Area Report for Board of Trustees

Exhaustion in the time of Covid

As we enter the 10th month of remote teaching and services, one thing is clear: everyone—students, faculty, staff—is working harder to accomplish what needs to be done. Exhaustion is rampant. Twenty-one faculty (9 tenured/tenure track and 12 part-time) are taking COVID-19 related leave in Winter quarter. (Twenty-one faculty took COVID-19 related leave in Fall 2020 as well). In addition to working in remote conditions, we are in the midst of two profound shifts. The first is the move to ctcLink and the second is the implementation of guided pathways. I had the opportunity to meet with leaders from HCEA this week and they shared the results of a survey conducted by WEA with faculty. A couple of themes stand out. First, faculty are deeply committed to the success of our students. They are working longer hours, answering more emails, problem-solving with students about a range of new issues, and learning to teach remotely all at the same time. Work/life balances are harder than ever to achieve. Another theme is that faculty miss opportunities to interact with colleagues. The same is true for staff. Zoom meetings, no matter how well-facilitated or content-rich, can’t replace the spontaneous connections that happen at the ends of meetings, or the rich and unscripted conversations that occur when you bump into a colleague in the hallway or at the copier. Yet, even so, amazing work is happening, which is testimony to the extraordinary community of people who work at this college.

Enrollment management updates: Kudos to Highline’s Department Coordinators

In spite of the uncertainties and complexities of anticipating student enrollment during this extended pandemic, faculty Department Coordinators have been able to manage the schedule for both Fall 2020 and Winter 2021 to meet the needs and interests of students as evidenced by demand in a fiscally responsible way. Their hard work is to be applauded.

Given the budget constraints, coordinators were asked to aim for a minimum enrollment of 18 students in sections across the curriculum. This target is slightly higher than previous year’s targets, and was applied to all sections, whether they were being taught by adjunct, one-year, or tenure-track or tenured faculty. Coordinators, working closely with faculty colleagues, met this challenge. Their work was made much more complex because they had no way to predict whether students would choose fully online courses or hybrid/virtual courses or virtual courses. Simultaneously, not all faculty feel equally adept at or comfortable with all three modes. In spite of these challenges, the schedule that was developed for Fall and Winter is slightly more efficient than it has been in previous years.

The HUB—Federal Way Education Center has a lease!

Tammy Hague, Program Manager for the HUB, sent the following email campus this week: “I have some encouraging news to begin 2021.  The Hub—Federal Way Higher Education Center has a lease!  This has been a long and challenging process, but it has finally happened.  The Hub will be located at 1615 S 325^th St. in Federal Way and is slated to “open” sometime in late spring.  There are still a ton of details to work out and naturally our original vision will arrive more gradually, but I wanted to share the good news.  I will be reaching out with more details and updates as I know more.  I look forward to collaborating with you all as we build The Hub and create a place of connection, access, and convenience for our students and community. “

Teaching & Learning Enhancement Awards for 2020-2021

Faculty receiving Teaching & Learning Enhancement Awards include:

1. Bobby Butler (Urban Agriculture) – Somali & Ethiopian Agricultural Outreach and Development Project: “The purpose of this project is to develop culturally and linguistically relevant agriculture education materials for the Ethiopian and Somali communities of South King County and abroad. Our program will accomplish this by  working with the Ethiopian and Somali students from our program who have personally requested this project,  and a few of the elders in these communities. Ultimately, we will design a science-based basics-of-farming  curriculum; design culturally and linguistically accessible education materials in the form of videos, pictures,  and written words; and build a website for these materials so they can be accessed by aspiring and current farmers in South King County, and anywhere else in the world with internet access.  The outcomes of this project were developed in collaboration with students and community leaders from the  Somali and Ethiopian communities of South King County.”
2. Aleya Dhanji (Physics) – Create an Open Resource–An Interdisciplinary, Culturally Responsive Database of Calculus-Based STEM Problems: “In many informal discussions on pedagogy and assessing student learning, STEM faculty will often  comment on how students have great difficulty in taking a concept they learn in one class and  applying it to another class… Students often also lack confidence in bringing their knowledge of one discipline into the class of  another discipline, for example, being able to confidently explain definitions of a mole from  Chemistry class when doing thermodynamics in Physics class even if they are Chemistry majors! … We owe it to our students to make problems meaningful, to draw connections across disciplines and  to help them build a coherent framework wherein they can synthesize knowledge from their  different classes to address a real-life scenario… Highline is also the most diverse college in Washington state with a large immigrant community,  many of whom choose to major in STEM. We owe it to our students to validate their cultures and backgrounds, and create an environment that allows them to see themselves as future  scientists/engineers.”
3. Joe Figel (Life Ocean & General Science) – Illegal Wildlife Hunting and Trade: Implications for Human and Environmental Health: “Upon completion of a 2019-2020 Fulbright fellowship I was awarded for study in Sumatra, Indonesian  colleagues and I have drafted an article describing the deleterious impacts of snare trapping, a highly  destructive form of hunting tied to massive wildlife declines and species extinctions (Gray et al. 2018; Roe et al. 2020). Titled, “Malignant Snare Traps Threaten an Irreplaceable Megafauna Community,”  we plan to submit our work to Tropical Conservation Science, a leading international journal focusing on the ecology and conservation of tropical ecosystems: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/trc. Our article, which includes 4 Indonesian co-authors (including Rudi Putra, recipient of the 2014  Goldman Environmental Prize), will raise much needed awareness about biodiversity loss and illegal  wildlife trade in Southeast Asia. Our goal is to publish the article by January 2021 and make press  releases with major news outlets shortly thereafter.  Another project goal is to use knowledge gained during this research to develop an interdisciplinary  module for Intro to Environmental Science students at Highline. Beginning Winter Quarter 2021, this  innovative module will introduce students to the issue of biodiversity decline and its emerging  associations with human health. Emphasis will be placed on the connections between the illegal  wildlife trade and COVID-19. The module will also present a series of solutions to prevent future  pandemics.”
4. Amy Rider King (Youth Reengagement and Success Programs) – An LGBTQIA-inclusive campus: LGBTQ and nonbinary youth are significantly more vulnerable to depression and anxiety than non-LGBTQ  youth. Recent reports indicate that this vulnerability has increased during COVID-19 due to isolation, not being  able to express identity, and difficulty accessing mental health care. There is a need at Highline College to  ensure that we are strengthening our efforts to be an LGBTQ-friendly and inclusive campus by reaching out to  this student population during closure and by preparing vital in-person supports for when students return. I  am proposing a project that will assess campus climate related to LGBTQ inclusivity through the creation of a documentary-style video that will focus on raising awareness of inclusionary practices and investigating areas for growth and development.
5. Deborah Moore (Library) – Evaluation & Media Literacy Instruction: “This project is designed to provide funding for major revisions to two of the library’s Information Literacy  (IL) Canvas modules (Evaluating Internet Sources and Media Literacy) which are widely used by faculty at  Highline College and other campuses. Since these two modules were created in the summer 2019, they  have been downloaded from the Canvas Commons 81 times (Evaluating Internet Sources) and 108 times  (Media Literacy), with significant jumps in numbers of download since Highline moved to emergency  remote teaching (ERT) in Spring 2020. Librarians strive to provide excellence in teaching and learning through our IL materials. With the move to  ERT, the library has had to move all of its resources and services to the virtual environment. In addition,  we plan to maintain a strong virtual presence even when in-person instruction resumes. The Library’s IL  modules are available in Canvas for instructors to use in their classes, but these require ongoing revision to  remain relevant and accurate. These two modules need thorough revision because of the ubiquitousness of fake news and misinformation, making it more important than ever that these resources remain up-to date. These two Canvas IL modules were specifically designed to challenge learners intellectually and  practice culturally responsive instruction. Because those are two areas that are ever-changing, the IL  modules need to also.”
6. Wendy Swyt (English) – Improved Placement for Pre-College Readers and Writers: “I propose to research innovation about precollege placement, gather materials, and develop a pilot  for a precollege placement mechanism for students not eligible for the current Directed Self-Placement (DSP). These are students who need more work in English reading and writing before they are ready for even English  101Plus or English 99, let alone the 5-credit English 101. These students either can’t take the ABE/ESL courses  or they do not wish to. Currently, with the exception of Jumpstart English (which uses an interview/application method), students  who are not eligible for English 101 take a variety of indirect placement tests (Accuplacer Reading, KITE, IELTS, TOEFL). In some of the precollege courses (English 97 in particular), instructors are seeing students struggling  or bored in courses that don’t meet their needs and abilities. More importantly, these students arrive in  precollege courses with little understanding of curriculum or expectations.”

Big thanks to those serving on the Teaching & Learning Enhancement Award Selection Committee included Asha Bhaga (ex-officio), Jack Harton, Tarisa Matsumoto-Maxfield, & Patricia McDonald.

Re-Start Grant Funding Award from SBCTC

Highline College received a $129,000 Professional/Technical Re-Start grant from SBCTC to support COVID-19 recovery efforts in two programs that have been particularly challenged by the pandemic. the Early Childhood Education program and the Hospitality & Tourism Management (HOST) program.

On the enrollment challenges (from the grant): “Communities of color have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 on every level and access to higher education is no exception. For 15 years Highline College has offered state ECE certification in Somali, Spanish, and Arabic. Fall of 2020, low enrollment forced us to cancel two classes in Somali, two in Spanish, and one in Arabic, making this the first quarter in a decade that we were unable to offer access to professional certifications to linguistically diverse communities. Restart funds will allow us to return to full operational capacity by leveraging the skills of our adjunct faculty to act as community ambassadors.”

“Hospitality & Tourism Management involves coursework in food, cruise lines, destination management organizations (DMOs), lodging, tour guides, casino and gaming, airlines/airports, beverage, event planning, rental cars, retail, railroads, clubs (i.e. city, country), amusement parks, and recreation and park. HOST has historically been able to cover such a wide array of industries for two reasons: we are the second largest hospitality and tourism program in the Northwest (after Washington State University) serving more than 200 students each quarter; and we feature a thoughtful curriculum design, guided by a diverse Advisory Board. Programs most negatively impacted by COVID-19 are those which Highline students have historically been most interested in: airlines/airport, event planning, restaurant management, hotel/lodging, and travel agency work (December 2019 survey of HOST students). Each arena has suffered severe employment declines since March 2020.”

The cross-divisional team working on this grant included Kari Cantey and Dave O’Keefe from Institutional Advancement, and Sherri Chun, Jennifer Johnston, Marco Lopez, Paulette Lopez, Patricia McDonald, Darin Smith, Justin Taillon, and Jodi White in Academic Affairs.

ELL to College Pipeline Project, a joint project between Highline College and Highline Public Schools, to be funded by College Spark

From the application: “The ELL to College Pipeline Project is designed to support direct enrollment of ELL students into post-secondary education. There are currently 157 students enrolled in ELL courses at Tyee High School. Of these students, over 50% listed Spanish as their home language. The fact that only 34% of Hispanic/Latinx students are directly enrolling in college — which is markedly lower than other ethnic groups — makes this project a top priority for both Highline Public Schools and Highline College, where a vast majority of Tyee graduates attend college classes….The project includes a combination of evening/weekend, summer and quarterly seminars for 10th -12th grade students and families as well as a sequence of credit-bearing courses. Along their path to graduation, students will gain 10-15 college-level credits, contextualized to fit the project goals and aligned with student needs and degree requirements. By earning college-level credits, students will gain momentum and confidence.”

The cross-divisional team working on this project included Fawzi Belal, Kari Cantey, Aleyda Cervantes, Rashad Norris, and Dave O’Keefe from Institutional Advancement, and Justin Dampeer, Donna Enguerra-Simpson, and Jennifer Joseph-Charles from Academic Affairs.

Report submitted Jan. 08, 2021, by Vice President Emily Lardner, Ph.D.