Welcome to Winter Quarter 2023.  We in Academic Affairs are looking forward to welcoming our students and faculty back to campus when classes begin next week.

Washington State’s Climate Solutions Program along with the State Board has awarded Highline College $53,800 in funding to support efforts to combat climate change and promote climate justice across the Highline College community. We are very proud of Highline’s deep engagement in this work, as evidenced by the wide participation outlined below. The award is being dispersed in the following manner:

• Core Themes 1, 2 & 3-
  • $31,000 will support a faculty professional development program led by Dr. Darryl Brice and Woody Moses. They will undergo training in Climate Justice and Civic Engagement during the Winter 2023 quarter. In Spring 2023, Darryl and Woody will then train ten other faculty to develop climate justice curriculum in their courses.
  • Climate Justice curriculum combines both social justice and climate science, thus making it interdisciplinary by nature. Because it focuses on the well-being of historically marginalized groups, it has the potential to reduce barrier and close equity gaps for all community members, while also increasing educational success.

• Core Theme 3 –
  • $5,400 for two representatives from Highline to attend a Facilities and Sustainability Director’s retreat, and support continuing efforts back on campus at the discretion of the college.
  • One potential benefit of this retreat is to cultivate community partnerships with other colleges to find better solutions for sustainably managing our infrastructure and systems.

• Core Themes 1, 2 & 3
  • $6,000 for two faculty to attend a conference on Agriculture and natural resources
  • $9,000 for three faculty to attend a conference on Energy, Manufacturing and Transportation.
  • These retreats are designed to help colleges plan for the upcoming challenges to our educational system caused by the climate crisis and to make sure that the solutions are as equitable as possible by creating community partnerships and creating job opportunities that will close equity gaps for all community members.

• Core themes 1, 2 & 3
  • $2,400 will support six faculty in various research projects
    • CO2 Research that will focus on using CO2 monitoring in the classroom.
      • Such real world research has been shown to increase educational success
    • A Zines project in which faculty will learn how to help students create climate justice zines – small books and booklets – to increase civic engagement and create community partnerships.
    • An Integrative Assignment that is interdisciplinary and will support faculty to infuse climate justice into their curriculum, with the goal of increasing educational success and collaborations.

Core Theme 1: ACCESS, Reduce Barriers and close equity gaps to access for all community members

The MESA program had a record 45 applications in Fall quarter.  This increase will allow (and require) an expansion of services and reflects the continuing growth of STEM on campus.

The Bring Your Kids to College (BYKC) program has STEAM workshops in the ThunderLab Makerspace in Building 16, Room 106 on the Highline College campus usually on the third Saturday of the month from 11am to 1pm.  The workshops consist of multiple stations with a variety of activities or experiments that teach STEAM concepts in a fun and interactive way. The BYKC team does all the planning and initial setup of stations. Some stations target a younger audience by using Play-Doh, coloring pages, or some type of artwork. Other stations are more challenging with experiments designed for more advanced learners. At least one station typically has a “make-and-take” item that participants can keep. All stations have step-by-step instructions that adults use to help the kids they brought to the workshop learn something about science, technology, engineering, art, and/or math (aka STEAM). Volunteer facilitators help the kids (and accompanying adult) as needed with the hands-on activities by answering questions and providing guidance. Volunteers also may help with last minute set-up pre-event and post-event cleanup. Volunteers do not need to know anything about the topic. The BYKC team will teach them everything they’d need to know.  Programming begins January 21st.

Core Theme 2: STUDENT LEARNING, Increase educational success, collaborate to improve
Four Winter Institutes were offered the week prior to the start of classes. These workshops, coordinated by Bob Scribner, Program Manager for the Learning & Teaching Center and Marc Lentini, Director of Educational Technology, are designed to support faculty learning. This year’s slate of offerings included:

• “Warm Feedback for Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI),” designed and facilitated by Tarisa Matsumoto-Maxfield. Thirteen faculty enrolled.
• “Tired of Textbook Tyranny? OER, Library Resources, & Canvas,” designed and facilitated by Hara Brook, Deb Moore, and Mattias Olshausen
• “Catching the Current: Using Job Postings to Communicate Relevance and Strengthen Your Program” designed and facilitated by James Peyton and Tanya Powers, with a guest appearance by Miguel Fernandez, Chandler-Gilbert Community College
• “So, What is an Effective Advisory Committee?” designed and facilitated by Paulette Lopez, Tanya Powers, and Rickitia Reid

Much appreciation to the organizers, the facilitators, and all the participants for engaging in these important conversations the week before classes (and faculty contracts) begin.

MESA students from Highline visited the Fred Hutchinson Cancer with their MESA counterparts form GRCC and TCC to explore the world of biomedical research.

Core Theme 3: COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS, Create a more inclusive working environment and a more valued, visible relationship with communities we serve

Highline and Green River Colleges are collaborating together to offer a brand-new program called Discovery Academy.   The Discovery Academy is a summer camp for kids from ages 8-11 & 12-14 that focuses on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) education.

Each week is a different camp topic:

• Sound Science Camp at the MaST–includes beach exploration, animal identification, skeleton articulation, specimen dissection, and more!
• Law & Order Camp—students will examine and build a legal case at a staged crime scene at Green River and then come to Highline and take it to the courtroom where a mock trial will ensue.
• Additional Camps include Robotics, Understanding Urban Ecology, Art of Writing, Digital Photography & YouTube Content Creation, and more.

Both colleges are working with their respective Foundation departments to each provide up to $5,000 for scholarships for under-represented kids in need of financial assistance.  Thank you to Josh Gerstman and the IA team for supporting our “campers”.

A big shout out to Rus Higley & Aeriel Wauhob at the MaST and Bruce Lamb & Che Dawson in the Legal Studies department for their support and involvement in the program.

Achieve student and ASHC Student Body President, Mahad Dahir, and Achieve Advisors Laneeka Hall and Tetyana Matsyuk represented Achieve and Highline College at the State of the Art Conference on Inclusive Postsecondary Education and Individuals with Intellectual Disability (SOTA) in Syracuse, New York in October. The SOTA conference provides opportunities for colleges, universities, researchers, program staff, parents and self-advocates to learn about the current state of research and practice in the field of inclusive postsecondary/higher education, and to network with each other. Conference speakers include faculty and staff from postsecondary education initiatives, parents, self-advocates, and other experts—sharing effective practices and leading group discussions.  The parallel Student Leadership Conference brings current and prospective college students into the conversation with opportunities to learn useful tools for the transition to college life, expand their skills as student advocates and leaders, and meet peers from across the country.  Mahad, Laneeka and Tetyana also hosted a booth at the Student Leadership Conference College Fair. Since the conference, Mahad has been invited to be a guest on the Tuesdays with Liz: Disability Policy for All YouTube broadcast (Date to be scheduled).

The Pure and Applied Sciences, in collaboration with the Physics Club will start the new year off with a Bring Your Kids To College event on Saturday, January 21, from 11 am-1 pm in the Makerspace in Building 16.  This month, outreach leads Stephaney Puchalski and Mariola Kulaweic will explore the science of sound through hands on activities for kids ages 3-18.  All are welcome!

Division Honors and Achievements

Dusty Wilson (Mathematics) received a Teaching and Learning Enhancement Award for “Escape (Rooms) Beyond Mathematics.”

Eric Baer (Geology) presented The Geoscience Transfer Landscape In Washington State: A Summit to Improve Equity and Access at the American Geophysical Union Meeting in Chicago on December 13, 2022.  The paper and poster reported results from a NSF-supported workshop on improving geoscience pathways in Washington.  The AGU meeting is the largest gathering of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists in the United States.

Congratulations to the four Members of the Pure and Applied Sciences Division who were selected to participate in the College’s initiative to Vietnam.  Marie Nguyen (Chemistry), Razmehr Fardad (Mathematics), Eric Baer (Geology), and Chris Gan (Biology) will be going to Ho Chi Minh City in March to build our international connections.

Stephaney Puchalski and Mariola Kulaweic (Lab technicians) took their DNA exploration activity to Green River Montessori School on December 7.

Eric Baer (Geology) was a panelist for the American Association for the Advancement of Science webinar on how to prepare a proposal for the National Science Foundation’s Improving Undergraduate Education in STEM program.  Information and a recording are available here: https://www.aaas-iuse.org/event/overview-with-a-focus-on-community-colleges/  .  Over 100 people attended live.

The whiteboards recently installed in the building 26 common became a nexus for students in Math, biology, and nursing classes who were studying for finals. Thank you to all those who collaborated on getting these installed, including the Math Department, building managers Sherri Chun and Darin Smith, and the Facilities department, headed by Barry Holldorf.

Report submitted on Jan. 4, 2023 by Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Emily Lardner