Robert S. Jackson: Candidate Profile

Note: Answers provided have not been edited for grammar, misspellings or typos. In some instances, candidate claims that could not be immediately verified have been omitted. Jump to:BioKey IssuesQA Bio City: WoodstockWebsite: Candidate did not respond.Office sought: McHenry County CollegeAge: 85Family: Divorced. 4 daughters 12 grandchildren (includes 6 step-grandchildren), 4 step-great-grandchildren.Occupation: Since 1991: Principal, Oaktree Capital Corporation (fee-only Registered Investment Advisor) Formerly faculty: U of IL-Springfield (co-founder), Rockford College, Kent State, Yale. ; author: 3 published books (literary, finance, land-use), 1 in process.Education: Beloit College, BA 1949; Oxford (England) 1954, Harvard University (Divinity) STB 1956; U of Michigan (English Language and Literature) MA PhD 1958; NASD/FINRA Series 2, 63, 65. Landmark Education (Curriculum for Living, Communications, Partnership).Civic involvement: Co-founder and 10-years Heartland Institute (free-market think tank) Board; 6-year Shimer College Board; 6-year Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ Board; Co-founder Covenantal Community of University Church; Co-founder Bridges (Midwest social investment forum); Co-founder, 6-year Global Abundance Alliance Board; Co-founder Global Promise Alliance; Co-founder Nippersink Nickel and Dimers (socially responsible investment club); Member: RotaryOne (Chicago), Mid-America Club (Chicago), Financial Planning Association (Global).Elected offices held: None.Have you ever been arrested for or convicted of a crime? If yes, please explain: No.Candidate's Key Issues Key Issue 1 MCC's role in creating the future local, national and global ""knowledge-based economy.""Key Issue 2 Help fulfil intention of MCC ""Promise"" foundation.Key Issue 3 Adjudicating issues re: MCC-located Metra station.Questions Answers With enrollment up at my many community colleges, it can be challenging to keep pace as far as available classroom/lab space, the number of qualified teachers and available course work options. How would you manage that?I would cooperate in what I understand to be a board's limited roles in organizational management. I understand those roles to be 1) to help develop, interpret, articulate MCC's primary vision, intention, and inspiration, 2) to support and facilitate the top-level MCC professional staff and/or outside consultants who will do the actual detailed and hands-on resolution of these issues, and 3) to be knowledgeably and responsibly involved in the contractual arrangements with these professional persons. A board member should be aware of and attempt to manage ""available classroom/lab space"" and similar such issues only insofar as they imtersect a), b), or c) -- lest that board member create road-blocks rather than road-maps toward their proper outcomes.In tough economic times, many students (and working professionals) turn to a community college for its educational value. How do you ensure that a person's financial sacrifice equates into an educational benefit?While tuition costs properly convert into educational benefit, so also education ultimately converts into economic benefit, especially if one understands the term ""economic"" broadly, as Aristotle did, not so much only to each individual's financial success as to also provide a bountiful community, a community presenting something better than ""tough economic times."" No single individual can ""ensure"" this, no single student, and no single board, or other single MCC member. This is a cooperative effort. See also my Number 1 campaign issue, and my response to the Editor's question above.Is a tax rate increase needed and, if so, how do you justify it?A 9% plus increase in the tax-rate for MCC has already been proposed and accepted at a recent MCC board meeting. No doubt some further process steps must occur before that increase were to be in fact assessed to MCC taxpayers. I would need to be a board member for a year os so in order to provide a responsible opinion on whether this or any tax-rate increase is either ""needed"" or ""justified."" I do offer this ""opinion"" now -- even before much ""how-to"" knowledge: In spite of the rocky beginning of the Promise Foundation program, I value its intention, and would promote as best I can, its own reorganized efforts, or those of any of the many similar public-private MCC support ventures that might arise. Indeed, trying to help such organizations to fly is itself an education.Community colleges provide many services to a diverse population. Is there a service your college should be providing that it is not, or reaching a segment of the population that it is not?This is an excellent question that I would want to keep alive at all times I might function as an MCC college board member. At the moment I need time on the board to be able to provide a responsible answer. In the meantime, I offer as a credential that I not only have spent years in top-flight schools and among those academics who wished to excel in them, time teaching math electronics in U.S. Navy Training schools in World War II, but also, as a resident of an experimental church-sponsored living ""community,"" I lived for 17 years in Chicago's Woodlawn community, then regarded as one of the Chicago's 10 worst neighborhoods. In those years, among other adventures as one of the .5% caucasian persons in that neighborhood, I was a founding board member of a racially-integrated neighborhood development corporation, an entity still alive and active though now I understand with 100% Afro-American staff and board.If you are a newcomer, what prompted you to run for the park board? If you're an incumbent, list your accomplishments or key initiatives in which you played a leadership role.Yes, I would be a newcomer to the college board. Here's what prompted me: In my earlier life academic career, I had the privilege to be hired as a consultant to the Illinois Board of Education and later as a Professor of Humanities in hte founding and early functioning of a new university in Springfield -- then known as Sangamon State University, now the University of Illinois at Springfield. We created Sangamon to become a ""capstone"" to the Illinois system of Community Colleges by offerring the Junior, Senior and first graduate year curricula. I learned to love and respect the intentions and values expressed in that intention and all that it implied. Now I would like to have the opportunity to ""give-back"" some of what I learned there and in my subsequent business life. Put in one sentence: I want to facilitate the life-fulfillment of the people who will create the future of McHenry County, our nation, and the world.