Oregon Public Broadcasting

Portland Community College already got its bond measure passed last fall – the biggest in state history.

When it comes to big, PCC holds the title: enrollment is up 15 percent this year, 5000 extra students since 2007.

Rob Manning reports PCC officials want to become education’s “green giant.”

PCC dean, Diane Mulligan, spent the first day of school at an information booth at the Sylvania campus center. Some students hoped to squeeze into classes that were already full. Mulligan would hand them a form and wish them luck.

Diane Mulligan: “If the instructor lets them in above and beyond the class limit, then they have to get special permission. Many students are going to those faculty, and so I’m sure there’s lots of pressure on that faculty today to let in additional students to the classroom. So I’m sure we’re going to see much larger classes than are usual.”

The math chair at PCC’s Cascade campus, Holli Adams, met with her counterparts from around Oregon last Friday. She says everyone was struggling to keep up with unprecedented student demand.

Holli Adams: “We added as much and many of them as we had space for, and instructors to do, and we still stranded hundreds of students on wait lists.”

PCC officials expect the numbers to level off at some point – but not to come back down. 

Preston Pulliams: “Thank God we were able to pass a bond last November. That allowed us to continue to expand our facilities.”

Preston Pulliams is PCC’s president. He’s talking about a $364 million bond that’s already at work in two places: PCC is moving administrators into a downtown Portland office building to free up classroom space on campus. And a brand new campus is underway in Hillsboro.

Dozens more projects are on the drawing board.

PCC has long had sustainability goals, but it wasn’t till after the bond passed that administrators, like Linda Gerber at Sylvania, started thinking big. She commissioned a study and the results surprised her.

Linda Gerber: “We didn’t know when we went into this that it was going to reveal to us that we could get to net-zero.”

Net-zero – making Sylvania energy-independent – came from the sustainability crew at Portland-based developers Gerding Edlen.

Up to nine million of Sylvania’s $15 million first phase could be bond money.

Facilities manager Tim Donohue says the first big energy project is in Sylvania’s boiler room.

Tim Donohue: “The two larger boilers will be taken out, de-commissioned, and that will provide room to put the combustion turbine engine in that will generate electricity and reduce our carbon emissions.”

Sylvania chief Linda Gerber says replacing the boilers will pay off. 

Linda Gerber: “We’ll be saving about 72 percent on energy costs. Maybe even more importantly, our greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced about 57 percent.”

She says the new turbine will also be an attraction for students studying green technology.

PCC’s lofty ambitions will help state and local leaders reach greenhouse gas targets. And facilities’ manager, Tim Donohue says PCC is helping the local utility, Portland General Electric, meet its energy demand.

Tim Donohue: “They’re projecting that capacity-wise, it’s not going to be there in the future. And so they’re scrambling right now, I think, to figure out what those energy bases are going to be, to meet demand.”

But will these construction projects help get more teachers and smaller classes for all those new students? President Pulliams says the bond helps.

Preston Pulliams: “You need labs, you need classrooms but the other part of that relates directly to state funding, and that's something we struggle with. We’re not able to hire as many full-time faculty as we’d like to, or maybe expand as quickly as we'd like to.”

But there is a side benefit of going “green.” Sylvania officials expect to save more than a million dollars a year on energy bills.

And that’s money that PCC can spend elsewhere.

Like hiring teachers, keeping tuition down, or providing financial aid.