Area Report for Board of Trustees

As I reflect on the outcome of the recent election, I am reminded of the critical role education plays in shaping a brighter, more inclusive future. At Highline College, our commitment to our mission—building a strong and inclusive community, promoting student success, and advancing social justice through meaningful educational pathways—remains steadfast. Guided by our vision to be a regional leader in equitable education and community empowerment, we continue to support all students in reaching their potential, regardless of background or circumstance.

In the coming months, Highline will work diligently to uphold these values as we respond to the evolving needs of our community. By prioritizing our strategic goals of Access, Learning, Community, and Culture & Capacity, we aim to create an environment where every student has the opportunity to thrive. Together, we will move forward, dedicated to advancing Highline’s mission and vision to serve the public good.

October brought great activity to the community, to include the following:

1. Professional Development Day (PDD) 2024 at Highline College was a dedicated day for faculty, staff, and administrators to focus on personal and professional growth, collaboration, and alignment with the college’s strategic priorities. The keynote speaker for the PDD was Dr. Melissa Salazar, the ESCALA CEO. The title of her session was What Does it Mean to Become a Hispanic Serving Institution? Burning Questions and Critical Practices.

For colleges like Highline that are on the brink of earning the Hispanic Serving Institution designation, now is an opportunity to hold dialogues about servingness, or the ways Highline can intentionally put into place practices that foster Latinx/e student success.  In the keynote address/workshop Dr. Salazar, the founder of ESCALA Educational Services Inc., shared share what she identifies as the “Burning Questions”, or key discussions that emerge in HSIs as they attempt to shift away from a historically white institutional culture. Dr. Salazar also shared practitioner stories from her organization’s work partnering with more than 75 HSIs across the country, and which practices have been making the biggest difference for Latinx/e students.

2. Highline College hosted a FEMA led Cybersecurity Tabletop exercise for WACTC Presidents. The exercise allowed college presidents to recognize the specific types of cybersecurity threats that their institutions could face, such as ransomware, phishing attacks, and data breaches. Participants learned about threat actors, motivations, and the potential impacts on institutional operations and data. Presidents practiced response protocols and incident management. The exercise emphasized the importance of clear roles and responsibilities during an incident, for instance, the importance of collaboration with IT teams, legal advisors, communication staff, and external cybersecurity experts. Other key focus areas were crisis communication, institutional resilience and recovery planning, coordination with Government and law enforcement, and policy and preparedness enhancements.

Overall, the event empowered WACTC presidents to better understand cybersecurity threats, response protocols, and preventative measures, preparing them to lead proactive cybersecurity efforts at their institutions.

3. Thunderbird Soar Foundation Event was a wonderful event to celebrate and support Highline’s commitment to student success, community engagement, and educational access. Highlights of the event included community and donor engagement; Foundation and organizers’ recognition; student and program success stories; examples of advances of strategic goals, fundraising for scholarships and programs. Overall, the event underscored Highline College’s dedication to fostering a supportive, inclusive environment and showcased the essential support provided by the Highline Foundation in advancing the college’s goals.

Information Technology Services

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

• ITS staff have been working with several groups on campus, including the new Outreach and Recruitment team, to operationalize use of the Recruit module in the watermark Watermark Student Success & Engagement (SS&E, formerly known as Aviso) to support and track our student recruitment efforts.  In addition to Outreach, the BAS office and Business Division in Academic Affairs have begun making use of these tools.

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

• ITS is partnering with Student Services and Academic Affairs to provide training and support to employees around advising and academic planning in the Watermark SS&E platform. The goal is to provide a consistent academic planning experience for students at all levels, and take advantage of functionality and reporting in SS&E to support that work. Trainings were held in August and October, primarily attended by student services staff, and were also recorded and made available to the campus community.  Additionally, Zoe Harris from Academic Affairs provided guidance on navigating the multiple systems available to support academic planning and how to use them together most effectively for student success.
• Jill Hammitt led an “Advising Treasure Hunt” during Professional Development Day.  This session taught faculty and staff the best places to find student data to support advising such as Advisement Reports, Program information, Holds, Graduation Application status, Notes, Milestones and more in ctcLink and Watermark SS&E, and then gave participants challenges to practice and demonstrate what they had learned.

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

• Tim Wrye attended the EDUCAUSE annual conference in San Antonio, TX in October, and was recognized for his participation on the EDUCAUSE Top 10 Issues panel for 2025.  This annual report is developed by representatives from a variety of colleges across the EDUCAUSE membership, and Tim was honored to represent Washington, Community Colleges, and Highline in that group.  The overarching theme of the report was Restoring Trust, and, the number one issue for 2025 was The Data Empowered Institution.

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

• ITS staff across the division have been planning and implementing a variety of software and infrastructure improvements, including the implementation of the CourseDog class scheduling platform in support of Academic Affairs and the Handshake student internship and job platform in support of Career and Transfer Services.  Additionally, we made the decision to retire the AppsAnywhere virtual application platform at the end of summer quarter in lieu of utilizing the Intune functionality now available to us in Microsoft365, and the Infrastructure and System Administration (ISA) department is actively working on hardware updates for our core datacenter network and our virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) system.
• Technology Support Services (TSS) is working with EdTech, Accessibility Services, and Conference Services to upgrade equipment in some of our largest campus meeting spaces.  Planning started in the summer and we anticipate installations to happen through winter and spring quarter, depending on vendor and space availability. We are also planning for a round of classroom equipment updates later in the academic year.
• Our Teams Phone migration project is nearing completion.  All of the components are in place, and we are moving users and departments to the new system as quickly as our service provider can respond. (If you’ve ever tried to move your number between mobile providers, think about doing that for 1000 of numbers.) We anticipate all numbers will be on Teams by the end of fall quarter, and then we will focus on dialing in (pun intended) the configuration and functionality for our shared service lines.
• Our annual end-user IT Security Awareness training campaign kicked off in October.  This critical (and required) component of our IT security program helps make sure all employees know their part in protecting the institution’s data and systems. The training is made up of a series of short weekly lessons that will run into Winter quarter.  Meanwhile, ITS Leadership is almost complete with our initial assessment of the “Compiled Controls”, an exercise which helps us map our current status against the multiple IT security regulations and requirements the college is held to.  Once that assessment is complete we will be prioritizing work to mitigate any identified gaps.
• Pat Daniels, through her work as co-Chair of the ctcLink College Collaboration Group (cCCG) has been working with folks from other system colleges and the SBCTC planning a structure for cross-college process alignment.  Known as PAWs (Project Alignment Workshops), this effort is intended to make sure the colleges are collectively making the most effective and efficient use of our shared systems, primarily focused on processes that utilize ctcLink.  These workshops will require active participation from Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) from all colleges, and the first workshop is going to address Travel and Expense processes.
• ITS, Accessibility Resources, and EdTech are working to coordinate the college’s response to new Accessibility requirements coming under changes to Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). These changes strengthen the requirements that we are held to for accessibility across all digital platforms and materials.  The Accessible Technology Committee presented to Executive Cabinet about these changes earlier this fall, and is now in the process of meeting with each EC member individually to work on planning to support this work in each of their divisions. At the recent Information Technology Commission meeting, the SBCTC Accessibility Coordinator called out Highline’s materials on the issue as an example for other colleges, which have been developed primarily by Michael Hanscom, our Accessible Technology Program Manager.
• In October, Tim Wrye and Pat Daniels helped support a Cybersecurity tabletop exercise for all of our system Presidents.  Hosted at Highline, a majority of our system Presidents gathered to participate in discussions led by staff from FEMA around 2 cybersecurity incident scenarios. Pat and Tim functioned as silent observers and reporters for the exercise. Acting President Penn attended on behalf of Highline and was an active participant in the exercise.  All of the Presidents came away with a greater understanding of the risks and implications of this kind of incident, including candid reports from their peers at institutions which have experienced a significant attack.

Report submitted by Acting President Dr. Jamilyn Penn