to three quarter backlog of transfer students.

Going forward, the UW will keep the same number of spots and will honor their proportionality agreement with us to take 30 percent of all eligible transfers but will begin to admit them on a competitive rather than a first-come, first served basis. How students will react to this change is yet to be determined.

Since the UW is our largest transfer partner, it is imperative that they continue to take our students in the numbers and proportionality they have before, or the credibility of the community college transfer program and our program is on the line. Moreover, if the universities don't build more upper division capacity, especially in high demand areas, this will further exacerbate the problem of baccalaureate production which business claims is so important to the state's economy.

The stand, especially of the UW and WSU about taking any over enrollment, has placed incredible focus on the practice for all of higher education. The legislature felt that this was being used as a lever for more funding and placed in budget notes this past year that colleges and universities should seek a sustainable number of enrollments, because they see no growth funding in the immediate future. If the practice of over enrollment is phased out, we will confront serious issues about what to stop offering and which populations should or will we and the state stop supporting.

Tuition and enrollment policies affect our core value that higher education should be both accessible and affordable to all. As the issues are becoming clearer, higher education is grappling with the appropriate positions to carry forward. It is in our interest to resolve these issues, but, bringing our values, needs and demands into alignment is challenging.

I began with the comment that a crisis is brewing in higher education. We have looked at the factors that are contributing to it externally and internally within higher education. Each issue is large and complex; and taken together create an unstable and demanding situation for us in the immediate future. Our state will undertake a comprehensive review of all of higher education this year; we have vested interests in the outcomes; and, we will be deeply immersed in all of the activities the review will spawn. I have the utmost confidence that we will get to the other side of this positively, perhaps, in an even better situation than we have now, but it will take diligence, clarity, and focus.

So, now the question is what does this mean for us this year? Why am I bringing all of this to you today? It is clear that much of this year's work will be focused outward at the same time we need to address several issues internally. I want you to understand what is happening and I seek your support for some important work that we will initiate at the college.

Attending to the various public policy discussions will be a top priority for me personally. With the help of our very capable President's Staff members, we will work to make the best contributions we can to these large and complex issues. We are fortunate to have a voice in all of the statewide policy development venues --the three legislative work groups; the Governor's education cabinet; and, the group that is pursuing a dedicated funding source for higher education. This will take time away from day-to-day college business but it is certainly crucial to our future and must be done.

Within the college we need your help, support and understanding on several key activities. Our two top internal concerns are stabilizing enrollment and the operating budget.

We have been grappling with many issues since our budget was reduced and we did not receive the enrollment growth we needed; such as: Can we absorb budget cuts and still keep quality levels the same? We've tried to do this. And, if the state is not funding enrollment, how will we serve the increasing demand for education?

BCC currently educates about 1600 FTEs above the state's target which we have done for many years. That is almost the total enrollment of Cascadia or the UW-Bothell! We recognize our strategy of over enrollment that has served us well the past twenty years may not work any more. In the past, it demonstrated our need for enrollment growth to the State Board and legislature, who responded positively with funded growth. What is new is that now there was almost no FTE growth funded this year and the legislature has indicated they do not anticipate funded growth in the foreseeable future.

Our college is oversubscribed and experiencing unmetunprecedented demand that will continue during the next decade. We are aware we cannot add indefinitely without support from the state. The collective sense among President's Staff is that we have reached capacity -- the point where we simply don't have the full-time staff required to meet the workload of the college.

Going into this year, we chose not to reduce enrollment or quality of education. These, and protection of jobs, were our primary goals as we struggled to finalize this year's smaller budget and establish enrollment levels. But we did, for the first time in our history, make a conscious effort to slow the expansion of enrollment. Our goal was to keep overall enrollment levels even with last year. This obviously has had an impact on students, as we have about 3000 students on waiting lists. Many, many students are not getting the specific classes they need and this will continue into the foreseeable future.

And, to be frank, our strategies didn't control enrollment as much as we wanted. We still experienced some growth this fall.

The other side of this picture is we have grown to depend on income beyond state support to manage our college. Our state funding is very low. It simply has not provided the college with the necessary funds to operate with high quality and effectiveness. Revenue from over enrollment and other key programs like international students and running start has permitted us to fund areas like professional development, expanded facilities, new equipment, and furnishings for new buildings, among others. Over enrollment has brought money into the college, which has helped out in hard times.

We are in a tight situation financially, on the operating side (although capital projects do continue to be funded by the state -- as you can tell by our projects. Unfortunately, we can't switch money from the capital to the operating side.) From a strictly financial perspective, we need to keep our over enrollment at current levels or experience greater budget reductions. And, we are not certain we have seen the last of budget reductions. We have some immediate unfunded liabilities coming due. We have uncertainty about our international students-enrollments and funding that could go away tomorrow depending on US foreign policy or further unrest in the world. There is also speculation that state revenues may not yet have bottomed.

We have a vested interest in over enrollment. In addition to the service it provides our community, it has helped us financially. Losing over enrollment revenue would create a markedly different college than the one we currently know.

We are addressing this right now and have identified a creative way to deal with over enrollment with the SBCTC, modeled on the UW's extension program, that will permit colleges to serve the same number of people, keep the local revenue as we have been doing, and that won't count against us as over enrollment. We will work on this until we find a solution.

We know our tight budget is going to continue for a couple of years until an economic upswing starts generating additional tax revenues. Much of the incentives and flexibility we have given up through budget reductions are going to continue awhile longer. We ask your understanding as we work to stabilize our financial footing. This means being smarter with current resources and developing new sources of revenue.

The $1.7 million reduction we took going into this year will have impacts on us. Like any family caught in a downturn, to make this year's budget we're going to have to tighten our belts, pinch pennies, and be more judicious about how we spend. It means we will need to make difficult decisions about priorities and forego some features we have grown used to, including upgraded computers every three years or spur of the moment development opportunities -to name but a few.

At the department level, we will need to evaluate each expenditure. College wide, we are implementing efficiency measures immediately, like consolidating desktop printers and instead using centralized printing to save costs. We targeted $50,000 in energy savings we must realize during the course of this year. We need to make that happen. We can make a good start by turning off computers, lights and other equipment at night. We will also form an efficiency committee to identify how we can be smarter with precious resources. In all, we will have to be very sharp financially because we won't have the flexibility and financial cushions we used to have.

Moreover, we need to look at other sources of revenue, especially as some of the college's staples, such as continuing education and international education enrollments, are financially challenged. We will start a health and wellness institute to position us for available workforce money in these fields; expand our continuing ed testing center to include new products, such as SAT testing; and we will evaluate other new revenue ideas like producing digital course materials in high demand areas and expanding our capacity in online education. Frankly, however controversial it has been, this area has the most likelihood of providing substantial help to us.

We are very lucky to be so competitive in our grantmanship. We just received a Title III grant that will provide us $300,000 each year for five years to improve student services and planning. Bravo to all of you who worked on this! We need to pursue more grants like this.

While the efforts I mentioned will help stabilize our internal financial footing and over enrollment, they do not address the enrollment pressures we will continue to experience. We will need to undertake other internal measures to work on the longer term problem.

Since public sentiment is such an important part of this discussion and since the public might be asked as early as next year to make a major reinvestment in education, we will activate intensive community relations work to ensure our community understands our mission, community contributions, enrollment demand and the impact of funding changes.

We will need to forge closer ties and find more common ground with our educational partners -- high schools and universities -- to find positive ways to fulfill students' needs in cost-effective systemic ways. BCC is already doing good work on articulated programs.

We have created several new articulation agreements with four-year colleges and universities to provide our students more options to transfer, since the University of Washington Seattle is so oversubscribed. For example, this fall we are joined by Eastern Washington University, who will offer a degree in applied technology that is articulated with our network management program and an interdisciplinary degree in social studies. We are working with other universities to build affordable BA options for our transfer students. This may be the time when the community college baccalaureate will take wings and we need to be prepared.

We need more programs like the one we are participating in with the Bellevue School District and the UW to define standards for what "college ready" means.

In short, we need to stay the course with positive programs with our educational partners; understand their challenges; and be responsive to finding beneficial solutions.

Although we do a very good job of supporting our business community, we will need to be more visible in assessing and responding to their needs. We have several strategies underway in workforce development that should yield better visibility for us in this area.

The work we began last year on the strategic planning process will position us well. Because it provides a uniform statement about who we are, what we stand for, as well as our mission and strategic goals, it becomes even dearer to us as we weather challenges this year. Not only will it inform our accrediting society about where we are headed as an institution, but it will also, more importantly, focus and guide our actions in the near future. An earlier version of the plan was distributed last spring and it has been refined this summer. You will be receiving an updated version tomorrow by email for review and comment during the next few weeks.

You may recall the strategic plan is the first step in a thee-year project for our college -reaccredidation, the educational community's stamp of approval for our programs. This year will be devoted to our self-study. Obviously, we can't afford to do anything other than our very best. To all of you who are working on it: your efforts are very much appreciated. And for all of us, when asked to do something related to accreditation, please assign it the high priority it must have. We must keep this momentum going -even as we deal with many other crucial issues.

BCC is respected by our greater community and regarded as the leading college in our state with programs of national stature. Our colleagues look to us as models and leaders in shaping the public policy agenda for the state this year. Higher education's response will be a test of character and strength for the entire system.

Needless to say, but I will any way, in these times we need to pull together as a college family and turn our attentions outward at the same time we must attend to internal business and support each other. It is not the time for us to be in any disarray within our walls that will take attention away from essential issues about higher education. It is important that we fully realize that there are large issues at stake. We know we are at our best when we come together as a community and take on large issues and challenges. This is our competitive advantage. We do things in the BCC way, which means thoughtfully and responsively beyond expectations.

As characters in this plot, we each have the choice to be a hero, supporting cast member or antagonist. I am looking for the heroes and supporting cast member in each of you. When you are called upon to undertake some of the college's work, please treat the request with the high priority it deserves and step up to the assignment with commitment. When our budget impacts hit you personally, please understand and remember that this is only temporary and in a couple of years our reserves will be replenished. When we ask you to participate in measures that contribute to efficiency, please pitch in and do your part. If you see things that will better our experience, please volunteer them to us. And most importantly, please bring fun, joy and caring into our daily work. The BCC story is in large part our life's story and we are the authors of the experience we all have.

This year, we need to be able to count on everyone's positive contributions to this chapter. The reason why BCC excels in a challenging climate is because of its people -- its faculty and staff, its volunteer leadership and community supporters. It's a matter of attitude - of belief in the importance of what we do - that has brought BCC to the forefront of community colleges over its 38-year life. This attitude has produced the individual miracles that are played out through your individual actions by the thousands on our campus each year.

We started our discussion reminding ourselves to keep our eye on the page and not on the dots. We need to remember that ours is important work in which nothing less is at issue than human potential and the welfare of our community. The best way to begin the year is to be reminded once again about the worth and value our efforts have on the people we serve. Let's take a breather and see what a few of our students have had to say about the difference we've made in their lives,

[Video]

Thanks to Rick Otte and his crew for that reflective moment. Keeping these students at the center of all we do provides the right perspective on these issues. As we begin the new school year, let our students' words inspire us to the highest quality educational experience we are able to provide. Their futures are at stake.

Conclusion

I have outlined a year of statewide higher education issues that includes revisiting and publicly reaffirming the importance of our values and mission along with addressing long-term budget, enrollment and tuition questions. Internal to the college we will complete our strategic plan and launch a comprehensive self-study for accreditation; and as well, undertake several measures to help position us positively for the future.

Although we confront serious issues, they present at the same time new possibilities and opportunities. I have no question about the outcome. The community college mission is as vital to our communities and our state as when the system was founded in the 60s. We have demonstrated our worth to society and I am confident after this period of assessment and close scrutiny our value will be reaffirmed and that we, as a college, will have understood our environment and responded to it in a positive way that bolsters our future. In fact, I look forward to the journey.

There is no reason why this chapter in BCC's future can't have a perfectly fabulous ending. Remember last year; we began with budget challenges but in terms of all we accomplished and the sort of academic and extra-curricular activities we supported, it emerged as one of the best years yet at BCC, .

The thing that needs to be constantly in our minds is the importance, the enduring significance, of our positive impact on people's lives. We must bear in mind the students whose lives we are touching daily here at BCC. That's the bottom line of all we do. We provide opportunity and the essential support for people to take the best advantage of it. I can't think of more important and personally rewarding work. We are all extremely fortunate to be part of it.

And so our story begins -- It was bright, crisp autumn day, the opening day of the 38th year of Bellevue Community College. A proud and capable academic community came together to reflect on its mission and the people it serves. Its individual members reaffirmed their commitment to their students, to each other, and to the enduring values for which they stand.

Fast forward to the end of the year and we see ourselves gathered to review the last page of this chapter of the BCC story. It reveals a splendid and fulfilling end to an invigorating year; a year of meaningful exchange, hard work tempered by humor and good will. It was a bold chapter of educational planning for the decade, filled with new possibilities, conviction and passion in reaffirming our core values; a chronicle of service and reaching out; in all, it was a year where cooperation, leadership, and satisfying accomplishment flowered, and you were part of it.

Here's to you and to a great year!