Area Report for Board of Trustees

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

• The ELCAP Department faculty and staff worked together to ensure they provided a safe, supportive, and caring environment for each other and the thousands of students who work hard to make a life for themselves and their families. This has been especially important as the federal government continues to attack and undermine our immigrant and refugee communities.

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

• The Puget Sound Welcome Back Center was once again the recipient of several contracts and grants to help internationally educated professionals reach their goals of re-entering their chosen professions.

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

• Early Childhood Education wanted to celebrate over 12 years of offering their Spanish cohort and 10 years of offering their Somali cohort.  We are also close to hiring a new ECE for Spanish Cohorts tenure-track position to support our Spanish cohort.
• Thunderword covering the MAST and beyond! Some of the projects are:
  • Podcast with Rus on MaST and SixGill event o SixGill Shark Event (BIG multifaceted project!) Video teaser for marketing (HUGE), photos, and coverage at the July 6th event.
  • Digital Photo Library Evergreen State’s Sustainability in Prison: Bringing the MaST octopus back to prison being covered by Thunderword team.

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

• Learning and Teaching Center launched its new name and announced the joining of forces with the Educational Technology Group. There will be much more coming from TIaDL in the next academic year. But first we want to thank all the faculty that took time to offer professional development workshops to their peers.
• Laura Soracco, English department Faculty, received the Civic Engagement MiniGrant in March through the Project Pericles. This is part of a Mellon Foundation and Eugene M. Lang Foundation initiative to sustainProject Pericles’ Civic Engagement Resources for educators in different disciplines. Her proposal was to create an English 101 titled “Critical Information Consumption in the Digital Age.” She will continue to focus on misinformation and critical information literacy aspects applied to English composition. This work will become part of Project Pericles’ “Beyond Media Literacy” track.

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