I want to thank you for attending the joint legislative reception with Green River and Renton Technical College earlier in the month. We had a good turnout and I believe this event went a long way in having our legislators listen to our concerns and hopefully turn them into action. A special thank you to Josh Gerstman and Shakira Erickson for organizing a great event in Olympia.

Many of our staff, faculty, trustee members and myself have been in Olympia meeting with legislators and advocating for our college and system. We have more visits happening before the session ends and I look forward to continuing our message and requests to Olympia that will greatly help our college and system financially and structurally.

I had a great opportunity to be a reader in the “Highline Reads” program sponsored by the library this past month. My selection was from the book Clarity and Connection by Yuong Pueblo. He is quickly turning into one of my favorite authors and speaks about change and personal growth. I encourage you to read his book if you have a chance. It’s had such a positive effect on me in various ways. Thank you library staff for the wonderful experience.

Currently, I’m on my way back from the Achieving the Dream annual convening with representatives from Highline’s leadership team (Executive Director Slota, VP Dr. Lardner, Dean Bachmeier, VP Dr. Penn, Dean Knappenburger, and Executive Director Wrye) where student-centered peers explore college transformation as a catalyst for equity and economic vitality. Highline participated with 300 other colleges and exchanged evidence-based strategies that drive access, momentum, mobility, and community impact. This experience will assist us as we continue to build our strategic plan through campus engagement.

Lastly, I’m finishing up reading the files for our tenure discussion at our Board of Trustees meeting next week. Once again, I’m so impressed by the quality and dedication of our faculty. I hope you all can stay after the meeting for the tenure reception (hosted from 12 p.m. – 1 p.m. in Building 2) – it will be a lovely and touching event.

Information Technology Services

IT Services is embarking on our first major reorganization since 2014. Reflection and review after the loss of our colleague Mark Wynne last summer led ITS leadership to propose a shift to better reflect the current IT landscape. While IT Customer Services will persist, the Infrastructure and Data, Development, and Integrations teams are being reformed into an IT Operations unit and a Business/Data Analysis unit. Terminology and structures for these teams are being finalized, and a manager position for the Operations unit will be posted in the near future.

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

Tim Wrye joined several Highline colleagues at the Achieving the Dream conference in Chicago. Tim presented a session with partners from AWS about 2 AI/machine learning projects that ITS staff are currently working on, one with Financial Aid and one with Academic Affairs and IR. The conference provided valuable networking and learning opportunities with peers from multiple colleges from across the country working to improve student success.

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

We have seen recent institution-wide employee improvement in our collective security awareness culture as measured by training completions, feedback, and behaviors. ITS is also exploring new email security and protection settings and are testing and working toward additional future improvements, as email remains our largest area of security risk.

Human Resources

During the month of January, the Office of Human Resources began work on developing employee communications and training for managers and supervisors. The goal is to provide regular and ongoing training and mentorship to college leaders around the collective bargaining process, employee performance management, and overall leadership strategies.

Recruitment and Operations have been extremely busy since the start of the year, onboarding new employees and posting (and reposting) vacancy announcements. The Human Resources team also met with our classified union partners for our first labor management meeting of the calendar year, and have been working with Vice President of Academic Affairs, Office of the President, and HCEA on bargaining the impacts of the ongoing challenges presented by COVID-19.

Human Resources also began sharing additional information from resources such as the Employee Assistance Program to ensure our workforce has the support they need, whether they are at Highline or at home. The return to on-campus operations impacts each member of the campus community differently, so the Human Resources team will continue to serve as a resource to staff and faculty as we transition from being a primarily remote workforce during the pandemic, to a robust and effective in person institution.

Division Honors and Achievements

Our campus recruiters, Leslea Berg and JP Altamirano, have been hard at work during the month of January posting and filling a number of positions. For the month, they advertised 30 full time vacancies and filled 5 vacant positions.