COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT 9

HIGHLINE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

MINUTES OF BOARD OF TRUSTEES’ MEETING

April 8, 2004

STUDY SESSION

Executive Session

Legislation Update

2004-05 Budget Planning

Strategic Initiative Report

Faculty Recruiting and Hiring

Board Professional Development

Construction Update

MEETING

Call to Order

J. Michael Emerson, Chair, called the meeting to order at 10:00 a.m.

Roll Call

Members Present: Michael Allan

Elizabeth Chen

Ed Davila (excused)

J. Michael Emerson

Arun Jhaveri

Attorney General Representative: Derek Edwards

Approval of Minutes

The Board of Trustees’ Meeting minutes for March 11, 2004 were approved as written.

Correspondence

None

STANDING REPORTS

Associated Students of Highline Community College

Kolesta Moore reported and distributed a report to the Board.

·The Student Awards Ceremony will take place on May 26 at 5:00 p.m. in Building 2.

·The applications for student speaker at Commencement are due by April 16.

·Student elections are May 19 and 20. It has not been decided whether to use paper or electronic ballots.

·A record number of 37 clubs have been formed on campus and they’re excited to take a tour of the new building on April 13. The Spring Club Fair was a great success with approximately 200 students attending. The Recycling Club is having an event today wearing their bright green and white t-shirts to promote recycling on the campus.

·April’s First Friday Leadership Institute had more than 40 students attend, the highest student involvement to date. The session was centered on group communication and understanding the dynamics of different work styles and how they work together as well as the effectiveness of a well-rounded leader.

·The Student Government extends thanks to Richard Fisher, Chief of the HCC Security Department for collaboration with the students on safety initiatives. Safety and security has been a big initiative this quarter and Richard has been working closely with the students giving safety hints and tips and sharing his resources with the students.

Washington Public Employees’ Association

Michelle Tuscher reported.

·The WPEA Convention is April 30 through May 2. The delegates develop WPEA’s operating fund for the next two years. The Highline Community College Chapter attendees will be: Cheryl Carino-Burr, Lee Hall, Sandi Hall, David Hayes, Gerald Jackson, Dawn Saunders, Taylor Stoneback, Helen Buller and Gerie Ventura.

·The Classified Staff Training Committee has two new members, Bob Hermanson, elected by the classified staff, and administrative representative Janice Adams, appointed by Dr. Bell. Gary McCune, Chair of the Committee, says the committee is constantly looking at how the training funds can best be used and distributed benefiting a greater number of people.

·With Dr. Bell’s approval, and the approval of the Professional Development Day Committee last fall, an invitation was extended to the other colleges in the Staff Training for Community and Technical Colleges, Region E, to participate in HCC’s Professional Development Day. A representative from Green River Community College came and was impressed that we encompass the entire faculty and staff. She shared this at her college, and they decided that their in-service day this month would also be extended to encompass all of their campus community and they have invited HCC to participate.

·The membership meeting day has been changed from the third Thursday of the month to the third Friday of the month from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. to accommodate all staff members including those on different shifts.

·WPEA plans to participate in the Parking Solutions Forum scheduled April 28 to offer ideas and solutions for parking.

Highline College Education Association

Ruth Windhover reported.

·Negotiations are continuing with the administration for the next HCEA contract period and it’s going well.

Faculty Senate

Phil Droke reported:

·No significant item to report except that the Senate has been meeting.

REPORTS

Honors Program

Barbara Clinton, Speech Department and Honors Program Coordinator explained that the Honors Program was developed for those students that were very motivated and academically successful and were interested in preparing themselves to transition to a four-year institution. When she started at Highline, she realized that there was an incredible diversity of students in her classroom with students under-prepared and some extraordinarily gifted students. There is an array of resources to assist the under-prepared students at Highline but not much to offer the gifted students. So she worked with the gifted students individually and gave some examples of those students. She decided that an honors program should be developed for these types of students.

With approval of her Division Chair, Lonny Kaneko, she began to research the Honors Program at the UW and other four-year schools in the state. Lonny told her that to make an Honors Program work in a community college, it would have to connect to all four-year programs. After working with some faculty at the UW because she wanted the program to articulate directly to theirs, she presented a proposal to Jack Bermingham, which he approved.

The Honors Program has grown from last year with 15 students working with ten instructors to this year with 120 students working with 65 instructors. The program is open to all students with 12 credits of college-level work with a GPA of 3.5 or higher. There are no honors classes but honors options. Honors option is a special honors project that a student works with the instructor in a regular class that turns the class into an honors experience for more credits. If a student does six honors options projects for a total of 30 credits, plus an additional five credits, he or she graduates as a Highline Honors Scholar. These five additional credits are earned through a seminar to put together student portfolios with personal statements, scholarship essays, etc, which can help the student to transfer to a four-year university and apply for scholarships.

Dr. Clinton gave a number of student success story examples where students have overcome great obstacles and have received large scholarships and are continuing their educational goals. One student will be receiving a $32,000 full scholarship to UPS. Another student, Donnie Schwendeman, was selected as one of 20 out of more than 1500 nation wide by USA Today’s All-USA Community and Junior College Academic First Team and will be featured in USA TODAY on April 26. Honors scholar students are being actively recruited by PLU, Whitman, Eastern, Central, and the UW Honors Program. The Acting Director of the UW Honors Program says Highline’s Honors Scholar Program is the most exciting thing she’s seen come out of the community colleges and says that this program should be a model for the state. Five students are graduating as Honors Scholars this year.

She extended her gratitude to Jack Bermingham and Lonny Kaneko for their support of the program and acknowledged Mark McKay and the Foundation for agreeing to fund the last quarter before graduation if the student completes the entire Honors Program.

The Board extended congratulations and commended Dr. Clinton for her dedication and commitment in developing the program and they extended thanks to the 65 faculty who have volunteered and agreed to encourage the Honors Program in their classes this quarter. Dr. Bell also applauded her for the work she is doing in moving the Honor students to the next level.

AREA REPORTS

Student Services

Ivan Gorne reported.

·A correction should be made to the Board letter from Student Services which should have listed Gloria Koepping under the heading of Counseling/Testing Center as receiving an award from the Department of Health for outstanding and dedicated service to the Examining Board of Psychology, serving as a Board member since 1999–2004.

·Toni Castro, Associate Dean for Diversity and Student Development Services has her staff doing things on a regional, state, and almost a national level presenting at conferences and sharing the good work that’s happening at Highline. She attended the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) Conference and she was told that through her presentation at the regional conference, and her regional efforts, NASPA is looking at a pre-conference seminar concentrating on student services for community colleges at the national conference usually orientated to four-year colleges.

·When our Student Government visited the legislature in Olympia, they mentioned to legislators that they should be careful on deciding to use electronic voting because of some of the problems Student Government has experienced in their elections on campus.

·We received a grant to hire a Job Developer, so we now have a state work study job developer doing a terrific job, would like to find a way to keep her on staff, and maintain that grant. She goes out in the community and searches for state work study jobs and helps on campus as well.

Administration

Marion Davis reported.

·Re-striping, re-lighting, and reorganizing parking lots to create more space is going to be done.

·There is about $700,000 available from the Port for sound abatement for building 19.

·Work will begin on getting the building layouts decided for the Highway 99 building.

·Research is on-coming for other avenues besides on-campus parking including but not limited to the following: discussions with Metro regarding updating and upgrading the bus shelters to make riding the bus a more attractive alternative; a Forum on campus on April 28 for parking suggestions; distributing material on van sharing; reducing the number of permits issued on campus; continuing to meet with Lowes about alternate options for their parking lot; and a new Park & Ride Lot scheduled to be built at 272^nd and Highway 99 as a possibility for further parking by carpooling from there to the campus.

Institutional Advancement

Sherry Reichert reported.

·The Burien Lions Club has approved a scholarship for $750 for sight or hearing impaired students awarded for the 2004/2005 school year.

·Reminder, the Gala will be Saturday, May 15.

·Communications and Marketing has just released a request for proposals for a community perception survey. This survey will provide some information for HCC regarding its brand and image including publications and web site communications. The process is currently open and closes on April 16 with a selection of vendor going to work by early May. The work should be completed by early August.

·Dr. Bell expressed her gratitude to the Gates Foundation for their generous contribution of $5000 for the upcoming Gala.

Instruction

Jack Bermingham reported.

·Dr. Bermingham reiterated that parking is a challenge on every campus, including the University of Washington, which is not only a challenge but also expensive. By comparison, our challenges may not be as great as they are for other institutions. HCC will benefit from Dr. Bell working closely with the legislature for the College to receive additional money to help with the parking situation which will be difficult by the fall. Parking is not such an overwhelming concern that we can’t find solutions.

·Yesterday was the yearly event that a group of University of Washington graduate students come to campus by our invitation to explore the possibilities of teaching at a community college as a career. Thanks to Jeff Wagnitz and his assistant, Sue Kelly, for doing a great job in setting up the agenda for the day’s activities. They are given the opportunity to visit classes and to speak to faculty. This is another strategy we use to recruit new faculty. Last year we hired an intern instructor in physics, and our success story is Rebecca Sliger, now a tenured faculty member in engineering.

·Under the Title VI A Grant we received on internationalizing the curriculum, a workshop is scheduled this month focusing on assisting faculty and promoting goal perspective within the curriculum. Bermingham attended a meeting in Montreal for the Title VI project and spoke about how important federal funds are to help create a better understanding of the world especially at a time when the US is involved in war. Two outcomes from the Title VI Grant for next year include teaching Arabic language on campus for the first time and a stronger curriculum will be developed on Middle Eastern studies. Middle Eastern studies are not focused upon in high school and higher education should offer opportunities for students to understand the world around them. One of the challenges is that the current administration is concerned about ideological issues in Title VI A Grants so they are talking about establishing an advisory committee to oversee these Grants at the federal level.

·We’ve just received notification that we are getting 16 more Worker Retaining FTE’s. He acknowledged Dean Michael Allen, Nancy Warren, and John Huber in Worker Retaining for doing a fabulous job meeting the demands for all these students, even with being understaffed.

·Faculty searches are continuing which is an extra workload on campus for a number of faculty who are involved in those searches. This is taken very seriously, and that’s the key to our success in hiring great people. We had the good fortune to hire Barbara Clinton, and she’s making a difference in several programs on campus. She is just one of many stories that we’ve had over the years who contribute to our success.

·This year is the 50^th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision and faculty and staff are very involved in planning a week-long program of events in May to commemorate this anniversary.

Discussion

• The Board discussed the role of higher education as helping students understand the world around them, but tend to talk at the community college level about worker training and job related education, and that’s appropriate. We also have to keep the academic transfer in mind as it’s an important role for education.
• Dr. Bell commented the thrust of our community college agenda at WACTC and TACTC is on worker training and we do a great job in that area, but it’s not all that we are. She would like to see TACTC actually have some sessions and presentations on the academic transfer role of our institutions as well as our international education programs and helping people to become better citizens through understanding the world. These efforts need to be recognized and funded to support the entire mission of the community colleges.
• Dr. Bell commented further on Barbara Clinton’s report as an example of so many of the things that our faculty do to enhance the educational experience for students at Highline Community College. She also said, “Barbara established the Honors Program on her own initiative over and above everything else she was doing. She’s not only the kind of person we want to hire but she’s the kind of person we want to keep. There are so many faculty, I wish we could bring them all to you, it’s incredible some of the things that they do. And, the faculty are only one part of the picture because we have this extra effort over and above and beyond, all across all divisions, Student Services, Administration, and Institutional Advancement. It’s an incredible group of faculty and staff we have here on campus.”

Unscheduled Business

• Arun Jhaveri reported that he finished his term as one of the ten volunteer commissioners for the King County Commission on Governance that developed a report the end of March and is available on the King County web site. The report has recommendations on how to make the King County government more responsive, accountable, cost-effective, and efficient.

New Business

None.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 11:25 a.m.

Next Regularly Scheduled Meeting of the Board of Trustees

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Board of Trustees will be May 12, 2004.

8:00 a.m. Study Session Building 25, Room 411

10:00 a.m. Meeting Building 25, Board Room

ORIGINAL SIGNED MAY 12, 2004

______________________________ _________________________________

J. Michael Emerson, Chair Priscilla J. Bell, Secretary