/ Office of Business and Finance/ Finance Division Winter 2026 Update

Finance Division Winter 2026 Update

Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Operations Andrea Dooley provides an update on capital projects, sustainability, and IT initiatives.

March 02, 2026

Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Operations Andrea Dooley

Credit: Copyright, Steve Hambuchen

Dear Colleagues,

Before I even knew it, we were nearly halfway through this new semester! I hope you all enjoyed Otter Week and the unveiling of our adorable (but fierce) new mascot! Huge thanks to Facilities for the heavy lift of preparing the campus and installing various otter displays. Visit the bookstore or the L&C Athletics website to rep new otter gear. Continuing on the spirit front, stay tuned for Days of Giving, March 10-12. I’m grateful for the continued engagement, support, and collaboration from each of you and your departments.

Best,

Andrea Dooley

Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Operations

Facilities

Continuous improvement in the Facilities Department is everywhere, in the fall semester 2025, reactive work orders dropped 10 percent, and scheduled preventive maintenance work was up 300 percent. This important and fundamental change in service delivery demonstrates our targeted program to shift from reactive to predictive maintenance, and that software strategies continue to assist with this transition.

In addition to great improvements through maintenance services, we have begun to expand this effort to all of the service lines provided by the facilities department (mechanical, buildings, paint, fleet, locksmith, grounds, custodial, capital construction, conference and events).

Capital Projects

With winter upon us, we see a number of capital projects complete and a few cue up for spring delivery. Here is a snapshot:

The Manor House: Water intrusion frustrates and baffles building scientists, with some water still finding its way into the business office. Permits are now approved and an ornate metal wall cap is currently being installed. Fingers crossed it solves the problem!
Elevator Modernizations: Fowler service elevator is scheduled for May.
Roof Projects: Olin Phase 2 is complete, along with fireproofing repairs and corrections.
Olin Exterior Waterproofing: Set to complete with some sealing of concrete transitions, and finally, in the spring, a complete new facade with elastomeric paint.
Bike Parking Improvements: Watzek bike parking is just finishing up, and we tie the bow on our City zoning conformance requirements for bicycle parking!
Lower Estate Garden Phase 2: Is complete, and an amazing new gathering area for the college community. There is an amphitheater, an area for large tents, a water feature, and seating areas. There are a great number of design elements behind the scenes, like stormwater systems and supporting electrical systems. Enjoy the new venue!

Sustainability

The Sustainability Office has been focused on several key initiatives this past term, including supporting the continued work of the Strategic Imperatives Advisory Council, advancing energy-related programs, training and compliance, and our bi-annual sustainability reporting.

As the Strategic Imperatives Advisory Council’s work continues, the proposed Center for Environmental Innovation is beginning to take shape. A center director will be hired this spring, and a community-wide event will bring together faculty and staff from across the three schools. We would be thrilled to have any community members join us as we envision future collaborative work!

This academic year, the Sustainability Office employed two energy interns through Energy Trust of Oregon’s Strategic Energy Management intern program; one student is focused on occupant engagement and another on data management and building performance compliance. Thank you to those who have supported and engaged with these students as they do this work and prepare for careers in the energy field.

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s STARS reporting program is the tool we use for our bi-annual sustainability reporting. This reporting supports several sustainability rankings and helps us benchmark and assess progress over time. We appreciate your assistance in our data requests. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

Business Office and Student Accounts

Business Office

The College’s Audit Committee accepted the audited FY25 financial statements in October. The College’s federal Single Audit was completed earlier this week and both reports are now available on the Business Office website. The team is busy focusing on preparing the College’s Form 990 and other calendar-year tax filings.

Financial Planning and Analysis

The FPA team has been busy this fall and winter working with the three schools and Common Services in monitoring the current year budget, developing multi-year models, and, most recently, focusing on the FY27 budget. We have been supporting the Executive Council, CAS Budget Managers, and CAS Budget Working Group as they work to align revenues and expenses in the context of lower undergraduate enrollment and a sustainable budget.

Information Technology

Comings and Goings

Kathy Tymoczko retired from the college on December 12. As Senior Developer/Analyst on our Information Systems team for over thirteen years, Kathy provided expert knowledge and advice supporting Colleague and its use across many areas of the college. We wish her the very best!

Infrastructures and Operations

Institutional Operations has been very busy upgrading over 500 Windows 10 computers to Windows 11. They are also working on an automated deployment system for Windows computers.

The IT Service Desk and Operations staff interviewed over 30 students and hired seven new student workers in order to backfill students who are travelling abroad this semester.

The infrastructure’s firewalls were replaced with new units in October. In order to be more resilient, new network backbone and core switches were put into production via a cutover in October, replacing older, obsolete hardware. L&C’s datacenter backup appliance IP addresses were migrated onto our new IP network schematic.

Academic Operations has its hands in a lot of spaces, replacing hardware, resolving equipment failures, and optimizing classroom system wiring. The team replaced a larger-than-usual number of HDMI ports in classroom racks that received a lot of wear-and-tear. Students practiced their ladder safety skills while adjusting almost all the projectors in Miller, which had been mysteriously tilted slightly to the left.

Along with classroom AV work, Academic Operations was also able to present a proposed future classroom design. This new single-source classroom design was presented to the Library Ed Tech committee for feedback, along with data supporting the new design, and then presented to faculty at the annual Faculty Technology Showcase. Work on solidifying this new classroom design will continue throughout the spring semester.

EdTech

During the Fall 2025 term, the EdTech team focused on building technical capacity and infrastructure. Staff engaged in professional development around generative AI tools, such as Playlab.ai, to engineer and test an internal Moodle 4.5 help bot. These projects are part of our collaboration with groups such as the AI Advisory group to expand expertise to support informed and thoughtful use of GenAI tools, which continue to be incorporated into everyday tools we all use for teaching, learning, research, and everyday tasks. A workshop series, Moodle Mondays, was developed to expand and update available Moodle resources. Digital media support included mentoring student employees in the VDIS imaging lab to lead peer-to-peer training and retooling the curricular Adobe Premiere workshop into an intensive 90-minute session.

The semester culminated with the Annual Faculty Technology Showcase on December 11, featuring 16 presentations by 20 faculty and staff across 11 disciplines. Co-sponsored by Information Technology and the Library and Educational Technology Committee, the event provided a platform for colleagues to share how they are using educational technology in teaching, research, and creative production across 11 disciplines, ranging from the Natural Sciences to the Humanities.

Enterprise Applications

In November, the Enterprise Applications team co-led a book club-style discussion on “Co‑Intelligence: Living and Working with AI” by Ethan Mollick and “The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want” by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna for interested students, faculty, and staff from across the institution. The EA team continues to plan for AI Community Dialogues that will take place in late winter. We led a series of four workshops in the Fall for administrative staff in exploring the use of AI as a “digital intern”, and plan to continue to offer workshops in coordination with the AI Advisory Group in the Spring. We expanded the Institutional Prompt Library and Gem Sample Instructions in collaboration with campus partners.

For the College of Arts and Sciences, we helped migrate the application process for the Festival of Scholars and Artists to a more sustainable, automated workflow and continued our work with the Advising Center for automation communications and coordination around Notifications of Academic Concern. Additionally, we are working with the SPARC office to improve the Animal Use Protocol forms for IACUC review of classroom and research usage of animals. Enterprise Apps worked closely with Research & Assessment at the Grad School to complete our migration of process automations in Salesforce from the older Process Builder to the newer Flows. After the departure of Steve McCurry from our Service Desk, Enterprise Apps has taken on the administration of our ticketing system, FreshService, and is working to complete the implementation.

Information Security (ISO)

Managed the annual cybersecurity training program.
We are nearly complete with the testing of a new password change tool that will utilize MFA and replace the sunsetting WebAdvisor-enabled tool. Expect communications about this new feature and the new password standards.
We are nearing completion of the plan to expand the use of MFA to protect additional applications beyond Google and Workday. Nearly 70 percent of system compromises are due to user account password compromises via phishing or weak passwords. Requiring that additional factor of something you have to the existing factor of something you know (password) is important to continue to protect our digital assets.
ISO is reviewing Google settings to ensure they are best tuned as a safe productivity tool. One change we will be introducing is hiding references to one’s LCXX-XXXX account name in the Google directory by promoting the email alias, the address intended for communication.
With the Infrastructures and Operations Windows Upgrade project, we have partnered to include minimum setting standards to add additional projections of each device. We recommend storing data on LC Files and/or Google Drive to ensure it is recoverable should the laptop be lost, stolen, or damaged.

Information Systems (IS)

Information Systems was kept very busy supporting CAS, GSEC, and Law Registrars as they prepared for the migration of registration, advising, and other critical functions from WebAdvisor to Colleague Self Service, which was completed in early February.