Robert Marshall

The Student Services Office, as it was known during Robert Marshall's time, has undergone several name changes. The Office of the Dean of Students was created in 1965 and became Student Personnel Services in 1967. It was changed again in 1976 to Student Services. In 1997, the department reorganized and merged with Instructional Services to become the Office of Instruction and Student Services.

Robert B. "Bob" Marshall began his work at Lane Community College when it was the Eugene Technical-Vocational School, part of Eugene School District 4. He worked as a math teacher and the director of the Manpower Development and Training Program (an act intended to train and retrain thousands of workers unemployed because of automation and technological changes).

When citizens voted to turn the Eugene Technical-Vocational School into the nucleus of a community college in 1964, Marshall received the challenge of setting up an academic records system. He had eight months to do it before the official opening date of Lane Community College on July 1, 1965. Marshall kept his position as the director of the Manpower Development Training Act (1965-1968) after Lane opened its doors. In 1968, he took a job as the Director of Admissions. This was a position he kept for 20 years, until stepping into an interim vice president position for Student Services, which was made permanent in 1990.

In a 1990 interview, he explained the important role Lane Community College played in the evolution of higher education. "Lane was the second college on the West Coast to offer a computerized transcript system… the first college in the Northwest to have an online registration system… the first to offer online degree evaluation… [and] one of the first in the Northwest to offer touch-tone telephone registration." Marshall said that, because there was no precedent to follow, it was exciting time at the college; "[f]ree discussion led to innovation." This innovative attitude kept Lane Community College on the edge of development for registration systems. Marshall thought the college had to continue this push toward innovation; he saw the key to its survival in revitalization and change. He believed that "[a]s you become older, you become more comfortable with what is than what could be. You can't maintain the beginning level of energy."

He retired at the end of the 1991-1992 academic year; the following is an excerpt from his intent to retire letter, dated January 29, 1992: "It is very difficult to put into words just what the college has meant to me through all of these years. Experiencing the building of a new campus and the successes that have followed have given me a great deal of pride, but all of that pales when I think of the thousands of students who's [sic] lives have been changed for the better through their involvement with... Lane Community College… What makes the college a special place to work is that we do truly care about each other and our students."

He was succeeded by Linda Fossen in 1992 (A-049).

Before moving to Oregon, he spent several years with Allied Chemical in Delaware (1953-1954, 1956-1958) and two years as an Army instructor in power plant operations (1954-1956). He studied power plant mechanics at Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades in Pennsylvania (1953) before earning a B.S. in 1961 and M.Ed. in 1962 from Pennsylvania State University. He did post-graduate work in educational administration at the University of Oregon, 1964-1970.

From the guide to the Student Services Office (Robert Marshall) Records, 1965-2000, (Lane Community College Archives)