Area Report for Board of Trustees

The Equity, Diversity, and Transformation (EDT) Division is charged with embedding equity in everything we do at Highline College. Below are updates of the ongoing work.

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

• The Highline Support Center’s student housing program, SHoRe (Student Housing & Retention) team was asked to present at the Regional Student Housing Summit. On April 9th, 2026, this blog post was written regarding the event: Building Regional Solutions for Student Housing Instability | United Way of King County and includes a short video of State Senator T’wina Nobles who was in attendance.
• The 2nd annual Wa State Hispanic Serving Institution Symposium (HSI) was held at Highline College on Friday, April 24th. The event was co-hosted in collaboration with Skagit Valley College with approximately 200 educators and leaders from across the state. Participants gathered to learn, connect, and explore the principles of servingness as it pertains to emergent HSI’s and HSI’s in Washington. Keynote speakers included Dr. Mike Munoz President of Long Beach City College, and Dr. Elizabeth Gonzalez, HSI Director at UCLA. Very special guests included the two Highline Public School’s Mariachi bands: Mariachi Ocote from Evergreen HS and Mariachi Tesoro from Highline HS. The HSI Symposium webpage is here: Washington State Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Symposium.

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

• The Students of Color Conference held online affinity groups and the EDT Assoc. Dean was invited to facilitate one of the affinity groups. The group brought together 25 students from 9 colleges, including Highline.

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

• The Highline Community Pantry was awarded a $15,000 grant from Food Lifeline for  our “…innovative approach to ensuring food access for immigrant and refugee communities continues under this anti-immigrant climate.Further,our work was recognized for “its impact, creativity, and responsiveness to community needs and leadership.” 

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

• Between April 20 and May 4, Institutional Research administered a second round of the Life in College Survey to our students with the support of ITS and Student Services. This survey is part of a research partnership with Education Northwest to understand how our students can more effectively connect with support services and how these services effect their success at Highline. The spring survey added 280 responses to the 573 collected earlier in the fall.

Report submitted by Vice President of Equity, Diversity and Transformation, Dra. Maríbel Jimenez