New Name: Council on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

The campus organization formerly known as the Diversity Council has changed its name to better represent its mission and to align with Vancouver’s strategic initiatives. It will now be called the Council on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

Look for more updates from the CEDI coming soon.

Week of Welcome

Thanks to everyone who participated in Wave the Flag on Monday of last week, who wore their blue t-shirts and/or their “Ask me” buttons to help get the semester off to an energetic start last week. It was great to see colleagues at the Welcome Back BBQ on Wednesday, as well.

Welcome back for Fall 2018!

Hello, faculty and staff colleagues, and welcome to the start of fall semester 2018. First, I’d like to ask you all to help us be sure that all students who should be registered are registered, so that we can capture our FTE accurately. Having all our students registered in all their classes is important for us, so that our FTE is reflected correctly–a process that has budgetary implications for the campus. Census day is a week from Friday–August 31–and the earlier we have all students registered the better, as we track our FTE on a daily basis, and right now our FTE is not up as much as we expected it to be at this point in the registration process.

In other news, earlier this month I celebrated my 5 year anniversary as Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at WSU Vancouver. I’m feeling good about my time here, and will have some more to say in future posts about the changes we’ve made over the past five years.

Go Cougs!

Congratulations to Renee Hoeksel

Renee Hoeksel, Professor of Nursing, is this year’s winner of the V. Lane Rawlins Distinguished Lifetime Service Award. This award honors individuals who have given a substantial part of their career to advancing WSU through excellent service and have demonstrated great personal commitment to the university and community.

One of WSU Vancouver’s founding faculty, Dr. Hoeksel started her career with us in the fall of 1990, when the campus was located in Bauer Hall at Clark College. She has been working to create, grow, and develop the excellence of the Nursing program and the campus ever since. Among her many contributions, she served as a leader in the development of the statewide Direct Transfer Agreement that provides seamless articulation for students to transfer to BSN programs in the state following completion of an Associate’s degree in nursing, which seeks to fulfill the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation to increase the proportion of nurses with a bachelor’s degree to 80% by 2020. Dr. Hoeksel also provided leadership in the development of the Masterplan for Nursing Education. In 2008, the Hoeksel Award for RN/BSN Student Achievement was created on the Vancouver campus to honor the values that Dr. Hoeksel has promoted throughout her career.

In her nomination letter for this award, Dr. Linda Eddy, Vancouver Academic Director and Associate Dean in the College of Nursing, wrote: “Her capable leadership has had a profound influence on the College of Nursing, the WSU Vancouver campus, the University, the nursing profession, and patient and population health outcomes. She did this through active and skilled engagement with leaders across the university, the Vancouver community, and health professionals throughout the state and region.”

The Vancouver campus, Washington State University, and the State of Washington have benefited from Dr. Hoeksel’s advocacy and service, and I’m delighted to be able to congratulate her on receiving this significant recognition of that service.

 

Oscar Vazquez speaks as part of Common Read

Last night our campus was fortunate to host Oscar Vazquez, one of the team of young roboticists featured in this year’s Common Read book Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream. Mr. Vazquez spoke about having been brought to the U.S. by his parents when he was a child, the events that led him to the robotics team at Carl Hayden High School, and how that team went on to win the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition, beating the MIT team and other college teams. He talked about getting a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Arizona State University, then returning to Mexico to attempt to re-enter the U.S. legally and begin a path to citizenship, and the enormous setbacks and hurdles involved in that process. After his return, he joined the military, served in Afghanistan, then began his current career with the BNSF railraod. He has testified before Congress regarding DACA, and showed as part of his presentation a photo of

of himself and former President Obama at the White House. Following his talk, there was a lively Q&A session with the audience.

At the reception following the talk, Mr. Vazquez interacted with Vancouver students, iTech prep students and teachers, and community members. It was clear that his presence engaged our students and community in significant and meaningful ways.

My thanks go to Oscar Vazquez for coming to our campus, to the Diversity Council for sponsoring the event, and to Suzanne Smith for coordinating the event as part of the Common Read program.

 

Adverse Weather Statement

Just when we thought the winter was going to pass without significant snow and ice, it started snowing at the beginning of this week. And while the campus is truly beautiful when decorated with snow:

the weather can cause disruptions for faculty, staff and students traveling to campus. So I just wanted to remind everyone about the adverse weather statement we adopted last year, and to encourage faculty to include the syllabus statement in their syllabi so students have guidance about what to do in circumstances such as we’ve been experiencing this week.

 

New Year, New Learning Opportunities

Happy 2018! May it be a year of growth, development and productivity for us all.

The year starts with faculty professional development opportunities offered by Academic Affairs and VIT’s Academic Services, the first of which will be held next Tuesday, January 9. Workshop topics include preparing your class for campus closure, how to deal with accommodations and accessibility issues, Blackboard and One Drive. For a complete schedule and descriptions of sessions, check the Faculty Development Opportunities site.

The Meaning of the Week

I’ve heard some questions and confusion arise about the academic regulation regarding the 15th week of the semester; it’s a topic around which a fair amount of folklore has grown, so I’d like to disambiguate. It seems to be commonly referred to as “dead week,” but is actually called Closed Week in Academic Regulation 78, which defines it as follows:

78. CLOSED WEEK

No examinations or quizzes (other than laboratory examinations, make-up examinations and make-up quizzes) may be given during the last week of instruction.  Paper-proctored exams given for Global Campus courses are exempt from this rule, only if scanning and emailing the completed exam is not possible due to lack of equipment or infrastructure.

Here are some of the piece of folklore that I’ve heard regarding Week 15 which are not true:

• No new information can be introduced in a course during this week. [There is no such prohibition. It is a week of instruction; only exams and quizzes are interdicted, not teaching of new material.]
• Classes don’t meet this week. [They do meet! This is why I particularly dislike the practice of calling it “dead week,” a term which historically referred to a week between the end of classes and the beginning of finals that was meant to be used for study.]
• Make-up exams can’t be scheduled during this week. [Not true. See above.]

Academic Regulations 74-89 pertain to examinations; most of them pertain to final examinations, and collectively they provide the framework in which we operate at the end of the semester. I encourage you to check them out, rather than falling for the folklore.

Inclement Weather Statement

The following statement has been developed by the Council of Faculty Representatives and the Vancouver administration, and has been adopted by the campus:

Adverse Weather or Natural Hazard Statement

WSU Vancouver is a commuter campus, with faculty and students arriving from diverse regional micro-climates. Conditions in one region may significantly differ from conditions in another region. In the event that an adverse weather event (e.g., snow or ice) or natural hazard that poses a safety risk occurs, course instructors can use their discretion to decide whether they would like to offer students an alternative learning option that does not require travel to campus. Faculty and students should take personal safety into account when deciding whether they can travel safely to and from campus, taking local conditions into account. Faculty will not be penalized for working remotely to provide students with alternative learning options and students should not be penalized if they are not able to attend class in person.

The faculty member is responsible for choosing the best mechanism for alternative learning, if WSU Vancouver is open and the instructor decides to cancel the face-to-face meeting and substitute an alternative learning activity. A repository of alternative learning options is available on the WSU Vancouver Knowledgebase website or you may contact Information Technology for help. Faculty are encouraged to use universal design when possible, to make online content accessible.

Faculty are expected to notify all enrolled students by email or through Blackboard, along with letting their Academic Director and office support staff know the status of their course, within a reasonable time after the determination has been made to open or close campus. In the case of a course taught by AMS over multiple campuses, AMS should be notified, if possible.

If an instructor holds class during a weather event or natural hazard, but a student does not attend due to adverse conditions, the instructor should not penalize the student. Allowances to course attendance policy and scheduled assignments, including exams and quizzes, should be made by the instructor. Faculty delivering a course via AMS to a campus that closes for inclement weather should make similar allowances for students enrolled at that campus. Students who attempt to gain advantage through abuse of this policy (e.g., by providing an instructor with false information) may be referred to the Office of Student Standards and Accountability for disciplinary action.

Syllabus statement: In the event that an adverse weather event (e.g., snow or ice) or natural hazard that poses a safety risk occurs, you should take personal safety into account when deciding whether you can travel safely to and from campus, taking local conditions into account. If campus remains open and your instructor decides to cancel the face-to-face meeting and substitute an alternative learning activity, you will be notified by your instructor via email or through Blackboard within a reasonable time after the decision to open or close campus has been made. Instructions regarding any alternative learning options or assignments will be communicated in a timely manner. If travel to campus is not possible due to adverse regional conditions, allowances to course attendance policy and scheduled assignments, including exams and quizzes, will be made. Students who attempt to gain advantage through abuse of this policy (e.g., by providing an instructor with false information) may be referred to the Office of Student Conduct for disciplinary action. If a student encounters an issue with a faculty member, the student should first talk with the faculty member. If the issue cannot be resolved, the student should follow the reporting violations of policies outlined on the student affairs website.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day

[author’s note: this should have posted yesterday. Ah, well]

The second Tuesday in October is celebrated annually as Ada Lovelace Day, to encourage women to enter the STEM fields. Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord Byron, is widely considered to have devised the first programming language, and her work later inspired Alan Turing. In a reversal of stereotypes, her father was an emotionally tempestuous poet, one of the founds of the Romantic movement, and her mother was a mathematician.

More information can be found about Ada Lovelace Day here.