Page 8 - Flathead Beacon // 6.1.16

COURT BEAT 15 Newsworthy
Longest-Standing Professor at FVCC Retires
Ivan Lorentzen has spent 45 years teaching students and making a di erence at the college
BY MOLLY PRIDDY OF THE BEACON
When Ivan Lorentzen rst started teaching at Flat- head Valley Community College, the school was a edg- ling idea just coming to fruition, located in various buildings in downtown Kalispell.
It was 1971, a mere four years after the college was created, when a young Lorentzen stumbled into what would become his life’s career. After earning a bache- lor’s degree in psychology and master’s degree in phys- iological psychology, he had moved back home to Kalis- pell to nd a job.
And a week before the school year started, FVCC came calling. The school had received a grant to fund two new teaching positions, one in psychology.
“I didn’t have an o ce on campus that rst year, I worked from my house,” Lorentzen said in the midst of cleaning out his campus o ce last week.
After nearly ve decades of teaching psychology and ethics at the college, Lorentzen is retiring with the title of FVCC’s longest-serving teacher.
“After 45 years here at the college, Ivan is really part of the college, an institution here,” FVCC President Jane Karas said last week. “He’s a fabulous faculty member and great teacher. We’re de nitely going to miss him.”
Some of his best memories come from the early days of the downtown campus, when all of the professors’ o ces were on the same oor in one building, regard- less of discipline. That comingling of ideas would follow Lorentzen’s career.
“We were making it up day by day,” he said. “Every- thing was new. We were all building something from scratch.”
Lorentzen was the driving force behind the college’s
Ivan Lorentzen is retiring after 45 years of teaching at Flathead Valley Community College. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
now-popular Honors Symposium Lecture Series, which in its 23rd season explored the theme “Dividing Lines: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics, Religion, Race, and Gender.”
Such discussions are integral to personal develop- ment, Lorentzen said, which is why the series is open to the general public as well as students.
“If you can’t listen to an opposing point of view, and all you can do is state your opinion louder, that’s a recipe
for disaster,” he said.
The lecture series was born out of Lorentzen’s love of
attending conferences and hearing new ideas about his eld. That feeling of hard, thoughtful, civil discussions was also the foundation for the Honors Program at the college, started in 2009.
In the program, professors from two seemingly dis- connected disciplines – like poetry and physics, for example – team up to present challenges found at the intersections of these disciplines, forcing the students to think of new solutions.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for students to get out of the silos of disciplines,” he said.
Heading into retirement, Lorentzen has no plans of slowing down. There’s always scholarly work to be done – he’s also earned a doctorate in educational leadership – and of course, taking care of the east valley farm on which he grew up.
“There are parts of [teaching] I will miss terribly,” he said. “It’s been a pretty good run in all. You push where you can to make a di erence where you can, and some- times it works.”
And the students?
“I’m going to miss them the most,” Lorentzen said.
mpriddy@ atheadbeacon.com
“AFTER 45 YEARS HERE AT THE COLLEGE, IVAN IS REALLY PART OF THE COLLEGE, AN INSTITUTION HERE. HE’S A FABULOUS FACULTY MEMBER AND GREAT TEACHER. WE’RE DEFINITELY GOING TO MISS HIM.”
- FVCC PRESIDENT JANE KARAS
Somers-Lakeside School Board Rejects Partnership with Kalispell Board members voted unanimously to rebu a proposed interlocal agreement with Kalispell
BY DILLON TABISH OF THE BEACON
SOMERS — In front of 13 spectators and 78 empty chairs, the Somers-Lakeside school board rejected an o er to send middle school students to the neighboring district in Kalispell, where a proposed facility could still have future rami cations on the lower valley and lake- shore communities.
The Somers-Lakeside School District #29 board on May 25 voted unanimously to rebu a proposed inter- local agreement with Kalispell School District #5, opt- ing to keep the rural district intact with Somers Middle School and Lakeside Elementary.
“I feel as though if we enter into an agreement now there’s no coming back. I think maybe we wait and see how it plays out,” School board member Meredith Coop- man, who made the initial motion to reject the agree- ment, said at the meeting inside the middle school’s car- peted gymnasium.
“I don’t think people want to see the school closed. I
like the small-school atmosphere for my kids.”
With much of last week’s attendance made up of teachers and other school sta , board members sided with the majority of residents who recently expressed opposition to the interlocal agreement through a dis- trict-wide survey. A total of 229 people lled out the sur-
vey and 71 percent were opposed to the deal.
Yet the sparsely attended meeting, which had signif- icant implications for the entire district, re ected some of the concerns among school o cials that the commu- nity could remain disinterested and unsupportive of
future bond or levy requests.
“I really wish there were more community members
here tonight. It’s a bit disheartening,” Somers-Lakeside School Superintendent Paul Jenkins said.
Jenkins said the fear is that a large number of families could still send their students to a new school in Kalis- pell, resulting in diminished operational funds that led to cuts to sta and programs in the Somers-Lakeside district.
Somers-Lakeside o cials have said the district orig- inally sought a potential agreement with Kalispell after years of rejected taxpayer levy and bond requests that have left the facilities languishing with deferred main- tenance and operational needs. Last year voters did approve a general fund mill levy worth $185,000 annu- ally, the rst successful levy in the district since 2006.
A Kalispell steering committee has identi ed build- ing an elementary and middle school on the south end of town as priorities. The school board will review the proposal, among others, at its June 14 board meeting before possibly oating a bond request to voters in fall.
As part of the planning e ort, Somers-Lakeside o cials discussed a possible agreement with Kalispell that would have sent the rural district’s sixth-through-eighth grad- ers, as well as roughly $1 million in state funding, to the potential new middle school. The move would e ectively close Somers Middle School and eliminate more than a dozen teaching positions in the lakeshore community.
dtabish@ atheadbeacon.com
8
JUNE 1, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM