Area Report for Board of Trustees

Happy Spring Quarter, Board of Trustees. The Student Services report to you this month is light. Staff have been focused on preparing their departments for the start of spring quarter, while also helping to support a variety of projects/work around the College community, to include grant development and submissions, committee engagement, and staff recruitment. This month, I would like to draw your attention to details related to the Financial Aid Simplification Update, what was submitted by the Director of Financial Aid, Corinne Soltis. If you have any questions related to the details provided, Corinne is available to provide clarification, where needed. Thank you.

Kind regards,

Dr. Jamilyn Penn

Vice President of Student Services

Student Support and Funding Services:

Financial Aid Simplification Update 

FAFSA Simplification includes all federal changes to the federal application process for financial aid that began in 2022 and culminated in the current 2024-25 FAFSA Application year. Following are updates related to the overall FAFSA simplification process.

• The 2024-25 FAFSA is live with the following issues:
• Parents and spouses without a social security number are experiencing significant issues apply with the FAFSA
• No student can make a correction on their FAFSA until mid-April.
• There are known issues with delivered IRS Tax information when the filer or the IRS made corrections to their tax return information.
• WASFA applications are available and appear to have no significant issues.
• Financial Aid software will not be available until mid-May.  With setup and testing, Highline is expected to have working software in late May.
• To overcome the significant delays caused by the FAFSA Simplification, Highline’s Financial Aid Office will implement the following:
• Significantly reduce the number of students who need to provide additional information beyond the FAFSA/WASFA application. This will reduce the number of times an application needs to be reviewed by staff, leading to faster file review and award of aid.
• After processing initial applications, priority will be given to enrolled students. After the initial applications are reviewed, priority will be given to enrolled students in classes.  Notices will be sent to students, so they have time to enroll.
• Adjust Advisor responsibilities to increase file review hours per week by 30. The Financial Aid Office has trained student employees to answer basic financial aid questions to allow Advisors 5 more hours per person per week for application review.
• Reduce staff processing time for document tracking. Students can no longer submit documents via email, streamlining the complex document tracking process so staff has more time for student questions and file review.
• Train support staff to assist with file review. Full-time support staff will be trained on some file review procedures that will speed up necessary requests for additional information from students.
• The Financial Aid Office will be closed to the public on Wednesdays for processing.  If necessary, we may seek to close to the public on Friday as well—a strong suggestion proposed by the state Financial Aid Council.
• Mandatory overtime for Financial Aid Staff during the summer. The Financial Aid department is still seeking budget funding for this overtime.
• Flexibility to hold more Fall students in classes without payment. Allow the Financial Aid Office to hold more students in Fall classes without financial penalty to the Financial Aid Department budget if the above measures do not close the processing time gap.

International Student Programs (ISP):
For the spring quarter, there are 38 new international students from a variety of different countries attending Highline College. Most noticeably, about a third of the new students are from Myanmar. The other populations are made up of Vietnamese, Japanese, Kenya, Germany, Morocco, France, and Tanzania. The week of March 25^th, ISP staff welcomed 28 of the new students at the new international student orientation day. Further, staff at Campus View hosted a meet and greet session for all student residents on February 28^th and March 8^th. International students were very present at the events.
Jesse Aspree, Director of ISP will be on a recruitment trip from April 2- 28 to visit our partner universities and agencies in both Japan and Korea.

Student Life: 

Global Student Ambassadors (GSA) recently presented topics on culture, bias, and identity to campus partners, including Achieve Program students. Attendees were engaged in learning to explore their identities and biases and to identify ways these characteristics affect their relation to society.

Through a collaborative effort with the Inter-Cultural Center, GSA hosted The Year of the Dragon Lunar New Year Celebration at Highline. The Lunar New Year celebration at Highline has become an annual event that the community enjoys immensely. GSA educated the community on different traditions through the lens of diverse cultures that celebrate it. Attendees participated in various games and tried different dishes and presentations.

The World Wonders and Art Event brought different famous (and less famous) arts and world wonders around the globe to the Highline community. GSA created a walk-through gallery with small replicas and printed materials accompanied by a brief history and description of each artifact. This provided attendees with the opportunity to explore different arts and architectural and natural wonders around the world.

The annual Global Fest will take place in May – more information to come.

Counseling 

Data for the number of students served by Counselors during winter quarter 2024 is reflected as below:

The Counseling Department scheduled 530 appointments this quarter. There were 107 more scheduled appointments than Winter 2023. That is an increase of 25.2%! Counselors completed 374 counseling sessions with students this year. That reflects 117 more counseling sessions than Winter 2023. That is an increase of 45.5%! Counselors also had 14 drop-in/urgent appointments this quarter. There were 9 drop-in/urgent appointments in Winter 2023.

Further, the Director of Counseling was able to support 13 1-to-one sessions during spring break when Faculty Counselors were away from the office. Seven of those counseling sessions were scheduled and six were emergency drop-ins and emergency consultations for student safety and well-being.

Mission Statement: As a South King County college striving for social justice, Highline College partners with global students as they envision, plan and achieve their educational and professional goals.