Area Report for Board of Trustees

Successful Professional Development Day (submitted by Bob Scribner, Program Manager for the Learning & Teaching Center)

Highline’s annual Professional Development Day takes place each fall and provides an opportunity for personal and professional growth for all employee groups on campus: faculty (full and part-time), staff (Exempt and Classified) and administrators. The objectives for the day are to stimulate and expand participants’ knowledge and perspectives through engaging activities, to build and grow the Highline College community by providing collaboration opportunities, and to promote and encourage lifelong learning in a fun and safe environment. To facilitate meeting these objectives and to allow more people to participate, it is a non-instructional day for students. This year’s program featured a morning plenary session where the campus community was invited to listen and engage with Highline’s new equity first strategic planning team, followed by two rounds of professional development workshops presented by faculty, staff and administrators across topics of interest to all employee groups

Fall Faculty Meeting: Focus on Enrollment

Close to 150 faculty and staff attended the Fall Quarter Faculty Meeting, where the focus was on enrollment. The meeting opened with introductions to new faculty and staff, and then transitioned into a series of presentations focused on Highline College’s current enrollment challenges.

Vice President of Administrative Services, Dr. Michael Pham, led faculty through a presentation on budgeted FTEs for FY 2021-2022. He shared the state FTE target for Highline and how that target is tied to Highline’s minimum operating allocation. Dr. Pham presented three years of data showing enrollment targets for State FTEs, Running Start FTEs, and International FTEs. He also presented the percentage of the target that was reached in each category, and compared that with the percentage reached in the preceding year.  He concluded by comparing 2021-2022 enrollment targets with actual enrollments, noting that as yet, Highline is not meeting its budgeted enrollment targets.

Dr Pham’s presentation was followed by a series of presentations describing strategies Highline is using to address our enrollment challenges. Laurinda Bellinger (ITS) and Shawna Freeman (AA) presented information on the Student Retention Software RFP process. Here is an update on that process, reprinted from the Fall 2021 Academic Affairs Newsletter: “We are excited about the purchase of a software that will help us enable the new pathways and support students. As part of the RFP process, we held two faculty and staff requirement gathering forums in August. Input from these forums was used to help shape the requirements and deliverables for the RFP. We were fortunate to have 4 proposals submitted for us to evaluate. On October 13th, the scoring committee made its selection. Currently, Purchasing is in negotiations with the winner. It is our hope that contract negotiations will be completed by Friday, October 29th and that we will be able to announce the winner on November 1st. A BIG thank you to the selection committee: Laurinda Bellinger, Shawna Freeman, Jill Hammit, Emily Ladner, Lyall Rudenskjold, Jennifer Scanlon, and Tim Wrye.”

May Lukens, who led the development of Highline’s successful Title III proposal, shared information about the way in which that five-year project is also designed to help increase enrollment by focusing on retention and on closing equity gaps. The grant, which was noted in last month’s area report, will implement evidenced-based strategies under five key components:

• Provide course specific supports to increase gateway course pass rates, retention, and graduation
• Increase campus data capacity to support decision-making in closing equity gaps
• Redesign student experience in the onboarding process to give students a strong start
• Transform advising to increase student momentum and completion in chosen pathway
• Comprehensive Professional Development to close equity gaps

Then Vice President of Student Services, Aaron Reader, shared information about process improvements underway across the Student Services Division. Finally, Vice President for Institutional Advancement, Josh Gerstman, provided an update on the work of the Strategic Enrollment Management Planning (SEMP) team. As he put during the Faculty Meeting, “while SEMP Team is currently Ay Saechao, Fawzi Belal, Gabrielle Bachmeier, Josh Gerstman and Tim Wrye, we recognize everyone has a connection with enrollment.” In his presentation, VP Gerstman shared that the team is drafting an RFP for Enrollment Management to conduct SWOT analysis, recognize strength of current efforts, identify gaps and recommend practices that will work for Highline. This SEMP work must focus on all four phases of enrollment: Outreach/Recruitment, Intake/Onboarding, Retention and Completion.  As well, Enrollment Management needs to align with and support aims of Guided Pathways, the Equity First Strategic Plan, and the new Title III Strengthening Institutions Grant. VP Gerstman concluded by inviting attendees to share their experiences, suggestions, and questions about enrollment with the SEMP team.

Guided Pathways Advising Update (written by Robin Martin, on behalf of the Guided Pathways Leads Team)

The Guided Pathway Leads team, Robin Martin, Lisa Voso, Razmehr Fardad, Monica LeMoine, led by Maribel Jiminez and Shawna Freeman, has been working on implementing mandatory intrusive advising across the campus, in conjunction with Degree Pathways.  The main goal is to increase transition to college, retention, and graduation rates. In addition, this implementation will create a more equitable campus environment where all faculty are advising students, and all students are receiving quality advising.

Our team is in frequent communication and collaboration with the Learning and Teaching Center, Degree Pathway Advising Representatives, Department Coordinators, Advising Center staff, and other colleagues across campus to help ensure a smooth and sustainable transition to campus-wide intrusive advising.

The Interim Advising Program Manager, Mary Weir, has played an integral role in this process.  She completed an exhaustive data analysis to explore advising load inequities, and she used this data to devise a plan to equitably assign students to faculty advisors which has never been equitably nor systematically done before at Highline.

To implement this project we have designed advising weeks which will be held from November 1- 12.  Each week will support new faculty advisors as well as provide the most current information for our faculty who are already expert advisors.

The first week will focus on faculty professional development. We will introduce faculty to intrusive advising, cover tech tools to reduce workload, and introduce faculty to the professional advising team available to answer quick questions via Microsoft Teams.  Faculty will also learn about the different degrees offered at Highline including looking at program maps and transfer requirements.

The second week will be open time for faculty to actually meet and talk with their new or old advisees.  Faculty will have the time and tools to practice real-life advising.

In the third and final week, faculty will have the opportunity to debrief and share out.  This time will be valuable for faculty to share successes, ask questions, and to learn from one another.

Lastly, there have been resources created to support faculty as well. Resources and Support:  Common Campus-wide Academic Planning Worksheet, Faculty Advising Canvas Page, and the Advising Council Website.

Going forward our team is discussing and planning ways to continue and expand the mandatory advising initiative for the rest of this year. The team looks forward to continuing to support faculty with these kinds of initiatives.

HEET 14:  Highline College Nursing Pathway – Open Access for Working Students

HEET—Hospital Employee Education and Training—is funding from the SBCTC to support projects that advance the careers of incumbent healthcare workers. HEET requires a Labor-Management-Education partnership. Highline College continues its innovative use of HEET funds by partnering with the Training Fund, SEIU Healthcare 1199NW and lead employer St. Anne Hospital (FKA Highline Hospital) to address equity challenges in nursing education, especially for the student who works full time. The project merges with Guided Pathways work already underway to improve advising, mapping and navigation for pre-nursing students to create a more diverse nursing field. The goals are to simplify and improve nursing advising, create a worker-friendly schedule, and prioritize incumbent workers for enrollment. A contextualized version of College 101, newly developed for Guided Pathways, will run winter quarter addressing the particular concerns of working students, and focus on healthcare career pathways and how to face the challenges of prerequisites and nursing school head on. A full time Pre-Nursing Navigator for Working Students is being hired to work closely with professional and faculty advisors and provide support for working students in the pathway. This project lays groundwork for a possible part time AAS in Registered Nurse program at Highline, addressing the need for more slots in RN programs and an RN schedule that allows students to continue working.   More information about HEET funded projects can be found here.

Pure and Applied Science Division News

• The Palo Alto Networks Secure the Future Competition is highly competitive. Students must first be nominated by a faculty member. Meghan Koester, senior in the BAS program and president of the Cyber Competition Club, was nominated to the competition by Dr. Amelia Phillips and Michael Myers. At that point, the student must then complete a pre-qualification round consisting of either: passing a single-attempt 60-minute pretest with a score of 80% or better; or providing a PCCET or PCCSA certification. The contest is limited to 150 students, so those presenting the certification will automatically move on while those completing the exam will make up the remainder of the group. Meghan earned her PCCET the evening before the pre-qualification cut-off date and has moved forward in the competition. She will be completing course-work as part of the competition and taking a test every two weeks to move forward. The top 10 students in this competition will be presenting their work to Palo Alto Networks board members in February or March.
• Amelia Phillips, chair of the division and CIS faculty, was a panelist discussing pathways into cybersecurity, and how cyber-interested individuals can best position themselves in the field. The panel was held on October 21^st as part of Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week and was moderated by UC Berkeley undergraduate student, Charissa Kim.

MESA Center News

• MESA and Highline have partnered with Microsoft for Project Beacon, a mentorship program for students who are matched with Microsoft Programmers. Three Highline students were selected for the second cohort and selection for the third cohort is in progress.
• Mesa has had two students successfully complete internships with the National Renewable Energy Laboratories and NanoString Technologies.

Faculty Laureates

• Aaron Ottinger, English, had an article published in Interdisciplinary Digital Engagement in the Arts & Humanities (IDEAH) entitled “The Global Ecodigital Divide: A Collaborative Mapping Exercise for Online Classrooms.  The article can be read here.
• Jayendrina Singha Ray, English, had her second article in the Afghan series published in Seattle Weekly. The interviewee is a Highline student.
• Žanetka Gawronski, Fine Art, has a solo exhibition of new encaustic painting at CORE gallery during the month of November. The artist statement reads:  Liminal Moments:  Liminal Moments is a body of work within which I have encapsulated new discoveries, perhaps these images will remind you of moments within your day.
• Rob Droessler, Ceramics, has been working on a new series of mugs that have images fired onto them. The images are created with a high iron content laser printer.  It needs the correct combination of glaze, printer ink and firing temperature to make this process work.
• TM Sell, Political Science, moderated a candidate forum last week in Federal Way. He will also be chairing the Current Issues in Northwest Politics panel at the annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest Political Science Association following the election in November and will also be making the Washington state report for the same panel.

Report submitted October 25, 2021, by Vice President Emily Lardner, Ph.D.