Area Report for Board of Trustees

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

• Sinai Espinoza Hernandez, Workforce Outreach and Recruitment Specialist, will be representing Highline College’s Professional Technical programs at the South King County Career Showcase organized by the Seattle Southside Chamber of Commerce. This event was be held at the ShoWare Center Area on April 24. The Career Showcase brings together over 1500 high school juniors and seniors to explore career paths and educational opportunities.
• On Saturday, April 26 the Bring Your Kids to College STEAM workshop will be celebrating Earth Day with dozens of hands-on activities from 11 am to 1 pm in the makerspace. These monthly outreach events continue to draw large numbers of families to do science on campus.

Pictures from last year’s Earth Day Bring Your Kids to College event

• Pi Day (3/14) at Highline was a terrific success with math games and events (including a showing of the movie Hidden Figures) designed to get students excited about Math and raise awareness around Math completion. Thanks to the foundation for providing pizza for this event!
• Celebrate Inclusive Postsecondary Education (IPSE) Day with Achieve students at the College for All: An IPSE Day Celebration in building 7 on May 1st from 2-3:30. Inclusive Postsecondary Education (IPSE) Day raises awareness about college opportunities for students with intellectual disabilities. IPSE programs support students as they take college classes, join campus life, and work toward certificates, learning alongside peers with and without disabilities. The Achieve team invites you to attend and hear from a panel of Achieve students speaking about their experiences and the impact of the program.

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

• We are launching our Puget Sound Educational Service District (PSESD) ElevatEd Paraeducator to K-8 Teacher Certification Program with Auburn, Federal Way and Highline College starting Fall 2025. We are working to create a supported pathway for paraeducators in Auburn and Federal Way to receive their Associate of Arts (AA) degree, Bachelor of Arts in Science (BAS) degree and K-8 Teacher Certification from Highline College. As part of that work, we will be collaborating with Native educators from the Muckleshoot, PESB, Auburn, Federal Way and Highline School Districts to revisit the John McCoy Since Time Immemorial standards into our pathway.
• Highline College, in partnership with the Science Education Resource Center of Carleton College, received a grant of $438,400 from the National Science Foundation to develop and implement a summit on innovations in two-year college STEM education. Dr. Eric Baer (Geology) is the lead PI on this project. The multi-day Summit will take place in Alexandria Virginia in July and will bring together awardees for the IUSE: Innovations in Two-Year College STEM Education (ITYC) program to share expertise, ideas and innovations with each other, prospective principal investigators, and NSF program officers. The project will contribute to building a robust community of two-year college STEM education researchers and provide a forum for discussing current and future research focused on STEM education at two-year colleges
• Thursday, 4/17, is Engineering Mentor Night. Put on jointly by the Puget Sound Engineering Council (PSEC) and Highline’s Engineering program, the event gives students the opportunity to meet industry professionals and learn about the different fields of engineering and careers they can pursue. The event will start with a brief introduction of PSEC and all mentors present. Then students will have the opportunity to rotate through the event and speak with various mentors. Typically, students will join a mentor in a small group, the mentor will talk a little bit about their career/industry, and then answer questions. Mentors will come from various fields including: Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering, Software Engineering, and Structural Engineering
• Highline Student Oscar Salas Romero was selected to participate in the Keck Geology Consortium’s 2025 Gateway project on Geologic Boundaries: Identifying the Transition to the Anthropocene in Lake Wononscopomuc, CT. He will be participating in this 5 week paid research program based out of Amherst College in Massachusettes  to identify a candidate for the Holocene-Anthropocene boundary in the unlithified sediments of Lake Wononscopomuc in northwestern Connecticut.  This project is part of the very selective Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, funded by the National Science Foundation
• Highline Student Thomas Huynh won first place in the Pacific Northwest and Seventh nationally in the 2024 AMATYC math contest.
• Since rolling out the Digital Literacy website and Northstar Online Learning access, Northstar has been accessed by over 600 unique users who have spent nearly 500 hours on assessments and lessons.
• Reference Librarian Karen Fernandez served on the 2024-25 Asian Pacific American Award for Literature for Adult Fiction Award Jury (press release). Her donation of new AAPI titles to the Highline Library directly contributes to student success by ensuring that the library collection reflects the identities and experiences of the college’s student population. Access to materials that resonate with students fosters a sense of belonging. Participation in a national committee not only serves the broader library profession but also brings recognition to Highline and promotes AAPI voices and heritage.

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

• The ninth annual Native Student Success Summit is happening on May 21, 2025. We have an exciting slate of speakers and a phenomenal planning committee of Native educators from across the region. This event is a result of a partnership between Highline Public Schools Native Education Program and Highline College. Seattle Colleges Division of Access, Community and Inclusion has also generously sponsored our event. For more information, please visit nsss.highline.edu.  A big thank you to Tanya Powers, Associate Dean for BAS Pathways, for her leadership on this event.
• Highline College is partnering with Highline Public Schools Native Education Program to bring celebrated Native author/poet Joy Harjo to campus via zoom on 4/29 in Building 7 from 10am-11am. She will read her children’s book/adapted poem and will do a quick Q and A. Joy Har­jo, the 23rd Poet Lau­re­ate of the Unit­ed States, is a mem­ber of the Mvskoke Nation. She is only the sec­ond poet to be appoint­ed a third term as U.S. Poet Laureate. Born in Tul­sa, Okla­homa, she left home to attend high school at the inno­v­a­tive Insti­tute of Amer­i­can Indi­an Arts, which was then a Bureau of Indi­an Affairs school. Har­jo began writ­ing poet­ry as a mem­ber of the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mexico’s Native stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion, the Kiva Club, in response to Native empow­er­ment move­ments. She went on to earn her MFA at the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop and teach Eng­lish, Cre­ative Writ­ing, and Amer­i­can Indi­an Stud­ies at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­­for­­nia-Los Ange­les, Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona, Ari­zona State, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois, Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado, Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawai’i, Insti­tute of Amer­i­can Indi­an Arts, and Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee, while per­form­ing music and poet­ry nation­al­ly and internationally.
• Ten areas of Highline College participated in the 2025 Federal Way STEAM Exploration night. Over 4200 people attended. The event was sponsored by Highline, thanks to the Foundation. Highline’s programs who participated included: Math (Terry Meerdink, Babie Hunter); Geology (Eric Baer); Bring Your Kids to College (Stephaney Puchalski and Mariola Kulawiec); Physics and CyberSecurity (Igor Glozman, Rav Kang, Usman Rizvi), Engineering (Cait Cramer), Biology (Katie Baker), Nursing (Steven Simpkins), Outreach (Cristina Bautista Vega, Savann Smith), Respiratory Care (Kayoko Kado) and the MaST Center.

Pictures from the 2025 Federal Way STEAM Exploration Night

Core Theme 4: CULTURE & CAPACITY: Promote a campus culture which fosters equity and inclusivity supporting employee growth and development, and institutional capacity for transformation

• MB Barboza, Geology instructor, was accepted into the School of Ice Professional Development workshop at Dartmouth College this summer. This all expenses paid opportunity Is part of the US ice drilling program and will focus on information and teaching methods to explore how the ice drilling program contributes to the scientific knowledge of Earth’s climate and Glaciers.
• Aleya Dhanji (Physics) is presenting a pre-workshop session “In-class Advising as a Strategy to Reach Underserved Students” and a regular session “Shifting from Groups to Teams – How do we make Group Work Effective, Engaging and Inclusive?” at the Assessment, Teaching and Learning (ATL) Conference in Vancouver, Washington April 29-May 1. The conference aims to foster a transformative educational environment where student engagement and learning are at the heart of every classroom interaction.

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