RECAST | Outreach to Community Colleges and High Schools

From: Blewett, Lori <blewettl@evergreen.edu>
Sent: Saturday, November 7, 2020 2:53 PM

Dear Faculty Colleagues, 

In the past year, many of you have offered to help increase new student enrollment. I am writing to you about how you can help the college’s enrollment challenge by building stronger faculty-to-faculty relationships with colleagues at regional community colleges and high schools—especially those serving historically marginalized students. By expanding discipline-specific collegial relationships and engaging in related public scholarship and service, we can help make Evergreen more visible, welcoming, understandable, and relevant to local students. 

Current Washington State education goals call for a dramatic increase in 4-year college completion rates. This is an opportune context for us to connect with high school and 2yr institutions that share this goal. The challenge of providing engaging online instruction also presents an opportunity for reaching out to regional colleagues. As part of our professional networking, public scholarship, and public service, we can offer to share online resources, host a joint event, talk with students about college and career options in our fields, provide a guest lecture, etc. Such events open opportunities to talk about what studies in our discipline look like at Evergreen and how this differs from other colleges. 

IESS, in collaboration with Wade Arave (Director of Admissions), the CAT Leaders, and the Admissions, Recruitment, and Marketing Pool governance group, would like to help you participate in such outreach efforts. We are convening a conversation on Nov. 13th for faculty interested in working to enhance our public profile and reputation through public scholarship and collegial relationship building. Wade will be present to share a variety of outreach strategies. Collectively, we will talk about how we can support one another in this effort and the kinds of institutional assistance that might be useful going forward. 

Please consider joining us for a Conversation about Community College and High School Outreach: Friday, Nov. 13th, from 1-2:30 pm.  

Contact Lori Blewett (blewettl@evergreen.edu) to receive a zoom link. 

We’d also like to identify faculty who already have strong professional relationships with community colleges or high school faculty and/or are already engaged in the kinds of activities described above. We’d like to hear from you to learn from your experience, avoid duplicating efforts, and build on your work where appropriate. If you have experiences to share, please send a brief description of the kinds of community college or high school outreach you’ve been doing to blewettl@evergreen.edu. 

Sincerely,

Lori Blewett 

IESS Faculty Scholar 

Member of the Faculty 

The Evergreen State College