Area Report for Board of Trustees

As we enter the homestretch of Spring Quarter heading to graduation I’d like to remind trustees of the many events that are going on at the college. If you have any interest in attending events, please contact my office and we will provide all the information.

This past weekend, the college hosted our annual Y.E.L.L. event and it was a success many thanks to the planning committee, the EDT office and Dr. Rolita for providing the welcome at the event.

And congratulations to Dr. Penn for completing her Aspen fellowship.  As a reminder this fellowship only selects 40 participants nationwide so Dr. Penn is in very select company.  The Aspen Fellowship often is a gateway to a college presidency.

Please have a good week.

John R. Mosby, Ph.D (he/him)

President, Highline College

Human Resources

Core Theme 4: CULTURE & CAPACITY, Create capacity for meaningful strategic planning and institutional transformation through intentional development of employees, facilities, and systems that support student success and close equity gaps

We are looking forward to our upcoming retiree celebration on June 9th  and are working with the team and the retirees on their upcoming celebration. Please consider joining us that day from 2 to 3:30 p.m. in Building 8, Mt. Constance/Olympus.

Melanie has been invited to join the SBCTC ePerformance test study group. The first kickoff meeting was last week. We are looking forward to moving our annual performance discussions off of paper that requires us to constantly chase down leaders for completion. This is in alignment with several other paper processes we are looking to change sometime in the future such as exit interviews.

Faculty negotiations will wrap up on June 13^th. It is refreshing to see both sides working together collaboratively for the greater good of the institution.

Information Technology Services

Core Theme 4: CULTURE & CAPACITY, Create capacity for meaningful strategic planning and institutional transformation through intentional development of employees, facilities, and systems that support student success and close equity gaps

• Highline launched the new Student Financial Responsibility Agreement (SFRA) in ctcLink in conjunction with the beginning of summer and fall enrollment. ITS and Student Financials staff met with staff and faculty across campus to prepare them, and developed documentation and communications to support students through this new process. While students are unable to enroll without completing this agreement, early summer and fall enrollment numbers show we are ahead of last year’s pace and this process is not preventing students from enrolling overall.  We continue to track progress and send targeted emails to students eligible to enroll who have not yet completed the agreement.  As of May 16, almost 3000 students had completed their SFRA. Special thanks to Jill Hammitt for her leadership and dedication to our students to ensure a smooth launch.
• After discussions with faculty about student device needs and a review of ITS data about student device checkouts and waitlists, including a deep dive with the Technology Support Services team during the recent Equity Development Institute, ITS has determined that there is a great enough need to increase device availability that we reallocated some funding to purchase more devices for the student checkout pool.  Those devices will become available to students during summer quarter, and ITS will be more closely monitoring pool availability and work toward making sure any student who needs a device is able to access one.  At the same time we will continue to look for outside partnership opportunities to help us build student device ownership.
• At the request of Dr. Mosby, Tim Wrye and Dr. Pham worked together to coordinate a Strategic Planning retreat for the college on May 12-13.  Collaborating with Lisa Bernhagen, Chair of the Institutional Effectiveness Committee, Emily Coates, Director of Institutional Research, and several Executive Cabinet colleagues, the retreat guided a diverse group of employees through exercises to set multi-year targets for our existing indicators and measures under our Strategic Goals and Objectives, and to identify existing and future strategies to meet those targets. This work will better illustrate connections between departmental and divisional work and our strategic goals, and better help us see our progress toward our strategic goals.
• Pat Daniels and Tim Wrye joined over 30 Highline colleagues and participants from across the state at the first annual Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Symposium at Skagit Valley College on May 13. While you will hear more detail about the Symposium from Dra. Jimenez, ITS is committed to actively supporting Highline’s journey to becoming an HSI.  Pat and Tim were excited to be able to hear stories and learn lessons from our system colleagues about their HSI journeys and what we can do to support that work at Highline.
• ITS would like to welcome Ryan Membreve as the newest member of the IT Infrastructure and System Administration team! Ryan grew up in Des Moines and is a graduate of Central Washington University, and comes to us from his most recent position at Federal Way Public Schools.  We are excited to have Ryan on board in this critical role supporting Highline’s IT systems.

Report submitted by President John R. Mosby, Ph.D.