Opening Day –

Thank you all who participated in Opening Day for the new academic year!  I was honored to be a part of the Clark tradition. I think ASCC President Evans Kaame helped set such a positive uplifting tone, reminding us of our shared vision – supporting our students. Thank you to Chair Jacobsen and Trustee Speer for their welcome message and updates. Thank you to the Executive Cabinet (William Belden, Vice President of Student Affairs; Stefani Coverson, Vice President of Human Resources and Compliance; Shanda Haluapo, Associate Vice President of Planning and Effectiveness; Lisa Gibert, Clark College Foundation CEO; Dr. Sachi Horback, Vice President of Instruction; Kelly Love, Chief Communications Officer; Valerie Moreno, Chief Information Officer; Rashida Willard, Interim Associate Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Bob Williamson, Vice President of Administrative Services; and Kevin Witte, Vice President of Economic & Community Development). And, thank you to the Guided Pathways Team for an engaging Opening Day presentation, which included the following themes:

1. Our 3 year completion rate has increased, but opportunity gap has not changed, specifically for our students of color. As we begin to implement the framework and support systems of Guided Pathways we will eliminate our existing racial equity gap.
2. Our community is becoming more diverse. This means, we need to be intentional about creating a welcoming and supportive environment, meaningful connections with our communities of color, and strong partnerships with education and business entities so we can fully meet the needs of our community.
3. There has been significant progress strengthening our high school partnerships and we have improved our efforts in recruitment and application.

Lastly, as we move forward we encourage you to continue asking yourself, “Is the work I’m doing following the Equity Minded Framework?”

New Awards announced

I want to thank Rashida Willard and Debi Jenkins who created a special moment in honor of Lora Whitfield. Lora, a highly respected and beloved Early Childhood Education Professor at Clark College passed away in early July. To remember her work and her many acts of love, we decided to introduce a new employee award, the Lora Whitfield Social Equity Award. This award will honor Lora’s legacy and take an important step to recognize Clark College employees based on their exceptional work in removing systemic barriers for our students and employees. Some of you have asked about the poem Debi wrote and recited in Lora’s honor. I’m happy to tell you that it is available to you on Clark 24/7. Thank you, Debi, for finding the words to help mirror all our feelings of love and gratitude for Lora.

I announced a second new award, The Clark College Exceptional Administrative-Exempt Award. As with our Classified and Faculty awards, we want to honor employees who contribute in significant ways to building a positive and inclusive environment, and who exhibit traits of excellence in their role at Clark.

Both of these awards include a $1,000 award and a glass plaque, thanks to Clark College Foundation. We’ll have more details in the next few weeks on the submission process for both awards moving forward.

Honoring our own

One of my favorite moments at Opening Day is seeing the employee awards and acknowledgements. Our annual Exceptional Classified Staff Awards were presented. Congratulations to Amanda Brown in Libraries and Ian Beckett in Art for your exemplary and steadfast work in supporting the college and our students.

Our Exceptional Faculty Awards were first announced in June but presented at Opening Day. Congratulations and thank you to:

• Dr. Karl Bailey, Chemistry
• Nadine Fattaleh, Chemistry
• Deena Godwin, Communication Studies
• Zachary Grant, Libraries
• Malcolm McCay, Economics
• Erin Staples, Health & Physical Education

I’d like to also congratulate everyone who received service awards. I’ll highlight our 25- and 30-year employees.

25 years of service:

• Karen Hagen, Clark Foundation
• Kristine Barker, Faculty
• Kayoko Barnhill, Faculty
• Aaron Bingham, Faculty
• Don Gonser, Faculty
• Bob Hughes, Faculty
• Travis Kibota, Faculty
• Gail Robinson, Faculty
• Kimberly Bower, Student Affairs

30 years of service:
            Lisa Hasart, Administrative Services

            Lynn Boydston, Instruction

            Vicki Weese, Instruction

            Michael Arnold, Faculty

Welcome Week – do you have your t-shirt?

We gave away t-shirts at Opening Day (I have mine). We still have shirts available to you at Gaiser Hall Room 204.   The idea is that we want to welcome our students with a shared message during Welcome Week, “You belong here.”  This is a college wide effort to create that sense of belonging and inclusion for all our students.  I think the visual also can remind ourselves that we have ability and support to do collegiate work with a student centered approach. I’m so proud of the work you’re all doing.

What’s on your mind?

Several weeks ago I sent out a brief, anonymous survey to all of you in order for me to gather essential information about the college. It’s been a great resource for me to hear more about your concerns and your suggestions for me as your interim president at Clark. Because it was summer quarter, I want to re-open the link to give employees who were off-contract during the summer an opportunity to respond. Here is the link if you haven’t responded yet: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TellMeAboutClark. The survey will be open until September 22.

Ways to work on Goal #4

It’s one of our top ten goals in 2019-2020: “Institutionalize hiring and retention practices that are equitable and inclusive.” To support this effort, I wanted to pass along along a new upcoming training opportunity to help us reach our goals. Human Resources has partnered with the Office of Instruction and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to offer a four-part webinar series, “Hiring a Diverse Faculty.” The series is hosted by USC Rossier School of Education, Race and Equity Center. Though the title indicates faculty, the concepts apply to all recruitment types. Anyone who has been involved with hiring efforts in the past or in the future is encouraged to attend.

All webinars/gatherings will be held in Gaiser Hall (GHL) room 213 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at the college’s main campus. We have reserved rooms on the following dates to gather as a group to watch together. Please click on the links below to sign up for sessions.

• September 24:  Innovative Recruitment Method
• September 26:  Job Announcements
• September 30:  Implicit & Explicit Bias
• October 2:       Job Interviews

Strategic Planning

I met with the Executive Cabinet this week for a daylong strategic planning session. At the heart of our work is the list of ten priorities for Clark College in 2019-2020 as approved by the Board of Trustees. Over the next several weeks, I’ll provide you with more detail as to how we’re going to achieve the goals we’ve set. For today, I’d like to list them out for you: 

1. Increase student engagement and outcomes by implementing Guided Pathways resulting in increased student completion and equity.
2. Improve the college climate and employee morale, including shared governance.
3. Develop and implement comprehensive professional development to improve employee intercultural and multicultural competencies.
4. Institutionalize hiring and retention practices that are equitable and inclusive.
5. Implement ctcLink technologies.
6. Respond to the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities’ accreditation recommendations.
7. Create a long-term budget forecasting, planning, and resource-allocation process.
8. Foster external partnerships with stakeholders to achieve our goals.
9. Finalize and implement a holistic plan for campus expansion at Boschma Farms
10. Hire and onboard the new president.

Most of these will not be a surprise to you. In many cases, these are things we’re already working on. I am very conscious of the fatigue many of you are feeling as you have been engaged in this work over the past year. I want to support you in whatever way I can this year and work together to meet these goals.

Birthday Celebrations

I hosted our first open house to celebrate and recognize faculty and staff birthdays for the months of August and September. Thank you to those who joined me for cupcakes, coffee, and conversation. If you were born in August or September and you missed it, please come to our next open house birthday celebration. Here are the dates for the year:

• Tuesday, October 15, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
• Tuesday, November 12, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
• Thursday, December 5, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, January 15, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
• Thursday, February 6, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, March 11, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
• Thursday, April 9, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
• Thursday, May 7, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
• Tuesday, June 9, 2:30-3:30 p.m. (June and July birthdays)

I look forward to seeing and celebrating you on one of these dates!

Welcome Week!

I hope you were able to enjoy the Welcome BBQ Friday on campus. It was fun to meet our student athletes, and I’m grateful to the Foundation for providing lunch to all alumni, students, faculty, staff and friends. I was sorry to miss it. I was at the Foundation Board Retreat and we also enjoyed a little BBQ.

There are activities all week for students. Do you get the Penguin Digest? Here’s the link so you can opt-in for updates about news and events for students.https://clarknet.clark.edu/forms/penguin-digest-opt-in/index.php

Also, help us commemorate 2019 Welcome Week by wearing your “Welcome Week” T-shirt for a massive group photo Friday, September 27 at noon at Gaiser Student Center. I love the start of the academic year and the return of our students. Each student is a powerful reminder of why we do what we do.

Here’s to a fantastic 2019-2020 academic year!