Opening Day Address 2007-08

President Jean Floten

September 18, 2007

Welcome & Introductions

Good morning!

It is truly a pleasure to see you all again and to welcome you to opening day of the 2007-2008 academic year at Bellevue Community College.

Opening Day is always an exciting event. The campus pulses with anticipation and good feeling, and I think it captivates and energizes everyone.

Very soon now, thousands of new and returning students will descend on our campuses and online classrooms, filled with hope and trepidation, bringing new energy and new challenges to all of us. And that’s exciting.

Before we go further I want to extend an especially warm welcome to the members of our college Board of Trustees who are with us this morning. I hope all of you will take the opportunity to greet these Trustees today. They devote a tremendous amount of energy and brainpower to guiding this college, and I know they would appreciate the opportunity to get to know you better.

Sadly, a number of our dear colleagues will not be with us this year. First of all, we fondly remember Phil Lucas, who passed away last year.

We will also miss nine members of the BCC community who retired over the past year, after many years of excellent service.

All of these fine people deserve a strong sense of pride in what they accomplished here, because there is no more important work than what we do at BCC. We develop students’ intellect and resources, and we prepare them for better lives and livelihoods. At the same time we strengthen our community by producing a diverse set of new contributors, each of whom brings new ideas and new perspectives, sharpened by the forward-looking, critical thinking skills they learn here.

Again this year we are delighted to welcome a number of new employees to help in this important work. There are too many for me to read all their names, but I do want to introduce a few of them individually because their roles impact us all: 

• Peter Maphumulo, our new Executive Dean (would you please stand, Peter?)
  
  

• Bea Hughes, our new Vice President for Human Resources
  
  

• and Star Rush, our new Director of the Center for Liberal Arts.
  
  

Welcome to BCC, all of you.

I’m also exceptionally proud to introduce our International Scholar in Residence for 2007-2008:  Lucia Zuppa, a World Language instructor from Argentina.

Would you stand, please, Lucia?

Lucia will teach Spanish as part of our World Languages Department, and will also be available as a classroom and community speaker on various topics related to Argentina and Latin America, including music, dance and literature, all favorite topics of hers.

Lucia holds a degree in English instruction from Argentina’s Instituto de Formacion Docenta Continua and a diploma in teaching Spanish as a foreign language from Asociacion Argentina Docentes Espanol.

Welcome, Lucia!

This is the sixth consecutive year we will host an international scholar-in-residence through the Center for Liberal Arts, and the fifth consecutive year this program has been supported by the prestigious Fulbright academic exchange programs of the U.S. State Department.

It’s quite unusual for a community college to be supported by Fulbright, and essentially unheard of to be selected repeatedly for their programs. So this is quite a testament to the quality of our programs and especially those of our Center for Liberal Arts.

And last, but certainly not least, we also welcome a special visitor from Asia this year, a scholar from one of our sister schools, Shingu College in Seoul, South Korea. Please welcome Dr. Sung-Yoon Huh.

Dr. Huh will be here with us for one year specifically to observe our Alcohol and Drug Studies and Radiologic Technology programs, as well as our Continuing Education programs, especially TELOS, the study program for retirees.

Welcome, Dr. Huh. We’re honored and delighted to have you with us.

We are also excited to have 23 new faculty members join our ranks over the past year.

Would all of you who are new faculty members since last September please stand to receive our warm welcome by way of applause?

Welcome to all of you.

And we are delighted to welcome 68 new classified staff members and 19 exempt staff employees.

Would all of you who have joined our staff over the past year please stand to receive our warm welcome.

We wish all of you a fulfilling and enjoyable career at BCC. And I invite everyone on campus to greet these folks personally at the New Employee Reception this Thursday, the 20th, from 4-5 pm in room A265— the nice lounge at the south end of the A building.

I hope you can all be there.

Achievements & Accolades

BCC seems to be constantly evolving and getting better year by year. And this year is no different.

Those of you who haven’t been here since June are returning to a college that is different from the one you left in a number of significant and very positive ways.

Science

Most obviously, we are on our way now with construction of our 11th instructional building on this campus— a new Science and Technology building we’re calling the S Building, which we expect to complete in late fall a year from now.

This new building will be an extraordinary asset for us. With three stories and 64,000 square feet of space, the S Building will provide 22 classrooms and labs as well as faculty offices. That’s crucial because lack of sufficient lab space has been a bottleneck for the nearly 4,000 students who take science courses here each year—including not only transfer students but also those in health science programs.

Just as exciting, the science and technology programs using that building will be enhanced in a major way by three grants received in recent weeks from the prestigious National Science Foundation, totaling $1.5 million!

Congratulations to Dr. Gita Bangera, Jeff Johnson, Cheryl Vermilyea and Barbara Miller for developing such creative and exciting projects and landing these highly prestigious grants.

Perhaps the most intriguing is the grant of $478,000 over three years to support true, real-world research experiences in genomics for BCC science students.

This is one of the first times ever that community college students will have an opportunity to undertake useful scientific research, and it’s not only a huge feather in our cap and a great opportunity for students, but also, we hope, a way to further intrigue students about the excitement of careers in science.

We will be partnering in this project with the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service at Washington State University, which will assign us a specific bacterium whose DNA our students will analyze and sequence. No other institution anywhere is studying this organism, and our students’ results will become part of the global genomics library.

This is potentially quite important research because the bacterium we are assigned is thought to be potentially useful in counteracting a devastating root disease that attacks wheat and barley. So BCC students’ work, then, could eventually be used to improve grain production worldwide.

We will have support and involvement in this project from key scientists from the USDA as well as the U.S. Department of Joint Genome Institute in San Francisco, which is part of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Donors to the BCC Foundation are also supporting this genomics program by contributing $40,000 for the purchase of a new, high-quality DNA sequencer for instructional and student laboratory.

The second and third awards will be directed by our National Workforce Center for Emerging Technologies and will also involve some exciting and highly prestigious partners.

For example, faculty from Columbia University will partner with us in a three-year, $824,000 grant project that will build ongoing partnerships with employers for the purpose of expanding internship, mentoring and other real-world learning opportunities for our science and technology students.

The grant will also lead to enhanced science and technology curriculum at BCC and other community colleges by supporting regional faculty-employer exchanges and conferences.

Under the third award, a two-year planning grant of $213,000, University of Washington and Seattle-area community college computer science and technology faculty will join us in designing and piloting three projects to encourage more science and technology students to stay in school and complete their educational programs.

Of course, these aren’t the only grants BCC has received recently. We also received funding from the state board for a new program in the high-demand field of  electroneurodiagnostic technology. This program begins Winter Quarter, and will be the only one of its kind throughout the six Northwest state.

Electroneurodiagnostic technologists, by the way, specialize in recording the electrical activity of the human brain and nervous system using electroencephalographs and other equipment.

Kudos are due Paula Boyum, Maurice McKinnon, Erika Ferreri and Barbara Miller for developing this high-demand program to fill a crucial work-force need and winning the grant from the state board.

And congratulations to Myra Van Vactor and Helen Taylor for landing a $7,000 grant for BCC READS from the federally funded Library Services and Technology Act implemented by the Washington State Library. The funds will be used to purchase print and media materials related to this year’s book selection The Worst Hard Time, for publicity, and to bring the author, Tim Egan, to campus next spring. As you can see, a grant doesn’t have to be huge to have a big impact!

Student Success

Even more fundamentally, we have begun to grow significantly as a college in the way we approach student success.

Just two weeks ago 600 of our first-time college students came to campus for an intensive, three-day immersion in strategies for college success. The event—something like an orientation session on steroids—is called the First-Year Experience, or FYE.

This comprehensive introduction to college is designed specifically to help students make the interpersonal connections they will need for support and encouragement among peers as well as faculty and staff. Research has clearly shown that such relationships are one of the most significant factors in overall student success, so we are making sure our students begin for create such networks from the outset.
           
FYE students also developed and wrote out their own educational plan, and learned college survival tips such as how to study most effectively, how to conduct research using library and on-line resources, and how to make use of the many, many forms of support we offer them here at BCC.

Most importantly, I think, these students learned they will not be invisible at BCC. In fact, they will be surrounded by hundreds of peers who share the very same dreams and challenges and by faculty and staff who care deeply about each student’s success.

But FYE is one of just three strategies we’re using in our college-wide Student Success initiative.  This year we also began requiring first-time students to meet with an academic advisor to define a clear path toward their educational goals.

Previously, many students avoided the optional advising program and as a result often strayed into classes that were not related to their goals or even appropriate for their skill level. Now all first-time students are being guided to more thoughtful academic decisions and more efficient use of their time and of their own and the state’s financial resources.

Over the summer, for example, our staff advised approximately 2,000 students in one-on-one half hour sessions. That’s three times more than was usual in past summers. This year, students would come in and take the assessment test, then immediately see an advisor, after which our student ambassadors helped students actually register.

The third pillar in our student-success initiative will be a vigorous program of rapid intervention. Our instructional and student-service staffs will work closely together to identify early signs of a student at risk—such as missed assignments, or declining results on daily work. We will respond immediately to these students with appropriate support such as counseling or tutoring, while there is still time to get the student back on track that same quarter.

Few if any other community colleges in the nation have implemented an ongoing student-success program of such breadth and depth, and we anticipate that this powerful triad of FYE, required advising and a robust early-intervention program will lead the way nationally as a model approach to the challenge of helping more students to reach the graduation line.

Kudos for designing and implementing these innovative programs are due to many, many people in Tom Pritchard’s Student Services department, including Matt Groshong, Sigrid Olsen, Trina Ballard, Celinda Smith, Faisal Jaswal, and all of the people in the assessment, enrollment, educational planning/advising and other Student Services offices. These programs provide extraordinary additional resources to help students achieve their dreams and Become Exceptional.

But the job can’t be left just to these people. We all need to be thinking about and trying new ways of connecting with students. Jim Ellinger, for example, has developed a new component for the part-time faculty orientation sessions on ways to make early connections with students.

And Henry Amaya, Nancy Gonlin, Katherine Oleson and David Oar, for example, have developed a Classroom Learning Communities manual which provides proven strategies for developing connections with and among students in the classroom. It’s had a very positive impact on students, and I encourage all faculty to use it.

Outreach and Recruitment

Another new and better way of doing our work here is evident in the new Outreach and Recruitment activities being undertaken by Student Services.

In addition to visiting high schools and maintaining a BCC presence at fairs and public events, Trina Ballard has also introduced some fun and attention-getting activities, such as an “I Love BCC” video contest and a lottery drawing for students who enrolled early, with the prize being free tuition for Fall Quarter, funded by the BCC Foundation.

All of these activities, while still in their infancy, have already had an impact. We have done better this year, for example, in working toward our recruitment target—still not quite achieving it fully, but coming closer than last year. And while it is crucial that we keep working hard to bring in the additional students, BCC remains the most effective college in attracting students, exceeding our state-assigned enrollment target by 10 percent, more than any other community college in the state.

Thank-you to Trina for her great work and to Bart Becker for the advertising that supports our recruitment program.

Another major step forward came in August when we announced an exciting  partnership with Snoqualmie Valley Hospital giving us the opportunity to establish another satellite campus – this one in new facilities that the Hospital will soon begin building where State Route 518 crosses I-90, an area of major growth in east King County.

Initially, the site will be dedicated to extensions of our health science programs, which address the most critical work-force needs in the region. But we hope, over time, this new site will blossom into a comprehensive campus with a wide variety of programs.

Other Achievements

There are many other signs of continued progress at BCC.

We have a newly-established position of Vice-President of Equity and Pluralism, and another position of ombuds-person, filled ably by Miranda Kato, to help us better implement and sustain our commitment to pluralism.  

Would you stand, please, Miranda?

Congratulations and thank-you to the Diversity Caucus for spearheading the creation of these position.

Jim Bennett has also established a new Bellevue Incident Response and Support Team, or BIRST, which will coordinate and expedite the college’s response to campus climate issues related to bias-motivated incidents and act as advocates for the persons affected.

The team includes Jim, Interim Dean of Student Services Tom Pritchard, Vice President for Administrative Services Laura Saunders, Vice President for Human Resources Bea Hughes, and Executive Dean of Instruction Peter Maphumulo, and they want to hear from you if you become aware of any acts of bias or intolerance.

Other major achievements include International Student Programs’ largest-ever summer enrollment.

They hosted 523 students this summer, that’s 25% more than last summer. And that followed the largest Spring enrollment of international students ever since 9/11/2001. We had students from 80 countries studying at BCC last year – an incredible success story in the wake of the precipitous drop in international students entering the U.S. in the years immediately following 9/11.

Congratulations to Cris Samia and his staff!

Another major step forward was Continuing Education’s delivery of training in Microsoft Office 2007 to Casey Family Programs offices in 15 states. This is the first multi-state training deployment in BCC’s history and a new plateau in the evolution of our contract training program.

Congratulations to Bruce Riveland and Dennis Phillips!

And of course we welcomed the first contingent of students in our initial bachelor’s degree program, which is in radiation and imaging sciences. It’s an outstanding group, including the people who run imaging operations at the area’s major hospitals and clinics.

Congratulations to Ron Radvilas and Elise Erickson for all of their hard work and success in putting that program and first cohort together.

And I also want to recognize and express my appreciation for the continued spirit of collaboration that was evident in contract negotiations again this year. My thanks go especially to faculty and administration negotiators for their success in identifying and addressing key issues in the interest-based bargaining approach.   

The spirit of cooperation among employees, as exemplified by these people, has been a true blessing for BCC over the years – something we all contribute to and which pays big dividends in the quality of our programs. This is a distinguishing characteristic of BCC—something that is not there at most community colleges.

Work-plan for the Year

Yes, we continue to grow and evolve rapidly as a leading institution in higher education, making fantastic progress thanks to everyone’s commitment and hard work. The BCC of Fall 2007 is even better than the BCC of Fall 2006.

And as we continue on that ascent we face another year of challenges. Our work plan for the coming year is, and this will come as no surprise, ambitious, to say the least. In addition to the routine challenges we encounter every day just in running a college the size of a small city, we have a number of large additional projects and initiatives before us that will require campus-wide focus and effort.

Right at the top of the list is preparation for an accreditation visit. “Oh no! We just did that!” you say. Yes, but as an institution that now offers a bachelor’s degree, we need to achieve accreditation at the level of a four-year institution, which must meet more stringent standards and requirements.

Fortunately, the incredible work you did in the most recent re-accreditation self-study gives us a major head-start this time. And given the excellent report the accreditors returned in 2005, I am confident we will be successful again. But it will take a lot of help from most of you.

We will also be working to more fully integrate budgeting, enrollment management and college-wide planning, so that the results and expectations of one inform and support our planning in the others. By looking more comprehensively at these crucial areas we will get a much clearer picture of what we need and how far we can reach.

We will revisit our long-range strategic plan, too, to look anew at where we want to take BCC over the next ten years. We need to re-think what enrollment targets and what new programs will capture them, and re-calculate what we will need in terms of new facilities to support that. Should we build a dormitory to house international students? Do we have enough space for our growing student activities, and if not, where can we find it? We need to think carefully through all such issues once again.

Another major item will be to apply the results of what we have learned about our effectiveness as an institution, and ensure that we are making the best use of our expertise to monitor and improve our performance. We will consider expanding the role of the Institutional Effectiveness Group in college planning and budget development, and we will consider applying the standards of the Washington State Quality Award to improve institutional effectiveness. 

To further support the Student Success Initiative I spoke of earlier, we will begin planning for a new Teaching and Learning Center of Excellence, which will be a think-tank and faculty support center focused on applying new technology to our teaching methods and adapting our pedagogy to the new ways of thinking and communicating that characterize the Digital Native generation.

We also will be launching a number of new training programs for new faculty and staff; for people who have accepted new assignments and responsibilities, including program chairs, administrators and staff;  for all faculty in techniques of classroom management; and for almost all of us as we implement new IT systems.

We not only have a new i-Modules system that we are using to manage and coordinate our contacts with potential students and community members, but we will also soon begin using Microsoft Vista instead of the Windows operating system, as well as Office 2007 on all our computers. And before long —hopefully this year—we will begin to use the new state-wide computer system for community colleges—what has been referred to as the ‘re-hosting’ project. We must not only learn to use the new program; we must also incorporate the expanded accessibility of data to improve college planning and operations.

Also this year we plan to better integrate various aspects of the many programs and courses we have that look outward, around the world, to enhance our ability to instill global competence in our students.

Another challenge will be to begin implementing the state’s requirement to move to common course numbering system among all community colleges.

This is quite an ambitious work-plan, isn’t it. But think back to our past experiences:  again and again we have proven our mettle in achieving ambitious goals. And I know that together we will accomplish the work we have carved out for ourselves this year.

Cohesiveness

There is one more crucial challenge for us this year that goes well beyond a day-to-day work plan. Together we must address a fundamental challenge that has arisen to our cohesiveness as a community. Specifically, we must gather our resources and continue to address the issues and the needs related to diversity.

In doing so we must gain and learn from our experience if we are to be the great college we believe ourselves to be—a place where everyone can come to work and study feeling respected and valued for their individual contributions.

The face of America is changing rapidly, and it is our responsibility as educators to model the behavior that is needed in the larger community.

For several years we have all taken justifiable pride in our work on pluralism and diversity. We established a strong record of participation from all segments of the college community in the Beyond Diversity workshops, and we have excellent strong contributions from our Diversity Caucus and Pluralism committees. Their work has resulted in the college receiving some impressive awards for equity.

Over the past year-and-a-half, however, a series of events have shaken our collective resolve and our consequent pride in continuing accomplishment in the area of diversity.

Today is not the day to analyze the details of those specific events, but I would be remiss in my responsibilities as President if I did not say that it is critical that we regain the fundamental unity of effort which previously carried us so far.

We need to find it within ourselves to move beyond our differences, focus on the ideals we hold in common, and begin to move forward again in this crucial area.

Early in my career I developed a fundamental trust in the collective abilities and commitment of the faculty and staff at the colleges where I worked, and that trust has been consistently rewarded. I have always maintained that every college has the collective talent and resource to successfully meet every challenge it faces.

And I remain convinced that the faculty and staff of our college, despite conflicting viewpoints, are fully committed to achieving our fundamentally common goals related to pluralism and equity.

We want a workplace that honors the principles identified in our Pluralism Compact and our Affirmation of Inclusion. We want an environment in which all students and faculty and staff can exercise their right to participate fully in campus life, freely, without bias, and without being discriminated against.

But while individual convictions and commitment to pluralism may be constant from prior years, as a college community we have strayed from our path in deed and action. This is a fact we must all acknowledge and accept.

For that reason we need to work consciously at restoring the trust, the mutual support and the sense of unified commitment that are essential to achieving our pluralism goals.

I need your help in this, and today I ask each of you, individually, to do everything you can to rebuild our damaged relationships with each other, to reinforce those core values that we hold in coming, and to recommit to being the kind of college that we all want to work in and will best support the growth and development of our students.

We have learned many lessons over the past year and a half. As a learning college we need now to reflect on what we have learned and come to grips with how we translate that into positive steps that will move us forward once again.

I have set down what I believe are the lessons of the past 18 months in the form of a statement of what I believe is needed from each of us as part of this college community. All of us must serve as a model of resolve and action, and I will start with myself: 

For example, I believe it is my personal duty as President, and also that of our deans and vice presidents and our administrators in all areas of the college, to:

• speak out loudly and clearly against expressions of racist, sexist, homophobic and other bias, and react promptly and firmly to acts of discriminatory harassment;

• create forums and workshops to raise awareness and promote dialogue on issues of race, sex and sexual orientation;

• intensify our efforts to recruit members of racial minorities on student, faculty and administrative levels;

• and expand our curricula to reflect the diversity of peoples and cultures that have contributed to human knowledge and society, in the U.S. and throughout the world. 

I admit that we, the administration, have not always handled these responsibilities as well as we should have, and the college has my and the executive team’s personal commitments that we will provide more active and effective leadership now and in the future.

But equity and pluralism are not just the responsibility of the administration. We need support from everyone on campus.

For example, I would like to see faculty:

• Own the climate in their classrooms to ensure that all students are afforded dignity and respect, and the opportunity to learn without interference.

• Monitor student progress closely and help students to get assistance when the first signs of trouble appear.

• Report acts of hatred or bias to the Ombuds-person or BIRST team..

• Take the opportunity to teach when students engage in discriminatory acts, acts of bias, or acts of hatred. This means dealing proactively with matters of race or other forms of bias when they occur. There are specific techniques that must be used in order to perform that duty successfully, which means participation in the college’s programs of education and training on these matters is critical.

Similarly, I would like to see our staff:

• Avoid stereotyping and prejudgment

• Report acts of hatred or bias to the Ombuds-person or the BIRST team.

And collectively, we ALL share the duty to:

• Treat all students with dignity and respect.

• Create a professional and equitable environment

• Interact respectfully and civilly.

• Create a supportive climate where collaboration is required.

• Participate in education and learning about pluralism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”  He was not simply expressing a hopelessly optimistic view that good intentions will inevitably overcome challenges. Rather, he was articulating a recognition that human progress depends upon a strong commitment to change, upon the energy to make it happen, and upon the mutual respect and trust essential for collaborative success.

As I reflect on our impressive successes in meeting many challenges over the years, I recognize these qualities as the basis for our collective energy, resource, and commitment to identifying and accomplishing our collective goals.

Conclusion

As we face the challenges of the new year, let us always bear in mind the importance, the enduring significance, of our positive impact on people’s lives. Keep in mind the students whose lives we are touching through the miracles that happen daily in our classrooms.

Listen to this statement from Sean Howe, one of our transfer graduates, who spoke at commencement two years ago. It has stayed with me because it is such a moving example of that miracle.

Sean said:

“Honestly, I never thought I would go to college. Being the first of my siblings to try it, I was not sure I even belonged in academic circles.

 “But BCC showed me my potential. Teachers like Dr. Helen Taylor taught me how to be a good student.

"They taught me to be informed, involved and aware of my world. I have been volunteering for a good portion of the time that I have been at BCC. This is something I never thought of doing prior to coming here.

 “When you set all of the knowledge I have gained aside, there are still a mountain of qualities I have gained at BCC.

 “I have not only learned to be a good student but also a good person, to be active in my community, to give without expecting anything in return, to share my knowledge and creativity with the rest of the world, and to embrace people as individuals with a common goal.

 “My degree will not just be an associate in psychology, but a degree in life and humanity.

 “That’s what I have gained from being a student at BCC.”

And that is what it’s all about -- the bottom line of all we do.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.”

And when one infuses intelligence and character into our society on a daily basis, as happens here at BCC, one exerts a major positive influence on our world.

I can’t think of more important and personally rewarding work. We are all extremely fortunate to be part of it.

Thank you, and have an exceptional year!

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