Board candidate hopes to create a better Mt. Hood

For the past two years, Calcagno has been working closely with administrators from Mt. Hood for his marketing firm, Calcagno Media.

“I have been producing videos that help promote career and technical education,” he said.

He has also worked on programs like VESL (Vocational English-Spanish language) and I—BEST. “These programs have really engaged me to want to do more to support low-income families and to provide skills training for nontraditional students so that they can attain better incomes,” he said.

Holding a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon, Calcagno enjoys hiking with his wife and dog, as well as enjoying culinary options with his wife. He is mentoring a young, at-risk youth whose parents thought “could benefit from a role-model … to talk to him about life skills and character building,” he said.

According to Calcagno, MHCC needs more leadership coming from the board of directors to identify and address concerns from within the community and to come up with “forward-thinking and innovative ideas.”

Calcagno said he is passionate about making college affordable at the community college level.

“I fear that if we are to do things the way that they have always been done, we are going to get the results that we’ve always seen,” he said.

“I really, strongly believe that the community colleges in Oregon provide the best avenue for learning and achieving goals,” he said. But he also said he thinks that actions and comments by Mt. Hood’s board members at the March 10 board meeting was very troubling – including a planned 3.8 percent tuition increase for this autumn.

“That we are considering another increase in student tuition, I think it is wrong,” he said. “We cannot keep financing our operations of the college on the backs of the students.”

Community colleges are becoming less and less accessible to low-income students and low-income families, Calcagno said. It is important for students, faculty, and the community to recognize that “education must be accessible,” he said.

He also criticized salary increases for several Mt. Hood administrators.

“Our board ought to be thinking long and hard before giving mid-level managers promotions, (how) we’re also going to essentially tax our students more,” he said.

MHCC can either blame its problems on the state and the actions coming out of Salem – “pass the buck, as it were – or stand up and say, ‘No, we are going to find the money elsewhere,’ and not put the burden on the students,” he said.