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RCC to lose a friend and advocate President Harvey Bennett announces he'll retire in February By SUSAN JAY Harvey Bennett knows what it's like to paint a vision and then find the canvas, the artists and the colors to bring that picture to life. It's what he did as president of Rogue Community College, and it was most visible when he spearheaded the school's annexation of Jackson County into its district. Today RCC enrollment in Jackson County exceeds even the college's expectations, increasing by 50 percent this fall over last year. Two years after voters approved that annexation and 14 years after he first stepped onto the Grants Pass campus, Bennett is ready to retire. He announced his intentions to RCC teachers and staff by e-mail Tuesday and to the board at Tuesday night's meeting. He will officially retire in February 1999, but will stay until the college finds his successor. He would also like to continue to teach part-time. Bennett has two doctoral degrees and is a former elementary school teacher, junior high principal and administrator at Eastern Oregon State College. He talked to the board earlier this month about the idea of retirement. "I shared with them that I would like to retire strong from this position and feel good about the college and the things we've accomplished," he said. He said he also wanted to retire from the board that had hired him as president in 1986, after two years as RCC's dean of instruction. Bennett, 64, said the idea of retirement arose after the personal joys and sorrows the past three months, which gave him pause to reflect on his life. His father died in September, and that same month and in October, grandchildren were born. With those kinds of momentous experiences, "you think about things differently," Bennett said. Public employee retirement benefits were only a small factor in his decision, he said. Jim DeCourcey, an RCC board member now and when Bennett was selected for the president's post, said the board was confident Bennett was the right person for the job. "Over the years, that confidence has been rewarded with affirmation after affirmation," he said. Upon receiving Bennett's e-mail announcement, Linda Wagner, director of RCC's nursing program, e-mailed him back: "What will we do with inservice days without your sense of humor? How will we navigate the political quagmires that abound without your leadership?" Wagner said she has always felt supported by Bennett and "the students definitely had a friend and advocate in Harvey." She said Bennett has worked hard to make RCC a two-county college, which required numerous visits to Salem and meetings with legislators and community players. Bennett saw the need for a community college in Jackson County in 1984, when he was interviewing for his first RCC job. He drove around to look at the area. "I probably didn't think about annexation. I thought about service and why it wasn't there from the very first day I came here," he said. RCC had to overcome many obstacles to annexation, including a campus full of dilapidated buildings, funding and fear of competition from then-Southern Oregon State College. In 1989, RCC raised $2.1 million from the state and the college foundation to modernize the campus and its 21 buildings. Then came the gradual work to make annexation a reality. The hardest part of the process was "finding a way to ensure that Rogue and Southern both understood and could convey their different missions," he said, or else opponents would argue the county didn't need another college. Bennett said his time as president has been about the college becoming. With the hard-working faculty and staff, Bennett said, "we took a good place and gave it the right kind of presence in the community and then regionally." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA