Opening Day Address 2005-06

President Jean Floten

September 13, 2005

Good morning and welcome! Join me for a trip back in time for a moment, to 1966: The Vietnam War was raging, student draft deferments had just been abolished by Lyndon Johnson and SDS Chapters were springing up on campuses throughout the United States to protest the war; the Supreme Court ordered cities to desegregate and the Black Panthers were forming amid immense civil unrest; Betty Freidan and others started NOW to advance women’s rights; cigarettes packages posted their first health warning; the Beatles released Revolver, their seventh album, and completed their last official concert; Star Trek went boldly where no man had gone before in their first television episode; Mary Quant introduced miniskirts and Pierre Cardin was putting his name on the outside of clothes for the first time; Miranda and Medicare came on the scene; the genetic code was cracked -- and the Eastside was finally getting its own college! Happy fortieth anniversary, BCC.

In 1966, BCC classes were held in borrowed classroom space at Newport High School in the evening. BCC wouldn't have its own campus until 1969; but, that didn’t stop it from opening on Jan. 3, 1966, with 464 students—all of whom it would appear attended this orientation! The course schedule fit neatly on one page and was heavy on liberal arts subjects, such as Chemistry, English, and History. What were then termed vocational classes included secretarial sciences, practical nursing, basic aircraft blueprint reading and food service management. You could tell it was a different time from this newspaper article that talked about classes for girls, and featured the college’s Homemaking Department for sewing, pattern-making and upholstery.

For its first three years, BCC was shuffled together in borrowed classrooms and portables at Newport High. Pauline Christiansen recalls that it was such a tight squeeze in the faculty office portable that instructors had to coordinate with others at nearby desks to even stand up.

BCC students were destined for greatness from the very beginning: they elected their first officers and launched a campus newspaper in 1967. Men's basketball debuted in December 1967 only to win the state championship their very first season. Note that very young first coach—Gary McGlocklin!

BCC finally started on its own campus in September 1969. Some classes remained in portables until a second phase of construction ended in 1973; and, that was about it for buildings for the next 20 years.

Back to 1966: This was a year of protests that lasted through the decade. Students were at the core of transformational changes sweeping the country at that time, from free speech to civil rights. These appeared at BCC, too. BCC added a class called “`Negroes in History”' in 1966; created its minority affairs program in 1971; and, in the following year, opened the women's center. Many Vets, fresh from combat, availed themselves of the GI Bill to come to school.

The first board chair, Pat Duffy, recalled the thinking that went into the design of BCC’s president’s office. Any of you who have visited it may have noticed its fortress-like qualities: two sets of double locking doors in 11/2 inch hardwood, a back exit, windows opening onto the roof and centrally placed for viewing the main entrance and courtyard at the same time—all strategic decisions for Duffy and first president, Merle Landerholm, so they could make a quick escape if any militant students might decide to barricade them in. It was a different time!

Former security director and early student, Karl Palo and some of his friends formed the People's Freedom Democratic Revolutionary Society to publish their own independent newspaper in response to campus sanctions of the legitimate student paper. They printed it on yellow paper to signify their ”yellow journalism.” This occasioned BCC’s first free-speech controversy in 1967. Karl remembers these students, far from being radicals, were Vietnam vets who relished tormenting the administration with their tongue-in-cheek reporting. After the group published a rather rude picture of a student body officer, the state sued them. In response, they hired a flamboyant attorney who loved controversial causes. As the students stood in the courthouse waiting for their case to be heard, their attorney browbeat the state’s attorney so effectively that he dropped the suit.

While long hair was the norm on most campuses, the Eastside was a little more conservative still with crew cuts and back-teased dos, as evidenced by this picture of the first graduates. Karl remembered one particular evening he and a high school student were standing outside Newport High School making derogatory comments about the ”hippies'' arriving for college classes. Pointing to a carload of particularly scruffy individuals, the kid asked how these folks could be serious about their education and how BCC could allow students to dress like that. Glancing at the car, Karl said with a grin: “Those are faculty.”

Speaking of hippies, do you recognize these early people at the college? Mike Talbott, Jon Wolff, and Laurel LaFever. Do you know that John Osmundson is the only original employee who is still at BCC? Pauline, TP, and Laurel are some of the early pioneers. Let’s ask anyone with over 35 years of BCC service to stand and let’s thank them and the others they represent for the beginnings of this great college.

It was fun glancing into our past, wasn’t it? Throughout the year, we will dig deeper into our archives and launch more fun activities to commemorate our forty years and …the half-million students that we have served. Isn’t that astonishing? Bob Adams and Juan Ulloa have prepared a special historical website on the college’s site that is full of memories. Be sure to check it out!

I think in some ways this opening day is not too very different than that very first one forty years ago. The emotions are probably the same: bursts of energy interspersed with fits of floating anxiety. The joy/anxiety of our founders was due to the newness of the experience; new people, a new place, new wonders yet to be discovered, and not knowing exactly what to expect. Today, the experience is not new to most of us. We greet our college like an old friend with whom we can always pick up the conversation, no matter how long the interruption. Well-attuned to BCC’s rhythms, we know the intensity of our activity will only build throughout the year and to expect joy and sorrow, hopes and dreams, and success and failure along the way. 

Our founders probably felt a similar familiarity 40 years ago, even though the college was just beginning -- because of the timelessness of the values and traditions of academia, manifest in the coming together of teachers and students to create meaning and significance in the same way others before have for over a millennium. This dynamic doesn’t change.

Former Yale University President Bart Giamatti characterized this as the “constant conversation.”

The university today is very different from the one 25 years ago, or 50 or 100 or 250 years ago, and yet it is not different. It is still a constant conversation between young and old, between students, among faculty; between faculty and students; a conversation between past and present, aconversation the culture has with itself, on behalf of the country…. Perhaps it is the sound of all those voices, over centuries overlapping, giving and taking, that is finally the music of civilization.”

Constant conversation of overlapping voices becomes the music of civilization…That is a nice thought -- this joining produces energy that connects us, our ideas, our values, our spirit, and our aspirations, into something that is distinctly ours, but also deeply rooted in tradition. BCC is what we, and all who have gone before us, have created; we are its agents for a short while, and it is the common vehicle through which our individual achievements and accomplishments gain power and importance as we, in community, blend them together for our collective purpose.

This upcoming year will provide many occasions to merge our voices in strengthening our college and articulating the values and purposes which will shape the next 40 years.

We have added 73 new full-time employees since last September to our family of 1,551 employees, and we are still in the process of hiring more. Would everyone who has joined BCC since last September stand? Let’s give these new members of our community a round of applause. We welcome you and sincerely wish you a fulfilling and rich tenure at the college. Please attend the new-employees reception Thursday at 3:30 p.m. in the Garden Room, so that we may extend a more personal welcome to each of you.

We are again fortunate to have a visiting scholar with us this quarter, Malcolm Cash, whom many of you have already met. Malcolm is not known for sitting still: in fact, when you first meet Malcolm you are immediately struck by his immense energy and intensely active mind. Malcolm teaches English and Creative Writing at Lorain County Community College in Oberlin, Ohio, and has accomplished much in his career as an author, consultant, columnist, scholar, lecturer, facilitator, editor, researcher, and visiting professor. His deepest passion is multiculturalism in all of its dimensions. What he is proudest of is being great dad to Ayanna who is 15 and a 4.0 student, who will attend Sammamish High this quarter. Malcolm will teach Race in the United States and assist us with student retention. Please help me welcome Malcolm Cash. There will be a reception in Malcolm’s honor on Wednesday, 21, at 2:30 p.m. in the Garden room. Come by to say hello.

As you saw when you arrived this morning, we have had a very busy summer, and it is not quite over in the campus improvement area. Don Bloom has already sent you an email telling you about all of these, but I did want to mention that printing services are temporarily located in the K Building, with the exception of the self-serve copier, which you will find in the ScanTron room in the cafeteria.

But most important, I need your help to thank Don Bloom, Laurel LaFever and the plant operations crew for all they have done to improve and beautify our campus this summer. I also want to thank student services, division support, and institutional advancement for their special outreach and student recruitment efforts. Enrollment is looking fairly positive after some serious concern earlier this summer.

Let’s now turn our attention to the new year and what we may anticipate. I think we all agree and take pride in the fact we work at a great college. Others tell us that we have a national reputation based upon our unique programs, public-private partnerships, and our innovation and creativity. However, we know that the real measure of the quality of our college is in the excellence of the work we all do, in the classroom and in the support we provide to enhance students’ abilities and improve their lives. This is our real influence and our core.

As President’s Staff met this summer to reflect on the past year, several crucial issues dominated our discussions that are of very serious concern to our college, to the students we serve, and to the very quality of life we create for each other at our campus. We realized that many of us are dealing with the financial adversity of the past few years by waiting and just hoping to get through it, and that we on President’s Staff have been focused on getting the college through budget reductions as the crisis we have taken responsibility for addressing and, in so doing, we have drifted from our primary responsibility of supporting the advancement of our college. After much sobering self-examination, we have concluded that this year we must refocus our collective energies and resources to make our college the best we are all capable of creating and maintaining, regardless of the budget outlook. We know we must deal with budget issues, yes, but we must also address far more fundamental issues pertaining to our collective well-being, both for our employees and as an institution that serves our students and our community.

And these realizations have guided us in shaping our planning focus for the next year. We recognize that we cannot help ourselves, or succeed in our dedication to others, by simply standing by and waiting to see how events turn out. We must create opportunities for our students and our college, especially in this time of challenge. We must discover the vehicles that will help us determine our best course forward.

We have given this preliminary thought over the summer in preparation for working with you on the issues and strategies for solutions as we begin the year. We have chosen four planning priorities that concentrate on restoration and reintegration, important themes to center us as we prepare for the impending accreditation visit and plan for a more prosperous future. These are: student success; community building; institutional renewal; and innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. These matters will be informed by the important conversations we will start this year, which in turn will strengthen our impact on our students, our college community, and our greater community.

I want to spend a couple of minutes on these, why they are important, and how we plan to take up the discussions with the college community.

Priority focus #1: STUDENT SUCCESS. This year, we will center our attention on student success through close examination of our learning experiences at BCC. Student success, as I am referring to it, is the aggregation of college services that begins with (1) attracting and recruiting students into appropriate programs; (2) helping them to stay long enough to complete their educational goals; and (3) presenting our offerings in well-structured, coherent, and carefully scheduled curriculum. Student success is the heart of our work at BCC, the very essence of what we are here to do, and we must keep assessing, learning, and improving to keep our college vital and maintain our record of success.

The second reason is situational, but critical nonetheless. It may be no surprise to you that enrollment at most state colleges has dropped over the past couple of years. BCC declined by 5 percent last year and is still facing challenges. We must take close stock of our situation, understand enrollment patterns better and how to intervene with new ways to attract and retain our students. Failure to do so will invite potential loss in state subsidy and tuition. As we have painfully learned, fewer students yield fewer resources. It is not my intention to dwell on the budgetary aspects of this because there are far more significant reasons to take up this conversation.

But I do have one last word on budget reductions—we have been there, done that; and we don’t want to do this any more. You have my commitment to do everything I can do this year to NOT take another budget reduction and I hope I have a similar commitment from you. I believe we will be successful at this once we make this work a central focus for us all.

This summer, I reviewed some current literature about student success and found that the reasons students stay in school are very simple: the reinforcement of just one important relationship and involvement in college activities are the two key ingredients.

Who could read Tuesdays with Morrie and not be moved and awed by the student’s account of his relationship with his beloved sociology professor, so expressive of his admiration, respect and love for his mentor during his struggle with his impending death? There is no greater influence than this type of relationship – it literally changes lives. Faculty members are fundamental in students’ decisions to return for that critical second quarter, or turn from freshmen into sophomores, or from sophomores into graduates.

However, faculty aren’t alone in this enterprise—all of us play an important role in formulating the educational environment of our college. Our collective efforts form a web of support for our students, providing them with a sense of affiliation, personal worth and of being welcomed, through the numerous transactions we manage each day. Whether walking a lost student to a class, taking time to smile and say hello, listening actively to a student who is frustrated by processes he or she doesn’t understand, or seeing that a student gets helped rather than redirected to another college office, we act as emissaries in the aggregated experience people know as BCC.

Involvement is another key to students staying at the college. Findings of Alexander Astin, UCLA professor and researcher, show the more involvement a student has in college, the greater the amount of learning, personal development, and civic engagement the student will have. A tenet of student success, therefore, is building a campus of rich experiences – both in and outside of the classroom. We definitely have very positive examples to build on through our work this year. An immediate opportunity is to help students with relief efforts for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, which will afford many opportunities for them to learn social responsibility and become civically engaged in very caring and compassionate ways. I hope you will find ways within your curriculum to support these student efforts, which will be coordinated by Diane Douglas, Faisal Jaswal, and the student newspaper.

Later this week we will call for volunteers for the four new committees that will work on this initiative. They are the Student Success Steering Committee, coordinated by the Office of the Executive Dean, who will oversee the work of this initiative and three related committees: Planning/Marketing/Recruitment, Student Success, and Instructional Processes.

The Planning/Marketing/Recruitment Subcommittee will identify measures the college may take to expand enrollment. The committee will study BCC’s enrollment patterns and demographics in order to match college programs against the availability of markets that generally produce their enrolled students. We will apply program data and students’ profiles to our programs’ advantage and define strategies for the best way to reach appropriate markets or develop new ones. One market we will pursue this year is enhanced 4-year degree options. We are completing an application, due at the end of this quarter, for authorization to offer a bachelor of science in Medical Imaging and Radiologic Sciences as one of the state’s four pilots in community college bachelor’s degrees; we will continue to expand our successful partnership with EWU; and work to secure articulation agreements on a major by major basis with universities.

Student Success Subcommittee (SSS) will review and assess thebroad array of programs and services that help students define and meet appropriate educational goals. We will examine educational planning, advising, financial aid, scholarship programs, and other student services; the ease of accessing college services and student satisfaction with these services; our scheduling and educational delivery; and programs that support affiliation and engagement – in short, all the services that comprise the overall learning experience at BCC.

Vincent Tinto, faculty member at Syracuse University and an expert on student attrition, states that student success starts with a “good” education, comprised of positive experiences in and outside of the classroom. We have some great work already in place in the programs of the Center for Liberal Arts, experiential learning, and student-and faculty-sponsored events like Earth Week, the Indian Film festival, to list but a few. We will want to consider others, as well, that have at their heart building relationships and fostering a sense of affiliation—so essential to student persistence. I hope the Center for Liberal Arts will assist the student success committee to determine what holds the most promise in building enhanced student learning communities.

Another fruitful analysis will be to determine why many BCC students leave before they complete their goals. I am not suggesting we should reduce standards to keep students; but we should understand why students don’t complete their education and how we may intervene. While we all know we have dynamic, engaging programs that can change the lives of students who participate, we must redouble our efforts to reach potential students and mediate appropriately to help them stay and succeed.

In addition to this committee’s work, there are several collateral efforts underway to improve student success: student services has been very active in assessing their level and quality of service and engaged in rethinking and retooling their organization so they may deliver the very best customer service.  Assessment of student learning, led by Robin Jeffers and the Assessment Coordinating Team (ACT), has provided good data about our students’ learning, which should help us increase the sophistication and rigor of our college’s general education program and deepen student learning. The Diversity Caucus has expressed interest in developing a freshman experience and a mentoring program to improve participation and retention rates for students of color that are well below the levels we need to claim success.

The third group, the Instructional Processes Subcommittee, will oversee enrollment management, which is our success in weaving a coherent, contiguous series of program offerings that address the needs of current and future students. What we offer, how, in what format, and with what resources, are some of the key questions that will guide this work. In spite of budget problems, our work to create new academic programs, enrich existing programs, and bolster support systems must continue. With softening enrollment and budgets, now is the time to scrutinize our purposes in allocating resources.

As we form these four groups -- student success steering committee, instructional processes, student success, and planning/marketing and recruitment committees -- we are reminded that student success, in all of its dimensions, is the responsibility of every one of us at the college and we will seek cross-campus representation. Additionally, to engage in the depth of work that is required, I want to make a special appeal to our faculty to contribute to one or more of these important discussions. A meaningful dialogue about teaching and learning must have faculty at its core; faculty members need to own this discourse to carry the conversation forward. Through this intense focus on student success I am optimistic we will invigorate our programs, and us too, along the way.

Priority focus #2: COMMUNITY BUILDING TASK FORCE. It is no secret that the last four years have been hard on us, as we have recalibrated to meet declining resources and enrollments. The sole purpose of the community building task force is to help us reconnect, reintegrate, and rebuild trust and support across the college. Through its efforts we will strive to regain the energy and enthusiasm that have always been the hallmark of Bellevue Community College. While there is already some excellent work underway, and believe me it is much appreciated, we will work together to find ways to rekindle our community, create time to celebrate our accomplishments, and renew our appreciation of each other.
Priority focus #3: INNOVATION, CREATIVITY AND ENTREPEUNEURSHIP will develop ways for promoting BCC’s innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship (ICE) by bringing support for new ideas and programs, help in developing them, and assistance in implementing them. To maintain preeminent in the years ahead, we must have constant conversation about our approaches to teaching, learning, service and engagement and learn how to recognize and seize new opportunities that grow from our current successes that will move our college into a positive and sustaining future. Finding out how to do this is the task of the ICE Task Force.

Our last Priority focus #4: INSTITUTIONAL RENEWAL strives to improve our operational effectiveness and our ability to shape BCC’s long-term vision through a close examination of our organization and structure. Three groups will be convened – in instruction, student services, and pluralism, for the purposes, respectively, of (1) improving management and services to students in instruction; (2) improving educational and support services for students and aligning structure and functions within the student services program; and (3) suggesting an organizational structure for the college’s pluralism programs to keep its forward momentum, and evaluating organization and program recommendations received last May from the diversity caucus.

These—student success, institutional renewal, ICE, and community building -- are our four priorities for the year.

How do we move agendas that are this broad and pervasive across campus? In addition to having representatives from all employee groups participate in each of these efforts, the Student Success Steering Committee along with chairs from the other three task forces will meet with President’s Staff bi-weekly to present an update of their progress and plans. All groups will be requested to post minutes and host at least one meeting early each quarter for interested faculty and staff to meet and talk informally with them. In addition, each member of President’s Staff will incorporate, in their unit work plans, contributions to each of these efforts.

This work is very important to our entire college and to all of us. To borrow a timeworn metaphor, time is a river. The current is change. We can not just stand on the rises and watch it flow; of necessity, we need to choose between being carried with the tide or directing our own course. Our history demonstrates that we, as an institution of thinking and caring professionals, are very capable of deciding our own ambitious course; navigating it with unparalleled skill, expertise, and collaboration; and succeeding in reaching it. Our most satisfying endeavors at BCC have been those courses that have the most college involvement and affected the most lives in the most important ways. That has always been BCC at its best. I am looking forward to refocusing and reintegrating our work together in a common course this year.

Our last item is our accreditation visit. On October 10, 11, 12, we will be visited by 10 evaluators from the NWCCU, assigned by the Commission to evaluate how well BCC is meeting accreditation standards in consideration of reaffirmation of BCC’s accreditation..

We all know the importance of this event, as we have been involved over the past four years in preparations for the visit by first revisiting our mission and goals, then developing a multiyear strategic plan, followed by two years of self-study. O ur self-study document is finally done, all 240 pages of it, and it looks great and reads well.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the over 120 people who poured time and energy into it. Let’s recognize these people for all they have contributed to this process. Please stand as I call your name and please everyone, hold your applause. They are Ron Leatherbarrow, Jerrie Kennedy, Valerie Hodge and Lynne Sage, your Accreditation Planning Committee. They deserve our greatest reverence and appreciation for putting months of work into this.

The Accreditation Steering Committee members (please stand): Valerie Hodge , Lynne Sage, Ron Leatherbarrow, Gin Bridwell, Rhonda Gilliam, Gordon Leighton, Matt Groshong, Graham Haslam, Jenny Laveglia, Mark Storey, Tom Nielsen, Tom Pritchard, Helen Taylor, Laura Burns, Lucy Macneil, Don Bloom, and Rob Viens. These folks guided the process at every step and chaired chapters of the report.

Would all accreditation committee members please stand? These people researched, reviewed, analyzed, and wrote. In sum--it was a huge job. Please join me in an equally huge round of applause for these incredible efforts. After the October visit, we will have a real party to celebrate.

Now, we need the entire college community, over the next three weeks, to do some very specific reading and preparation, which I will explain in a second; but, first I want to provide context about the process. The NWCCU, the official accrediting body for our college, is composed of all the colleges and universities in the Northwest region; governed by a Board of Commissioners, mostly educators, elected by member institutions. Commissioners develop and apply accreditation standards, official benchmarks for high quality and excellence. Accreditation is designed to enhance academic quality, document achievements, demonstrate accountability, and make program improvement based on assessment and evaluation. Maintaining accreditation is of critical importance to us: it affords legitimacy to our institution and credentials; instills public trust by endorsing our standards and practices; and, importantly, makes us eligible to receive federal and state money.

The process has four primary parts: the self-study which engages the college in evaluating and documenting compliance with nine standard areas and their descriptors. These nine areas are: Planning and Effectiveness; Educational Program and Its Effectiveness; Students; Faculty; Library and Informational Resources; Governance and Administration; Finance; Physical Resources; and Integrity. Each standard asks: (1) Who are we? (Values); (2) What do we claim to do? ( Mission); (3) Are we doing it? (Integrity); (4) How well are we doing it? (Effectiveness); (5) How do we know? (Evaluation); (6) What data do we collect? (Evidence); (7) What does the data tell us? (Analysis); and (8) What are we doing as a result? (Planning). Each standard has a narrative and success indicators that the college must address in its self-study.

Second is the visit by the evaluation team that (1) reads the report with emphasis on areas of assignment (2) interviews people in the area (faculty for Standard 2; student services staff for standard 3, etc. ) to determine accuracy of the self study and integrity in meeting standards; (3) reviews documentation; (4) identifies commendations and recommendations; (5) completes a draft report before they leave; (6) holds an exit interview to review general recommendations and commendations; and, (7) finally, prepares a final report for the Commission and college.

Third, in January, I will appear before the Commission to defend BCC’s request for reaffirmation of accreditation. The Commission will then notify us of their action. They may reaffirm accreditation; request a progress report and/or a focused interim report and visit; defer action; issue a warning; impose probation; issue show-cause order; deny or terminate accreditation.

How to prepare: Read the self-study. Focus on the section(s) that pertains to your area of responsibility at the college. Faculty, for example, should review Standard 2 Academic Program and Its Effectiveness and Standard 4 Faculty. You will most likely be interviewed by at least one evaluator. As you read your section, review the Commission standards at www.nwccu.org, review the college’s response, then think about questions an evaluator might ask, or ask your chief administrator to provide you with samples. For example, as you read chapter 2, think about how your courses or programs help fulfill standards; be prepared to show how you are involved in the gened and assessment processes; know what gened requirements your classes meet, assessment tools and assignments you use to assess students, and have them on hand; and, be prepared to discuss what you have changed based upon data these processes have generated. In student services, think about how your program supports the goals of student services and the college, what you know about your program and its effectiveness, and what revisions your area may have made based upon evaluation of services and feedback from students or other service users.

Over the next couple of days, and in the remaining three weeks, we will hold meetings and present overviews of key parts of the report and we will email several sheets with basic information you will need to know. Please look for these and keep them available. The self-study is posted on the intranet on the accreditation work area, and there are hard copies in division and other administrative offices, and in the library, as well. If you want a copy or have questions, Valerie, Ron, and Lynne are on stand-by for you. Please take time to be adequately prepared.

I’m sure that it has occurred to many that the timing of the accreditation visit is most unfortunate, coming on the heels of four years of budget cuts that have rocked the institution and severely tested our resiliency, our values and our cohesiveness as a college community.  We have weathered its most severe impacts, having come through the worst challenges in budget and enrollments in the past 20 years and having deliberated and acted as a community in addressing them successfully. I sincerely believe what the team will find is us at our best. I think we’ll be prepared to tell the visitors with collective conviction that BCC is the best community college in the nation, primarily because of the quality of character and talent that people in this room bring here every day.

We are at a critical juncture for our college, anticipating reaffirmation of accreditation and embarking on a course that will nourish our community and reintegrate our collective efforts to further our great college. I have confidence that it will be your abundant ability and talent that will enable us to accept our challenges and move forward inspired and renewed for our work ahead. Without your dedication and support, BCC would not be where it is today, nor could we face the course forward with such certainty and hope. The college’s conversations this year will add exquisite layers to BCC’s influence and chart our position for the future. Happy fortieth anniversary BCC; here is to a great year.