Area Report for Board of Trustees

Winter enrollment trending up!
Enrollment for Fall Quarter 2023 exceeded the previous Fall Quarter enrollment by 407 FTE’s. That positive enrollment trend seems to be holding for Winter Quarter too. As of December 1, Running Start enrollment was 166 FTE’s higher than it was on the same registration day last year, an increase of 25%. On that same day, international student enrollment was also higher than last year, by 12 FTEs or 8%. Unfortunately, we continue to experience significant challenges with enrollment in BAS programs. Plans are underway to address this. Nonetheless, overall enrollment was 168 FTE’s higher than it was last year at this time. (You can see these enrollment trends on this Tableau Dashboard.) We expect enrollment to continue to climb. A big thanks to everyone for all the work that has gone and continues to go into helping us meet our enrollment targets.

Congratulations to the following faculty who were awarded Teaching and Learning Enhancement awards for 2023-2024:

• Laura Yanez Alvarez (ELCAP), “Personalized Tech Readiness”
• Katie Baker (Biology, “Application of Large Data Sets, PBL, and CURE in Cellular Biology for Majors (BIOL& 211)”
• Lisa Bernhagen (English), “How to make antiracist ungrading practices work well in Canvas for students and you”
• Chris Gan (Biology), “Increasing Diversity and Representation in the Anatomy and Physiology Laboratory”
• Daryllyn Harris (Counseling), “Strong, Magical, and Depressed: Support Group for African American women with experiences of Depression”
• Robin Martin & Rashmi Koushik (ELCAP), “ELCAP Student Handbook & Jumpstart Program Improvement”
• Angel Steadman (ELCAP, “Empower: A Comprehensive OER Textbook for Advanced ESOL Learners”
• Thanks to Hara Brook (Library), Maurea Brown (ELCAP), and Oussama Alkhalili (Business Technology) for serving on the TLE awards committee. Thanks to the Highline Foundation for providing funding for these awards.

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

• The Reflection Room for neurodivergent students has drawn many students from all over campus. It has been a very busy place and initial feedback has been very positive. Students say they are enjoying having a quiet, calm, and welcoming place where they can retreat, rest, and experience all of the different sensory items in the room. The large bean bag, weighted blanket, and noise machine have been a big hit. Clark College, who opened their “Sensory Room” this quarter, has featured the impact of rooms like this on student wellbeing in an article in Clark 24/7 where they also featured Highline’s Reflection Room and South Puget Sound Community College’s Calm Room. A Thunderword article entitled “Finding calm in the chaos: Highline’s Reflection Room offers students a sanctuary” was featured in the November 16 issue.
• Fall Quarter 2023 has seen a total of 533 disability related accommodation requests in 335 classes. In disaggregating the student data, over 70% fall into the neurodivergent category.
• High School Engagement and Success hosted Collegecon with the support of various departments and volunteers on Saturday, December 2^nd. Collegecon is a free one, day learning experience for students and families that has been hosted at Highline College, in partnership with Highline Public Schools, for the last 7 years. Attendees engaged in interactive workshops about college and career options and preparing for life after graduation They also attended a resource fair, and learned how to apply to and pay for college.
  • Over 300 HPS students attended Collegecon. Students were accompanied by their families, causing overall participation to total nearly 400 people
  • 20 programs were represented by faculty and staff at the resource fair
  • HPS Students said:
    • “This experience has been so fulfilling! This is my first year coming to College Con, and I was blown away by the amount of information I am able to take home with me. Thank you for hosting this event, and I would love to come back next year!”
    • “This was a really great opportunity. I learned a lot.”

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

• Maritime High School and Highline have embarked on a partnership to offer Science (and especially Marine Science) classes to Maritime’s Junior and Senior students. Maritime High School is a collaborative project of Highline Public Schools, Northwest Maritime Center, Port of Seattle, and the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition.  Through this partnership, Maritime students will get access to Highline’s exceptional science faculty and facilities, including the MaST center.  Maritime students will also receive college credit, allowing them to graduate from Maritime with a head-start on their college career. We anticipate it will serve 12-20 students in 2024-2-25 and twice that in 2025-26.  This partnership is thanks to the collaborative efforts of Chase Magliocca and Karen Steinbach in Running Start; Luckisha Phillips, Rus Higley, Eric Baer, Gabrielle Bachmeier, and Jennifer Joseph-Charles in Academic Affairs.
• Highline ran its first CIS 100 IBEST in fall quarter of 2023. The CIS and ELCAP co-instructors, Aaron Hayden and Cyrille Gibran, are finding the instructional model to be very effective at providing essential support to students as they enter the CIS educational and career pathway. As a result, the CIS Department wants to expand its IBEST to include CIS 150 and CIS 160. The ELCAP and CIS Departments are collaborating on implementing the new CIS IBEST courses in spring quarter 2023.
• More students are coming into the Library. Compared with the library front gate count for Fall 2022, in Fall 2023, around 5 times more students are coming into Building 25. Many of the students go up the elevator to the 6^th floor Cohort Learning Communities, Academic Success Center, and MESA or the 5^th floor International Student Programs or Accessibility Resources departments.
• Example, Week 6/Midterms:
  • Fall 2022 Monday-Friday: 2,791
  • Fall 2023 Monday-Friday: 17,893

Advisory Committee on Digital Literacy, Generative AI, and Academic Integrity

As Dr. Mosby shared with campus, Dr. Lardner is convening a planning team to establish an advisory committee on artificial intelligence, digital literacy, and academic integrity. Many faculty are grappling with the impact of AI on student learning, including concerns about academic integrity. Many faculty are also reporting that students struggle with technology in general. Some faculty are suggesting that we should explicitly address inequities embedded in this aspect of the “hidden curriculum”—including, perhaps, a version of a digital literacy assessment for incoming students.

These are challenging issues. Dr. Lardner has invited a group to help draft a charge, a timeline with deliverables, and a process for inviting broad faculty participation. This initial planning team includes Aleya Dhanji & Tarisa Matsumoto-Maxfield, LTC Faculty Co-Chairs; Teri Balkenende (HCEA representative); Maurea Brown (ELCAP); Sam Kaplan (Center of Excellence for Global Trade & Logistics); Marc Lentini (Ed Tech Director); Luckisha Phillips (Education); Monica Twork (faculty librarian); Gerie Ventura (Library Director); and Izzy Wroblewski (Director, Student Conduct), with support from Carrie Davidson (Director, Office of Instruction).

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

• Co-sponsored by Accessibility Resources, Disability Justice Week 2023, November 6-9 “The future is accessible” was a success! Over 220 people attended four days of workshops. Workshops included national speakers, local disability self-advocates and our own Highline students. DJW partnered with Climate Justice Week organizers for a film viewing and discussion about the disproportionate impacts of climate change on disabled communities.
• Skyler Fulton (business faculty), Ché Dawson (legal faculty), Laurel Lunden (health occupations faculty) and Sherri Chun (business technology faculty) attended Career Day at Kennedy Catholic High School on October 12th. The objective of Career Day was to expose 11^th grade students to career pathways other than the traditional 4-year college.  Highline College brought faculty to represent degrees in Legal Studies (Paralegal), Business and Accounting, and Medical Assisting.  Faculty spent the morning meeting with groups of 11^th grade students, and the conversations varied greatly!  A few students knew exactly what they wanted to do, but most had only general ideas. It was an exciting opportunity to discuss ALL career paths, not just the ones our departments represent.  Kennedy Catholic has a lot of students involved in athletics, and having Ché and Skyler there was another way to actively engage student athletes who want to continue participating in athletics but are not qualified to compete at the D1 or D2 level, and for whom D3 schools are financially or geographically challenging.  We made great connections, and hope to participate in this event next year.

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

Led by faculty chair Lisa Bernhagen, the Institutional Effectiveness Committee continued its work to streamline the current MFR by identifying objectives and measures that might usefully shift into division or department Institutional Effectiveness plans. That proposal has been shared with the Executive Cabinet, pending review. The potential shorter, more focused version of the MFR will be shared with campus in Winter. This move comes partly in response to feedback from the NWCCU midcycle visit, but also in response to the original plan for drafting a new MFR through campus-wide consultations.

A subcommittee of the Assessment Committee (Ellen Bremen, Mary Kajoka, Tylir Mackenzie, Angel Steadman) along with Lisa Bernhagen, Jenni Sandler, Justin Dampeer, and Emily Lardner  has been developing an alternative to the current program improvement process with the goal of streamlining and simplifying all of Highline’s assessment processes: course-level, program-level, college-wide, and program/discipline improvement. The subcommittee is presenting the results of this work to the larger Assessment Committee next week.

Facilitated by Jennifer Joseph-Charles and Crystal Kitterman, with support from Carrie Davidson, the Instructional Leaders Group (ILG), which includes Deans, Associate Deans, Directors, Associate Directors, and Program Managers in our division, met in December to:

• Connect with colleagues;
• Engage in small group sharing and learning of how to to improve strategies, assessment, and goal setting for Institutional Effectiveness Plans;
• Continue data analysis practice and begin to brainstorm solutions
  • “Go slow to go fast” – derived from “The Fifth Discipline” by Peter M. Senge

Since last spring, the facilitators have been working with Nicole Coope and Melissa Trambley from Kanoa Consulting on a year-long professional learning program focused on communication and relationships, trust, belonging & inclusion, and project management, which emerged as high priorities at an early fall retreat. At the December meeting, the group continued to unpack and call out aspects of white supremacy culture. Nicole facilitated focused work on dismantling perfectionism, “the conditioned belief and attitude that we can be perfect based on a standard or set of rules that we did not create and that we are led to believe will prove our value” Tema Okun May 2021.

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