4th Annual Mentoring Conference: New Dimensions

Join us for the 4th Annual Mentoring Conference on Friday, April 12, 2019! The theme is "New Dimensions."

The EvCC Mentoring Conference is a full day of speakers and workshops focused on sharing best practices, bright ideas and both individual and institutional experiences with mentoring. This is a rare opportunity to build networks and share ideas with colleagues involved in mentoring across our region.

Would you like to be a presenter? Workshop Sessions are 45 minutes in length, including time for questions and evaluation. This year, we are particularly interested in starting conversations about equity and inclusion. Got a great idea for a presentation? Send it to the Mentoring Conference Planning Team today! Presentation proposals may be submitted through March 1, 2019. Notification of acceptance will be sent by March 8th. More information is available at: http://www.everettcc.edu/administration/admin-services/professional-development/disruptive-innovation-mentoring/conference

For more information, email mentoring@everettcc.edumentoring@everettcc.edu

The Meaning of Fulfillment

submitted by Peg Balachowski, Associate Dean of Teaching & Learning at EvCC

On Sunday, October 26, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Emily Fox Gordon titled “The Meaning of Fulfillment.” Gordon begins, “At 66, I find myself feeling fulfilled. I didn’t expect this, and don’t quite know what to make of it. It’s as if I’ve been given an outlandishly oversize gift.” She speaks about an almost forgotten fantasy – being the “hostess of an intellectual salon.” Guess what –in my role as the Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at Everett Community College, that’s really my job! The hostess of an intellectual salon.

Pictured: Peg hosting new faculty in the Center for
Transformative Teaching, Fall 2017

I feel like I am working with some of the best faculty that our profession has to offer.
Together with the other 5-Star Consortium partners, we have identified a common need to rework, revise, and/or revitalize our work with faculty, both new and veteran. Here are some questions that we have thought about (and truly struggle to answer):

1. In what ways can we incentivize professional development for all faculty?
2. What are sustainable faculty development best practices?
3. How do you institutionalize professional development practices and policies?

I so appreciate the opportunity to work together with my colleagues to strategize and support each other as we take a critical look at how we can address these big questions. Huber and Hutchings coined the term “the big tent” in 2005 when writing about the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL).  Right now we only have a small tent – maybe it’s a pup tent – but I think we can all fit.

Exams – are they really learning opportunities?

submitted by Peg Balachowski, Associate Dean of Teaching & Learning at EvCC

“Some faculty members lament that exams can be missed opportunities to cultivate learning because worries about grades consume students' attention. What if there were a better way?”

In a recent post in the Teaching and Learning newsletter (courtesy of The Chronicle for Higher Education) the authors described a two-stage exam:

“Here’s how it works: Students take an exam individually... After they submit their answers, they split into groups of three to five students and go over the test together to hash out the answers.” Hmmm… you might be wondering if students who know this is the exam protocol would neglect to prepare for the exam. I wondered that too. The faculty who used this technique decided to test whether students had really learned anything from the group session and gave a surprise quiz just a few days later on the same material. Note that this was an INDIVIDUAL quiz. To their delight, “students who tested collaboratively learned the correct answers to more than one-third of the questions they had initially answered incorrectly on the tests they had taken individually. And, when students were tested three days later, the knowledge largely stuck.”

Is that enough of a boost in learning to convince you to try this technique? Let us know if you do and how your students did!

By the way, you can sign up to receive the Teaching and Learning Newsletter from the Chronicle by going to this site.

Introducing Kristina Jipson

Kristina Jipson, PhD, MFA
Senior Associate Faculty, English Department
Co-Coordinator Faculty Development

Welcome, Kristina Jipson! Kristina is one of the newer folks in the 5 Star Consortium. Learn more about her below!












What do you like most about your job?
The passion and genuine kindness of the people I work with.

What are three career lessons you’ve learned thus far?
Very few people wind up doing one thing their whole lives—be open to career growth and change.
If you have a great idea, somebody else is probably already working on it—find them and help!
Google yourself—at least once. I’ve been caught out one too many times with a sentence that starts with, “I saw online that you…”

What is one surprising thing you do as part of your job?
Assemble furniture!

What do you like to do on your days off?
I have days off?

Are you messy or organized?
Organized! I consider myself a an IKEA collector. The most romantic thing my husband has ever done for me is set up a Craigslist alert for coveted KALLAX units on sale in our area. So far, we’re at 80+ cubbies, and as far as I’m concerned, they are the only thing standing between us and the total world domination of our small, knick-knack collecting children.

If you could be anyone from any time period who would it be and why?
Can I stick with my current hand? We are living in “interesting times”!

Any favorite line from a movie?
That’s easy, because it’s my youngest daughter’s as well: “Weezin the juice,” from Encino Man. My daughter’s name is Louise, AKA Weez, Weezo, Weezy, ZZ, etc., so in our house “weezin” is basically the coolest thing anyone could do to anything, especially juice.

You’re happiest when?
Hmmm…can I have two? One for when I’m immersed the chaos of my adorable family, and one for when I’m writing quietly all by myself?

If you had to eat one meal, every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?
No brainer: sushi boat.

If your house was burning down, what’s the one non-living thing you would save?
Do I have to be able to carry it? We have an old family piano that travelled cross-country four times before landing in our living room, where it gets played every day (very well, I might add!) by my oldest daughter, Mathilda. I’d haul that out of the flames and impress the neighbors.

Top 3 life highlights?
Well, I have one very tall and infinitely kind husband, and two insane, wizardly daughters, so that math works out pretty well!

Impacting Students for a Lifetime - Part 2

Continued blog post series by Sally Heilstedt, Associate Dean of Instruction - Engagement and Learning at LWIT 

Interact with Students By Name

The first of the 4 Connections is simple but for many, not easy: Learn your students' names and begin using them on the first day of class and throughout the quarter.

I have the very good fortune of having an excellent memory, if I see names written down and associate them with faces. I relied on that ability a lot as an instructor and felt pretty good about myself when I knew and could use all of my students’ names after the first day of classes. It wasn’t until my second or third quarter of teaching that I realized something was amiss. I assigned students to in-class groups about three weeks into the quarter, and it became very apparent from the “hey, yous” and “you theres” that the students did not know each other’s names. Even if you are great at learning and using your students’ names, there is still room to improve the practice of the first Connection.

What follows are a few practices faculty have adopted to better memorize and/or utilize students’ names and to help students get to know one another:

• Name Plates - Provide printer paper or cut-up old file folders and have students create name plates to stand up on their desks. Collect them and pass them out each class session for the first few weeks as a self-assessment of your learning of their names.
  
• Introduction - After I discovered that students did not know their classmates’ names – and realized I has failed to give them that learning opportunity – I began a new practice in my face-to-face classes. On the first day of class, I asked everyone to share their names and one activity each that they enjoy doing. On the second day of class, I asked them to do the same (but to share a different activity). On the third day of class, they once again shared their names and this time, an accomplishment of which they are proud. I noted all of their responses on my attendance sheet and used them throughout the quarter to design examples and content, create teams, emphasize successes, encourage transfer of skills, etc.
  
  In the online environment, create a discussion forum where students are asked to introduce themselves and reply to each other (at least two to three other students). Provide introductory questions that connect to your course content or are simple like those described in the face-to-face activity above. Take the time to reply to each of the students, too.
  
• Canvas Profiles - Ask students to add a photo and short bio to their Canvas account under Profile. Be sure to do the same. Note: Due to safety reasons, you may have students who do not feel comfortable participating in this option or are unable to post personal information to Canvas.

During any of these activities, encourage students to use their preferred names and note those on your attendance sheet or roster. As someone who went by a name other than what I had to use to register, I deeply appreciated when an instructor knew and used the name with the most meaning to me. Names carry such weight in our sense of value, belonging, and self. Learning and using your students' names communicates that you value them, that they belong, and that they can be themselves in the classroom community.

Impacting Students for a Lifetime - Part 1

by Sally Heilstedt, Associate Dean of Instruction - Engagement and Learning at LWIT 

 
A little over a year ago, I walked into a session at the Achieving the Dream (ATD) annual cohort kick-off event (LWTech was there to learn more about ATD). Now, I can’t recall the exact title but it was about faculty-student relationships and success. I was thrilled to see it on the agenda. When the session began, I felt like I had been duped – data, data, data…yadda, yadda, yadda. After only a few minutes, however, the session was handed over to Don Wood of Odessa College. He began to share his journey, and the college’s, as he discovered a profound truth about student success: connection to faculty members matters, a lot.

Don, then dean and now VP of Institutional Effectiveness, was worried about course success. Students at Odessa were dropping out at high rates. Odessa’s overall in-class retention was only 83 percent. Initially, Don investigated the impact of commonly identified variables that impact courses success: subject, course, time of day, rigor, and student preparedness. There was no significant correlation to high dropout rates (I was shocked by this, too!). Then, he looked at the instructional side of the equation. Do different teaching methods impact dropout rate? No, again. What?!? Don moved to a qualitative approach to try to understand why some instructors had very low dropout rates. He interviewed them and coded their responses and something wonderful emerged (my embellishment added). The faculty who had the lowest dropout rates demonstrated “a common thread of connectivity to their students” (Kistner & Henderson, 2014).

Yes! I felt reinvigorated in my commitment to teaching and to faculty development and to student success and to completion and all the work that had lost a little of its luster for me. Here was the core of everything. But, what does connectivity look like? Well, Don didn’t leave it there. He broke down the responses further into four common practices shared among the faculty with the highest in-class retention: 1) Interact with students by name; 2) Check-in regularly; 3) Schedule one-on-one meetings; and 4) Practice paradox. Over the next few weeks, I will write about each of the four and the different ways faculty at LWTech and across the Washington State Community and Technical College system have chosen to practice them.

Odessa asked all faculty to practice what they came to call The 4 Commitments for at least one quarter. Their in-class retention rate went from 83 percent to 95 percent!!! And, that new rate was “regardless of gender, age, race/ethnicity, or Pell status” (Kistner & Henderson, 2014). Incredible! Few practices in higher education have been able to increase student success AND close equity gaps – here is a simple (but admittedly, not easy) approach rooted in the hearts of students and teachers. I can’t wait to share more about what The 4 Connections (LWTech’s adaptation) has meant for the faculty with whom I work.

If you can’t wait for the next post, visit http://bit.ly/4connections to learn more.
 
Reference: Kistner, N.A., & Henderson, C.E. (2014). The drop rate improvement program at Odessa College. Achieving the Dream’s Technology Solutions: Case Study Series. Retrieved from http://achievingthedream.org/resource/13784/the-drop-rate-improvement-program-at-odessa-college

What's a Five Star Consortium?

by guest blogger, Jennifer Howard, Vice President of Administrative Services at EvCC
  
The Five Star Consortium group started in 2009/2010 as a way for nearby colleges to work efficiently together to support faculty, staff and students. All the colleges in the state formed some sort of efficiency group, and in North King and Snohomish Counties, five nearby colleges formed the 'Five Star' Consortium.  The senior leaders met with their peers at the other four institutions and talked about ways to work together. The Human Resource leaders met for breakfast, and as HR leaders are known to do, they talked. A LOT. And they kept meeting and talking each month to figure out ways to make their work more efficient, effective and impactful.

Over the years, we have hosted an annual diversity career fair, published joint advertising, explored uniformity and shared resources around background checks; we have also enjoyed benefits from cost sharing as well as many other efficiencies. Among the discussion topics was “How do we get and keep excellent associate (adjunct) faculty? Is there something we can do to help them be better prepared when they walk into the classroom that first day? That first week? That first quarter? What are the things the Colleges valued when it came to classroom practices?” Everyone at the table was mindful of the fact that the “Freeway Flyers” (as associate faculty are often called) needed a little extra attention. This was the beginning of the Best Practices conversation.

In September 2015, the Five Star Consortium began joint quarterly trainings for new associate faculty. Since so many faculty are shared among the colleges, we realized that we had common best practice information to share. Instruction took on the training, and HR hung around to make sure the policy information was covered.

The Five Star Colleges care about continuous improvement, so if you attend a Five Star event, be ready to provide your feedback. We want to grow and meet the needs of our colleges into the future.

Thanks to everyone at Shoreline, Cascadia, Edmonds, Everett and Lake Washington Tech.