Area Report for Board of Trustees
Happy July, the summer is once again, speeding along. I wanted to highlight a few items for the month before our upcoming board meeting. This past spring, Highline College launched its inaugural Campus Climate Assessment (CCA) in partnership with the National Institute for Transformation and Equity (NITE). Between May 15 and June 16, 2022, over one-third of Highline College faculty and staff responded to the survey and just over 5% of students completed the assessment. In total, close to 500 community members shared their individual perspectives on the state of equity at Highline College. As the first CCA administered at Highline College, this sets the foundation for understanding, acknowledging, and addressing the (un)known barriers to achieving diversity and equity. Both the process (engaging community members to document their experiences) and product (aggregate data on institutional experiences with diversity) will provide new insight to guide institutional change.
Beginning in fall, survey findings will be submitted from NITE to the Office of the President and Office if Institutional Research (IR) for review and later share with campus shareholders. I look forward to reviewing this information with the Trustees as well and will appreciate your feedback as well.
As a reminder, Highline College has been selected to join King County Promise as one of the inaugural partners and on Wednesday, July 20, our college will be hosting the King County Promise Kickoff. Puget Sound College & Career Network (PSCCN) will be welcoming the King County Promise partnerships whose goal is to make the dream of a college education a reality for students in King County. There will be approximately 75 key stakeholders, including King County Promise funded partnerships, academic partners, and community-based organizations. Our institution is excited and proud to begin this transformative work for our King County community and residents.
Our commencement survey has been submitted to the campus to gather feedback from our “Crossing the Stage” event and begin planning for the next academic year. As we gather responses, I will be sharing these ideas with campus and our Trustees about options to ensure we celebrate our student achievements in the best way possible.
And finally, some not-so-great news. Unfortunately, I acquired COVID a second time this past week (my first diagnosis was in January). This new B5 variant is contagious and approximately 40% of cases are repeat COVID cases. Personally, I’m on the mend but will say this latest bout was hard. I mention this strictly as a reminder that we’re not out of the woods yet with this pandemic and a to always exercise safety and precaution. I wish everyone a safe and relaxing week as we close out July and look toward August.
Human Resources
There are approximately thirty open recruitments at Highline for exempt and classified positions. Ten new tenure-track and one-year faculty positions have been filled; one full-time faculty recruitment remains in process.
Staff in HR continue to work tirelessly in support of recruitments, compensation changes, year-end processes, new contracts, and preparation for annual performance reviews.
Human Resources offered training for staff and managers on July 11, 2022 to help employees prepare for their annual performance reviews. The training highlighted the importance of this process to establish priorities, clarify expectations, and help employees make progress towards their professional goals.
Through the processes outlined in the Highline College-WPEA Collective Bargaining Agreement, the parties have worked to address historic inconsistencies impacting employees’ periodic increment dates. Human Resources is working to conduct a detailed and thorough review of all employee records. To date, we have completed a review of approximately 36 records and issued nearly $40,000 in retro pay to impacted employees. This process exemplifies the work of Highline’s WPEA shop stewards to advocate for employees, and the ongoing collaborative partnership between the college and union.
Information Technology Services
IT Services staff continue to work over the summer on system and equipment maintenance and upgrades looking forward to fall quarter. One project completed this month by the Infrastructure team is the campus-wide upgrade of the wireless network, which has been in process for the last several months.
ITS has also increased participation in several campus-wide efforts, including the Strategic Enrollment Management planning and the new King County Promise grant. ITS participation in these initiatives helps to ensure systems, processes, and data structures can support the critical work of these efforts.
Report submitted July 16, 2022, by President Dr. John R. Mosby