Area Report for Board of Trustees

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

• With support from CCIE, Accessibility Resources opened the college’s first Disability Cultural Center (d-center) for students in building 22 room 204. On April 17th a kickoff event was held to gather feedback from students about their wants and needs. The center will be open Mon-Thurs from 12-3pm through spring quarter with a plan for a campus wide Grand Opening in the fall. In its first few weeks the d-center has been visited by over 50 students. The main goals of the center are to promote disability identity and culture, build community and support networks, and advance advocacy and accessibility.
• Accessibility Resources is partnering with Sound Transit, local artists, and blind/low vision Highline College students on the development of a permanent tactile art installation at the Kent/Des Moines (KDM) light rail station. The KDM station will be the first to have a permanent tactile art exhibit for the blind/low vision community. Highline students have attended several meetings on campus with the Sound Transit artists and representatives, and were invited to tour the site on April 30th! The students are being paid for their contributions to this important project!

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

• The Highline College Library is thrilled to announce the publication of In Our Own Words: Stories from Immigrant and Refugee Students, Volume 2, released online in May 2025. Last spring 2024 Dr. Amal Mahmoud (ELCAP faculty) and Karen Fernandez (reference librarian faculty) collected stories written by students in Amal’s Level 4/5 ESOL classes. In these stories, students shared memorable trips they’ve taken, life experiences, and details about their lives as they practiced English writing skills. Deb Moore and Karen collaborated to publish the stories online through the Pressbooks platform. Volume 1 of this series was published in spring 2024. A release party to celebrate the student authors of Volume 2 will be held on Thursday, June 5th at noon on the 3rd floor of the Highline College Library (near the ESL book collection). All are welcome to attend.
• Deb Moore, faculty member in the Highline College Library, presented with a colleague from Lake Washington Institute of Technology at the SBCTC’s Assessment, Teaching, and Learning Conference. The presentation, titled Centering Student Voices: English Language Learners Become Published Authors, described a collaborative open pedagogy project representing student writing from English language learners, and how this project transformed into a regional publishing collective. Books published by this regional publishing collective are available in an OER Commons Group: the Washington Open Student Publishing Collective.
• Laura Soracco, English department Faculty received the Civic Engagement Mini-Grant in March through the Project Pericles. This is part of a Mellon Foundation and Eugene M. Lang Foundation initiative to sustain Project Pericles’ Civic Engagement Resources for educators in different disciplines. Her proposal was to create an English 101 titled “Critical Information Consumption in the Digital Age.” She will continue to focus on misinformation and critical information literacy aspects applied to English composition. This work will become part of Project Pericles’ “Beyond Media Literacy” track.
• Laura Soracco also presented at the Washington Librarian Association conference in Tacoma last month as part of a panel discussion on teaching about misinformation. She was invited to present by the Center for an Informed Public at UW since she received a grant from them last year, and has completed some curriculum changes through mentorship she received from the Center for an Informed Public.

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

• Community and Employment Services successfully passed our biannual audit from King County and the State of Washington Developmental Disabilities Administration and has been asked to provide training to other service providers on goal setting and analysis.
• Community & Employment Services was awarded a two-year contract from the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR) to provide employment services.
• Community & Employment Services Program Manager, Brenda Kim, delivered Best Practices in Supported Employment Training for Microsoft local, national and global sites and has been asked to do more trainings in June.
• Arts and Humanities division: Design Portfolio Show June 4th 1:00pm to 6:00pm Building 16 Student Art Gallery.

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

• Carl Sandburg wrote in his poem “North Atlantic,” “The sea is always the same: and yet the sea always changes.” So it is with Highline. The Teaching Innovation Development Lab [TIDL] is a new initiative that brings Educational Technology [EdTech] and the Learning & Teaching Center [LTC] together to provide faculty with professional development and resources focused on innovative, equity-first teaching practices that enrich the overall student experience. TIDL is co-led by the Director of EdTech and the Faculty Director of the LTC. TIDL will create programming around key areas identified by faculty; college-wide initiatives; and contract/regulatory requirements, including accessibility, equity pedagogy, and generative AI. TIDL will play a critical role in shaping and delivering programs that advance both faculty development and Highline’s strategic goals.

Report submitted by Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Rolita Ezeonu