Chemeketa's President Announces Retirement

The Chemeketa board will meet Nov. 28th to lay plans for finding a new president, Ostlund

(SALEM) - “I want to have more time with family and friends,” Schuette said in her statement to Chemeketa employees and board members Friday afternoon.

“Gretchen is making the decision to retire for all the right reasons,” said Dan Ostlund, chair of the Chemeketa Board of Education. “Issues of the heart reflect the character of her leadership.”

“Chemeketa has excellent support staff that we will depend upon during the transition,” said JoAnne Beilke, another member of the board.

From 1988 until 1992 Schuette served Chemeketa as dean of Humanities, Sciences, and Learning Assistance.

Positions she has held at other institutions include superintendent of the Gresham-Barlow School District for three years, dean of distance and continuing education and director of Portland Area Programs for Oregon State University, interim commissioner for Oregon Community Colleges, and executive vice president of Mt. Hood Community College.

Schuette has served on the Oregon State Board of Higher Education since January 2004.

“Gretchen is a most skilled and knowledgeable leader,” said Ed Dodson, a member of the board. “She has exhibited a passion beyond anyone I have ever worked with. She was the right leader for the difficult economic times the college has gone through.”

“Community colleges are, in my judgment, the most productive public investment I know of,” Schuette said. “We do indeed provide a skeleton key to students, to again borrow the metaphor—a key that can open so many different doors in students’ lives, and the results are a great return on investment for individuals and for communities. I am grateful to have had a great ride as president of a wonderful college.”

I will retire at the end of June 2007, completing what will have been a ten-year working relationship with Chemeketa Community College. I want to have more time with family and friends. A few other factors also enter into the timing of my decision. But first I want to say thank you to all who have helped me in my efforts to do the best I could for Chemeketa. Thanks also to those who will continue to help me over the next six or seven months.

I love my job. I love you my colleagues. But I’ve made my decision, and I made it in the month or so before the November 7th election.

My decision was not—and I didn’t want it to be—impacted by anything on that ballot. So I made up my mind, although I’m not sure I’ve made up my heart. That will take time.

Mitigating unsuccessfully, however powerfully, against my decision to retire is my love of Chemeketa and my regard for the mission of the college and how superbly the people of Chemeketa achieve it.

I will miss the ever changing, highly motivated, and deserving students. I will miss board members and other colleagues bound together for the cause—opportunity for all in our community.

Community colleges are, in my judgment, the most productive public investment. We do indeed provide a skeleton key to students, to again borrow the metaphor—a key that can open so many different doors in students’ lives, and the results are a great return on investment for individuals and for communities. I am grateful to have had a great ride as president of a wonderful community college.

Over the last five-plus years, we were Chemeketa. My version of our short history includes mistakes and shortcomings but also these accomplishments.

We responded to 9/11 and continue to act to be a place of peace and an important gathering place in the swift running waters of national and state turmoil.

We invested in diversity leadership development and stayed true to our shared belief in the dignity of all who study or work at Chemeketa.

With as much class and wisdom as we could muster, we weathered a precipitous recession, coupled with significant cost increases, and yet we balanced budgets, bridging multimillion dollar gaps each year between expected revenues and expenses.

With creative and determined responses, we continued and strengthened prudent practices, reduced spending by millions of dollars each year, and relied on the commitment and talent of our employees.

We faced up to the worst case scenario for decision makers who believe in the value of keeping college affordable, having to recommend and approve regrettable fee and tuition increases in order to hold on to the value of access to excellent education throughout our community.

We kept our central commitment to a quality teaching and learning environment—and we kept our commitment to a quality work environment.

We sustained our focus on student support and student activities, while preserving a comprehensive mission and service throughout a large geography.

We cherished working with students and with student leadership. In so many ways, we “took a stand” for each student’s journey and, along the way, worked to reflect that commitment in our new alma mater.

We recommitted as a college to our community and worked to reflect our promises to our community in a statement of strategic intent.

We continued to be the most important force in our region for adult literacy and college preparedness and called out the goal of 100% adult literacy in our district.

We opened wide the door to all levels of college. This effort included strengthening our use of data in planning, budgeting, and continuous improvement.

We are better positioned for significant and sustained change that I know will drive increased student participation and persistence.

We strengthened and expanded programs with our district high schools. We effected significant development in online and hybrid delivery of courses and programs.

We brought new four-year college and university partners to our community, allowing people in our district greater access to baccalaureate degrees without leaving their families and their jobs.

As do other educational institutions, agencies and businesses in our local region and throughout the state know Chemeketa to be a quality partner. We have well leveraged our resources through partnerships and through other resource development efforts.

We served over 50,000 individuals each year, and we supported the economy of our community with technical training, workforce development, and business support. We identified the economic impact of the college on our community and shared that information broadly.

Chemeketa staff expanded the recognition in our community and throughout the state of the positive contribution of community colleges. We provided leadership for local and state-level initiatives to support more Oregonians getting more education, and today in Oregon there is a strengthened commitment to ongoing student-centered improvements across universities, community colleges, and schools.

For example, we have greater assurance that community college work completed anywhere in the state will be linked with and count at universities and also that more high school age students will have access to college.

We worked with others, successfully, to garner greater state financial aid for community college students. We increased our college foundation’s scholarship funds and raised each year about $100,000 for childcare scholarships at our signature fundraising event.

Together college staff and board members held high the principle that community college students throughout the state should have equitable state per-student funding, and the State Board of Education, at what we hope remains the end of the “distribution fund wars,” upheld that ethical position.

We nurtured the critical board/president relationship, working well together for the good of the college, and Board of Education members provided extraordinary leadership in what has been the most challenging period for college finances to date.

We completed our once-in-a-decade accreditation self-study and visit with flying colors, receiving kudos for our work with partners, for our outreach in the community, for our stewardship of public resources, and for our innovative spirit.

We took a capital funds request to our community and, in so doing, strengthened the understanding of the college in our community. Chemeketa will be back another day with a capital request, and we built a positive foundation for that return engagement.

We took great care of our facilities and grounds. We provided quality services, including bookstore and food services.

Negotiations, agreements, and differences with classified, adjunct faculty, full-time faculty, and exempt employees were conducted in a respectful manner, with attention to both employee interests and the long-term health of the college.

Why retire? I wish to spend more time with my children, my grandchildren, and my dear Rick . . . and also with close friends.

I have been working hard, the only way I know how, since my children were toddlers, some thirty-five years. I’ve missed much of the childhood of my older grandchildren and am painfully aware of how quickly my youngest grandchild, too, will grow up without me having significant time to know her.

The challenges facing parents argue for more involvement and help from grandparents when possible. Rick and I would relish that involvement and will offer that help. I would love to have more time to re-engage with my sister and brother and their immediate families as well.

While Rick, who has been retired for going on seven years, has displayed great patience, he and I would like to share more than a few weeks of vacation, short weekends, and an hour or two on most other days.

And, dear friends, I look forward to our time together in the future, when I don’t have a work problem or work task sitting on my shoulder distracting me from you.

Life is short; that’s a lesson I learned at age 13 when my father died. It’s probably high time I started a different phase in my life, one in which I can find new ways to demonstrate that I have indeed learned that lesson.

By retiring at this time I hope I can contribute to an effective transition to a new president.

The Chemeketa bond measure failed in the November 7th vote, yet we know we have broad and deep community support.

Over 63,000 people voted for the measure; had fewer than 1 percent of votes shifted, we would have won the day. We did by far the best of the 5 community colleges with measures on the ballot.

The circumstances facing the college will require the College Board to again request capital resources, as I mentioned above.

The passage of a bond measure one day will provide critical funds with which to shelter operating resources for the essential mission of Chemeketa.

Revenue from such a bond measure can cushion the college for any tough sledding ahead, just as our sound long-range financial planning and management have done to some extent over the last arduous five and a half years.

In my view, the best next opportunity for a bond measure request to the public is the general election in two years. So, retiring this year can allow a new president sufficient time to establish the relationships in the community and at the college that would be critical components of a successful request.

Further, now is as a good a time as I can envision in the next several years to “hand over” the college. We have a strong board and administration. Strong employees throughout the college are fueled by their devotion to students.

While capital resources are limited, we do have a renewed commitment to changes in how the college operates in the arenas of retention, recruitment, and associated marketing. These changes will support student success and revenue generation in our challenging resource environment.

In addition, today we have hope for increased state revenues for community colleges.

Most important in my mind, decisions made in the next couple of years will set the course for the next decade. I believe it is best for a new president to be in place within the next year in order to provide leadership that can extend through to seeing the consequences of those decisions.

I wish the Chemeketa Board and all my colleagues who remain in the family of Chemeketa the best. Because of you, we met the challenges facing us since the fall of 2001. You have been the world to me. I wish a new president the support of board members and colleagues and a well of energy to continue the good fight.