Academics News

* Shoreline signs MOU with Chinese college

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:28:00 GMT

Above: Shoreline President Lee Lambert (left) Ningbo City College of Vocational Technology President Li Taiwu after signing a memorandum of understanding that could bring Ningbo students to Shoreline.

Below: Lambert and Bo Fu of Shoreline outside the Geely automotive plant.

Shoreline Community College and a college in China are working on a collaborative program that would expand the connections that are bringing Chinese students to Shoreline.

Shoreline President Lee Lambert recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Ningbo City College, located in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, just south of Shanghai. “I first met Li Taiwu, President of Ningbo City College about a year ago,” Lambert said. “This MOU, I hope, will become the third international program under our relationship with Tsinghua University.”

This past October, Shoreline signed agreements with Tsinghua and Qingdao universities for a “1 +1 +2” plan. After their first year, students from the two Chinese universities can come to Shoreline for the second year toward a two-year associate’s degree from Shoreline. With a Shoreline degree in hand, those students could then apply for admission to a four-year university in the U.S.

The MOU with Ningbo City College includes a similar arrangement for their students.

Ningbo City College is a public full-time post-secondary college that focuses on employment-and-ability-based education. Programs at the college are closely tied to business and industry needs in the surrounding area.

A port city, Ningbo has been an important trade and commercial hub since the Tang and Song dynasties. It is one of the three biggest industrial centers in Zhejiang Province. It has the biggest deep-water harbor and the port moves the most cargo in China. Industries include textile, fashion, machinery, petrochemical, steel, electric power, papermaking, electronic information, mechatronics and biotech. The Ningbo municipal government is working develop high-end modern services to meet the needs of the increasingly foreign-based economy.

Ningbo City College has 428 full-time faculty and staff serving a total of 7,818 full-time students. The college offers 37 diploma programs of higher vocational education and four bachelor degree programs. They also have a cooperative agreement with Western New Mexico University.

Lambert has made a number of additional stops on this trip, too.

“During a brief stop in Seoul, Executive Director of International Education Diana Sampson and I met with our partners from Ajou Motor College,” Lambert said. “This is a partnership was established in 2006 when I accompanied Washington’s former Gov. Chris Gregoire on a trade mission to Korea. Boryeong, Ajou’s hometown, is also a sister city to the City of Shoreline. We host a group of about 20 Ajou students during the summer to learn about applied automotive service.”

Lambert said the Korean Ministry of Education has designated Ajou Motor College as a "World Class College." This means in part they will provide a greater leadership role to other Korean colleges in building and establishing international partnerships and relationships, he said.

From Seoul, Lambert met up with Shoreline’s Assistant Director for International Outreach Bo Fu in mainland China.

“We visited the city of Cixi, invited by the mayor to discuss U.S. higher education partnerships,” Lambert said. “While there, we visited a technical high school where the students receive a stipend to attend.”

Lambert said they saw the school’s CNC machining and electrical training programs which appeared to be quite advanced. “Many of the students will graduate and go directly to the workforce. A smaller number will go on to a Vocational College or University,” Lambert said. “The principal was interested in setting up an English language training program.”

While in Cixi, Lambert and Fu toured the Geely automotive plant. Geely is the company that bought Volvo and sells passengers cars under three other brand names, including, Emgrand, Englon and Gleagle.

“Bo and I also travelled to YuYao city where we have an established international program with the top high school in the city,” Lambert said, adding that the program was established through a partnership with the Heibei Study Abroad Institute of Tsinghua University.

“I met with a group of more than 20 students. At least half are planning to attend Shoreline,” Lambert said. “We visited another high school in YuYao and are hoping this will become the site of another international program. We also visited an experimental middle school to meet with parents interested in sending their children to the international program at YuYao high school and potentially on to Shoreline.”

Lambert also visited the Nanjing Institute of Technology.

Nanjing officials have visited Shoreline with the Vocational Education and Leadership Training program sponsored by the American Association of Community Colleges and the China Education Association for International Exchange. While here, Nanjing expressed interest in Shoreline’s world-renown Professional Automotive Training Center. Now, Nanjing officials are interested in a diagnostics and torque training program that could start as early as this summer. That training is available as part of Shoreline’s participation with the National Coalition of Certification Centers (NC3) and its industry partners, including Snap-on Corp. Lambert currently serves as president of NC3.

“They wanted to reassure me that they are seeking support from the Chinese Ministry of Education to bring this long anticipated program into reality,” Lambert said.

Lambert may also meet in Beijing with former NBA star, Seattle SuperSonic and Washington State University basketball player James Donaldson. “I just learned that (Donaldson) would like to meet with me while in Beijing,” Lambert said. “James is a member of the Washington State Chinese Chamber of Commerce, which I am now on the board, overseeing the Chamber's educational initiatives. He would like to discuss teacher training as he is involved with the NBA in China.”

Lambert said he has additional stops scheduled to visit a partner high school in Zouping, Qingdao University in Qingdao and Chongqing to speak with financial participants in the proposed privately funded student housing project.

SCC/Jim Hills

* Shoreline aligns with new UW online degree

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:47:00 GMT

Shoreline Community College has always had strong ties to the University of Washington and today’s announcement of the UW’s first online-only degree reinforces that relationship.

Links

“The UW’s new degree program aligns perfectly with our expansion of online offerings,” Shoreline President Lee Lambert said, adding that Shoreline’s mainstay, two-year Associate of Arts degree is already available online. “Students will now be able to start online at Shoreline and achieve a four-year, University of Washington degree, completely online.”

The UW on Wednesday, March 27, 2013 announced its first online-only bachelor's degree, the Early Childhood and Family Studies program. While final approval is still pending, UW officials expect the program to start fall quarter, 2013, with applications opening May 7 and classes starting Sept. 25.

"This is a very exciting development in the use of technology to meet critical educational needs that otherwise might be difficult to do in a more traditional educational setting," UW President Michael K. Young said at a news conference in Seattle. "The country is moving toward better education, training – and certification – for the teachers of our youngest students. This is an optimal way to ensure they have access to high quality education in a place and at a cost that makes sense for them.

“We will be doing more of this."

In addition to being available online, the new UW degree will cost $160 per credit for the 84 course-credit degree, significantly less than regular tuition rates. Shoreline’s cost is even less, generally ranging from about $86 to $117 per credit for online classes, not including fees. Students would generally complete the new UW course credits over two years, but must have a minimum of 70 college credits to be accepted.

“We share the UW’s vision that online degrees are a great way to expand access to quality higher education,” Lambert said. “We know there are about a million Washington residents with some college, but no degree. It is vision and cooperative efforts like this that can help bring people the education they need for a better life.”

In addition to aligning with the UW program, Shoreline is also offering a “reverse transfer degree” to students who leave for the UW before completing a 90-credit, two-year community college degree.

“The University accepts our credits as part of their degrees, there’s no reason why Shoreline shouldn’t accept UW credits for our degrees,” said James Jansen, Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs. The reverse transfer concept is new, Jansen said, adding that Shoreline is currently developing an application and transcript review process.

UW Educational Outreach will administer the new program and received a Next Generation Learning Challenges grant partially funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help offset costs of developing the degree. The grant includes offering several core classes in early childhood education free to the public, as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on the Coursera platform.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 25 percent growth from 2010 to 2020 in the employment of preschool teachers. Head Start requires 50 percent of its teachers to earn bachelor's degrees, while other national and state programs use teachers' degrees to gauge the quality of their early education services.

At Shoreline, in addition to the general transfer degree online, a number of education-oriented degrees and certificates are offered online.

“Our Associate in Arts Elementary Education degree is online and part of the state’s direct transfer agreement with the UW and most other in-state colleges and universities,” said Ann Garnsey-Harter, director of Shoreline’s Virtual College. “We also have an Early Childhood Educator/Paraeducator Associate in Applied Arts and Sciences degree, a Child Care Professional certificate and a Child Care Basics certificate. All of those are available online, right now.”

In addition, Shoreline has the Parent-Child Learning, an operating day-care center that also serves as a learning lab for students, and seven parent cooperative preschools across the north end of King County. Parents in the co-ops earn college credit for their participation.

SCC/Jim Hills

* Cadwell and Walker gain tenure

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 19:53:00 GMT

Erin Walker (center) with trustees and President Lee Lambert.

Ellen Cadwell (center) with trustees and President Lee Lambert.

Ellen Cadwell and Erin Walker were each awarded tenure as faculty members at Shoreline Community College by unanimous votes of the Board of Trustees at the March 20, 2013 regular board meeting.

“It is just outstanding that Shoreline has such high caliber talent,” Trustee Gidget Terpstra said.

Cadwell is Director of the Health Informatics and Information Management (HIIM) program. The innovative program is completely online, one of the few such programs in the U.S. and has students from across the country. As health-care records have become increasingly computerized, employees in the field must be trained and certified. The HIIM program prepares students to take national certification exams and many go on to work in a variety of health-care settings including hospitals, long term care facilities, clinics and others.

Walker has worked in the International Education office since 2002. She has had various immigration and advising duties, but definitely finds advising to be the most rewarding. Walker holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Music from the University of Idaho. Besides advising international students, Walker also enjoys travelling and has visited 18 other countries and is looking forward to more.

SCC/Jim Hills

* Jansen on internationalization at conference

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 18:16:00 GMT

Internationalization is a key initiative at Shoreline Community College and James Jansen, the new Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs, is fitting right in.

Jansen was a presenter on Feb. 20, 2013, at the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA) Annual Conference in New Orleans. Along with two co-presenters, Jansen spoke on “Re-Imagining Internationalization for a Networked World: The COIL Institute for Globally Networked Learning in the Humanities.”

COIL, or Collaborative Online International Learning, is the focus of a center based in Manhattan at the State University of New York system’s Global Center. The COIL Center works with a network of colleges and universities in New York, including Jansen’s former school, Corning Community College in Corning, NY. Jansen joined Shoreline this past summer.

Jansen’s presentation focused on how faculty can help students develop meaningful cultural interactions across borders by building classes in which both faculty and students can communicate and interact with international partners at other colleges using digital means.

Jansen views that goal as much the same as Shoreline’s campus internationalization effort to bring global awareness and globally competitive skills to both domestic and international students.

The AIEA, formed in November 1982, is composed of institutional leaders engaged in advancing the international dimensions of higher education.

COIL is working to develop and implement online collaborative international courses that can be team taught as a format for deepening cross-cultural learning and understanding.

SCC/Jim Hills

* Federal grant grows Listening Tree Project

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:10:00 GMT

Instructor Sarah Zale makes a point during a "theater of the oppressed" presentation by members of the LIstening Tree Project club. More photos

“If it can work there, it can work anywhere.”

That thought kept going through Sarah Zale’s head as she sat in the Bainbridge Island Library in 2006, hearing a Palestinian describe how choosing to just listen to the Israeli perspective without judgment, directly from an Israeli, was having a demonstrable calming effect on perhaps the world’s most intractable conflict.

Listening Tree Project club members during the "theater of teh oppressed' skit.

Another Listening Tree branch

Students in the winter-quarter class co-taught by Sarah Zale and drama instructor are scheduled to present their skits on from10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 5, in the PUB Quiet Dining Room. The event is free and open to the public, but seating may be limited.

“Souliman al-Khatib was the first Palestinian to whom I ever really listened," said Zale. “He had served ten years in an Israeli prison for his role in the stabbing of two Israeli soldiers. When he was released, he co-founded Combatants for Peace, an organization of Palestinians and Jews who teach others how to find solutions to their problems with compassionate listening instead of violence.

What Zale, an English instructor at Shoreline Community College, found was the beginning of an answer to a problem she was identifying in her classes.

“I wanted students to take some ownership of their learning, I wanted them to play a role in directing it,” she said. “Telling them to do it wasn’t enough, I needed a way to draw them inside the learning, to do more than just plop in a seat, open the book and listen to me talk.”

The Bainbridge presentation made such an impression on Zale that she joined a Compassionate Listening Project delegation (www.compassionatelistening.org) traveling to Israel and Palestine to put the concept into action. Zale took that experience, came home and began folding the skills into her English classes.

“It was a slow integration into the classroom,” Zale said. Her students were still writing papers, but now they were doing them on subjects gleaned from personal experiences with compassionate listening techniques applied outside the classroom. “I asked them to involve not only family members, but the old man sitting in his porch they see on the way to school; someone they’d never talk to,” she said.

Still, Zale wanted more and she found it at Portland Community College.

“Portland has a program on Theatre of the Oppressed,” Zale said, referring to the theatrical form explored by Brazilian Augusto Boal that turns the audience into participants and focuses on subjects of social change. “So I had this idea, but could I really apply such a radical approach?”

Zale, who says she is still honing that approach, combines the tenets of compassionate listening with a framework of participatory theater and then applies it in the very traditional environment of an English 101 class.

It worked, but again Zale wanted more.

Building on the core of compassionate listening and interactive theater, Zale expanded the experience with components of social science, community service, multiculturalism and global awareness to create what she calls The Listening Tree Project.

Zale went looking for a fertile spot to plant her idea and found it at Shoreline Community College. “It’s so welcoming here,” she said.

Still, creating a new class can take time, so to keep momentum, Zale worked this fall with student government to create a student club, The Listening Tree Club. “Almost all of the members are my former English students or friends of former students,” Zale said.

On Nov. 29, the club showcased their work in the PUB Quiet Dining Room. The performance was open to anyone and drew perhaps 75 students, faculty and staff members. The powerful and raw five-minute skit illustrated the prejudices and power differentials that are at play between Asian and international students of color with other students on campus and in life and drew resounding applause. The audience then replaced characters, introducing their own dialogue as a way to practice how to resolve the conflicts presented in the skit.

For winter quarter 2013, Zale is co-teaching an interdisciplinary course (IDS 102) with drama instructor Deb Jacoby to further develop her curriculum of combining writing and interactive theatre. It is called “Leading the Way: Social Justice Through Activism and Compassion.” Students may receive English 101 credit as one option.

Zale is taking The Listening Tree Project to the next step: an actual year-long class at Shoreline.

“I have approval to implement the project ,” she said. “It will be a three-quarter series starting in the fall of 2013 with the same students committed for an academic year.”

To make the class work within the framework of Shoreline’s 90-credit, two-year Associate degrees, Zale is arranging for each of the three 5-credit classes to count toward the general education requirements of the degree. For example, one class would satisfy a Humanities credit requirement, another class fills a Social Sciences requirement she said.

In addition, Zale said students who complete all three quarters of The Listening Tree Project will receive a college-approved Leadership Trainer Certificate.

“The certificate is important,” Zale said. “More and more, employers are looking for something that says ‘Yes, I have these skills, I can be a leader in community building and conflict resolution and demonstrate active listening to multicultural perspectives.’”

To help fund The Listening Tree Project, Zale has just received curriculum development funds from the Carl Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Grant.

Shoreline also received a grant from the U.S. Institute of Peace to carry out a workshop this May that will include Listening Tree Project. Shoreline is one of 76 colleges, universities and public libraries across 32 states to receive the USIP award. The institute was created by Congress to professionalize the field of international conflict management and peacebuilding, implement conflict management operations abroad and generate new tools for conflict management and prevention. In 2009, Zale was a Fellow to USIP.

The May workshop is co-sponsored by the Global Affairs Center of the International Education department and the Listening Tree Club. Participants in the workshop will include students, staff and faculty from Shoreline and other colleges and universities, as well as community members. The event will explore human rights and international conflict using techniques of interactive theater and compassionate listening.

“In the words of Gene Knudsen Hoffman,” Zale said, “‘An enemy is a person whose story we have not yet heard.’”

The funding will also help The Listening Tree Project and other efforts related to the advancement of global awareness and competence and multicultural understanding.

“A mission of the project is to encourage individuals to increase their global awareness and compare and contrast cultural differences in order to respond artistically and think critically,” Zale said. Individuals come to demonstrate awareness and knowledge of the interdependence of nations concerning issues of peace and prosperity, and power and privilege, she said.

SCC/Jim Hills