Area Report for Board of Trustees

August and early September are critical times as we prepare for the upcoming year. Faculty are on break, and staff are busy completing annual individual performance evaluations as well as institutional effectiveness plans for the upcoming year.

Enrollment for fall continues to be stronger than it has been.

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

• The High School Re-Engagement and Success program reports a significant increase in young adults interested in completing their high school and potentially college credential, through this alternative program to traditional high school. This increase is due to a number of factors, including the team’s consistent presence in area high schools and a new signed agreement with the Tukwila School District.
• Interest in ESOL classes continues to significantly outpace our capacity to offer classes. An ELCAP team of faculty, staff, and administrators have designed and piloted a new student orientation process that is more like a short course than a single workshop. This helps to create more meaningful interactions with prospective students. Even if we doubled our size, we would not be able to meet the need in South King County for free or low-cost ESOL learning opportunities for immigrants and refugees.
• Legal Studies reports an increase in interest and enrollment, thanks to hard work by program manager Bruce Lamb. The bump in enrollment is a critical indicator of the success of a suite of strategies implemented by faculty and staff. We are benefiting from the work of Sinai Espinoza Hernandez, the outreach and recruitment specialist dedicated to our workforce programs.
• The Business Department initiated a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) pipeline process through the Watermark program to engage with prospective students interested in Professional Technical degrees or certificates in Business. The process includes a welcome email from the pipeline manager, who facilitates the routing of responses to relevant resources such as funding, testing/placement, and faculty advising. In the spring quarter, they successfully engaged with 26 students, resulting in 11 registrations for the fall quarter. Once refined, the department aims to expand this process to other departments.  The project was successful thanks to the hard work of Sherri Chun, Business Division Chair, Sarah Delaplaine, Business Division Administrative Assistant acting as Pipeline Manager, and the IT team on the backend.

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

• Faculty on the Assessment Committee have redesigned the process faculty use to assess course, program, and college-wide outcomes (core competencies). Faculty are meeting this summer to refine the forms that will be used to guide discussions of the results of these assessments. In collaboration with the Assessment committee, the Institutional Research team designed a template for providing data about disaggregated student success that will be customized for each program and discipline. The goal is to promote and support collaborative discussions of student success, including strategies that are working, equity gaps that need to be addressed, and potential improvements. Big thanks to Mattias Olshausen, Tim Wrye with his team in ITS, and Carrie Davidson for working with outgoing Assessment Committee Chair Aaron Moehlig to use existing technology to support this process.
• Two DACUMs (Design a Curriculum) are being held this month. One for our Criminal Justice program and one for Legal Studies. A DACUM is a facilitated process that incorporates the use of a focus group to determine the major duties and related tasks included in an occupation, as well as the necessary knowledge, skills and attributes. This job analysis technique is used to determine the competencies that should be included in a curriculum for a specific occupation. Thanks to Sherri Chun, Sara Delaplaine, Mary Weir, Bruce Lamb and Tanya Powers for leadership planning both of these events that strengthen our community partnerships and keep our curriculum up-to-date.

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

• The first cohort has completed their first quarter of the new certificate in case management which is aligned with our AAS in Human Services. In partnership with Catholic Community Services, faculty member Jennifer Jones met with representatives from eight of the largest agencies that work in the housing/homeless sector. This certificate is designed to serve incumbent workers in frontline positions, most of whom are women of color, by creating opportunities for economic and social mobility. Over 200 workers expressed interest, 70 applied (the application included a letter of support from the employer) and 28 enrolled. Loyal Allen served as the point person in Student Services, with support from Nou Lee. Big thanks to Gerald Jackson and Fred Capestany who taught the first two courses this summer.
  • This project, which is a collaborative effort that crosses divisions, has the potential to become a template for how Highline College can partner with critical employment sectors in our community to support incumbent workers.

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

• A team from Academic Affairs has been working diligently for months to overhaul the college’s catalog.  Professional technical degree programs have been reformatted for readability, inclusion of key codes for Student Services staff, as well as audited for accuracy.  Changes to programs have been submitted to SBCTC for approval by Acting Dean, Raegan Copeland.  The catalog was published in August and the team will continue to make process improvements going forward for accuracy and readability.  A big thank you to Dean Liz Word, Program Manager Zoe Harris and Director Carrie Davidson for their continued efforts.
• Faculty members Cathy Cartwright, Accounting, and Terry Meerdink, Math, are updating the Department Coordinator Canvas course, with the goal of having it ready for fall.
• This Fall faculty and staff advisors will have new tools and updated and improved tools to assist students in academic planning.  Our old PDF program maps have moved to their new home: Program Pathways Mapper (PPM). PPM is a web-based application built to host quarter-by-quarter maps of pathways through academic programs. This new platform offers students an engaging and accessible visual experience – highlighting prerequisites, offering course details at a click, and directly links to resources like Watermark, Pathway Advising, and how to make an appointment with a Faculty Advisor. Additionally, students will find milestones reminding students to meet with advisors, apply for graduation and other key events on their journey to completing their degree. Improvements this Fall will be seen in our alignment between our catalog, Academic Advisement Report (ctcLink), and the Academic Planning tool in Watermark Aviso. These three pieces of information are critical for ensuring students have the correct information for taking the correct courses that will lead to an on-track completion of their degree. In addition to creating and updating AARs for new programs and program changes, 57 AARs have been cleaned up over the past year.

Division Honors and Achievements

WSU Puyallup has a program called Empowering College Students to Equitably Enhance Urban Forests and is through WSU’s Urban Forest Health Lab. It is coordinated by Dr. Joey Hulbert. Three Highline students are among the program’s 2024 Equitable Urban Forest Interns. The student interns presented the work from their 10 week projects that focused on urban forestry at a symposium of community college student research.

Giselle Martinez-Jacobo gave a presentation on her work advocating for tree planting in Auburn

• Her campaign is called Trees for Auburn, and as part of her project she created this great Instagram account
  • She is off to UW Tacoma for Environmental Studies
• Birdie Jine did a study on the feeding habits of sapsuckers on bigleaf maples and western red cedars in several local parks
  • They are going to UW Seattle to study biological anthropology
• Emma Soderquist worked on a tree giveaway campaign in the City of Federal Way
  • She is returning to Highline to complete her associates

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