Area Report for Board of Trustees

Good day, I want to first wish you all a happy new year!  I hope the holidays were peaceful and enjoyable with friends and family.  The campus was able to participate in professional development days at home to enrich their learning around areas such as mental health and wellness and self-care during the quieter part of December.  As the college prepares for winter quarter, I want to remind everyone of upcoming study session discussion topics:

• January – MFR discussion
• February – Tenure review and discussion

Office of the President

As fall quarter came to a close, the focus for the Office of the President continued to be the development and progression of the Strategic Plan for Equitable Student Success. The Student Success Council met three times during fall quarter to ensure the advancement of our fall quarter priority action plans. The fall quarter priorities included:

1. Complete the process for selecting, purchasing and beginning the implementation of a customer relationship management (CRM) technology tool to support the recruitment-to-enrollment pipeline;
2. Create awareness of Aviso to students and provide frequent and clear communication to students about how to find their advisor through the new Aviso system;
3. In partnership with Federal Way and Highline Public Schools, engage staff and students to provide accurate information on Highline College programs and entry processes to include support for navigation through identified barriers as highlighted through our Strategic Enrollment Management plan and feedback from high school partners;
4. Increase capacity for the financial aid file review process and increase communication with students about the financial aid application status and other financial aid-related action items (e.g. receipt of documents, file review status, review/approval status, etc.);
5. Improve the college’s top-level site (highline.edu) and three most commonly visited subdomains: admission.highline.edu, registration.highline.edu and financialaid.highline.edu to provide clearer direction and access to information for prospective students seeking information to enroll, get financial aid and enroll in classes to increase enrollment quarter by quarter through 2022-23 and 23-24.

If you haven’t had a chance to do so already, I encourage you to read the Student Success Council Fall Quarter Update sent to campus on Dec. 08, 2022.

During the second half of the month our office enjoyed some much needed time off, taking the opportunity to spend time with family, rest, and rejuvenate for the new year. We are looking forward to next week’s visit with Susan Mayer, Chief Learning Office for Achieving the Dream Coach. We anticipate a lot of positive learning and growth opportunities from this visit and will be certain to share highlights with the board in next month’s letter.

Information Technology Services

Information Technology Services staff have been taking advantage of a quiet campus over the holiday break to get classrooms and systems ready for winter quarter, as well as taking care of some needed updates to back end systems.  At the same time, several ITS groups are working on new initiatives, such as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) addition to our Aviso platform, and a couple of proof-of-concept projects with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build our capacity and skills to make better use of available cloud technologies.

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

• Members of the DataDev and Infrastructure teams, with support from others, have been working with AWS and Highline’s Financial Aid office on a project to make students’ Financial Aid review status more transparent to students through a site where they can find their status without having to speak to a financial aid advisor.  This will allow students to get basic information more easily, and free FA staff up to spend more time with students who have more complicated questions.  The proof of concept was completed in December by developer Matthew Fiebig with assistance from AWS and other ITS colleagues, and we anticipate moving the tool into production by the end of February.  This is phase 1 of a larger project which includes creating more efficiencies in the technology used in the Financial Aid review process.
• A second proof-of-concept project is in process with AWS working towards using machine learning tools to identify course combinations which prove to be detrimental to student progress toward their degree.  This POC is in collaboration with Institutional Research and Academic Affairs, with the intent to inform future adjustments to Academic Program maps to improve student completions.
• As part of our ongoing Strategic Enrollment Management work, a stakeholder team reviewed requirements and functionality of a new CRM module to our Aviso platform during fall quarter.  The decision was made in December to move forward with this tool.  The CRM module will support communication and tracking of prospective students, and will give us additional functionality to help track and support new students through the steps to get them enrolled. Planning work will take place during winter quarter, and the implementation is expected to start around the beginning of spring quarter.

Core Theme 2: STUDENT LEARNING, Increase educational success, collaborate to improve

• We have now completed a full quarter with Aviso supporting Faculty Advising.  Going into winter quarter, we are beginning to focus on increasing Student Services use of this tool, as well as increasing direct student use.  Financial Aid has been configured and trained to start taking student appointments in Aviso during winter quarter.
• As part of the IT Security Awareness Training, the first simulated phishing email was sent out in December. (One simulated spam email was previously sent out in November). The simulated phishing email helped evaluate the effectiveness of our current email safety habits and identify areas of improvement so our institution can better protect our students’ data, employee data, community, and institutional success. 

Division Honors and Achievements

• Fall quarter, Jill Hammitt, Business Analyst for Campus Solutions (ctcLink) joined Pat Daniels as an additional representative on the ctcLink Working Group, which reviews and approves proposals for technical changes and enhancements in ctcLink for all colleges in the system.  Additionally, Pat is co-chair of the new College Collaboration Group, whose membership includes the primary ctcLink Leader from each college, and whose charge is to collaborate on system and process improvements for ctcLink.

Human Resources

During the month of December, the Office of Human Resources completed a number of end-of-year goals.  The payroll and benefits team worked to update changes made to employee benefits during open enrollment, and conducted a number of activities to ensure W-2’s are completed accurately and on time.

Recruitment and Operations have been quite busy filling a number of vacant positions last month, and onboarding new staff and faculty in preparation for the start of winter quarter.  The Human Resources team also met with our union partners regarding the upcoming year.

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

Human Resources will be emphasizing employee training and development in the coming months.  In addition to the Get Inclusive training platform launched in October 2022, the Human Resources team is also developing additional training opportunities for employees regarding ctcLink timekeeping, supervisor essentials, and collective bargaining.

During the month of December alone, approximately 260 employees completed their required trainings around Hazing and Bullying prevention, Title IX and Harassment, as well as Child Abuse Prevention.

Division Honors and Achievements

During the month of November, Gretchen Erhart led the Human Resources team after the departure of Summer Korst.  We appreciate Gretchen’s leadership and willingness to step in, ensuring there were no disruptions to campus operations.

Report submitted on Jan. 5, 2023 by President Dr. John R. Mosby