Area Report for Board of Trustees

November, 2023 is highlighted by the 14th Annual Black and Brown Male Summit on November 18 and Student Legislative Breakfast on November 29. On campus, the Web Team continued to make progress on the website migration, while IA and Foundation team members were active in the community, representing the college at various events and building connection with local community based organizations and economic development efforts that have planted the seeds for at least 2 future joint grant requests and opportunities to directly promote Highline College career oriented programs.

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

• Web Team is in the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) phase of the new Content Management System (CMS). The main objective is to test the design and features of the CMS to ensure they meet the specifications and requirements of Highline College. At the same time, the software vendor, Modern Campus, is testing sample migrations of current content from the Highline.edu, Financial Aid, Admissions, Registration, and Student Records sites.
• The 14th Annual Black & Brown Male Summit on Saturday, November 18th was a huge success. We served close to 300 young men of color and approximately 50 adult chaperones. We presented two powerful keynotes from Kevin Powell (activist, author, and filmmaker) and Dr. Rob Rubalcaba (math professor, San Diego City College), as well as several engaging workshops from Highline’s own Malaelupe Samifua & Joel Esqueda, former VPSS Aaron Reader, and many others. We also offered a very well attended resource fair with on and off campus resources. We are thankful for this year’s sponsors; KeyBank, WA State Faculty and Staff of Color Conference, HC Foundation, and HC Promise. Our committee appreciates the continued support to keep this event going. We are looking forward to celebrating our 10th year anniversary for the Young Educated Ladies Leading (Y.E.L.L.) Female Summit in the spring.

• Keynote Speaker Kevin Powell, gave a shout out to B&B Summit on his social media platforms and stated “this is how a conference should be organized, how beautifully they took care of the attendees and us guest speakers, all the love flowing here there everywhere.” We are now being contacted by folks from other states that would like to put something similar together in their own states.
• IA representatives Dave O’Keeffe and Josh Gerstman were part of 15 member cohort to attend ESCALA at Columbia Basin College along with 3 other institutions. The workshop is designed for colleges to move toward ‘Servingness’ to the Latinx community on the path to earning HSI (Hispanic Serving Institution).

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

• Shakira Ericksen, Director of Government Relations, and Ashley Kerr, Executive Assistant to VP-IA, provided extensive support to ASHC student leaders toward a successful annual student legislative breakfast, at which 103+ individuals attended, including 6 elected officials and federal staffers, and 5 excellent student speakers. This collaborative event is unique amongst our peer colleges and provides students direct experience in learning about the legislative process and connecting with local, state and federal leaders.

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

• Highline College Foundation sponsored a series of events in November and supported participation by Highline College representatives, including Para Los Ninos Annual Gala and St. Anne’s Hospital To your Health Gala – both on November 18.
• IA team members represented the college at several community events, including Seattle Southside Chamber of Commerce/Success Foundation Awards Night which featured the Workforce Discovery Camp, a weeklong program where high school students from Highline and Tukwila School Districts spent time with various businesses and industries each day. In their presentation, they highlighted their first day, which was a visit to Highline, a hands-on workshop in the ThunderLab MakerSpace, led by Stephanie Puchalski and Eric Baer and heard a presentation on Legal Studies by Che Dawson. The student speaker mentioned that the visit to Highline opened her eyes to all the different areas in STEM and Business she could get started on here at the college.

• Additional community events included participating in City of Burien education roundtable, Soundside Alliance community tour and reception with members of Greater Seattle Partners, Federal Way Diversity Taskforce, planning meetings with Puget Sound Educational Service District, Seattle Southside Chamber and Build2Lead.

Division Honors and Achievements

In November, we wished Raechel Dawson, Associate Director of Communications and Marketing, farewell and good luck on her next life journey as Associate Director of Communications at Bellevue College. We’re working on updating the job description for Associate Director of Communications and Public Information to be posted soon.

Report submitted by Vice President of Institutional Advancement, Josh Gerstman