Certificates continue to make steady progress for implementation beginning in Fall 2021. 

The college is planning to support three new Academic Certificates in: (1) Audio Fundamentals and Mixing Techniques, (2) Transformative Leadership, and (3) Anthrozoology. Likewise, there will be several Professional Certificates in the coming year: starting in summer there will be an Inclusive Community Leadership designed in partnership with the Thurston County Dispute Resolution Center and Education Service District 113 to be offered to current educators; and in addition, there will be a Special education Certificate and a Reading Certificate, also designed in partnership with Education Service District 113. Additionally, we are continuing to design a Professional Certificate with CELTC for Sustainable Cooperative Development design with the Northwest Cooperative Development Center. There are additional certificates underway for the 2022-2023 school year. We want to deeply thank the multi-functional staff team for developing the college infrastructure for this rapid implementation! 

The Certificates Work Group (Tamsin Foucrier, Richard Weiss, Alex Mezei, Kyle Pittman, Kelli Bush, Lin Crowley, Amy Betz, Alex Markley, Larry Geri) has continued to meet every third week to improve the Design Process for certificates.  We have designed a Letter of Intent—to support and encourage anyone interested in developing an Academic Certificate (embedded in the curriculum) or a Professional Certificate.  

We have a draft certificate policy and a draft certificate design handbook that continues to be refined as we work with faculty, work force partners and the implementation team to establish how the college infrastructure will support both degree-applicable and non-degree-applicable certificates. 

Summer Institute. Sue and Abir will offer a summer institute to work with interested faculty on designing certificates.  The institute is planned for July 29-30.  Please contact Sue (sue.feldman@evergreen.edu) and Abir (biswasa@evergreen.edu) if you have questions, or are interested in designing a certificate. 

Certificates continue to make steady progress for implementation beginning with a pilot stand-alone certificate in summer 2021, and several curriculum-embedded certificates planned/in development for Fall 2021.

The Certificates Work Group has continued to meet every other week to vet the certificate design process. The process is refining and differentiating between curriculum embedded, and stand-alone certificates. We have a draft certificate policy and a draft certificate design handbook that continues to be refined as we work with faculty, work force partners and the implementation team to establish how the college infrastructure will support both grad-applicable and non-grad-applicable credit certificates.

This past month, Sue met with multiple leaders working at community colleges (i.e., SPSCC, Pima CC) and four-year colleges (i.e., UW, Lewis and Clark) to learn more about successful approaches to establishing work-force oriented certificates in a professional studies program.  The most important take away from these meetings is the consistent message that a financially successful program requires public and private workforce partners. Once the unit is financial stable, and generating revenue, offering a wider variety of certificates including certificates that cost the unit money but provide an important community service is feasible.

The Certificates Lead Group was recently established and meets every other week to coordinate activity between the provost, deans, implementation team, and the college of graduate and professional studies design work group.

Summer Institute. Sue and Abir will offer a summer institute to work with interested faculty on designing certificates.  The institute is planned for July 29-30.

The college continued to move closer to identifying a suite of embedded and stand-alone certificates to offer starting in Fall 2021, in addition to further clarifying the certificate design process that will be used for certificates starting in Fall 2022.  To support students and community members with an interest related to business, we are coordinating with the Center of Entrepreneurial Leadership and Transformational Change (CELTC) to design an embedded and a stand-alone certificate, both of which are planned to start in Fall 2021. Importantly, throughout this development work, the implementation team has been very supportive in helping us stay on track with our rapid timeline.

Co-leads Sue Feldman and Abir Biswas proposed a summer institute to support faculty and staff in the development of certificates for Fall 2022 and beyond.  

If you have any questions about this work, or are interested in proposing a certificate in the future, please reach out to Sue (Sue.Feldman@evergreen.edu) or Abir (biswasa@evergreen.edu) directly.

The Certificates Workgroup has been meeting with faculty, staff, and community members interested in designing (i) Embedded Certificates (in the 21-22 or 22-23 curricula) and (ii) Stand-alone Certificates – and these meetings have improved the design process and suggest that we are on track to offer pilots of both kinds of certificates starting in summer or fall of 2021.  The certificate initiative takes a policy-as-practice approach.  This is important because it eliminates the often experienced disconnect between designing and proposing an initiative only to have it fail at implementing.

To this point, we have made good progress on a budget template.  In support of our aggressive timeline, in addition to regular meetings of the certificate workgroup, we have started a Leadership Group and have started to address questions of implementation with staff across the college

Co-leads Sue Feldman and Abir Biswas introduced Certificates at the winter Week 8 Faculty meeting, and solicited feedback and discussion with smaller groups of faculty in winter Week 9.