Area Report Board of Trustees

Information Technology Services joins the rest of the Highline community in mourning the recent loss of Dr. John Mosby. Dr. Mosby recognized the value of ITS as a partner to the whole college community rather than a provider of utility, and elevated ITS to a Cabinet level division during his tenure. He also was supportive of ITS staff participation in governance and support activities at the state level for ctcLink and other IT areas, which has contributed to Highline having a reputation for positive collaboration across the system. He was considered a mentor by multiple members of the team, and consistently told us we were the best IT team he had ever worked with. (While that was surely Presidential cheerleading hyperbole, we appreciated it nonetheless.) One member of the division related that a personal call from Dr. Mosby helped convince him that Highline was the right choice during his hiring process. We will miss his leadership and will work to carry his vision forward.

Meanwhile, like other colleges in the state and elsewhere, Highline has been impacted by the Canvas outages that have been in the news. ITS and EdTech staff have been engaged with the State Board staff, other IT and Ed tech leaders from around the state, and Instructure staff throughout. We continue to monitor and respond to the situation, as well as work on contingency plans if there are continued outages. I will update the board during the meeting if there are new developments.

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 college-wide Artificial Intelligence Work Group continues to make progress developing Highline’s response to the challenges and opportunities of this technology. Formed in March, 2025, the work group completed a college-wide policy which was adopted by Executive Cabinet in November, 2025.

The next phase of the work was to stand up a series of subcommittees to create guidelines and business processes and address some of the challenges facing faculty and staff. This month, we’re reporting on the work of those subgroups in both the Academic Affairs and Information Technology Services reports. Three of the subcommittees are focused on business processes, and those are discussed below.

AI Procurement

• Goal: Create guidelines and processes to review requests for purchasing AI tools
• The group is researching a risk matrix approach to making decisions about AI tools. Early information is that this approach is more appropriate to the rapid evolution of AI tools and licensing structures. This risk assessment step will be added to the normal ITS purchasing process for technology tools with AI components.

AI Pilots

• Goal: Develop processes for piloting and assessing effectiveness of AI tools
• An advanced draft of the pilot process, including a proposal form and evaluation criteria, is complete. We expect the products of this group’s work will fold into an overall procurement structure.

Business Process Improvement

• Goal: Develop standards and practices for using AI to improve service to students and make business decisions
• Currently, the group is researching and discussing how to frame discussions about return on investment, given how varied AI tools and implementations are, and how rapidly they are evolving.

Report submitted by Chief Information Officer, Tim Wrye