Area Report for Board of Trustees

The Academic Affairs Division continues to advance the College’s core themes in alignment with Highline College’s mission. Faculty and staff across the division remain deeply engaged in supporting students through innovation, and collaboration. Lastly, probationary faculty, Tenure Working Committees and Tenure Review Committee successfully concluding tenure meetings. 

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

• Open Education Resource (OER) in Biology: BIOL& 160 faculty used two Teaching and Learning Enhancement grants to adopt OER, saving students about $100 each across four sections this quarter. Plan is to expand OER use to all BIOL& 106 sections in fall.
• Live captioning: A new live-caption request process has been successfully implemented through a collaboration between IT and EdTech.
• Achieve partnered with Roots2Wings to host a conference for students with disabilities, families, and educators, drawing over 100 participants and engaging regional colleges in conversations about inclusive postsecondary education.

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

• MESA hosted a Virtual Reality event in partnership with local business Dimension XR, with over 60 students attending and sustained student engagement throughout the event.
• MESA tutoring growth: Fall and Winter MESA tutoring workshops in Chemistry, Physics, and Calculus averaged 12–15 students each, representing an 80% increase from last year.
• BIOL& 160 implemented five new student-centered labs that emphasize student agency and critical thinking, incorporate competency-based skill check-outs informed by Nursing faculty, and will expand to all sections in the fall
• PHYS& 202 held their physics lab on Jan 16th in the Makerspace. They learned or practiced their soldering skills to make panda plant guardians or weevil eyes.
• 3D-printed lab tools: The lab tech team 3D-printed scooterbots and custom-designed dual centrifuge tube holders, grain-size sediment cards, and mineral test kit boxes for use in geology and biology labs.
• The Earth Sciences Club prepared sediment cards during their January 16 meeting by gluing samples onto the cards.
• Physics club met in Makerspace on 1/21 having a quick lesson on basic circuits.
• Math data.  (Data –2024 and 2025, ctclink):
  • College enrollments up about 5.3% while math enrollments went up about 26.4%
  • Collegewide CR/2.0+ grades up about 6.9% while math 2.0+ grades up about 26.9%.  
  • The number of students who tried a 1st college level math class went up about 20.7%
  • The number of students who earned a 2.0+ in an entry level college math class went up about 24.1%. **Informed Math Placement (IMP) and Math corequisite classes are positive impacts!

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

• MOU created for graduates in Bachelor’s of Applied Science Early Childhood Education (ECE) and Elementary Education (EE) degrees through the University of Washington Tacoma’s Master’s of Education for Practicing Educators (MEd) program!
• Robotics! Workshop had a good turnout with more than 60 participants.
• Outreach brought 38 students from Pacific Middle School to the Makerspace. They used 3D pens (small hand-held 3D printers) to make some cute art.

Core Theme 4: CULTURE & CAPACITY: Become an anti-racist college through intentional development of employees, facilities, and systems that support student success and close equity gaps

• The Teaching Innovation Development Lab’s (TIDAL) deprogramming is fully underway, with the AI Literacy Community of Practice wrapping up (13 participants) and the Effective Teaching Community of Practice launching soon (17 participants). 
• AI Work Group engagement with the Teaching Innovation Development LabTIDL team members are actively involved in the college’s AI Work Group, including Angel Steadman (AI Literacy chair), Laura Soracco (Academic Integrity co-chair), Rashmi Koushik, Katie Fiorello, and Marc Lentini.

Division Honors and Achievements

• Susan Rich, English faculty was invited to read her poetry at the Kolkata International Poetry Festival 
• Susan Rich also organized and read at C and P Coffee Company for the West Seattle book launch for Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds (Raven Chronicles Press) with over 90 people in attendance. Alison Green, Greg November, (Susan Landgraf) and Susan Rich, English Faculty were there, too. 
• Zanetka Gawronski, Art Faculty, has a solo art show in September at Core Gallery, Seattle.
• Library faculty (Monica Twork) sabbatical work explored the role of mindfulness in information literacy. She completed training as a mindfulness teacher through the Mindfulness for Emerging Adults program and is collaborating with colleagues to develop a campus resource guide for integrating mindfulness into information literacy. See link https://library.highline.edu/ContemplativeIVL 

Report submitted by Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Rolita Ezeonu