Sally Moore Appointed Division Dean

Sally Moore, Division Dean,

Linn-Benton Community College

Congratulations, Sally Moore, the new Divison Dean at Linn-Benton Community College. Moore was one of three candidates.  The other two were Chris Breitmeyer and Ron Engeldinge.

 

Moore completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees at University of California in Santa Barbra and went on to a teaching job at University of California. She taught there for six years before transferring to UC-Davis, where she taught for four more years. After moving to Oregon, she taught at Lewis and Clark College in Portland. She came to Linn-Benton Community College after Lewis and Clark, and she has been here ever since.

While she was at UC-Davis she created a peer advisor program that helped incoming students who were lost and didn’t know what classes they should take. Apart from the peer advisor program, she has worked alongside the Division Dean of LBCC and acted as an Associate Dean of Academic Development, Communication Arts and Mathematics for one year. Moore’s goal is to bring the staff and the faculty together and connect them more strongly than they are now.

What exactly is a Division Dean?  A Division Dean is someone that makes the jobs of faculty a little bit easier.  The Division Dean takes all of the different departments throughout the division and unites them and makes that part of the college function.  Without the Division Deans, LBCC, or any school really, would be in utter chaos because nothing would organized and nothing would be getting taken care of.

Moore says that there are three things that affect students in a bad way and if people don’t address these problems then how are students going to get better? The three things that she mentioned are 1.) money, 2.) external demands, and 3.) lack of academic preparedness.
Moore noted that 50 percent of students can’t apply for financial aid, and 20 percent need financial aid but don’t think they will receive it and so don’t apply. All-in-all 45 percent of students going to LBCC receive financial aid.  As well as lacking funds for school, most students are full-time at both work and college.

“Eighty to ninety percent of students test into at least one developmental area, one-third test into all three [reading, writing, and math],” said Moore. “We have a responsibility to our students to make sure they are moving forward academically.”

According to Moore, schools to need to re-evaluate placement tests and make sure that students are getting the help that they need. She also thinks that study skills are critical. She doesn’t want to add more classes to the student requirements, but she thinks that the study skills class is a must for every student at LBCC.

One of the first things that a student asks when starting a new school is, “Do I matter?”  Moore is here to tell students that yes you do matter, that LBCC is a very welcoming environment, and that the faculty, no matter what department, are here to help. This is one of the reasons Moore created Welcome Day, which is Sept. 21 and is in its second year at LBCC.