Area Report for Board of Trustees
Welcome Trustees to spring quarter! I hope you all had a nice “break” or some restful days with friends and family as we head to the end of the academic year. I want to highlight a few things for the month that might be of interest to you.
There is a group of staff and faculty who are reviewing our campus climate survey conducted late last year and are preparing to highlight findings and provide discussion for the campus later this quarter. This is the first campus climate survey conducted in years and I want to give a special thanks to those individuals who made this happen and I look forward to the campus coming together to discuss the findings and themes as we collectively work together to build our community.
I just returned from the Association of Community Colleges (AACC) Annual conference in Denver, CO. I haven’t been to CO in over 7 years so I forgot about the rapid change in temperature and elevation. It was definitely an adjustment. However, I was able to share space with thousands of community college leaders and attend workshops and was actually given an opportunity to present with CampusWorks team members on building campus climate and initiating change for community. It was wonderful to highlight the great work done at Highline on a national level.
Lastly, I want to mention our 5th Annual Equity Development Institute: Honoring Our Promise: Becoming Effective Stewards of our Community. This event will be held on Friday, May 5 so please attend if your calendar allows. Our Equity Task Force, consisting of staff and faculty have worked tirelessly on this event and I can assure you, this year will be wonderful and thought-provoking for all.
Thank you all and have a wonderful week.
Information Technology Services
Core Theme 1: ACCESS, Reduce Barriers and close equity gaps to access for all community members
- As previously announced, Canvas and Zoom for all Highline users were moved to Okta over spring break. This is part of a strategy to simplify logins for students and employees across all Highline systems. Thanks to ITS staff member Mike Kromarek, whose thorough research and testing made this an extremely smooth transition.
- ITS worked with the Foundation on an integration with their scholarship application and processing platform, both using Okta logins for ease of student access to the application, and providing some system data to reduce the application load on students and improve the efficiency of the review process.
Core Theme 2: STUDENT LEARNING, Increase educational success, collaborate to improve
- As we both expand some resources and reorganize our team in ITS, we are collaborating with Instructional Resources to provide more clear direction to the campus community and a better cooperative process to respond to requests for data required for departments and teams to operate more efficiently or support strategic goals and institutional effectiveness work.
Human Resources
The Human Resources team continues to refine internal processes to ensure consistent delivery to our campus community. Our commitment to student success through hiring and retaining well trained faculty and staff is at the forefront of our department.
Core Theme 1: ACCESS, Reduce Barriers and close equity gaps to access for all community members
The initial draft of our recruitment handbook is nearly complete. Our recruitment team has been connecting with a variety of screening committees, not only to fulfill our role in the hiring process, but to understand gaps in our current process. These lessons learned are valuable in updating our college practices around recruitment, and will further assist us in hiring staff and faculty that reflect our student body.
In the coming months, staff and faculty will see a greater focus on employee training and development. As our on-campus presence increases, Human Resources staff will soon begin offering a wider range of in person trainings. Updated offerings will include topics such as Title IX, Performance Development, and Managing in a Union Environment. We will also work with Executive Cabinet and department leadership to identify additional areas where training is needed.
Division Honors and Achievements
Lisa Russell, Payroll Manager, and Cariko Brent, Payroll Coordinator, have successfully navigated a recent change to how system colleges process payroll. Since Highline converted to ctcLink, they have operated under a 67 step process to complete this function. The state revised this to a consolidated 23 step process. Lisa and Cariko were able to implement this new process without any disruption to employee pay. Great work!
Report submitted by Dr. John R. Mosby