50 Years in the Making: Honoring Russell Tripp
Sweeping out an old barn in 1967 so students could attend class there was not in his job description as a college board member. But sweep he did. Some 50 years later, LBCC Founding Board Member Russell Tripp would find himself celebrating the college’s 50th Anniversary, held September 29, 2017 – just not in a barn. Through the years, Tripp has seen the college transform from those early days in ’67, holding classes in barns and basements and serving 2,400 students, to a 104-acre Albany campus, centers in Corvallis, Lebanon, and Sweet Home, and serving more than 19,000 students and community members today. Advocating to bring a community college to Linn county, Tripp was elected in 1967 to serve on LBCC’s first board of education. That first board had a lot of work ahead of them to get the newly-formed college up and running, including appointing the first college president, Dr. Eldon Schafer, who put out a lofty goal to have the first classes start in September of that year. “It was ...