On Campus

* President Lambert named Pima chancellor

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:51:00 GMT

Shoreline Community College President Lee Lambert has been named the new chancellor at Pima Community College in Tucson, Ariz.

In unanimous vote Friday, May 17, 2013, the Pima board of governors chose Lambert to lead the six-campus college. Board Chair Brenda Even said it was clear Lambert has the skills needed to move Pima forward.

“I’m honored and pleased to be selected as the chancellor for Pima Community College,” Lambert said. “In my visit and conversations, it is apparent to me that Pima is committed to student access and success. I’m looking forward to working with any and all groups to advance the mission of the college.”

Lambert is scheduled to start at Pima on July 1.

The next step for Shoreline will be to discuss and develop a transition plan. The Shoreline Board of Trustees has scheduled an executive session for 3 p.m., Monday, May 20, with no action items on the agenda. Then, the board has a regular meeting scheduled meeting for 4 p.m., Wednesday, May 22. The Wednesday meeting will include a study session starting at 3 p.m. that day.

“I’m sorry to see Lee go, but wish him all the best in this next stage of his career,” Shoreline Board Chair Phil Barrett said. “He was a visionary president that, with faculty and staff, moved the college forward in many significant ways. Lee leaves the college in a far better position than when he arrived. The entire board of trustees is dedicated to finding a strong leader to help take Shoreline Community College to even greater heights.”

SCC/Jim Hills

* Pima to announce chancellor choice

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:42:00 GMT

The Pima Community College Board of Governors will meet Friday, May 17, 2013 to “select the successful finalist for chancellor."

Shoreline Community College President Lee Lambert was named last week by the Pima board as the leading candidate to be Pima’s next chancellor.

The Friday meeting agenda also includes “authorize execution of Chancellor contract, hear comments from Pima representatives who visited the Shoreline campus on Tuesday and thank those involved with the chancellor search. The meeting begins at 11 a.m. and will be streamed live on the Pima website.

Lambert visited Pima in April, toured the six Pima campuses, met with board and participated in open forums with employees and the public.

“I’m very gratified with what appears to be the Board of Governors decision,” Lambert said. “While I do love the college and people at Shoreline, I’m also excited about the opportunities at Pima Community College and the communities it serves.”

Shoreline Board Chair Phil Barrett said he was sorry to see Lambert go.

“Lee has been a great leader, a visionary leader,” Barrett said. “With this apparent change, we will now start on our own process that will continue to move Shoreline forward with the vision and values he helped to put in place.”

SCC/Jim Hills

* Pima Community College team coming to Shoreline

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:52:00 GMT

A group of officials from Pima Community College in Tucson Ariz., are visiting Shoreline Community College on May 13-14, 2013.

Shoreline President Lee Lambert is the leading candidate for the open position of chancellor at Pima, a six-campus system that is the eighth largest community college in the U.S. Lambert is one of four finalists for the Pima job. The Pima Board of Governors voted Friday, May 10, to authorize the visit to Shoreline as part of their decision process. No other campus visits were identified.

Pima Governing Board Chair Brenda Even said Lambert was “the candidate that seemed to rise to the top.” She has said the visit to Shoreline is a typical part of the “due diligence process” in the hiring of a new chancellor

Coming to Shoreline with Board Chair Even are board member Sylvia M. Lee; Lou Albert, President of Pima’s West Campus; Terra Benson, Director of Pima Admissions and Records; Kimlisa Duchicela, faculty member at Pima’s Downtown Campus, and Norm Rebenstorf, board member of the Pima Foundation.

Board member Lee arrived Monday afternoon, May 13, and informally toured the campus. On Tuesday, Lee and the rest of the group are scheduled to have breakfast with one or two Shoreline Trustees in the Board Room and then:

9:30-10:30 a.m. – Meet with senior executive team members
10:45-11:45 a.m. – Go on a campus tour
Noon- 1 p.m. – Have lunch with 1-2 Shoreline trustees
1:15-2:15 p.m. – Open meeting with students and others
2:30-3:30 p.m. – Open meeting with faculty and others
3:34-4:45 p.m. – Open meeting with classified staff, administrators and others

The lunch and subsequent meetings tentatively scheduled to take place at the ProfessionalAutomotive Training Center. While the afternoon meetings are focused on the groups listed, they are open to others.

SCC/Jim Hills

* Lambert leading candidate for Arizona job

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:33:00 GMT

The next step in the search for new chancellor at Pima Community College will be taken on the campus of Shoreline Community College.

Pima’s Board of Governors, in a special meeting Friday, May 10, 2013, approved travel expenses for a visit to Shoreline that could occur as soon as next week.

Shoreline President Lee Lambert is the leading candidate to be chancellor at the multi-campus district in Tucson, Ariz., according to Pima officials. At the Friday special meeting, Pima Governing Board Chair Brenda Even announced that Lambert was “the candidate that seemed to rise to the top.”

The Pima meeting and announcement came late Friday afternoon, after an all-campus meeting at Shoreline where Lambert discussed the Pima position.

In a unanimous vote, the Pima board authorized two board members and three employees to travel to Shoreline to conduct a site visit. No date for the visit was announced, but it is expected to be as soon as early next week. Chair Even described the visit as a typical part of the “due diligence process” in the hiring of a new chancellor.

“Shoreline has a lot of people and programs to be very proud of,” Lambert said. “I look forward to showing what we have built here to help our students be successful.”

Lambert is one of four finalists for the position that went to Tucson for extensive interviews. At the board meeting on Friday, Shoreline was the only site identified for a visit by the Pima delegation.

SCC/Jim Hills

* All-campus meeting covers plenty of ground

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:21:00 GMT

Safety & Security Director Robn Blacksmith models evacuation-monitor gear at the May 10, 2013 all-campus meeting. More photos

It was a crowded and informative agenda for the May 10, 2013 All Campus Meeting at Shoreline Community College.

Attendees, both in-person and on streaming video, saw and heard updates on the state and college budgets, division and department reorganization plans, accreditation, campus internationalization, the virtual college, campus safety and security efforts and college-level impacts from the state’s business-processes project called ctcLink.

President Lee Lambert began the meeting talking about his status as a candidate for the chancellor job at Pima Community College in Tucson, Ariz. “The things I care about are employees, faculty and students,” Lambert said. The opportunity to do that work on a larger scale at Pima, which has an operating budget that would be one-fifth of the entire Washington system, is one worth considering, he added.

As for the budget, Lambert said the state of Washington’s approach to funding higher education is hurting employees and students. “We are sorely underfunded,” he said. “Our focus has to be on Olympia because all we can do is respond to decisions made there.”

He noted that in 2009, the total community and technical colleges system of 34 colleges received about $988 million with $750 million of that coming from the state. “Today, we get just over $900 million, but only $586 million comes from the state,” he said. “The rest is on the backs of our students. We are overburdening our students. Something is wrong.”

Lambert briefly recapped competing budget scenarios from the state House and Senate, the main subjects of a special legislative session scheduled to open Monday, May 13. “While there are differences, at this point, we are planning on a flat, no new revenue budget from the state,” Lambert said. “Compared to recent years, that’s good news.”

James Jansen, Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs, said that a reorganization of the academic and student services areas that he oversees is on hold. “We had a lot of discussion across campus and I learned some things,” Jansen said. “Especially now with the potential for change with the president, we’ll put the reorg on hold until at least this fall and go forward with the current structure.”

Joe Duggan, newly appointed director of the also new Department of Institutional Assessment & Data Management, spoke about the next steps in the ongoing accreditation process. Duggan noted that he is looking for feedback on draft accreditation documents and has a June 14 deadline.

Campus internationalization was next up, with Dean of Social Sciences Bob Francis recounting his experience co-presenting on Shoreline’s efforts at the American Association of Community College (AACC) annual convention this past month in San Francisco. Other co-presenters at the convention were Diana Sampson and Mari Kosin from International Education office and Vice President Jansen.

Francis said that campus internationalization creates an environment that provides learning opportunities that attract and retain both domestic and international students. While students engage a rigorous academic program, community members also see the college as a vibrant place where they can learn more about the evolving world.

“I came away understanding just how far along we are,” Francis said, reciting a long list of on-campus internationalization successes and ongoing efforts. “We are head and shoulders above many larger institutions.”

Ann Garnsey-Harter, director of Shoreline’s Virtual College and eLearning, focused on the transition from Blackboard to the Canvas learning management system and other advances in her area. She noted that the process that began last fall has resulted in 197 classes now moved to Canvas.

“It has been hard work, but we’ve had lots of training and support, along with two retreats, and faculty should be commended,” she said.

Garnsey-Harter also noted that more faculty members are using and developing classes that use open course library (OCL) materials. The statewide project that started with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is helping keep down the cost of textbooks and other class materials. She noted the efforts by math faculty member Shana Calaway, who has developed two classes and written an OCL text.

More articulation agreements with more universities are also opening up new pathways for students, Garnsey-Harter said. Shoreline recently aligned with a new online degree at the University of Washington and is expanding agreements with Grand Canyon University, Portland State University and the University of Phoenix, she said.

Director of Safety and Security Robin Blacksmith paraded in front of the crowd in hardhat, safety vest and a backpack full of emergency gear as her introduction to a new effort to identify and train a small army of “evacuation monitors.”

“I need 74 volunteers,” Blacksmith said. “We are a large campus with lots of buildings so I need one for every building and then backups.” The idea, she said, is that every building will have people with knowledge and equipment in the case of an emergency that requires evacuation.

Blacksmith also touched on an upgraded emergency messaging system called Connect 5, online and in-person safety training that is being developed, reviewing options for added door locks and then asking everyone to have a personal emergency preparedness kit at work.

“They used to say three-days, three-ways, that might not be good enough anymore, but anything can help,” she said.

Director of Financial Services Stuart Trippel introduced one new word, ctcLlink, and added some more that warmed the hearts of many longtime college and system employees: “The HP is going away.”

The state uses an antiquated computer system known as the “HP 3000” to keep track of most business and student services. Earlier this year, the state awarded a contract that will bring new technology and new processes to Shoreline and the rest of the state’s colleges.

“Don’t think of ctcLink as an IT project,” Trippel said. “This is a new process project. The biggest issue facing us will be managing the change.”

During the question-and-answer session that followed the presentations, Lambert was asked about the Pima job and whether he would take a raise if the Shoreline Board of Trustees made him a counter offer. Amy Kinsel, faculty union president, asked if he would turn down any offered raise as a sign of solidarity with other employee groups who haven’t had pay increases in recent years.

A group of students holding signs stood behind out-going Student Body Association President Kanpong Thaweesuk as he made a similar request. A student, Sean Prather, also asked Lambert if he would turn down such an offer if made.

“I did not ask the trustees for a raise,” Lambert said. “It is not my intent to seek such a raise. My intent is to stay focused on student success.”

SCC/Jim Hills