Area Report for Board of Trustees
The quarterly Academic Affairs newsletter came out at the end of Winter quarter. In it, celebrate faculty who have been awarded tenure, received professional leave for next year, received teaching and learning enhancement grants (supported by the Foundation), and Open Educational Resource grants supported through Guided Pathways. We recognize new employees in our division, and congratulate those who have received promotions We address matters related to enrollment, specifically outreach and recruitment. We also address concerns that have been raised across division about communication.
We want to recognize two additional colleagues: Jennifer Johnston, who has been selected to serve as director of Highline’s Title III project, and Juli Hammond, serving as the Administrative Assistant for Title III.
In a collaboration with UW Tacoma’s School of Engineering and Technology, Highline’s engineering department has been funded a transfer partnership grant in the amount of $25,000 by the University of Washington’s Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI). This new project by CCRI involves institutional partners working together to target the structural inequities that affect low-income STEM students’ successful transfer and retention all the way from entry at a community college to completion of a Bachelor’s degree at a four-year institution. Engineering is one of the most in demand jobs in the state with a key shortage of skilled workers nationwide. By creating a partnership to increase the pipeline of engineering students from Highline to UW Tacoma, this project will be responsive to the needs of the community and workforce, and will expand the role that Highline plays within the local job market. The data sharing partnership will also address Highline’s core theme objective to increase educational success, close equity gaps, and reduce inequities’ especially for African American, Black, and Latino students in STEM. The team is led by Emese Hadnagy, Civil Engineering Program Chair, and Kira King, Academic Counselor, from UW Tacoma and Aleya Dhanji, Physics Faculty, and Timur Kuzu, MESA Director from Highline College. The Highline team is also supported by Melissa Moehlig, Engineering Department Coordinator, and Skyler Roth, Institutional Research.
Kudos to Faculty, Staff, and Students
Aleya Dhanji, physics faculty, and Bob Scribner, LTC director, gave a presentation at the NW Regional Equity Conference on “In-Class Advising as a Strategy to Reach Underserved Students”. The workshop focused on introducing in-class advising as a structured way to bring advising to students, help students build connections with each other and with campus and move students away from self-advising. Participants had a chance to work on a plan to implement a holistic advising approach that meets students where they are, addresses their individual needs, and focuses on student development and learning.
The Society of Physics Students (SPS) chapter at Highline College was last year recognized as a Distinguished Chapter, one of only 10% of SPS chapters across the nation and one of very few community college chapters to receive the status. A major contributing factor in the chapter award was the work by students in designing and 3D printing face shields for use by students, faculty and staff on campus during the pandemic so that classes could be held safely. Face shields of this quality that are reusable were hard to get and expensive since they were being diverted to hospitals, which is appropriate. As Nicki Bly, COVID supervisor, states, without the students coming up with the idea of making our own on Highline campus, and our head lab technician, Stephaney Puchalski, supervising the production, many classes particularly in healthcare programs could not have taken place safely. To date, more than 2500 face shields have been produced for campus. This is certainly a shining example of how our students’ initiative and ingenuity made difference in the time of COVID-19!
Eric Baer, Geology, had four published articles last year including an article in Nature Communications entitled ‘Uneven increases in racial diversity of US geoscience undergraduates’ and another in New Directions for Community Colleges entitled ‘Professional development during a crisis and beyond: Lessons learned during COVID’. The study published in Nature Communications highlighted that while the geosciences have made progress in racial and ethnic diversity over the past 20 years, this progress is not evenly distributed across institutions. It is imperative that more work be done to recruit a diverse student body and faculty, create accessible and inclusive learning environments, increase student sense of belonging and provide holistic academic and career mentoring in the geosciences.
Emma Kong, CIS faculty, has been working with faculty at Dakota State University related to trending technologies. One of their papers was just published in a scientific journal Energies. The study focuses on the smart electric vehicle charging for the Internet of Vehicles and to introduce trending technologies that can be applied to the Internet of Vehicles, e.g., blockchain, cloud computing and machine learning. The paper can be read here.
Megan Koester, a student in our CIS program, competed in February in the Secure the Future Competition hosted by Palo Alto Networks and placed first out of 150 students! Megan was nominated by a faculty member and pass a qualification round. The top 150 students who scored best on the test or earned the certificate then moved into the competition rounds. The first several rounds included: another test on cybersecurity concepts; reading on how those concepts apply to the energy, healthcare, and finance sectors; and writing reports on applying the concepts to an industry of your choice. Following that, there was a final round to select the top 10 students which consisted of a longer report on how all of the previous concepts could be applied to the education sector and a 5-minute video presentation. The focus of this report was creatively applying these concepts into securing this industry in the future. The final 10 students then presented their work for 10 minutes each to a board of Palo Alto Networks managers and directors. Congratulations on your hard work, Megan and great work of the CIS faculty for preparing our students!!
Report submitted April 07, 2022, by Vice President Emily Lardner, Ph.D.