Lane Community College
Lane Community College is a public two-year college in Eugene, United States with additional facilities in downtown Eugene, Cottage Grove, the Lane Aviation Academy at Eugene Airport. Lane serves more than 26,000 credit and non-credit students annually in a 5,000 square-mile service district, including most of Lane County as well as individual school districts in Benton and Douglas counties. In 1964 Lane County citizens voted overwhelmingly to establish Lane as a comprehensive community college; the new college was able to build upon successful traditions of the Eugene Vocational School, established in 1938 to provide manual education and training to high school students and unemployed adults. Lane's first board of education met in November 1964, with an agenda to hire faculty and staff, create curriculum, find classroom and office space; the college became a member of the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges in August 1965. According to the college's narrative history, "The first classes were held on September 20, 1965, at facilities at 200 North Monroe in Eugene.
During that first year 1,500 students registered at the college." Oregon's Governor Mark Hatfield presented the college charter in October 1965, voters passed a 5-year serial levy to support initial construction. Oregon Senator Wayne L. Morse presided as keynote speaker at the groundbreaking in January 1967. Local resident Wilfred Gonyea had donated 105.81 acres off 30th Avenue in 1965 for the main campus, added more acreage in 1967. Two other residents, Joe Romania and Lew Williams, donated additional land for the campus in 1972, the same year Mr. and Mrs. James Christensen donated land south of Florence for a facility there. In 1966 voters had passed a $9.6 million bond to construct the main campus in southeast Eugene, where classes began two years later. In May 1968, voters approved a $1.5 million permanent real estate tax base for operating costs, continuing the county's widespread support for the college. Oregon Governor Tom McCall opened the new campus in 1969 by cutting a log with a chainsaw.
Lane became a founding member of the League for Innovation in the Community College in 1973. Centers in Florence and Cottage Grove opened in 1976 and 1977; the college purchased land in 1983 to permanently house the Cottage Grove center. In 1979, Lane College was the host of the USA Cross Country Championships. Oregon voters passed Measure 5 capping property taxes in 1990; that same election, Lane County voters approved a new property tax base for Lane Community College. Because the statewide measure would "equalize" funding for Oregon's community colleges, the resulting funding uncertainties presented a dilemma Community College Commissioner Mike Holland called "a cosmic joke." The College lobbied for its new tax base, envisioned a return to better times, but President Jerry Moskus observed, "there were signs neither Lane nor Oregon would be the same."The northern spotted owl controversy and the nationwide recession of the early 1990s brought displaced timber workers to the College, after the dire 1992 forecast of a crippling recession in which President George Bush predicted, "we'll be up to our neck in owls, every millworker will be out of a job."
The New York Times reported, "At Lane Community College, the nation's largest center for retraining displaced woodworkers, nearly 9 of every 10 people going through the program have found new jobs, at an average wage of $9.02 an hour, about $1 an hour less than the average timber industry wage."By 2002, years of state funding shortfalls and enrollment growth required drastic action to reduce the College budget by 7 percent. The college eliminated seven degree and certificate programs, raised tuition by $10 per credit, a 26 percent increase. In succeeding years, some personnel layoffs were avoided by leaving vacant positions unfilled, but there were reductions in classified staff. Though the College invested capital funds in new construction and renovations in the first decade of this millennium, the operating budget has continued to be a challenge; the College predicted the shortfall for fiscal year 2015 to be $12.7 million, according to a local newspaper, "after a precipitous enrollment drop.
The student body grew by 40 percent during the Great Recession and has retreated since." In May 2014, a 5 percent tuition increase was approved to meet the deficit, meaning tuition increased 172 percent since 2000 — from $36 per credit to $98 per credit. Compounding the 2015 budget challenges, the federal loan default rate of ex-LCC students approached 30 percent in 2013, the threshold that could cause the federal government to "bar LCC students from getting federal grants." 73 percent of Lane's students take out student loans. Lane is governed by a Board of Education consisting of seven publicly elected, unpaid members who have responsibility for establishing policies and overseeing programs and services of the College. Lane is one of seventeen Oregon community colleges authorized by the Oregon legislature and regulated by the Oregon Office of Community Colleges and Workforce Development. Lane Community College offers two-year transfer Associate degrees, career-technical applied associate degrees and certificates, pre-college classes that focus on reading, writing and study skills.
State-approved programs offer students preparation for employment in 50 career areas: health careers such as nursing and paramedicine, flight technology, culinary arts and hotel and restaurant management and diesel mechanics, manufacturing and computer careers, graphic design and multimedia careers, exercise science, as well as criminal justice and human relations careers. Gr
Hillsboro Intermodal Transit Facility
Hillsboro Intermodal Transit Facility is a parking garage with extensive bicycle facilities located in Hillsboro in the U. S. state of Oregon. Located next to Tuality Community Hospital, the facility has nearly 800 parking spaces, including 13 that have charging stations for electric vehicles, as well as 35 secured spaces for bicycles that include showers and lockers. Opened in 2010, HITF has 20,000 square feet of commercial space, used by Portland Community College’s Hillsboro Center; the $16 million facility was a joint project between the city, Pacific University, Tuality Healthcare. A parking garage was part of Pacific University’s original plan for the Health Professions Campus, by September 2007 the city and school had received commitments for $7 million in funding out of a planned total price tag of $16 million. At that time, officials hoped to begin construction in 2009 on a four-level structure. In April 2009, the project was awarded $2.34 million in federal stimulus funds. In February 2009, the city approved a contract with Skanska USA for construction of the project with a bid of $13.1 million.
Officials hoped to begin construction that spring, though the city still needed to find $4 million to fund the project. In August 2009, a groundbreaking ceremony was held at the construction site, featuring U. S. Senator Ron Wyden, Mayor Jerry Willey, state representative David Edwards, Pacific University president Lesley Hallick, among others. Construction had begun at the time of the ceremony; the city hoped to attain LEED silver certification for the project due to its environmentally friendly aspects, including solar power and space for bicycles. As of August 2009, the facility was expected to cost $16 million, with $7 million in funding coming from the city in the form of bonds backed by the lottery, $4.2 million in federal funds, about $1.6 million from Pacific, the donation of the land by Tuality, valued at around $1.6 million. Hillsboro would own the facility, with Portland Community College signed on as a tenant for the first-floor commercial space. Construction was scheduled to begin in late July 2009 on what had been a parking lot for the hospital.
At that time the project had secured all funding needed, due to lower costs caused by the recession, the construction was to be completed in a single phase instead of several phases as had been planned. Besides the parking spaces, the project called for Bike Central, 15 electric vehicle charging stations, 19,000 square feet of commercial space on the ground level. Additionally, the roof was to include solar panels and wind turbines at a time. On August 31, 2010, the facility opened with a ceremony that celebrated both its opening and the opening of the second building at the neighboring Health Professions Campus. Dignitaries at the event included Hillsboro mayor Willey, state senator Bruce Starr, state representatives David Edwards and Chuck Riley; the facility opened in September. PCC moved its Hillsboro Education Center from near the Hatfield Government Center MAX station into the HITF in September 2010, renamed it the Hillsboro Center. An indoor bicycle facility with secured parking for bicycles and showers opened in October 2010.
In March 2011, the project was named one of nine finalists for the Daily Journal of Commerce’s top construction project for public buildings in the $15 to $50 million range, with the University of Oregon’s PK Park listed as another finalist in that category. The facility came in third in its category; the facility is located between Baseline and Washington streets and between Seventh and Eighth avenues in Downtown Hillsboro, a half block away from the Eighth Avenue MAX station. The thirteen ChargePoint charging stations at the HITF are from Coulomb Technologies and include features that allow users to reserve times, find open stations, be notified when a charge is complete, all remotely. Power for the charging stations comes in part from the solar panel array situated on the roof of the structure; these panels came from SolarWorld’s local plant in the city. The concrete-and-steel structure has a brick veneer and stands five stories tall, with the fifth floor uncovered. HITF has 794 parking spaces total, as well as nearly 20,000-square-foot of commercial space on the ground floor.
Skanska USA built the structure for the city of Hillsboro, while LRS Architects did the design work and Catena Consulting Engineers provided engineering on the project. The facility was a joint project between the city, Pacific University, Tuality Healthcare. Located inside the commercial space are BikeStation Hillsboro and Portland Community College’s Hillsboro Center. Hillsboro Center occupies 9,500 square feet of the commercial space and serves about 500 credit-seeking students each term and an additional 200 students learning English as a second language. BikeStation Hillsboro contains 35 secured bicycle lockers and lockers, a bicycle repair space that provides tools in about 1,200 square feet of space on the ground floor. Access to BikeStation requires a paid membership, with the program operated by Mobis Transportation. Media related to Hillsboro Intermodal Transit Facility at Wikimedia Commons City Newsletter SKANSKA
TriMet
TriMet, more formally known as the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, is a public agency that operates mass transit in a region that spans most of the Portland metropolitan area in the U. S. state of Oregon. Created in 1969 by the Oregon legislature, the district replaced five private bus companies that operated in the three counties. TriMet started operating a light rail system named MAX in 1986, which has since been expanded to 5 lines that now cover 59.7 miles, as well as a commuter rail line in 2009. It provides the operators and maintenance personnel for the City of Portland-owned Portland Streetcar system. In addition to rail lines, TriMet provides the region's bus system, as well as LIFT paratransit service. There are 688 buses in TriMet's fleet. In 2018, the entire system averaged 310,000 rides per weekday and operates buses and trains between the hours of 5 a.m. and 2 a.m. TriMet's annual budget for FY 2018 is $525.8 million, with 30% of resources coming from a district-wide payroll tax and 10% from fares.
The district is overseen by a seven-person board of directors appointed by the state's governor. In 2014, the agency has around 2,500 employees. TriMet is "a municipal corporation of the State of Oregon", with powers to tax, issue bonds, enact police ordinances and is governed by a seven-member board of directors appointed by the Governor of Oregon, it has its own boundary, which encompasses an area of about 533 square miles. The TriMet district serves portions of the counties of Multnomah and Clackamas. For more than 30 years the agency called itself Tri-Met, but it formally dropped the hyphen from its name in 2002, as part of a new corporate identity strategy involving a redesigned logo and new color scheme for its vehicles and other media. TriMet was formed in 1969 after disputes between the Portland city council and Rose City Transit Company, the private company that operated the bus system serving the city; the new public agency was created by an ordinance of the Portland city council, under provisions of a law enacted by the 1969 Oregon Legislature, took over all of Rose City Transit's service and fleet effective December 1, 1969.
Bus service in the suburban portions of the metropolitan area was operated by four smaller private companies which had a common union and were collectively known as the "Blue Bus" lines: Portland Stages, Tualatin Valley Buses, Intercity Buses and Estacada-Molalla Stages. These were taken over by TriMet on September 6, 1970. Eighty-eight buses owned by the four suburban companies were transferred to TriMet, but many were found to be in poor condition and the TriMet board soon took action to replace them with new buses; as of July 2018, TriMet operates a total of 688 buses on 85 routes, 145 MAX light rail cars on five lines, 253 LIFT paratransit vehicles. Each of the five MAX and 12 of the bus lines are designated as "Frequent Service" lines, scheduled to operate at headways of 15 minutes or less for most of the service day. TriMet connects to several other mass transit systems: C-Tran, the public transit district for Vancouver and Clark County, Washington Canby Area Transit, the public transit service for Canby and rural areas south of Oregon City along Highway 99E Cherriots, the public transit service for Salem and Keizer.
This connection is at the Wilsonville Station of TriMet's WES Commuter Rail rail line. Columbia County Rider, the public transit service for Scappoose, St. Helens, Columbia County Portland Streetcar, a circulator streetcar service in downtown Portland and neighborhoods near downtown Sandy Area Metro, the public transit service for Sandy SMART, the public transit service for Wilsonville South Clackamas Transportation District, the public transit service for Molalla and rural areas south of Oregon City along Highway 213 Tillamook County Transportation District, the public transit service for Tillamook and Tillamook County Yamhill County Transit Area, the public transit service for McMinnville and Yamhill County TriMet links to various local shuttle services operated by the following: Ride Connection, which serves Banks, King City and North Plains. Long-range transportation planning for the metropolitan area is provided by Metro, an elected regional government. Metro has statutory authority to take over the day-to-day operations of TriMet, but has never exercised that power, as past studies of such a merger have found it to be problematic.
TriMet runs the MAX Light Rail system, contracts with Portland and Western Railroad to operate the WES Commuter Rail line. Fares on MAX are the same as TriMet bus fares, fare collection uses a proof-of-payment system with ticket vending machines at each station. Fare inspectors patrol the system randomly. Incidents of violence on the system have led to calls for more security, some have argued that more thorough checking of fares would improve riders' overall feeling of safety; the TransitTracker system uses satellite tracking on buses and sensors in the MAX tracks to predict arrival times at stops and stations. Additiona
Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is a science and technology museum in Portland, United States. It contains three auditoriums, including a large-screen theatre and exhibition halls with a variety of hands-on permanent exhibits focused on natural sciences and technology. Transient exhibits span a wider range of disciplines. Beginning in 1903, odd artifacts were displayed in hallways and alcoves in Portland City Hall arranged by Colonel L. L. Hawkins; when the collection was evicted in 1936, about 12,000 artifacts were stored throughout the city. On November 5, 1944, the Oregon Museum Foundation was founded with the mission of establishing an Oregon Museum of History and Industry, it displayed its first collection of natural history objects at the Portland Hotel. Subsequent small exhibits occurred around town to generate interest and donations. In 1949, a house at 908 NE Hassalo was donated to establish the museum. Within a year, the Pacific Northwest's first public planetarium opened in a dome on the front lawn.
By 1955, OMSI's annual attendance had grown to 25,000. The need for expansion led to volunteers building a new site at Washington Park, completing the original goal of a hands-on museum; this opened to the public on August 3, 1958, following a formal dedication by the governor on June 7. A planetarium was again included; the new building at the southwest corner of what was Hoyt Park was located adjacent to the then-new site of the Portland Zoo, which began a one-year phased move in the same month as the new OMSI opened. The two attractions remained neighbors, sharing a parking lot, until 1992; the planetarium at the Washington Park site was a 90-seat facility housed in a temporary dome, but in 1967 it was replaced by a larger, 142-seat facility in a distinctive dodecahedron building equipped with a new projector. By the mid-1980s, 600,000 people per year were visiting the building, designed for only 100,000. Expansion at the Washington Park site was deemed infeasible, in 1986 it was announced that the museum would move to a new location on the east bank of the Willamette River, where a much larger building would be constructed.
Property that included the historic Station L power plant was donated by Portland General Electric, building construction was paid for by a fundraising campaign. In 1992, OMSI opened at the new site; the construction integrated the existing PGE turbine building and included the creation of a 330-seat OMNIMAX theater. The facility includes a 200-seat planetarium with Digistar 3 technology. In 2004 the Turbine Hall was closed from September through November for renovations in which the Discovery Space and Technology Lab changed places and a new Inventors Ballroom was added. Added were a small stage area for public exhibit demonstrations and a bridge connecting a new metal staircase with the mezzanine exhibits; the museum started planning for an expansion of the facility in 2006. In 2008, OMSI began finalizing the plans for the expansion, estimated to cost about $500 million and would double the size of the museum, they began working to secure the funds for the expansion the next year, but decided to hold off on the plans in 2010 after the poor economy had made it difficult to try and raise funds for the project.
The OMNIMAX dome theater closed in September 2013 for conversion into a conventional flat-screen movie theater, not IMAX but still has an extra-large screen, about four stories tall. Renamed the Empirical Theater, it reopened in December 2013. OMSI has five different specialized exhibit halls, a planetarium, a submarine exhibit; the USS Blueback was purchased by OMSI in February 1994. This submarine appeared in the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October before being towed to its present location, a pier adjacent to the museum, it was opened to the public on May 15, 1994, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in September 2008. The propeller is a National Submarine Memorial located outside of the main museum area, beside the Eastbank Esplanade; the submarine is available for daily guided tours and sleep overs. The Featured Exhibit Hall is used for temporary exhibits created by OMSI or brought in from museums around the world. Past exhibits have included "Grossology", "Giants of the Gobi", "A T-rex named Sue", "CSI, The Experience".
Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds 3, opened on June 7, 2007, closed on October 7, 2007. By late September 2007, 300,000 people had seen Body Worlds 3, setting the record as OMSI's most visited traveling exhibit. In September 2015, OMSI hosted The National Guitar Museum's exhibition, "GUITAR: The Instrument That Rocked The World." The Turbine Hall is named for the large retired steam turbine from its days as a PGE power plant. It features exhibits about engineering, physics and space travel; the Turbine Hall has two floors. On the main floor are the large exhibits and enrichment areas. On the mezzanine there are smaller exhibits; the Innovation Station includes hands-on exhibits related to invention. Laboratories for physics, chemistry and laser holography are connected to the Turbine Hall; the Chemistry Lab is the first hands-on wet chemistry laboratory in the nation. There are six stations that allow visitors to learn about chemical interactions by participating in experiments that share a common theme.
Themes rotate weekly and include the chemistry of toys, the nature of matter, environmental chemistry, industrial chemistry, chemical reactions, ev
Southwestern Oregon Community College
Southwestern Oregon Community College is a college in Coos Bay, United States. It is Oregon's oldest community college, founded in 1961; the college has about 14,500 students annually and has 69 full-time faculty and 275 part-time instructors. As of 2008, students from several other countries and states have attended this community college. One thing that sets Southwestern Oregon apart from other community colleges is that the Coos Bay campus offers apartment-style student housing. Founded in 1961, the college served Coos County and western Douglas County. In 1995, Curry County joined the district. List of Oregon community colleges Official website
Washington County Museum
Washington County Museum is a history museum located in Washington County, United States, at the Rock Creek campus of Portland Community College, north of Beaverton, Oregon. From 2012 to 2017, its public exhibit space was located in downtown Hillsboro, before it was moved back to PCC, its pre-2012 location and where the museum's research facility had been located. Opened in 1975, the museum is operated by the Washington County Historical Society with a mission of preserving the history of the area; the museum's site at PCC's Rock Creek Campus includes a research library and is home to the original Washington County Jail built in 1853. In the 1930s, local historian Albert E. Tozier donated his collection of artifacts, books and other items to the county historical society. Beginning in 1939, the artifacts were displayed at Hillsboro's Carnegie Library. In 1956, the Washington County Historical Society was incorporated. In 1962, the society looked at using Shute Park as a possible home for their museum, temporarily moved their collections to the park's pavilion.
In 1975 the county decided to start a formal history museum. From 1975 to 1987, Washington County operated the museum. During that time the museum was in downtown Oregon, at the Heidel Home. In 1982, a new museum was built at the Portland Community College campus at Rock Creek, it opened in January 1983. In September 1987 the Washington County Historical Society took over operations at the museum. In 2007, the museum began a $1.7 million expansion of the facility to more than double the size of the museum. The museums annual fundraiser featured Oregon State Beavers basketball coach Craig Robinson as the master of ceremonies in 2009 and raised around $90,000 for the museum. In 2012, the museum moved into a space at the Hillsboro Civic Center, in a return to downtown Hillsboro, with the first exhibits at the new location opening in November 2012; the new space covered 12,400 square feet on the second floor in the commercial portion of the center. After signing a fifteen-year lease, the museum was set to complete $1.5 million in improvements to both the new space and the former location at PCC.
At the time of the opening of the Civic Center space, museum officials said a lot of work to prepare the new site for the regular exhibits remained to be undertaken, that it was to be 2014 before all of the exhibits were moved from PCC to downtown Hillsboro, with the then-new space in downtown to be used for temporary, special exhibits in the meantime. One of the first of these was a traveling NASA exhibit of the Hubble Space Telescope; the former museum building at PCC underwent renovations in 2014–2015, continued in use as a repository for the county archives and an historical research facility. After the departure of the exhibit Hubble Space Telescope: New Views of the Universe in May 2013, a new featured exhibit on the history of the development of the Silicon Forest in Washington County was installed, opening in April 2014. An exhibit exploring the history of the Bracero Program was a featured exhibit. To coincide with the inaugural season of the Hillsboro Hops minor league baseball team, the museum opened an exhibit in June 2013 spotlighting the history of baseball in the county.
The museum fired director Sam Shogren in June 2014. The museum closed for several weeks in February 2015 to retrofit exhibit walls for seismic upgrades. In September 2017, the museum's board voted to leave the Hillsboro Civic Center location in downtown and move its exhibits back to PCC Rock Creek; the increase in attendance that the 2012 move to downtown Hillsboro – a higher-profile, more accessible location – had been expected to generate failed to materialize. The museum closed permanently at the Hillsboro Civic Center in September and is scheduled to reopen at PCC Rock Creek on October 25, 2017; the museum received 5,000 visitors annually at the PCC Rock Creek campus location's 5,000-square-foot facility. When located at the Hillsboro Civic Center, the museum operated a small store, selling books about local history, historical toys, an assortment of other small gift items; the PCC Rock Creek location is the Robert L. Benson Research Library with over 25,000 images, more than 1,400 maps, over 500 books along with other historical records and newspapers.
The Rock Creek location serves as the collection storage facility housing over 40,000 artifacts and items of historical significance to the County's history, is open by appointment only. On exhibit at the museum's PCC Rock Creek site is the original Washington County Jail built in 1853; this structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places from 1986 until 2008. Located at the county fairgrounds, the structure was rehabilitated and moved to the museum in 2004; the 10-foot by 16-foot jailhouse was located inside the museum, but was moved outside when the museum was expanded in 2007. Other artifacts in the collections range from everyday items such as sewing machines, to a wedding dress of a local prominent family; the museum's other exhibits include This Kalapuya Land that focuses on the Native Americans of the area, Washington County in a Nutshell that features artifacts from throughout the county's history, a changing exhibit along with visiting collections. Visiting exhibits have included Oregon is Indian Country from the Oregon Historical Society, among others.
The museum hosted an annual plowing event named the Draft Horse Plowing Exhibition to demonstrate farming before mechanized agriculture. However, the event has moved to Champoeg State Park. Washington County Museum educates the local community on the history of the county including use of a mobile
Michael Dembrow
Michael E. Dembrow is an American Democratic politician from the US state of Oregon representing District 23 in the Oregon Senate. Before his appointment to the Oregon Senate, Dembrow served in the Oregon House of Representatives serving District 45. Dembrow an English instructor at Portland Community College, served on Governor Ted Kulongoski's State Board of Higher Education; the Oregon League of Conservation Voters and Willamette Week endorsed Dembrow during the 2008 legislative election. According to Dembrow's official site, he is a former English instructor at Portland Community College, was President of the PCC faculty union for sixteen years, was appointed to the State Board of Education in 2007. In 1991, Dembrow helped to create the Cascade Festival of African Films. Dembrow earned an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Connecticut and his Master's degree in Comparative Literature from Indiana University. In 2009, Dembrow and Representative Chuck Riley introduced House Bill 2578, a proposal which required towers to contact property owners or tenants before towing.
The bill allowed the vehicle owner to move their vehicle "without fees beyond the initial hookup", requires that landlords display parking rules. Dembrow and his wife, Catherine or "Kiki", have one son, Nikolai C. Dembrow, one daughter, Tatyana Janine Dembrow. Dembrow has completed the Portland Marathon multiple times. According to Willamette Week, Dembrow is Jewish. 76th Oregon Legislative Assembly Official campaign site Healthcare Workforce Development
