Rachel Solemsaas, President, North Seattle College
This fall, North Seattle College (NSC) was proud to be named one of the top 100 community and technical colleges in the country eligible for recognition from the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) for promoting inclusive excellence in education. This opportunity to receive a national honor as part of the Biden-Harris administration’s Raise the Bar initiative is not one the college approached lightly. Since its founding in 1970, North Seattle College has always been an open-access institution of higher education, intent on preparing its diverse students for success in life and work. NSC clearly understands who its students are and where they come from.
Knowing the Neighborhood
While Seattle – thanks to being the corporate home of companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks – has a reputation for having high incomes and an enviable quality of life, the majority of NSC students come from low-income neighborhoods. More than 55% of students who live in the college’s eight ZIP Code service area come from two ZIP Codes with lower incomes than other areas of North Seattle. These neighborhoods have median incomes of just over $60,000, compared with other neighborhoods of North Seattle ranging from the low $80,000s to the low $100,000s.
Data from the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) has shown how student demographics have changed over time, and the college has maintained a focus on its students from a broad and growing catchment area. In the 1990’s, conversations and professional development about who NSC’s students are and what unique and diverse approaches can assist in their success helped the college evolve and sharpen its focus. The sharpening continued and, in many cases, accelerated in the 2000’s.
In the early 2010’s, NSC prioritized a data-driven approach and partnered with the Gates Foundation on a “Pathways to Completion” project. This partnership focused on underserved populations and how to accelerate their learning as evidence showed time as a major hurdle to student success. It focused directly on bridging the gap between access and success by redesigning the onboarding and first-term experiences of underprepared students and sought to improve completion through early retention and progression.
In 2016, NSC unveiled a new strategic plan that acknowledged the college’s history and created a roadmap forward. At the forefront of this plan was the continued prioritization of supporting underserved populations through an institutional reorganization that included a new college equity and diversity plan. This also established new executive-level positions at the college and, later, a district-level associate vice president of EDIC. Additionally, NSC created an EDIC division with increased staffing and a physical presence in a newly renovated Equity and Welcome Center. In 2018 and 2021, NSC was recognized as one of the top five LGBTQ-friendly community colleges in the nation.
The new strategic plan also positioned NSC to receive a critical Title III Grant in 2018 that provided financial and other resources for NSC to embrace the national Guided Pathways approach to continue the focus on student success with a specific focus on underserved students.
Defining Success
NSC defines success in the context of the Mission, Vision, and Values of the Seattle Colleges District Strategic Plan. NSC achieves success in this framework via its Core Themes (Advancing Student Success, Excelling in Teaching and Learning, and Building a Sustainable Community) and Essential Learning Outcomes (ELOs): Inquiry, Problem Solving, Communication, and Responsibility. Core Themes and Essential Learning Outcomes reflect both NSC’s student population and the communities it serves. As a minority-serving institution, NSC infuses equity, diversity, inclusion, and community principles into its assessment of Core Themes and ELOs.
Further, NSC prides itself on supporting the largest percentage of part-time students and the oldest student population in the state. In a research- and student-centered design study that NSC is conducting in collaboration with a local economic development organization (Seattle Jobs Initiative), it found: 1) 45% of transfer students and 60% of workforce students work full time while enrolled, and 2) 63% of transfer students and 79% of workforce students are enrolled part time.
The college also values equitable access to credential completion, economic mobility and fulfillment for our students by investing in programs like the Opportunity Center, Workforce Instruction, TRIO, AANAPISI, Benefits Hub, and Disability Services. All of these provide direct student support and eliminate systemic barriers for students from vulnerable populations.
NSC has embraced its definition of success by focusing on two aspects of culture: evidence and care. The college is guided by the tenets of transformational approaches that build on its adaptive capacity to innovate and co-create by FAILing (First Attempt in Learning). NSC believes in failing often and together to provide institutional learning. This encourages staff and faculty to try new and different initiatives and approaches to provide learning and support for diverse student populations.
With this focus, NSC has renewed its investment in faculty and staff to help them grow as champions of the approach. For example, NSC traditionally sends employees to the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity (NCORE) by funding 27 faculty and staff in the 2023-2024 year. Locally, professional development opportunities include Pathways to Teaching Excellence in which the college’s Teaching & Learning Center organizes gatherings to promote equitable and inclusive learning experiences.
Fostering Faculty that Reflects Student Body
Since the early 2000’s, NSC has formally committed to employing a faculty body that reflects the student body. These efforts are based on evidence that students perform better when they can see themselves in the front of the classroom. Search and hiring processes have become more informed by best practices that include an inclusion advocate on each committee. SBCTC data show NSC now has a majority non-white full-time faculty body. Once hiring is made, tenure track faculty are onboarded through the formal tenure process and informal cohort training administered by the Office of Instruction along with senior faculty. This cohort training focuses on informing new faculty of best and promising classroom practices particularly geared toward diverse and otherwise underserved students.
Regarding support for students, NSC has embraced funding opportunities aimed at providing intentional support for specific student populations and changes to traditional processes for all students. Together, these help the college reach goals of increasing student achievement for all students and eliminating success gaps between diverse student populations. Some examples include recognition and funding as an Asian American and Native American Pacific Island Serving Institution (AANAPISI); funding through a National Science Foundation (NSF) Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) STEM Grant; creating and implementing Directed Self Placement (DSP) instruments; and the Guided Pathways framework with Title III funding to map out instructional pathways that provide clear guidance for students to use to complete their desired educational goals.
Measuring Student Success
NSC’s student success measures are established in the Seattle College District Strategic Plan Scorecard. These goals include improving student engagement, fall to winter retention rates, completion of college level math within year one, completion or transfer within four years of entry, and job placement and wage progression. Each measure is disaggregated by race and ethnicity, specifically between Historically Undeserved Students of Color (Black, Native American/Alaska Native, Hispanic/Latine, Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander) and non-historically underserved students of color (White and Asian).
The Seattle Colleges district sets targets that each college seeks to achieve using strategies and tactics specific to its unique population of students. Progress toward each college is measured with various methods, including the Student Outcomes dataset. Another important way NSC measures student success is by utilizing workforce outcomes data on livable pay and career mobility.
The Mission of Seattle Colleges establishes the expectations that the colleges will prepare “…each student for success in life and work, fostering a diverse, engaged, and dynamic community…” in a multicultural, diverse, and international society. The Seattle Colleges Strategic Plan sets Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Community (EDIC) as one of four priority goals, with the development and implementation of a diversity action plan as a primary strategy. This plan is a key aspect of the practices used by NSC to achieve its goals.
Partnerships and Grants Are Key
One of NSC’s greatest practices is recognizing the value of partnerships and collective impact to do this work. Over the past few years, NSC continued to achieve notable successes in pursuing grant opportunities to further progress toward its student success goals. These included a Title III Strengthening Institutions Grant, LSAMP, and Mental Health Pilot Grant.
In 2018, NSC received a five-year, $2.2 million Title III grant to improve student success. The grant included four key initiatives: Implement a Guided Pathways Framework; Increase Success in Gateway Math Transfer Courses; Increase Student Access to Key Campus Services and Resources; and Enhance Staff and Faculty Involvement in Data-Driven Strategic Enrollment Management.
These key initiatives each contribute to the targets outlined in the district scorecard. Some new measures were included based on best practices from the Community College Research Center. For example, including early credit momentum metrics contributes to improved retention and three-year completion is a leading indicator for four-year completion and transfer. (A complete list of grant objectives is available here.)
The Title III Grant concluded last spring, and NSC made considerable progress in closing equity gaps. The college anticipates this progress will move it closer to the district target when four-year completion and transfer data are released.
As a minority serving institution (MSI), equity, diversity, inclusion and community efforts are integral in all initiatives at NSC. In Fall 2024, North’s LSAMP program was renewed for an additional three years with $1.5 million in funding. LSAMP funding supports minoritized student success in STEM programs through paid research opportunities (internships and summer research experiences) and conferences with opportunities to present original STEM research. Most recently, a student presented original research on air quality exploring correlations between PM 2.5 Concentrations and proximity to Outdoor Green Spaces using REGEX Optimization. LSAMP also contributed to physical space via the creation of a dedicated LSAMP lounge to foster knowledge sharing and a sense of community for marginalized students stems in STEM.
In 2020, NSC was awarded a Mental Health Counseling and Services Pilot Grant of $500,000 over four years by SBCTC. Before this grant, the ratio of students to faculty counselors at NSC was 3,000 to 1. The additional staffing served as the catalyst for a new initiative modeled after Cornell University’s Let’s Talk program. Let’s Talk decolonizes and destigmatizes mental health counseling by providing drop-in counseling that seeks to reach traditionally underserved students. To date, drop-in visits have increased by 269%, and the equity gaps between white and minoritized students utilizing drop-in visits has also narrowed.
In addition to grant opportunities, NSC supported many institutional initiatives designed to further its student success goals. One example of this work is Orientation to College Success (HDC 101) beginning in Fall 2023. National research by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) has shown these comprehensive success courses improve early momentum metrics that serve as leading indicators of long-term completion and transfer. While early data is preliminary, 99% of students surveyed in HDC 101 reported feeling confident about their ability to navigate college.
Allocating Resources to Meet Objectives
NSC’s resource allocation strategy is guided by shared governance and resource, technology and space allocation planning. Resource allocation is evaluated using a rubric that requires programs to demonstrate how their funding requests support student success goals and NSC’s Essential Learning Outcomes. The funding from this process contributed to institutionalizing successful departmental initiatives. For example, NSC’s Early Childhood Careers program used private foundation support to hire staff for the program’s additional language cohorts including Arabic, Somali, Spanish and Mandarin. These initiatives were successful, and NSC used the process to move these positions to the college’s operating budget.
Space allocation is also an important part of NSC’s Student Success strategy. Through shared governance, the college decided to institutionalize the Equity and Welcome Center funded by Title III. One service offered at the Equity and Welcome Center that contributes to our student success goals is Belinda’s Closet. Belinda’s Closet was opened in Fall 2022 in response to students needing clothing to wear on graduation day. NSC’s EDIC team established Belinda’s Closet to support students across the college who need professional clothing to wear at interviews, work and, of course, graduation.
Facts and Data Lead Processes
NSC uses data, evidence and evaluation through a culture of evidence and a culture of caring. The college’s culture of evidence articulates the power of analytics and intelligence with an inclusive use of both qualitative and quantitative data, with collective wisdom through storytelling that informs our actions and decisions. NSC’s culture of care defines how it approaches evaluation. This is done via the lens of taking chances by FAILing or “First Attempt in Learning,” where failing often, failing together, and learning from failure is celebrated. Improvement is an iterative process that works only when institutions reduce the stigma around failing. Examples where NSC has brought these practices together are the Guided Pathways 100-Day Projects and peer review assessment practice: Teaching Improvement Practices.
NSC awarded sixty-five 100-Day projects to faculty and staff focused on Guided Pathways redesign projects. The 100-Day projects funded initiatives pertaining to scaling up Guided Pathways. Applicants demonstrated alignment with Guided Pathways goals (retention, completion, Math/English attainment) and articulated how their project embodied SBCTC’s racial equity principles). Funded projects include initiatives to provide more courses with Open Education Resource materials, a series of Art Department Faculty retreats to explore opportunities for anti-racist pedagogical growth, and revisions to English composition curriculum to improve success for neurodivergent students.
Annually, NSC faculty engage in classroom assessment through the “Teaching Improvement Practices” (TIPs) instrument. This instrument is designed annually by the faculty-led Assessment Committee and guides faculty through an assessment of a practice (or practices) in their classroom that has been shown through evidence to be an area in need of improvement. The focus of TIPs work is determined each year by the Assessment Committee based on meta trends at the institutional level. For instance, the focus of the 2023-24 efforts were based on how modality impacts student success. At the end of the academic year, the results of the TIPs are compiled and summarized into an Annual Report. The summary of the Annual Report provides data and evidence that the college can use in its larger instructional and institutional assessments.
Shining Examples of Success
While several programs that have demonstrably contributed to the impact of NSC’s student success strategy have been highlighted throughout this article, two additional programs serve as shining examples: Seattle Promise and curricular changes to early Childhood Careers.
Seattle Promise is a college tuition and success program funded by the 2018 FEEP Levy. The program provides free tuition at any Seattle College (including NSC) in the form of last dollar funding; targeted equity scholarships to cover books, transportation and housing; and dedicated student support and advising positions. Modeled after other free college programs like CUNY’s ASAP program, preliminary results are encouraging. In the Spring 2024 Data Memo, Seattle Promise students have higher retention and three-year completion rates compared to the overall population, and outcomes for BIPOC scholars are significantly better than their non-Seattle Promise BIPOC peers.
The Early Childhood Education program at North serves as the pipeline for educators of color. Faculty and staff initiated curricular changes in Early Childhood Careers have cultivated a culture of inclusive excellence for historically underserved Students of Color in both their associate program and the Bachelor of Applied Science program. First, the program collaborated with math and alumni to co-create a contextualized, transferable and highly supported math course for educators. (NSC’s student speaker at the 2024 commencement ceremony was Jorge Hernandez Matancillas, who earned an associate of applied science degree in Early Childhood Education.) The course was piloted by NSC in Spring 2024 and had an 85.7% pass rate compared to 56.8% for Math 107, the most common college level course for ECE students. The program also created language cohorts for Spanish, Somali, Arabic, and Mandarin. It offers a high level of student support, with advising and navigation available in students’ preferred languages, peer tutor-mentors, and annual community events grounded in the rich cultural identities of these students.
The ECE program at North also partners with Seattle Central College and Seattle Public Schools on a grow-your-own teacher education model to increase teachers of color from within Seattle school communities. In the 2022–23 academic year, 55 percent of students in Seattle Public Schools were nonwhite, but 79 percent of teachers were white. The impact of teachers of color on all students, particular students of color, has been well established. An example of this success is increasing enrollment in historically marginalized students into the applied bachelor’s degree program, and preliminary fall to fall retention outcomes are strong indicators of success.
As noted in the beginning of this article, summarizing an institution’s history in supporting equitable access, success and post-college outcomes is not as easy as it may sound. North Seattle College has been a beacon for advancing educational equity and excellence since it opened its doors. The college doesn’t have all the answers – far from it – but the hope is that sharing some of the college’s learnings and experiences will help others as they seek to “raise the bar” and build an educational system that promotes equity and upward mobility for all students.
Dr. Rachel Solemsaas was named president of North Seattle College in July 2024, after serving as interim president beginning in September 2023. Her career spans more than three decades in progressive public service. Dr. Solemsaas’ journey includes 20 years in leadership and administrative roles at community colleges, where she has held chief executive officer positions. Prior to being named interim president for North Seattle College, she served as chancellor of Hawai‘i Community College for seven years. Her unwavering commitment to institutions aligns with her personal values as an anti-poverty activist and social justice advocate.
