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July 11, 2024: Academic Affairs

Home/Area Reports, Division: Academic Affairs, Meeting 07-11-24/July 11, 2024: Academic Affairs
2024-07-03T16:44:08+00:00 Print Page

July 11, 2024: Academic Affairs

Area Report for Board of Trustees

Summer quarter is off to a smooth start, and enrollment continues to improve. Overall tuition-bearing state enrollment minus ELCAP (which is consistently well-enrolled) is 11.3% ahead of where it was last year, a gain of around 108 FTEs. Tuition-bearing state enrollment minus ELCAP is nearly 18% ahead of where it was last year at this time for Fall. Due in part at least to changes in legislation that provided funding for summer Running Start, RS enrollment has increased from around 21 FTEs to 224 FTEs for summer. Running Start enrollment for Fall is 24% ahead of where it was at this time last year. International student enrollment is also slightly up for both Summer and Fall compared to last year at this time.

Some faculty are teaching; many faculty are taking a well-deserved summer break. AA staff are completing IE reports and beginning the process of setting goals for 24025. The deans team has begun work on a division-wide work plan, which will help us align efforts across teams within and outside our division.

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

  • 28 students graduated with an Achieve certificate, representing 10 school districts in King and Pierce Counties.
  • Aaron Hayden (CIS faculty), in collaboration with the ELCAP department, has developed new programs to bridge the gap between STEM programs and our ELCAP students by providing additional support through the IBEST program and Jumpstart for introductory Computer Science and Computer Information Systems courses. He is also teaching these classes at the HUB in Federal Way to extend students’ access to CS/CIS programs.

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

  • Faculty co-chairs of the Learning and Teaching Center, Aleya Dhanji and Tarisa Matsumoto-Maxfield, provide an overview of the LTC’s activities for 23-24, as well as a deeper dive into the LTC’s ongoing work to support faculty navigating and using generative AI.

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

  • Eric Baer (Geology faculty) is currently running a workshop for community college geoscience faculty on how to write National Science Foundation (NSF) grants. The two-week workshop will include 31 faculty from community colleges across the country, including Rus Higley of the Highline MaST Center.  The workshop is supported by NSF and is in partnership with Mount San Antonio College, Penn State Brandywine, Reynolds Community College, Suffolk County Community College, and William & Mary.
  • Zanetka Gawronski (Fine Art and Multimedia faculty) exhibits Book(s) of Life at the Core Gallery from May 29- June 29. The exhibit is of portable paintings that fold into hardcover books, to be carried and read again and again.
  • Achieve is partnering with 11 school districts in King and Pierce Counties to serve dually enrolled students in an Achieve certificate program for the 2024-25 academic year.
  • In 2023/24, the MaST Center Aquarium
    • Ran 90 educational outreach programs to our community partners, a 17% increase from the previous year and reached nearly 4,000 students and adults. One example and strong partnership has been with Federal Way Public School’s TAF Academy, where besides numerous programs, the middle school students are articulating a harbor porpoise similar to the skeletons at the MaST and that was obtained through our Marine Mammal Stranding Network.
    • In partnership with HC CE and Green River College CE, we are a part of the expanded Discovery Academy in which the MaST is offering 5 weeks (25% increase) of marine science summer camps. Registration is still occurring but as of early June we are above the benchmarks established last summer.
    • With one more Discovery Day where we are open to the public, we are on track for exceeding 8,000 visitors to the MaST by the end of June which puts us on track for 15-16K annual visitors, an increase of 4-8% from the previous year. For many of these visitors, the MaST Center Aquarium is the first time they’ll step foot on Highline’s campus and so efforts have been made to ensure that they realize this connection with the main campus.
    • Lastly, although not a community partnership, our social media presence has continued to grow by leaps and bounds including a Facebook video post in early June that went viral and was streamed nearly 2,000,000 times with 28,000 reactions, 1,300 comments and 6,000 shares.

Highline’s STEM programs, led by Dr. Katie Baker (Biology) and Dr. Eric Baer (Geology) participated in Starfire’s Tukwila Cup Tournament & Block Party Event on June 29th. They had hands-on activities and talked to future Highline students about Highline’s STEM programs.

Caption: Dr. Katie Baker (Biology) helps a visitor to the community block party design a building that will withstand earthquakes on a shake table.

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

  • Seven members of the math department (Terry Meerdink, Razmehr Fardad, George Lopez, Khoi Nguyen, Shane Kibler-Trimboli, Patrick Kwon, and Dusty Wilson) attended the 2024 NW Regional Mathematics Conference in Gleneden Beach, OR. This was the first gathering with Oregon since prior to the pandemic.  The keynote address by Dr. Patti Frazer Lock (NY) was a powerful example of using visualization tools in statistics to help students.  Breakout talks were given by community college math faculty from across Washington and Oregon and focused on education, math topics, and math history including EDI issues.  Highline faculty presented two talks at the conference.  The first was titled, “Resources and Ideas for Christian Mathematicians” and focused on work done in partnership with two organizations that support faculty of faith in the public university system (the Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences and Faculty Commons).  About 10 faculty attended this talk.  The second was on “Mathematical Escape Rooms” and gave faculty the chance to learn by doing.  One of our faculty brought an escape room experience that the attendees got to work with (fortunately all math faculty succeeded in escaping, and none were left in Oregon).  About 25 faculty attended this educational and interactivity activity.  Overall, the faculty from Highline were encouraged in their work as math educators and mathematicians, strengthened connections with colleagues in the system, and returned refreshed and renewed.  They thank Highline College and the Board of Trustees for their ongoing support of professional development.  These opportunities are not to be taken for granted.
  • Aleya Dhanji (Physics faculty) and Dr. Eric Baer (Geology faculty) attended the 2024 AAAS-NSF IUSE (Improving Undergraduate Stem Education) Principal Investigators Summit in Washington DC June 16-18. This is a bi-annual meeting of the roughly 600 project leaders of federally funded grants to improve undergraduate STEM education.  The Summit provided continuous opportunities to connect with, learn from, and share with members of the IUSE community, the National Science Foundation, and the greater undergraduate STEM education community.

Report submitted by Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Emily Lardner