Area Report for Board of Trustees
Happy beginning of May. As the quarter draws to a close, the college is sponsoring a number of events leading to commencement. A few weeks ago, the President’s Office and Academic Affairs held a hybrid reception for our newly tenured faculty from the past 3 years. It was nice to recognize our wonderful faculty for their exceptional achievement in gaining tenure. Many thanks to Danielle Slota, Carrie Davidson and a host of folks making this new annual formal event happen for our faculty and college.
Working with Professor Susan Rich, the Literary Salon was held virtually and it was quite a success. We had a number of students, staff, faculty and alums attend and read their own works. I was impressed by the amount of talent and creativity that folks put into their works. I even read one of my pieces – nervously but I was supported by the group. What a wonderful way to recognize the talents of others – through the use of pen and voice. I look forward to more literary salons in the future. Many thanks to all who participated and made this special event happen.
Recently, the college held staff/faculty and student town halls to review/revise our mission vision values statements for our campus. There was heavy participation in both town halls and many thanks to the equity-first core team for leading this effort. Substantial feedback was received which will further refine the statements to truly reflect our institution.
Finally, our 4th Annual Equity Development institute will be held on Friday, May 6. By the time you read this, the event will have concluded. However, we have a strong list of workshop presenters and hope our entire staff/faculty will participate. I will report back at a later meeting and want to provide a special thank you for the planning group who organized this event.
Human Resources
There are currently 27 open recruitments at Highline for faculty, exempt, and classified positions. Seven new tenure-track and three one-year faculty have been hired; four recruitments remain in process. Recruitments are taking longer than usual because we are not receiving as many applications as this time last year. To address this issue, HR is promoting positions via LinkedIn on a regular basis and working with hiring managers to generate interest through recruitment websites and listservs.
The use of a one-way video interview system, SparkHire, for first round interviews has been popular amongst our faculty hiring committees. Committee members have praised the convenience of the platform. Feedback from a small group of applicants has been mixed. Candidates found it easy to use but it did not ease their anxiety or nervousness. Candidates also reported that they missed human connection at this early stage of the process. If we keep the system in AY 2022-23, it will take extra care from HR recruitment staff to speak with the candidates to describe what to expect during the one-way video interview. We are not able to provide that care at this time because of staff vacancies in HR.
Information Technology Services
The Aviso Retention implementation project moved into a new phase this week as we held the first early-adopter end-user training sessions. Meanwhile, ITS staff continue to refine and improve the ctcLink data feeds that populate Aviso, and test and configure additional functional components of the tool. This implementation includes an expansion of our new Okta login platform, including multi-factor authentication (MFA), which had previously been implemented for virtual private network (VPN) users on campus teams accessing high-risk data. MFA will be rolled out for all VPN users over the summer, and for other systems moving forward.
The new ctcLink production governance structure was officially approved at the April Presidents’ meeting (WACTC). The new structure includes a permanent “ctcLink Leader” role at each college, which will participate in a new governance group helping make prioritization decisions for system enhancements and changes. The project Working Group, which is the primary functional/technical governance body, has been largely successful in their role, and will continue in the new structure with an expanded membership that broadens the functional college expertise represented. Pat Daniels has been a member of the Working Group since it was founded, and will continue for at least the near future to help recruit and select new members and ensure a smooth transition to the new structure.
The final ctcLink GoLive (DG6-C) is scheduled for the weekend of May 6-8 and will be complete as of the May Trustees meeting, meaning all 34 community and technical colleges will be live on the system, a milestone that seemed distant and unlikely some years ago. Having participated on the steering committee for most of its existence and serving as Chair for the last two years, Tim Wrye is proud of what we have accomplished both locally and as a system, excited to see that group sunset in June as the implementation project closes, and is looking forward to how we can all work together as a system on system and process improvements now that we are all live.
Report submitted May 4, 2022, by President John R. Mosby, Ph.D.