College tops $700,000 for new building

College President Jane Karas announced Monday that Flathead Valley Community College’s nursing/health building campaign has topped $700,000 in gifts and donations.

“We hope to reach $1 million by June 1,” Karas said at the regular March board of trustees meeting.

The college foundation launched the campaign to go with a $4 million gift from the Broussard family to build the Rebecca Chaney Broussard Center for Nursing and Health Science.

The Broussard donation requires that the community provide $1 million for the center that will house allied health programs as well as a student health clinic.

In other business, the board reviewed the results of its self-evaluation. Chairman Robert Nystuen said members scored the majority of 45 issues stated as positives between 4.6 to 4.8 which indicates agree to strongly agree.

All strongly agreed that board meetings were run in a fair, efficient and business-like manner and that a climate of mutual trust and support exists between board and president. Statements about board member orientation and active participation in growth of Lincoln County Campus received scores in the 3 range which indicated “no opportunity to observe or don’t know.”

Nystuen said the best scores were in areas of setting policy and allowing the administration to carry out the policies. The board also rated itself at 4.8 out of five in supporting the development of students as the most important focus of the college.

Nystuen suggested that the board work for more communication between committee members and examine the established orientation process for improvements. Karas said the board has an established protocol for orienting new members but should consider the mentor idea.

Overall, Nystuen said the self-evaluation paints a positive picture of the operation of the board of trustees and college.

He noted recent success stories:

• The high numbers of high school students enrolled in Running Start.

• The hundreds of dislocated workers retrained by the college.

• The many new and successful programs and events such as Scholars, culinary arts and the lecture series.

“By and large, what I see is that we allow Jane and the administration to do their jobs and support them with the resources they need,” Nystuen said.

He added that this evaluation is one of many things an accreditation team will look at during its visit April 16 to 18. College officials have worked for many months on a comprehensive report in preparation for the accreditation visit.

“It’s an excellent report and I look forward to the visit to see how we can improve what we do,” Karas said.

She said the team consists of seven or eight people who will stay for two and a half days.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.