Friday Letter, 3-17-23

From those of us who come from Irish decent, may the luck of the Irish be with us all today.

Today’s letter offers more detail on the budget writing accomplished over the past couple months. However, much of this is still being wrapped up and more details will be available next quarter. We’ll break this down by Revenues, Reserves, and Expenses.

Revenues:

Estimated revenues for 23-24 are still being determined.

• We have not yet heard from the legislature or SBCTC about how much our allocation will be for 23-24. This number could go up or down by $200,000 or more. For example, the legislature has not yet determined if they will fully fund next year’s COLAs. In the worst-case scenario, we would have to come up with an extra $165,000 to cover what they underfund.
• We need to know our Spring Quarter final enrollment. This number is available on April 10 and will help us plan our enrollment-based revenue for next year.

Reserves:

Jashdoa Bothra and the finance team have spent a lot of time this month determining just how much cash we have available to us. It’s not as simple as it might seem. Our initial estimates, when coupled with expense reductions, show that our Reserves can help us through this next period of enrollment growth for about 3-4 years.

• We have money invested with the state and in local bonds. This amounts to over $8M, but is only available to us when the bonds come “due” in 2024 and 2025.
• We have cash in our “savings account”, about $2.75M. Technically, we are always supposed to have at least $2.5M in our account as determined by one of our College Policies.
• We have money in “restricted accounts”, about $6M. Some of this money is truly restricted, like the $1.6M we are holding onto for the Student Government. We are working to see if we can release any of the remaining restricted accounts into available cash. This is still being wrapped up.

Overall, we have enough in reserves to cover the college in a “deficit” spending modality for a few years. However, we have to closely monitor that deficit and bring down expenses while we invest in all the strategies to increase enrollment. As well, reductions in expenses must go hand-in-hand with the use of reserves so that we can count on the reserves to last during this period of regrowth.

Expenses:

Last week’s Friday Letter outlined a number of ways we are working to increase enrollment. This is the only revenue we can influence to reduce the strain on reserves. At this point, we are conservatively estimating a $4M operating deficit for next year which includes investments needed for salaries, Innovation Hall, repair & replacement, etc. This is too much strain on the reserves. Our deficit can be no larger than $2.3M if we are to have enough reserves for the next 4 years. Over the last few months, the executive team has therefore worked with their various departments to see where we could reduce spending.

• Of the 25% of our budget that is considered “goods and services”, we have been able to identify significant savings. UWB and the Library have been helpful in identifying ways we could cut costs. Laura Hedal and Shawna Pitts have worked carefully to reduce our repair & replacement budgets. Multiple divisions have worked to identify programmatic savings or to be creative in how we find the money necessary to do our work.
• The deans and division chairs are working hard to maximize the class schedule to meet student needs, minimize under-filled classes, and meet contractual obligations we have with the faculty union.
• We are asking Student Government if we can tap into their $1.6M reserve to cover some extra costs next year.
• The Foundation is successfully raising funds to cover the start-up of the Redmond classroom.
• A number of employee vacancies are not being filled across the college. This is not a complete salary savings because some of the work performed by these positions will need to be accomplished through other means. Constituents impacted by not filling the vacancies have already been informed.
• While we settle all of the revenue, reserve, and expense calculations, we are being cautious about employee reductions. I am not able to share today where we have landed on this issue. By April 17, we hope to share final staffing decisions when our other variables have solidified.

Reductions considered so far bring our 23-24 deficit down to the needed $2.3M. Knowing that there are still many variables at play that might not be resolved until the summer (like the legislative determinations or closing out our expenses for 22-23), we must be mindful not to exceed this deficit amount. This may mean further reductions in October when fall enrollment is determined.

This has been a difficult process for all involved. We will be able to successfully fulfill our mission even with these implications and I encourage each employee to continue thinking about creative ways to further reduce our spending. 

SHOUT OUTS

Thanks to Erin Richards. Every year she takes students to Olympia to meet with legislators to not only learn about our state governance system, but to also allow the students to talk with legislators about the needs of the community colleges. This year, our students not only got time with each of our District 1 legislators, but also got to spend time with the Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. Thanks to Erin for continuing this effort and collaborating to educate students on our college.

Don’t forget, those same District 1 legislators will be here on campus this Sunday for their annual Town Hall. I will host the event which begins at 1:00 in Mobius. It is open to the public. 

From the IN Box:

I wanted to give a massive thank you to the staff, faculty, and students who signed up to support the Northshore School District Student of Justice Conference (SJC23). Your valuable time is recognized tenfold, and will be important to the 300 students visiting campus next Friday, March 24.

Sara Gomez Taylor 

Here is the list of individuals supporting the event, and their respective areas: 

E&I Scholars (students) 

Ananya Mishra 

Jenivee Saramiento 

Shannon Suarez 

Taesub Kang 

E&I Interns (graduate students) 

Frank Jiang 

Maia Wood 

Student Life EAB (student) 

Kim Singh 

Faculty 

Sadie Rosenthal  

SSS & SLS 

Erin Blakeney 

Ketra Embleton 

Marshanell Ferguson 

Rachel Druck 

Stephan Classen 

Foundation 

Brittany Caldwell 

President’s Office 

Larissa Tikhonova 

E&I 

Chari Davenport (event co-lead) 

Alia Mahdi 

Hao Cheng 

Kim Jones 

Facilities 

Shawna Pitts 

Allen Flaa 

Outreach 

Nina Jouval 

Satarupa Joardar 

Jaspreet Kaur Grewal 

Bong  Mangaser (photos) 

Kevin Ta (pre-work folder building) 

Please remember that you can submit a shout out for a colleague at FLShoutout@cascadia.edu.

Friday Letter, 11-4-22

There were several highlights to my week. It’s the enthusiasm and positive attitudes of our employees that sustain me and lots of folks helped me smile this week.

I met with April Brink, Hao Cheng, Amphi Diga, Erika Morales, and Sam Penjaraenwatana this week in Coffee for Three. What great backgrounds and stories you bring. It’s my challenge to the rest of the campus to find out who from this group travels from Puyallup to campus every week for work!

Halloween competitions were abundant this last Monday. Monsters Inc in Student Learning was a success as was “I’m a Game” in Kodiak Corner.

The last smile I’ll mention this week came from one of our faculty. I won’t drop names to avoid any embarrassment, but you are a bright light on this campus. Thanks for the hallway chat.

As always, work continued. We are beginning to plan out Winter and Spring DIAs, the Trustees’ sub-committee met this week to review finances, we are starting to get organized for the Budget Council launch in January, and I am over in West Seattle at the monthly WACTC meeting this morning. On behalf of the Foundation, I also spent time chatting with Microsoft and Facebook about our Redmond Together Center this week. And, big news (!), the campus has agreed on an official name for our STEM 4 building: Innovation Hall. This was the majority recommendation from multiple Cascadia and UWB advisory groups who narrowed down the choices from our all-campus process last spring. Our Trustees will vote to approve it at our November board meeting and the UW Regents will have it on an upcoming agenda as well.

You may know that the UW Bookstore no longer has an in-person presence. UWB and Cascadia are working to determine the future of that space and hope to make decisions soon about what serves our two institutions best in this moment. As well, work continues on figuring out our campus safety directions. So lots of work!

I hope you have a good weekend and don’t forget to vote! Thanks to our student Events & Activity Board for helping remind students of this as well.

SHOUT OUTS

This was forwarded to me by the Finance Office this week as a tribute to all of the Friday Letter readers. =)

Please share a shout out at FLShoutouts@cascadia.edu.

Friday Letter, 10-28-22

Thanks for everyone’s participation in this week’s DIA. If you couldn’t make it, or want a copy of the slide presentation on Cascadia Shared Governance, you can click here. I appreciate the feedback I’ve already started to hear from the Assembly breakout groups. The Navigators Council will process all of that information and discuss steps forward. Please remember that these days are devoted to all-campus work and employees are expected to participate. They help the greater good and give us a vehicle for meeting accreditation, state, and shared governance goals.

I also appreciate the multiple suggestions for how we can fund our coffee needs at these events moving forward. I smile thinking about the reaction the announcement caused and how folks brainstormed ways to make it happen without our regular funds. As more of these decisions are made, I hope our brainstorming will continue. As with all reductions, personally and professionally, there is often sadness. It’s our commitment that, as funding turns more toward our favor, we will bring back things that we hold dear.

After the DIA on Wednesday, the executive team met to discuss all of the data points we know from the state, UW, unions, the AG’s office, and health authorities about vaccinations.

As you may know, Governor Directive 22-13.1 requires COVID-19 vaccinations for employees of all executive cabinet agencies and small cabinet agencies on a permanent basis, but does not include a directive for employees of higher education institutions. Each institution is to establish its own direction.

In consideration of all the input and the directive, Cascadia has decided to not require vaccinations for employees NOR students beginning November 1. UW Bothell will be communicating its own UW system’s decision soon and we are aware that it may be different than the decision made for Cascadia. Cascadia’s decision on this matter is similar to many of the other community colleges and we do not envision that varying requirements across UWB and Cascadia will affect operations.

However, there are some additional considerations for WPEA-represented employees. Effective July 1, 2023, the College will require COVID-19 vaccination or approved exemption/accommodation of employees covered by the 2023-2025 WPEA Collective Bargaining Agreement consistent with the Tentative Agreement reached between the union and the State Labor Relations Section of the Office of Financial Management. In addition, WPEA-represented employees who

• choose to be boosted at a location of their choosing and
• voluntarily provide the College with proof of up-to-date COVID-19 vaccination that includes any boosters recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (at the time proof is provided to the employer between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023),

shall receive a one-time lump sum payment of $1,000.00 from the state that will be paid no earlier than July 25, 2023 in accordance with Article 42.26 of the agreement.

As with All Things Pandemic, we will continue to monitor changes, recommendations, and guidance as it is published by all of our various stakeholders. Note that you will continue to get “close contact” emails as that requirement exists through February 2023.

SURVEYS

We start a new “occasional” section of the Friday Letter this week entitled “surveys.” There were quite a few departments seeking feedback last week, so I suggested to the executive team that we help that process by announcing a new survey in the Friday Letter and that we spread them out to no more than one per week – they agreed. With that said, if you are wanting ALL Cascadia employee feedback on something, make sure it gets to me or an executive team member for inclusion. For this week…

Each year, our Foundation invites the college community to share their thoughts about its mission, programs and performance. Whether you think they are doing great work or have a suggestion about how they might improve, completing the survey will help them with strategic, programmatic and development planning. The survey takes about seven minutes – access the survey through this link – and will be open through November 30^th. Complete the survey by 5:00PM Friday – November 18^th and be entered in a drawing to win a $10.00 gift card from Stopwatch Espresso. Thank you in advance for participating – and helping the Foundation in their efforts to improve its service to our community!

SHOUT OUTS

Thanks to the IS team, Shawna Pitts, and Brandy Long. When they attend a DIA, they are also usually working to make sure captioning, technology, and Mobius are functioning correctly. I appreciate their collaborative efforts to make sure our gatherings go well.

Thanks to all the folks who led the quest for our B.S. in Computer Science. This week, we were granted authority by the State Board to offer this degree starting in Fall 2023. You can read the letter here. Well done.

Please share a shout out at FLShoutouts@cascadia.edu.

Have a great weekend.

Friday Letter, 10-7-22

This week fully exemplified the new work world for me in the President’s Office. It was filled with “pandemic-enhanced normality.” What I mean is that every task accomplished this week seemed reminiscent of pre-March 2020, yet with new spins influenced by the pandemic.

Yesterday and today, I have been meeting with the state-wide president’s group (aka WACTC) via zoom. Not all of our meetings will be on zoom…next month I’ll need to travel. Our topics included on-going discussions about labor issues as we return to more in-person environments and vaccination requirements change. At this moment, we are still pandemic-focused and meeting remotely, so not much has changed yet since last year.

Alternatively, the college’s Navigators and I met in person on Monday and we soon realized that we needed a hybrid environment to make that meeting work. We used the Owl; we had some folks on the screen and some in the room. It was a little clunky, but we got better at it over our time together. (This will also happen with future Trustees’ meetings.) For me, this was a new type of discussion modality and caused me to reflect that different modalities require different types of facilitation. For example, I could better read the behavior of those in-person but really had to divert attention to make sure I was also attending to those on the screen.

I started the Coffee for Three program with new employees this week and, over three days, took 6 of them to coffee. We tried some of the other locations in UW1 and Central Campus, but they are still getting on their feet so we huddled in at Stopwatch. It was great to get to know Allen Flaa, Dawn Williams, Chantal Carrancho, Mike Abay, Thais Lima, and Andrea Angel-Hilgendorf better. Everyone’s passion for Cascadia was noted and I am so glad they have joined our team.

I also met with our new Executive Director of the Foundation, Brittany Caldwell. While she hasn’t officially started yet, she is getting approached from all sides by community members expressing excitement about her employment at Cascadia.  She wanted to get a head start on understanding the College’s mission and the Foundation’s goals. We spent almost two hours discussing “What Cascadia is” and “Why I would want to support Cascadia.”

The pandemic-enhanced normality also means adjustment to some of our staffing models so we can fill gaps, re-think our work production, and utilize the strengths of our employees. One of those adjustments comes this month in the President’s Office. As of October, Donna Sullivan will be the new lead for all things related to the Board of Trustees. Ketra Embleton will be the new lead for all Public Information Requests. Both of these individuals will take on significantly more responsibility of things normally housed in the President’s Office while also supporting Meagan Walker and Kerry Levett, respectively. They will each have the new title, Manager of Administrative Operations (instead of Executive Assistant). Thais Lima and Alia Mahdi will continue to support Jashoda Bothra and Chari Davenport (respectively) as Executive Assistants while Larissa Tikhonova will continue to assist me with day-to-day tasks as a Program Specialist. In this model, we will say good-bye to Lily Allen on November 1. We want to thank her for her support over the last few years and wish her the best in all her future endeavors. This change will not cost the college more money, but hopefully help us to become more efficient.

We shared at Convocation this year ways we will explore increasing our enrollment post-pandemic.  Here are some follow-ups from those Convocation discussions:

• Direct Student Outreach:  Several of you signed up to reach out to students needing a little encouragement and support.  Following this week’s early alert process, student names will be identified, and you will be contacted with information on how to connect with your students.
• Enrollment Incubator: An optional weekly “enrollment incubator” zoom meeting will be held on Wednesdays at 9:00-9:45am starting October 19^th.   The time will be used to explore enrollment data points and generate ideas for retaining current students, as well as reaching out to prospective students. Generated ideas will be shared with Eteam at our weekly meeting. Look for a zoom invite from Kerry Levett.
• Multi-quarter Registration:  The Faculty Division Chairs, Teya Viola, Gordon Dutrisac, Noah Overby, and the Deans have been working to build multi-quarter registration. On October 31 we will open the joint Winter/Spring registration cycle. This past spring, students were able to register for both summer and fall at one time.  This fall, students will be able to register for both winter and spring.  This is a critical step in enabling students to develop a robust academic plan by having a multi-term, multi-year schedule. This process does not lock students into a multi-quarter or multi-year schedule.  Nor does this process eliminate the ability of the College to make changes to the schedule.  Other benefits for students with this practice include:
  • the ability to have earlier registration data for schedule decision-makers,
  • time for working students to plan both work-college, including working with supervisors, child-care, and other agents needed to support working students, and
  • students in sequenced and/or specialty courses can secure a seat ahead of time promoting continuous enrollment towards degree completion.

We will continue to share out Enrollment Recovery work and data.  You are welcome to review the working Enrollment Recovery Plan 2022-2024 which is available on Kerry’s VPSLS go.cascadia page.

Finally, Cascadia College Foundation scholarship applications for the Fall Cycle are now open! Awards are available for Winter and Spring Quarters of the 2022-23 academic year. Please help get the word out. Information and a link to the online/mobile application can be found on the Scholarships Webpage and will be available until the application deadline, October 14, at 5:00 PM.  Students complete one application to be considered for 25 scholarships and $50,000.00 in scholarship money.  Thank you for encouraging students to apply!

SHOUT OUTS

From the IN Box:

I’d like to take an opportunity to share appreciation for my colleagues, Fidely Navarro-Lopez and the Advising Team: Guided Pathways will help students identify a program choice with clear program maps that include specific course sequences, progress milestones, and program learning outcomes. A program map will help students make an informed decision to choose and narrow down their program options to complete a program at Cascadia. Fidely and the Advising Team have been working so hard to review and complete our 65 program maps by the end of the year! Thank you so much to Fidely and team for all the hard work!

Chantal Carrancho

Please share a shout out at FLShoutouts@cascadia.edu.

Have a great weekend.

Friday Letter, 9-9-22

The return of Fridays! For fun…let’s look at the derivation of this day’s name from some different perspectives (thanks Wikipedia).

Friday (in English) comes from Old English with the meaning “the day of Frig”, a result of an old convention associating the Germanic goddess Frigg with the Roman goddess Venus, with whom the day is associated in many different cultures.

In Romance Languages, the spelling has direct ties to the Goddess Venus.

In Arabic, the spelling of Friday is from a root meaning “congregation/gathering.” Personally…I like this version as Friday is often a time together with Friends.

In modern Greek, four of the words for the week-days are derived from ordinals. However, the Greek word for Friday is derived from a word meaning “to prepare”.

For us at Cascadia, Fridays are associated with the Friday Letter, Commencement, and usually fewer students on campus.

This week the Trustees met for their summer planning retreat. They heard the “State of the College” reports which we’ll repeat at Convocation. They feel that the campus certainly has some important issue to tackle (e.g., enrollment and finances) but that we are on the right track with concrete plans, stability, and a good course for the next couple of years.

Over the next 10 months, their monthly meetings will be in-person. Stay tuned for the monthly agenda which comes out a week before each meeting. The Trustees also agreed to help us with brand identity by being ambassadors to the community, such as attending School Board meetings of our local districts. Their next meeting is September 28 when they will further organize their sub-committees and vote on a chair and vice-chair for the coming year.

The executive team did a great job during the retreat highlighting opportunities in all four of our divisions. As expected, Chari Davenport highlighted Cascadia Scholars and the Student of Color Conferences. Meagan Walker spent her time talking about capital projects. Jashoda Bothra talked about our fiscal year close and the roadmap for stable finances over the next four months. Kerry Levett rounded out the reports with a deep dive into our enrollment demographics and many of the “enrollment recovery” initiatives underway.

Next week contains additional planning.

• The UWB executive team and the Cascadia leadership team will meet on Friday for a retreat to discuss new campus safety paradigms as well as our vision of the co-location.
• OneRedmond has an all-day retreat on Thursday that I will attend. They are the premiere economic development organization on the eastside and I sit on their Board.
• Meagan and I will film a “Welcome Back” video for students. I can’t tell you how many new employees said they watched the last iteration of that video as they were doing their research about Cascadia.
• And the Foundation will conduct final interviews for a new Executive Director.

There’s a lot happening as we build up towards Opening Week. Thanks for all the prep work in every corner of the college. Happy “gathering and preparation” day.

SHOUT OUTS

Please share a shout out at FLShoutouts@cascadia.edu.

Have a great weekend.

Friday Letter, 8-4-22

Despite fewer students and classes in the summer, projects, connections, and recruitment continue in full force. Here are some highlights from this week.

Jashoda Bothra and Joella Bennett-Gold (and team) are working hard with a CPA firm to shore up our fiscal year end numbers. This will be important information for future planning as we determine how much of our stimulus money we used in order to balance last year. This will then let us know how we much can use for the 22-23 fiscal year.  Most colleges in the system are still struggling with fiscal year end issues due to staffing and ctcLink. It is my hope that we will also master ctcLink this year so that it can be helpful for us. I appreciate the team’s hard work to make this happen.

The Foundation is working on their fiscal end numbers as well. The Foundation supported the college and students in numerous ways last year (94 scholarships!), but the current stock market volatility means that there might be less from our endowments in the coming year. Yesterday, the Foundation Board affirmed that they are ready to start actively fundraising for four college priorities: our student of color conferences, scholarships for students in the Cascadia Scholars program, certain program-specific scholarships (engineering, computer science, AIIS, and transfer to UWB), and furniture support for the new STEM4 building. You will see campaigns and donor outreach for these goals and I appreciate the work of Ketra Embleton and Mark Collins to help keep us moving forward.

This week, I met with the representative from Everett Community College who runs our continuing ed and contract training program. The pandemic decimated our continuing ed program, but our service to regional industries continues through contract training. Erik Tingelstad is primarily responsible for helping us to write those contracts and administer the program on Cascadia’s behalf. His work earned the college $53,000 last year and will bring in $65,000 this year.

In our monthly UWB/Cascadia administrative meeting, we met with UW Seattle staff who helped us create the Master Plan five years ago. This 5-year review demonstrated just how far the campus has come in realizing our physical buildout with the addition of the West Parking Garage, STEM 4, UWB residential housing, the forthcoming CC5-Gateway building, and new transit connections. We’ve made huge progress in a short amount of time and have held true to the principles of the Plan. Thanks to Meagan Walker and Shawna Pitts for being the stewards of Cascadia’s efforts.

Finally this week, I met with Bothell’s new city manager, Kyle Stannert. He has been on the job 7 weeks, spent the last 3 years working in Ft Collins, CO…and is originally from our area having worked for the city of Bellevue as the assistant City Manager. He brings a great, collaborative energy to Bothell leadership and sought this job with the knowledge that Bothell has the potential of being a great University/College town…much like Ft Collins and Pullman (where he did his undergrad work). We are looking forward to monthly breakfast meetings and will be inviting other community leaders to join us.

Our work continues and I am excited about the planning and initiatives underway.

SHOUT OUTS

Please be sure to acknowledge colleagues at FLShoutouts@cascadia.edu.

Have a great weekend.

Friday Letter, 6-10-22

It is THAT day. The day we all work towards. The day our students feel that sense of accomplishment because of what they have achieved with us.

I look forward to seeing everyone at Commencement. There is nothing better than seeing the joy on the faces of our students and being with each other to celebrate the day. This day also represents a symbolic End of the Cycle for us as faculty and staff…another school year is done. We wrap up projects, prepare for new courses, and enter new student recruitment cycles. While the work continues, we can all take a breath for at least a moment to affirm the value of what we do in our careers.

There will be some changes this year to Commencement.

• First, we are on the athletic field. Thanks to Becky Riopel and team for making this happen.
• Second, Dr. Kristin Esterberg, Chancellor of UWB, will join us on stage and say a few remarks to our graduates. This is the first time in at least 12 years that this has happened.
• Third, we will not be using the College Mace. A consensus among the e-team is that this symbol is dated and references the historical use of force in education. We have retired the mace from the ceremony, and will include other forms of symbolism, such as this year’s faculty chair Tasha Walston joining with Kerry to lead the processional to demonstrate the importance of faculty and administration collaboration.

We recognize that this year, like the last few, has been difficult. Changes continue and our summer will be filled with adjustments to reflect our new world. Thank you to all employees for staying on board with Cascadia and working hard to assure that Cascadia serves the needs of our community. I celebrate you as much as I do our students today. Without you, they wouldn’t be successful.

And, while you are all superheroes to our campus and our students, we would like to take a minute to recognize a few individuals nominated by campus to receive our annual service awards. The campus nominated individuals to receive this year’s Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Service Awards (for Faculty) and the Distinguished Employee Service Awards (for staff) over the last few weeks.

The Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Service Award is given out annually by the Foundation to honor Cascadia’s faculty who demonstrate achievement and service in the classroom. This award is supported by an endowment started long ago with our Foundation. Congratulations to…

• Natalie Serianni – full-time faculty, English
  “Professor Serianni worked hard to build connections with her students.”
  “Her class is a safe space where everyone can have their own ideas and thoughts.”

• David Shapiro – full-time faculty, Philosophy
  “Dave consistently shows his interest in the Cascadia Community in his teaching, mentorship of students, support for faculty and staff.”
  “Professor Shapiro uses a teaching method that is not only far more effective in teaching the students– but it also creates respect between the class and the teacher by a lot.”

• Linda Richard – full-time faculty, Math
  “Richard always made herself available to students during class periods and outside the classroom-it was clear that she truly cares about the success of her students.”

• Hannah Flesch – associate faculty, Anthropology
  “Professor Flesch has done an outstanding job in engaging her students with whatever she is teaching.  Students are never reluctant to attend her lectures and be a part of her insightful and beneficial discussions.”

• Bob Havens – associate faculty, BIT
  “Even when the subject matter became confusing, Professor Havens was extremely approachable, always smiling and happy to help. He did his utmost to ensure all his students understood what he was teaching.”

(Thanks to Erik Tingelstad and the Selection Committee – Chris Byrne, Soraya Cardenas, Marc Hyman, and Debra Waddell – for serving on this year’s selection committee.)

In 2012, the Foundation Board of Directors and College Executive Team established the Distinguished Employee Service Award to recognize our amazing Exempt, Classified, and Part-time (non-student) staff each year. Congratulations to…

• Melissa Stoner – Exempt
  “[Melissa is] prompt in responding to even rather complex request and does so in a spirit of collaboration and mutual support.  She is a Cascadia treasure and we all are fortunate to benefit from her financial expertise and her incredible people skills as well.”

• Ana Benitez – Classified
  “[Ana] is an enthusiastic team-player who is always willing to go the extra mile in order to provide service and support to her colleagues.  Faculty could not do our jobs of providing excellent education to students without her.”

• Rachel Berner – Part-time (non-student)
  “Rachel is always looking to support everyone and always is such a wonderful energy to be around. [She] has quickly made such an impact with Student Learning and always made a safe and welcoming space.”

Have a great weekend. Friday Letters will now start being posted on Thursday for the summer.

Friday Letter, 1-21-22

Some cool things have happened this week. Please feel free to send me some of the cool things that have happened in your areas and I’ll try to weave them into the Letter when I can.

The Foundation has seen increasing donor activity which has led to more scholarships. This includes:

• The Starting Point Award

Established with support from Cascadia Faculty, Jared Leising, and Foundation Board members, this award will support students who have been incarcerated or are an affected family member of a current or formerly incarcerated person.

• The Justin and Allie Gillebo Scholarship

Established by a Cascadia alum and his wife; this scholarship supports students pursuing a business degree – with preference given to students who are the first in their family to attend college.

• Shawn Miller Memorial Scholarship

Established by Cascadia’s community and members of Shawn’s family to celebrate and remember Shawn’s 23 year career and commitment to student success, this award will support first generation students – with preference given to students from underrepresented groups.

• The Miller-Hofmeister Endowed Scholarship

Established by two alumni College Trustees, Dr. Julie Miller and Nancee Hofmeister; this scholarship rewards students from underrepresented groups who enter, study, and graduate in the sciences, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) – with preference given to female students.

• The Ostroms–Wolfgang Memorial Endowed Scholarship

Established by a Cascadia alum; the award will support Cascadia’s first generation students pursuing a career in healthcare – with preference given to a career in pharmacology.

So cool to see our Foundation growing and supporting our students.

Yesterday I met with representatives of the Riverview School District. They reached out to Chari Davenport in an effort to find support for their potential students at Cascadia. Chari set up an in person visit to roll out our various programs with them. It was cool to reconnect with our Riverview friends and offer pathways for their students. They were excited about the renewed relationship.

On Wednesday, the Trustees approved retention increases for employees over which they have budget authority. As outlined last Friday, it was a large investment in our employees. We appreciate the Board’s support of us and Cascadia. Human Resources and our faculty bargaining group will now take on the administrative tasks of making that happen. Very cool.

On Wednesday, I met with Yukari Zednick, Dr. Scott James form UWB, and a representative from an agency that will be recruiting students for us from China, Malaysia, India, and Japan. Their hope is to have 200 international students enrolled in a program with us beginning Fall 2022. It’s cool to be a part of helping our international program regain students.

Finally, it was cool to meet with the woodworker this morning who will be taking trees reclaimed from the STEM4 site and turning them into memorial benches for Dede Gonzales and Shawn Miller. The wood was milled before COVID began and has been curing ever since. We hope to have those finished by Fall 2022. We’ll have a small gathering to honor our friends as we place those benches.

SHOUT OUTS

From the IN Box:

We’d really like to acknowledge the work that Shyla Hansen has been doing in the finance department and send in this special shout out for her. She has been such a great collaborator for us in the Enrollment Services department, she is extremely helpful and so supporting of our students in-person and remotely. We are so thankful to have her as a co-worker at Cascadia knowing that we can rely on her knowledge and willingness to reach out to students that need help. Shyla is fantastic at making difficult situations understandable to the student and to our department and her sense of humor honestly makes it all that much more enjoyable to work with. We really appreciate her!

~ Fidely Navarro-Lopez & Rachel Webb

Future Shout Outs can be sent to FLShoutouts@cascadia.edu.   

Have a great weekend.

Friday Letter, 8-19-21

A Preamble to today’s letter from Cascadia Leadership

Over the last few days we have watched news reports about the growing situation in Afghanistan. To our Afghan students and employees: we are thinking of those who have family friends in Afghanistan. We respect the rights of everyone to live in peace. Please know that we stand with you in solidarity.  

Friday Letter

Fall planning  is in full swing starting this month, and I don’t mean just in regards to COVID.

It seems like most of our communications revolve around the pandemic and how we are planning to move forward. Those are certainly important issues as we wrestle with mask and vaccine mandates, in-person and remote modalities, and interpreting the continually confusing messages from the state. Before we move on to “other Fall planning”, let’s recap for a moment where we stand with regard to COVID:

• The Delta Variant has brought back certain heightened risks, although those are mitigated somewhat by the availability of vaccines.
• Cascadia is requiring masks in the fall for everyone; UW just followed our lead and is now doing the same.
• We will have both remote and in-person classes; the class schedule has not changed since we published it.
• Employees are expected to be present on-campus a minimum of 1-2 days per week.
• Our September 13 return date is being re-evaluated. We may push that back a week. Stay tuned.

In addition to COVID planning, there is planning being accomplished in a number of other domains. The e-team will meet next Wednesday for an all-day retreat to catch up on these issues and make sure we are squared away for Fall:

• External Relations and Planning: STEM 4 is underway, the Foundation is moving at full steam, and Student Outreach is a huge focus. International Students will be on campus for their orientation on September 23.
• Administrative Services: We have found two support staff to bolster Finance and we have secured an interim Director. The search for permanent folks continues. Information Services is staying on top of our technology, including ctcLink and our new Customer Relations Management tool that will help with recruiting and student enrollment management. HR/Payroll continues to keep us on track with our new employee searches, the equity advocate program, and making sure we are getting paid!
• Student Learning: Guided Pathways work continues, with 4 work plan priorities for this academic year. We are launching the new College and Career Foundations program (merger of ELP and BEdA), developing the first three courses in American Indian and Indigenous Studies “minor” in UW partnership, and collaborating with area colleges on a BA in Computer Science degree.
• Student Success: A “First 6 Weeks Programming” series was developed to welcome & help familiarize students and faculty/staff with the many resources and services that Cascadia has to offer. Jumpstart Orientation & Resource Fair will be held partially in person for students on Thursday, September 23^rd. SSS staff are heavily involved in the implementation for two new software systems to support students:  Two modules from Symplicity, the Advocate module (for CARE team, student conduct, Title IX and Bias Incident Reporting) and the Accommodate module (for DSS Accommodations). Also, the EAB Navigate software package (for Guided Pathways). SSS created this summer five E&I work teams to review policies/practices/resources for the academic year.  The focus areas are: Admissions/Enrollment, Student Communication & Engagement, Student Finances, Student Resources, and Staff Training/Resources
• Equity & Inclusion: Cascadia Scholars is up and running…we hope to have 12 scholars on campus beginning in January for our inaugural mentoring cohort. We will also have three interns beginning fall term serving various roles to help move E&I forward on campus. The Office of E&I is also preparing to participate in the fall orientation and Jumpstart events. 
• President’s Office: Note that Lily begins her maternity leave next week. Please contact me directly if you need anything. The Trustees have their retreat on September 9 when we will review the comprehensive Strategic Plan, our current financial status, and our current enrollment status. Convocation is September 20 (9-11) and we will review the same information with all of campus at that time. The President’s Office is also keeping tabs on our Exempt Compensation review as well as an ‘equity analysis” that we hope to have performed for campus this fall.

We are a month away from our big start. Thanks to everyone for the summer planning work to get us there.

SHOUT OUTS

We all know that there are a thousand moving parts to getting us organized for Fall. A huge Shout Out to the entire team for the logistics involved in scheduling classes, ordering books, getting technology where it needs to be, recruiting/on-boarding students, awarding financial aid, and getting our facilities ready.

Future Shout Outs can be sent to FLShoutouts@cascadia.edu.

Have a great weekend.

Friday Letter

This week I want to highlight the Foundation’s Annual Report to the Community which celebrates the importance of Belonging at Cascadia. Our students thrive, in part, because they are members of a caring campus community. I hope you find something in the report that inspires you to celebrate your own contributions to our community this year.

In light of our Monday holiday honoring Dr. King, I would appreciate if you would read the report in lieu of a lengthy Friday Letter. We are an institution that believes in acts of service and cares about people. We care about equity and inclusion, hallmarks of Dr. King’s work. We also need to remember that there is a long list of people who have engaged, and continue to engage, in this work. Thanks to everyone who attended and what a great event yesterday with Christian Paige. Feel free to post a name or a reading in response to today’s Friday Letter if you would like to draw attention to efforts along this line.

 Interested in volunteering as a guest author for next year’s report? Email inquiries to foundation@cascadia.edu.

Have a great weekend.