Today we welcomed representatives from Century College - Randy Johnson, Director of Donor Relations for their Foundation, and Scott Randall, an instructor in their Solar Power program.  From Randy we learned a bit about Century's 50-year history.  Formerly known as Lakewood State Junior College, Century opened its doors in September of 1967 to 500 students.  Today Century serves over 21,000 students each year, offering a variety of degrees, diplomas, certificates and courses.  A primary benefit of attending a Community College such as Century is cost savings.  A student who opts to get a 2 year degree from Century, then transfer to a College or University to complete a 4 year degree can save up to $75,000 in tuition cost!  Another benefit is the ability to be trained in an area that may not be offered by a traditional university.  Scott Randall provided a great example of that.  Century's Solar Power program cannot begin to crank out enough graduates to fill the demand in this extremely fast-growing industry.  The job growth in this field is currently 90 times higher than the overall rate of job growth in Minnesota!  Scott frightened us all with pictures of the latest in self-driving 18-wheelers.  As hard as it still is to imagine, this is but one example of the future that is fast upon us.  We are moving to renewable energy sources in all aspects of daily living and Century College is playing a part by identifying job needs and working to fill those unmet needs.

Today we heard from Laura Keithahn, Operations Executive at St. John's Hospital in Maplewood.  Laura has a clinical background in Radiology.  She later went on to earn on MBA and became involved in hospital management with the Health East hospital system in the Twin Cities.  St. John's opened in 1911 in a downtown St. Paul location, moving in 1985 to Maplewood.  It was the first hospital in the Twin Cities to offer private rooms for all patients.  It currently serves over 100 patients per day in its emergency room operations.  It also handles 7,000 surgeries and 3,000 births per year.  Laura went on to discuss the recent merger between the Health East and Fairview Healthcare systems.  The newly combined organization has 32,000 employees, 11 hospitals, 56 primary care clinics, 55 specialty clinics and 54 senior living facilities.  She is enthusiastic about this merger, saying that it will enable the organization to manage through the challenging trends in today's healthcare market, which include a downward trend in reimbursement, higher percentage of medicare/medicaid patients, finding ways to pay for advances in medical technology, as well as the need to upgrade and update IT technology platforms.

Paul Hofslien and Jack Haugen served as speakers today.  Both are long-time members and past presidents of the Prior Lake Rotary Club.  Jack is the Foundation chair for the Prior Lake club, Paul is now serving in that capacity at the district level and this was the subject of their presentation.  Paul provided a brief history and overview of the Foundation, stressing the role it plays as the engine for all of Rotary's good works in the world, including local and global grants, projects, Group Study Exchange, Rotary's Peace Scholarship program and the global Polio Plus effort.  In the past several years, the giving level within our district has not kept pace with the requests that clubs have been making to receive funding for projects.  The total of contributions last year was approximately $350K and the district's goal is to increase that to $500K.  Jack spoke to the hope that members will make the RI Foundation their "Charity of Choice", citing the exceptional job the organization has done managing the foundation efficiently.  Less than 1% of contributions go to administrative costs, which has resulted in it being named one of the Top 5 Best Charitable organizations in the U.S. by CNBC last year.  Our club received an award this past year for being second overall in giving within the 60+ clubs in our district.  All members contribute $50/year as part of the quarterly dues paid, but we also had several additional significant member gifts which resulted in the high giving level for the year.  We hope other members will consider additional gifts to the foundation this year so that we might help the district reach its goal and provide the funds needed to complete Polio eradication and other good works around the world.