Campus Involvement

Supporting Student Success

The President of Student Nurses Organization and I at the STEM kick-off

Student Nurses Organization Advisor

When I began as an A&P instructor at Edmonds College, there was a small nursing club that had lost its advisor and hadn't been active. I reached out to my students that first year and revamped the Nursing Club. Today the club is the Student Nurses Organization (SNO). Officers of the club organized guest speakers and held meetings virtually during the pandemic over topics that were helpful to students working on their nursing school applications. As the SNO advisor, I am hoping to continue helping students reach their goals of becoming a nurse.

Pre-LPN Pathway

Edmonds College has a terrific LPN program and immediately upon beginning my faculty position I reached out to Kyra McCoy, director of the nursing program, to develop a collaboration between A&P and the LPN program. I not only incorporated her suggestions into the A&P curriculum that were needed for nursing students, but we started developing a pathway for pre-nursing students wanting to get an LPN certification. These students often struggled with English or Math skills in the LPN program, so together with advising, pre-college, and STEM division, we developed academic I-BEST courses for Nutrition with Pre-College Math, and STEM100 and CHEM& 121 with Pre-College English to help students facilitate and concentrate their learning with the core course content. We are continuing to develop this pathway to provide additional supports for students in A&P and the LPN program. Together with Nicole Rios-Gunn, we presented our progress at the All-Instruction meeting during Fall 2022 kick-off week. Nicole, Lauren Hajec, and I also presented this to the Board of Trustees at the November 2022 meeting.

I am also currently working with Allied Health to include a CNA (certified nursing assistant) connection for our pre-nursing students within their degree plan. This collaboration will allow us to connect students from professional technical programs to expand their careers as they progress to different jobs within healthcare.

Edmonds College-CWU BS Public Health Pathway

Many students I have advised are interested in careers in healthcare, but don't necessarily know what capacity, but they want to help others. They are interested in nursing, but are not always wanting to work directly with patients. Working with Central Washington Univeristy and a team from Edmonds College, we established a partnership with the public health department to create a pathway for students to get their pre-nursing associate degree at Edmonds College and then continue at CWU online to complete their BS degree in public health. These students want to work in healthcare, but need a pathway to that gives them the option to continue in an accelerated nursing pathway if they choose or continue into public health careers or even graduate school for a masters in public health degree. Prior to this partnership, there was no pathway for students to have this unique opportunity at Edmonds College or in Western Washington. This pathway will begin in the 2022-23 year. Please see the CWU press release for details on the program.

STEM Division Student Mentorship

Each year I participate in the STEM kickoff and STEM & MESA awards events. In 2020 due to the pandemic, both of these were virtual. For the STEM kickoff that year I presented a time management seminar to help students manage the new online environment: How to be a successful online student and manage your time. That spring I also helped create the STEM virtual awards with the MESA director and STEM retention specialist. By the next year we were able to have on campus celebrations and I also participated in the kick-off by helping staff the SNO club information table, which I again was able to do in 2022. We were also able to celebrate our student success in person at the STEM and MESA awards which I helped organize the sign-in and recognized our outstanding biology students.

I also continued to support students through my faculty advising each quarter and as a RiSE mentor to students. In addition, I am part of the STEM RiSE Core team to determine additional ways for STEM faculty to support student success. In the fall 2022, I collaborated with advising, the learning support center and the STEM retention specialist to host a healthcare transfer workshop for students to learn more about the transfer process and resources available at Edmonds College.

Select the video (49:05) below to view the healthcare transfer workshop.

Biology Department

Screenshot of the updated biology website.

Biology Program Promotion

In the biology department, we have exciting course offerings for students that include undergraduate research opportunities and field trips, in addition to new pathways for students to pursue their careers. To promote this, I worked with the marketing department to update the Biology Website and advertise our programs, including attending the Leti LatinX Expo in the summer 2022.

Data Driven Course Adjustments

During the past several years, the biology department has experienced growth in enrollment in our classes. This has presented some new challenges for scheduling classes. In addition, the pandemic has changed the modality choices for students for our classes. To address these scheduling issues I developed and analyzed surveys from our biology students, which allowed us to offer our classes in a flexible format at times our students needed the classes. This data driven approach extends into our analysis of equity for underrepresented students in our classes. I analyzed the retention/pass rates for our highly enrolled classes and as a department, we are working to adjust courses to close the equity gap.

Associate Faculty Mentorship

At the beginning of the pandemic, we found a need to come together as a department and collaborate to share ideas on pedagogy and other support. My role was to organize these connections, which evolved into biology department chats that were held quarterly. These collegial meetings allowed us to share new ideas, explore what issues were needing addressed in our classes, and help facilitate a mentorship between full-time and associate faculty. My mentorship role was also important individually with associate faculty teaching BIOL& 175 and BIOL& 241/242 where I shared my course development and worked collaboratively with these faculty as they taught these A&P courses.

Campus Community

As an associate faculty, I commuted between two colleges, which made it challenging to be part of the campus community. As a full-time faculty, I wanted to improve this and become more involved in the Edmonds College community. Not only did I participate in committees, but I also contributed as a community leader as faculty professional development co-coordinator and by my involvement across departments and divisions in my attempt to improve student programs for pre-nursing students.

Faculty Involvement

One aspect of professional development is not only learning and applying it to your classes, but sharing your knowledge with your colleagues so that they can also benefit from new, modern technology and pedagogical strategies. In my Designing Technology Rich Curricula class, I learned about Nearpod, an interactive tool to improve student engagement and formative assessments. I shared this knowledge in a presentation at Building Community Day in the spring 2022 quarter. I also participated in the fall 2022 Teaching and Learning Day with a faculty panel to share our experiences as part of the flexible learning pilot.

Committee Involvement

As a full-time faculty member, I was selected to serve on the Online Course Committee. This Title III grant committee has been involved in developing the OSCQR rubric used as a professional development opportunity at Edmonds College for faculty to improve their courses. I have also participated as a faculty member to pilot and improve my BIOL& 175 and BIOL& 241 courses with the OSCQR and have been a peer reviewer.

Select the video below to view my experiences with this committee and the OSCQR. (3:30)

2021-22 Faculty Professional Development Committee

Community Leadership

During the winter and spring 2022 quarters, I stepped into a vacancy to serve as one of the faculty professional development co-coordinators. In this roll, I participated in the faculty professional development committee (FPDC) together with Sharon Reitman (co-coordinator) to plan and facilitate faculty professional development meetings. We also presented the work of the committee to the President's Leadership Team highlighting the work done to bring professional development to Edmonds College for the year.

In addition to the work on the FPDC, I also planned and facilitated the Academy for New Faculty (ANF) meetings and developed content for the Canvas course for this program. The ANF program is for new faculty to engage in the Edmonds community with mentorship and professional development to learn about pedagogy and diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies. My contributions to the ANF Canvas course included developing modules that shared resources for the community at Edmonds College and shared resources and pedagogical strategies for building classroom community through technology. One example of this is a technology repository I shared that I created as part of my professional development at the U. of Florida from the Designing Technology Rich Curricula class. I particularly enjoyed my role in developing content for the ANF and leading the meetings with new faculty. This experience not only expanded my leadership roll at the college, but more importantly gave me an opportunity to connect with the campus community by welcoming new faculty to the college.

Now that you have seen my involvement in the Edmonds College community, it is now time to hear directly from students, collaborators, and colleagues about the impact I have made here at Edmonds College.

Select the button below to continue learning about the impact statements from the community.

Statements of Support

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