Area Report for Board of Trustees
Happy November Board Members!
It’s my pleasure to provide some updates on the excellent work coming from our students, staff and faculty at the college. I want to highlight our recent accreditation visit October 19-21. I’m pleased to say that visit was a success. The visiting team members provided numerous compliments to the campus community. One statement I wanted to highlight from the Team Chair:
“It was a pleasure to ‘visit’ your campus. The team felt welcomed and faculty, staff and students were engaged, informative and justifiably proud of the institution.” Our campus participated in large numbers for the campus forums and provided honest, detailed responses to the team’s questions. There were numerous accommodations and recommendations on how to improve our work for the future. Beginning in winter quarter, the campus will begin laying the groundwork for a new strategic plan for the next 7-10 years that will involve campus-wide discussions, collaborations and engagement from our students, staff, and faculty. I’m excited about planning the future for Highline College and look forward to having our entire campus community creating and shaping this vision for years to come. In addition, our campus will begin drafting an equity plan that will compliment and support our strategic plan, providing an amazing opportunity to further define our work centering on equity and inclusion in the classroom, program, and services and for our external communities. It’s a great time to be at Highline College.
Many thanks to the Accreditation Steering Committee for the excellent work over the years in preparing the campus for this important visit. Thank you to our Accreditation Liaison Officer, Dr. Emily Lardner for the heavy lifting and constant communication with the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU). And a special thank you to the entire campus community, including our Board members for participating and showcasing our institution.
The week concluded with our annual Professional Development Day (PDD) – an opportunity for our community to attend workshops facilitated by our staff and faculty. Numerous workshops were offered, and I had the pleasure to present at my first PDD – “So you’re thinking about Graduate School.” It was a lively and well-attended session that created discussion from participants. Thank you to the PDD committee for my opportunity to speak in a different capacity to our campus. And lastly, in looking at feedback from PDD, there was a new and popular session creating much interest – “Leading with Love” breakout session. This group has steadily grown in membership and programming over the past year, providing some great opportunities to showcase our community members and providing care and concern during these challenging and tough times for many at Highline College. Many thanks to Alycia Williams, Joshua Magallanes, Bob Baugher, Gum-Lai Ross, Erich Elwin, Gerie Ventura, Ay Saechao, Oussama (Sam) Alkhalili, Laura Manning, Steven Simpkins, Jean Munro and Liz Rangel (from UWT) for their creativity, innovation, celebration and modeling love for our community and society!
Report submitted Nov. 03, 2020, by President John R. Mosby, Ph.D.