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RECAST: Fall 19 | Week 10 | Provost Note

by · December 16, 2019

Hi all,

Last week’s Academic Fair reminds us that the end of another quarter is upon us.  Thank you to all who participated, creating a meaningful advising experience for our students.  I was impressed by the high energy level in the room!

The evening before the Fair, twenty-two of us gathered for our second Three Magnets event for 19-20 and had lively conversations about both our lives and our work.  I encourage you to participate as you are able in these and other meaningful opportunities for us to build and tend to our community.  There will be two off-campus evening gatherings in winter quarter, along with a late afternoon gathering on campus.  I hope you are able to join us if you have not yet participated this year.  Staff can sign up here and faculty can sign up here.

As I’ve shared before, we’re launching an ambitious process this year to identify and prepare to implement 2-3 new academic directions and/or curricular strategies that will substantially increase Evergreen’s enrollment.  Our goal is to begin implementation of one major project by June 2020, with an initial launch in fall 2021; and to begin implementation of a second project later in the 20-21 academic year to be available to students in fall 2022.  A cross-divisional coordinating group for this project has now met twice, and nearly 100 students, faculty, and staff combined have participated in an initial round of “blue sky” sessions where we sought the community’s bold curricular ideas.

Additional community conversations, including opportunities specifically designed for students, will be held in early winter quarter and announced in early January.  A primary objective of these sessions will be to share and receive feedback on a synthesis of ideas we’ve received so far.  We’ve created a website for community members to track and contribute to this project.   You can also send questions and ideas to bigbets@evergreen.edu.  All ideas are welcome and heard; we will consider the right sequencing for folding in new initiatives at varying scales in the months and years ahead.

Even as we plan to invest in new directions for Evergreen’s future, we must continue our efforts to stabilize our budgets for 20/21. We expect a cut on similar scale to last year to address continued enrollment and operating deficit pressures on the budget. We will build on the work we did last year to surface ideas and scenarios for budget reduction. We have engaged the Resource Allocation Advisory Committee (RACC) and the Faculty Advisory Panel on the College Budget (FAP) in this work. Expect to hear more in winter quarter.

I’d like to extend thanks to our colleagues in College Relations who are engaged in several collaborations with Student and Academic Life.  For example, Shauna Bittle and Alexa Morris-Lay facilitated a media workshop for faculty last week.  Farra Hayes and Larry Geri are co-leading work to publicize the Paths of Study.  Jeremy Mohn is working with Kristina Ackley and Andrew Reece on a faculty speaker series.  Kudos to Alyssa Parker, Heather Qualters, Tricia Bateman and Shauna Bittle for their silver CASE award in visual design for the “Academics: How You’ll Learn” recruitment brochure.  See the most recent “Evergreen Outreach” e-mail for more details, including how to share your ideas.

Congratulations and sincerest thanks to our faculty and staff colleagues who are finishing the first quarter of the Greener Foundations pilot programs!  We all benefit from your hard work in this start-up year, including lessons learned in preparation for full implementation next near.

Many of us were able to make a significant dent in our holiday shopping at another wonderful Arts & Crafts fair hosted by Student Activities last week.  There are additional holiday shopping opportunities this Friday and Saturday from 11-6 at the 23rd Annual Longhouse Holiday Native Art Fair.  The women’s and men’s basketball teams got off to a strong start last weekend.  Information on upcoming men’s and women’s basketball games can be found at https://gogeoducks.com/index.aspx.  A special welcome back to Evergreen alum Jackie Robinson, our new women’s basketball coach.

I greatly appreciate all of you and your continued commitment to our students.  I hope the winter break provides some time for rejuvenation and I look forward to seeing you all in the new year!

 

Best,

Jen

—

SAL Renewal Initiatives 2019-20 Accomplishments as of Fall Week 10

Current status of renewal initiatives for which Student & Academic Life is primarily responsible.

 

*indicates an update since the last Note

 

Greener Foundations (First-year Experience Program)

Contact: Trevor Speller, Academic Dean and Cynthia Kennedy, FYE Fellow

This fall, FYE has launched a 2-credit student success course “Greener Foundations” in 6 academic programs this quarter as phase one of our launch. We have 11 amazing staff instructors working with our students and collaborating with faculty teams. Faculty are meeting regularly in a community of practice–stewarded by newly minted Faculty Fellow Cynthia Kennedy–and staff are meeting weekly to work on their instruction. We have finalized our budget, and have already expanded access to field trips for students. In addition to this year’s roll-out, we are also working on the full launch of Greener Foundations, to begin in 2020-21!

 

*Learning and Teaching Commons (Commons)

Contact: Julia Metzker, Director, Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education learningandteaching@evergreen.edu

In Fall Quarter, the Learning and Teaching Commons hosted Commons Conversations, Blue Sky Conversations, and launched several new Communities of Practice.  Additionally, Joli Sandoz (Learning and Teaching Commons Faculty Scholar) and Liza Harrell-Edge (Archivist) have partnered to develop a learning materials collection in the Evergreen Archives. This collection provides Evergreen faculty an opportunity to submit assignments, activities, syllabi, and other materials for a learning collection that will be digitally accessible. Updates on how to contribute to this collection are forthcoming.  Please contact Joli or Liza for more information.

The Learning and Teaching Commons Advisory Council continues to plan more ways to best support you and the work you do with students.  Please send your requests for workshops, discussions, trainings, or other types of professional development to learningandteaching@evergreen.edu.

Council membership includes Robin Bond, Emily Gray, Julia Heineccius, Penelope Partridge, Merrill Pusey, Julia Metzker, Therese Saliba, Joli Sandoz, Eric Stein, Eirik Steinhoff, Lisa Sweet, Pauline Yu, Sonja Wiedenhaupt, Elizabeth Williamson.

As you turn your attention to planning your winter quarter, the Learning and Teaching Commons will continue to offer opportunities to support your development.

You might …

Details about these opportunities will be sent via email and posted to the Learning and Teaching Commons website at sites.evergreen.edu/ltc.

*Paths of Study 

Contact: Larry Geri, Academic Dean

Thanks to a concerted effort by the web development team (Brian Mathis, Alexa Morris-Lay, and Justin McDowell), and Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communications Farra Hayes, a revised set of Paths of Study webpages were completed in November.  The new home page for the Paths is https://www.evergreen.edu/studies/paths.  Each Path group submitted revised content for their pages, after which Farra and her team met with each of the Curricular Area Team Leaders (Kristina Ackley, Stephen Beck, Krishna Chowdary, Stacey Davis and Laurie Meeker) and dean Larry Geri to make final revisions.  The new pages briefly describe each Path for prospective students and provide secondary pages on each Path with more detail for current students.  Thanks to everyone who contributed to this project!

Following completion of the new Path webpages, a team from across campus began a major project to reach out to students regarding the Paths of Study.  On November 15th, Provost Drake sent all students a message regarding the Paths.  The team also developed the content for a Paths FAQ page (https://www.evergreen.edu/studies/about-paths-of-study) and created a Path banner for the main entrance to the Library building.  A Q&A session on Paths for staff from Registration, Admissions and Advising was held on December 4, 2019.  We plan to organize visits to academic programs early in winter quarter to answer students’ questions about the Paths face-to-face.

 

Masters in Teaching (MiT)

Contact: Sue Feldman, Director

MiT is busy finishing week ten of our final fall term with the final cohort of the former program. Fall term for MiT begins in August with the school district start. We are also busy with our program redesign and have progressed to a full program redesign making the program more accessible to Evergreen undergraduate students interested in becoming teachers.  Sue Feldman, MiT Program Director, welcomes any and all invitations to come talk about the new program design with faculty, staff and students.

 

*Native Pathways Program (NPP)

Contact: Dawn Barron, Director & Faculty

NPP has continued successful outreach and recruitment efforts with 5 new students entering winter quarter! Our Critical Indigenous Studies course had a health fair for their quarterly service-learning and research project and received over 100 surveys.

 

*Tacoma Program

Contact: Marcia Tate-Arunga, Dean

At Evergreen – Tacoma, we were honored to host a Zoom presentation with the Dalai Lama on the subject of compassion. This was hosted by the office of Governor Jay Inslee in conjunction with three additional college campus sites in the state of Washington. The presentation was a successful community engagement event, attended by over 75 students and community people who participated in a lively question and answer period.

Tacoma has taken on the responsibility of managing a work-study crew of students to enhance our facilities and make our laboratories more accessible.  The Student Activities team successfully held elections, expanding to an eight-member body.

We have added new partners with the following organizations: Graduate Tacoma; Metropolitan Development Council; Pierce College-Fort Steilacoom; Decolonize Education Conference organizers; three Upward Bound and Trio programs in the Pierce county region; Technology Access Foundation; and St. Martins Church.

 

Entrepreneurship

Contact: Larry Geri, Academic Dean

An event titled “Entrepreneurship and Changemaking at Evergreen” was held on campus on Friday, October 18th bringing together over 30 faculty, staff, students and community members to envision possibilities for the campus entrepreneurship program.  The event was very successful in exploring an expanded vision for this initiative. Work is underway with a small group to develop the next steps for stewarding this work.  More soon.

 

Bachelor of Science Re-envisioning

Contact: Larry Geri, Academic Dean

In 2018-2019, the faculty driving this initiative began to hold regular advising meetings with science students and are continuing to advise students this year.

 

*Aquatics Program

Contact: Elizabeth McHugh, Director, Wellness, Recreation & Athletics

The Aquatics Steering Committee Co-Chairs and Student Wellness, Recreation, and Athletics staff members shared the Aquatics Review Summary Report and options for consideration to Senior Leadership on October 29th.  Decisions on next steps are forthcoming.

—

NOTE: Significant work on the College renewal initiatives is being stewarded by other divisions on areas including Climate and Belonging, Enhanced Reputation, Indigenous Arts & Education, Inspired Marketing & Outreach, and New Student Recruitment.

 

 

Jennifer Drake, PhD | Provost and Vice President for Student & Academic Life

she/her pronouns

3805 Library, The Evergreen State College

2700 Evergreen Pkwy NW, Olympia, Washington 98505

(360) 867-6400  I  drakej@evergreen.edu

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