Dear Colleague,
As the academic year draws to a close, I want to share my gratitude for a wonderfully welcoming ten months. It’s been an incredible reception and I’m appreciative of how you’ve made it so easy for me to join this amazing community. I’m also thankful for the dedication and passion you bring to the campus and our students.
Together, we have launched significant efforts that will bring benefits to the college, our students, and the communities we serve. At the same time, you’ve remained focused every day on making true the promise of our mission: We will be a world-class leader in student success and community engagement. In this end-of-the-year message, I want to review the progress we’ve made, the opportunities that are in front of us, and some of the external factors that may influence our choices
We continued to build on the progress made during winter quarter in all four Areas of Focus:
1) Increase Enrollment, Retention and Completion
Shoreline Scholars
Our rollout was very well received in the community and the Shoreline School District is providing tremendous support. The initial cohort is continuing to grow. The impact on those students’ lives will be immeasurable. It is important our district knows Shoreline is making a major investment in the future of the communities we serve and we are committed to offering this unprecedented opportunity into the future. The freshmen, sophomores and juniors – even the middle-school students who visit our campus each spring – understand that even if college seems a financial dream, it is one that can come true through hard work and good grades.
Student Success Coordinating Committee
The committee continues to provide a nexus of communications and coordination for workgroups tackling specific projects, including Get-In-Gear, a College Success Course, Advising, Orientation and a new group, Recruitment and Enrollment.
“Get in Gear” is the revamped and renamed the “First-year, fast-forward” pilot from last year. The new version is in place for fall quarter with GIG 101 and GIG 102. While work continues, more information can be found here: www.shoreline.edu/get-in-gear.
College Success, is looking at two very promising areas. First, is a framework that can potentially help all employees gain skills to guide students at key decision points. The workgroup is considering a recommendation to send a number of college employees to the training called “Edge.”
Another program called AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) is focused on helping improve college readiness for students. Our local Shoreline high schools use AVID and the college annually hosts a regional AVID fair for schools from around the Puget Sound region. That program will be reviewed this coming academic year to determine how we can incorporate proven student academic preparation skills into our student success initiatives.
Clarus
Kathi Swanson, owner of Clarus Corp., was on campus earlier this year to gather information to help us look at both our internal processes around enrollment services and our external communications and marketing efforts with an eye on improving student satisfaction with these early connections with the college. While we expect to see her full recommendations in the near future, Kathi also offered some immediate steps to increase engagement with prospective students and bolster enrollments for summer and fall.
Website redesign
Of course, the college website is a critical component of our connection to prospective and current students, as well as the communities we serve.
Through a process that is being led by the Web Workgroup, the college has engaged a firm called iFactory to help redesign and re-imagine the college main website. iFactory officials were on campus just this week to begin the process with a series focus groups. I’m very encouraged by what I saw and heard. While an updated site is important, I’ve urged the Web Workgroup to take the time needed to assure a broad opportunity for input from across the campus early in fall term.
2) Leverage Community Engagement
Office of Advancement
With the commitment and support of the Board of Trustees, the college took an important step forward with the job posting for the Vice President of College Advancement. The Office of Advancement has been part of the college organizational chart since 2008, but had never been fully implemented. The Office of Advancement includes the Public Information Office, the Shoreline Community College Foundation and the Grants Office. By bringing all of those into one organizational unit, the college can move forward in a more intentional and coordinated way to meet our needs around community engagement and resource development. Laura Rehrmann, Special Assistant to the President for Community Engagement, is providing key direction as we realize the full potential of this area.
3) Develop Human Resources and Physical/Technical Infrastructure
Governance
College Council, ELT and Strategic Planning and Budget Council continued the work of establishing charters and the framework for their work. The details of those efforts will be available for campus-wide review this coming fall.
Developing our workforce
At an open, all-campus meeting on May 29, Bob Hughes, Ph.D. presented his ongoing work around developing the outreach, recruitment and hiring processes to serve our increasingly diverse student populations. Dr. Hughes has been meet with over 50 faculty, classified staff, and administrators to assess challenges and opportunities in this arena that are unique to Shoreline. Hughes’ project website is at http://diversityworkprogress.blogspot.com/
Community standard
Following displays of intolerance and hate through defacements of posters for Project Pride and the Muslim Student Association, we responded quickly with the formation of the Community Standard Committee. The committee worked tirelessly to develop a proposed community standard statement, protocols and guidelines to address such incidents if they occur in the future. That work is now being reviewed in preparation for gaining college community feedback on the Community Standard Statement and planning for a fall quarter rollout of the statement, policy, campaign and protocol.
Campus refresh
The work by Seong Shin, principal with McGranahan Architects, began late winter term and has been ongoing to help us refresh the college environment. I’m sure you’re like me, we’re anxious to get going as soon as possible. So, Facilities and Capital Projects Director Bob Roehl and his expert crew are gearing up for work on some restrooms and potentially other areas this summer in preparation for fall term. Seong’s initial designs take advantage of our beautiful campus grounds by bringing the colors and images inside. The design also anticipates using those colors and images to enhance wayfinding around campus. A more detailed plan for refreshing the college will be shared fall term.
Library and learning centers
The Ray Howard Library and Technology Center and our learning support centers are important parts of supporting student success at Shoreline Community College. Bringing those parts physically together will figuratively and literally create a centralized point of learning support for students. Tutoring services had already moved from FOSS to the library and the positive response from students has been gratifying. Now, we are working to bring the Math Learning Center and The Writing and Learning Studio in as well.
I realize that this is no minor shift for some of our employees, but I believe there will be major benefits for students. In addition to centralizing learning support centers and making it easier for students to find services, these moves also free up classroom space. We will be able to offer more of the classes students want at the times they want them.
Housing
We haven’t forgotten about student housing. Over the past months, we’ve been approached by a number of developers with a variety of proposals. Nothing is finalized, but we remain committed to offering housing options to our students, both domestic and international.
4) Strategic Plan
Strategic Plan Task Force
Nearly 300 people across campus were involved in some way with the process managed by the Strategic Plan Task Force. Perhaps the most visible was a series of SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities and threats) focus groups facilitated by Tom Mesaros of The Alford Group. In addition to the face-to-face sessions, an online survey was also available to help broaden participation.
The task force has also formed four work groups organized around these areas:
- People, place, and purpose
- Sustainability: The triple bottom line, which involves an equity and social justice, economic and environmental lens to sustainability practices
- Academics/Scheduling/Facilities
- Marketing and Communications
The first three have met and begun to establish some direction. The fourth, marketing and Communications, was designed to begin after the others and build on their work. The four groups are being asked to do significant work and eventually recommend just two or three goals and objectives for their areas. While the process initially anticipated just two meetings for each work group, we’ve clearly heard that more time is needed. If that extends the timeline for overall plan adoption past late fall, we will take the time to do this work well! Establishing the strategic plan is foundational work for the college and we must take the time necessary to build a shared future that serves our students and communities for years to come!
EXTERNAL FACTORS
Legislature
At this moment, we don’t know when the Legislature may pass a state budget or what will be in it. If lawmakers do not pass a budget by the June 24 Board of Trustees meeting, we will recommend to the board to pass a resolution to continue operating the college based on the existing budget. As a college, we have committed to provide instruction and services to our students during summer quarter. We have a plan and will continue refining it as we learn more from Olympia.
State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
You may have heard that the state board is scheduled to consider a new state-funds allocation model and adjust how colleges may count international students toward their state student FTE goals. Both of those items would not only impact Shoreline, but every college in the system. In general, the new allocation model would be a three-year rolling average of actual FTEs. Each college would receive an allocation for their number. There would no longer be a target FTE number and a 96 percent threshold to meet.
For international, Shoreline counts all international students toward our FTE goal. Other colleges have different approaches. The proposal as it stands would allow 2 percent of international enrollments to count toward the total state FTE number. The other 98 percent would be counted as what is known as “contract.”
With the help of Budget and Finance Director Dawn Vinberg and state board staff, we have modeled a number of scenarios to help understand what these potential changes could mean for Shoreline. While this new allocation model represents change, through the work we have done this year to strengthen our student retention and learning engagement for students, the college is positioned to deal with and respond to that change.
I hope you are proud of all of the work we are doing now to prepare the college to continue serving our students and communities; I know I am. As I began this message to you, I am confident that we are moving in the right direction to be, “… a world-class leader in student success and community engagement.” I’m confident because when I’m out-and-about, I hear how proud students and our community are to have such an outstanding college in our district.
Thank you for letting me share in your commitment to such an audacious vision.
With a happy and contented heart for a year full of successes and a future bright with promise!
Cheryl
Day at a Glance 
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