Area Report for Board of Trustees

Good day Trustees,

Well, as summer draws to a close the college has wrapped up summer quarter and quickly shifted gears to prepare for fall quarter.  Staff retreats are happening, people are wrapping up their vacations, and folks are enjoying the last bit of summer before fall begins.  I had a great opportunity to speak to the Foundation Board recently and I’m continually impressed by their energy and the excitement from new board members.  Many thanks to Josh and his team for creating a wonderful space to gather, work and learn.

The campus is busy preparing for opening and welcome weeks.  It will be another fun filled and informative time discussing our strategic plan and accreditation to name a few items.

I’m also excited that I will be starting my 8^th year as President.  Time flies.  Have a great week!

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

The Human Resources team is excited to welcome back all of our faculty and students into the fall quarter. To kick things off this academic year, we are beginning a compensation project for our exempt staff.

The objectives of this project are to:

• Define position classifications (manager, director, individual contributor, etc.)
• Establish appropriate salary ranges based on role and market alignment
• Create career pathing frameworks
• Implement governance to ensure compliance, equity, and consistency in salaries and requests

We will be using an external consultant who has already begun the work. She has a background in HR within SBCTC as well as 20 years of compensation experience. She has already completed this project for another college in Washington. The managers have been briefed on September 4^th and the employees will be briefed on the project as well. We are hoping to have this project wrapped up by the end of the calendar year.

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

• September’s Board of Trustee meeting marks the beginning of a new era as we meet in our new location in Building 2. Building 2 recently underwent a major A/V overhaul, with all new projection, audio, and video equipment, with the intent to better support campus events and instruction, third party rentals, and specifically Trustee meetings in the space. While the work is recently completed and we are still getting used to the new system, I believe I can speak for everyone in saying we will be happy to never again use the microphones in the old Board Room.
• In response to the college’s recent performance audit by the State Auditor’s Office, ITS and Purchasing have been working on an overhaul of our Small and Attractive Inventory (SAI) process.  Conversations and work had already been in process to update the software used to manage the inventory and better unify practices between ITS and Purchasing, and in response to conversations with the auditors, we further refined some of our plans for that project.  The first full campus inventory audit using the new system was launched in August, and will be completed through September as everyone returns to campus. We will then be reviewing the results of that audit and updating our procedures for greater efficiency.
• ITS announced to campus in August that our multi-factor authentication (MFA) options will change to remove the option for text message or voice calls this fall.  Our primary authentication provider, Okta, is removing those options from their offerings for a combination of security and financial reasons. We have notified campus of this upcoming change, expected in October, and will be working to provide extra support for users who change their MFA method at the beginning of fall quarter.
• In August, the Information Technology Commission and the Research and Planning Commission hosted the third annual Data Summit at Yakima Valley College. This event brings together IT, research, and functional subject matter experts together to collaborate on data issues across our system. This year the agenda included discussions of data issues in AI in addition to collaboration on our DataLink data replication system and campus tools built from it, as well as conversations on data analytics and data classification practices.  Pat Daniels participated on the planning committee for the event, and several staff from both ITS and IR participated along with Marco Lopez, Director of Budgets, Grants and Procurement.
• We are pleased to report that we have seen an 83% improvement in an annually-measured IT Security metric regarding end user phishing response over the past year. Our employees are a key point in our collective IT security defenses and it’s wonderful to see this type of gain.
• ITS would like to welcome Freddy Freire Aragon as the newest member of the IT Infrastructure and System Administration team! A native of Ecuador, Freddy is a resident of Des Moines and comes to the college with a wealth of computing and network experience in private industry.  We are excited to have Freddy on board in this critical role supporting Highline’s IT systems.

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