By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
Today marked the first day of the second month of the first school year with Dr. Rosie Rimando-Chareunsap serving as president of South Seattle College (WSB sponsor).
She’s also completing her fourth month in the SSC presidency. “I was counting my Mondays for a while – I lost count around eight,” she laughed during our recent conversation on campus.
While the job is new to her, the workplace is not – as noted when her appointment was announced in May, Dr. Rimando-Chareunsap has been at SSC since the turn of the millennium, most recently as vice president of student services. “I had to move offices, so the hardest part of (that) transition was decluttering my old space and letting go.”
Now that she’s settled in, what’s big for fall quarter? One word, first: “Budget.” The school is getting less money from the state and less money because of declining enrollment (about 100 fewer students on the first day of fall quarter this year than last). In the past few months, the new president has “been examining and studying the budget processes we’e had in the past” and along with results of a “climate survey” last spring, has been designing a new process that acknowledges “you don’t have to be a budget manager to have an opinion.”
The new process, for example, will include “more checkpoints during the year,” rather than just waiting until one annual point in time to start a review.
Also big: “Guided pathways,” redesigning “how students are guided through their experience … to increase student retention and completion.” This is a big deal for community colleges, Dr. Rimando-Chareunsap explains. While 90 percent of students start “with the intention to complete a degree,” life happens, and they leave. “We believe that what the student came in wanting to do is what we should enable them to do – so we need to look in the mirror at our own practices. It’s cultural change as much as program change.” (More on that shortly.)
Another major area of focus: Equity. She observes that “because of community-college pay and affordability issues, the people who are here are here because of a passion for what they do, including a passion for serving underserved groups.” So “from the top,” she is dedicated to “a strong focus on how we close equity outcomes.” Not only is she leading SSC on this, she is also the district’s leader too – appointed Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
That work is far-ranging, and Dr. Rimando-Chareunsap says she is “humbled by (the) gravity and importance in a woman of color coming into this role … I see that as an opportunity I’m not going to waste.”
Paramount in maximizing that opportunity, she says, is the act of listening: “To listen to the experiences of students of color, of underrepresented groups, to listen to what that experience is and then t take action on what we hear.”
There again, as with the pathways, she sees a need for change: To “stop presuming that a student has to come college-ready – the college needs to be student-ready.” Even community college, she points out, was built on “old foundations” such as exclusivity and limited access, “practices of centuries of selectiveness.” And while not everything is within their control to change, they can change the assistance they offer, they can change how they look at such things as a placement tool. They can listen, they can evaluate data, and then they can “make good design decisions.”
But: “We also have to really be willing to change … it sounds simple and it’s the hardest of all.”
That includes changing many things, including training and support for staff, including “providing experiences so they can become better at cultural competency.” Those experiences can help students find their way: While the “vast majority” of students who arrive direct out of high school say they are interested in working toward an academic transfer, “we’re paying more attention to students coming in saying ‘I didn’t know a kitchen could be my classroom – I didn’t know an airframe mechanic could make six figures’. We’re helping them work through that decision shift … we call it ‘career discernment’.” This year the president and her faculty and staff are focusing on “what does career discernment look like?” and how to “help students make better choices.”
That means “processes that are really accessible and understandable by all,” says Dr. Rimando-Chareunsap, and “that can be tailored to the student experience … diversifying the way we support (students) … one size doesn’t fit all in terms of support.” Figuring out the best ways to do that is a nonstop job, she adds: “The minute we start to relax is when students experience us in a way we don’t intend.”
She has confidence that SSC faculty and staff won’t be relaxing, in that way; she extols their achievements and aspirations, and their passion, especially for equity. “We don’t have to convince people that equity and diversity are a thing.” Dr. Rimando-Chareunsap says people were “essentially waiting at the door for” Dr. Betsy Hasegawa, who joined SSC earlier this year as Associate Vice President of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
Back to the budget. Most of the process was back in the spring, before her presidency began, but in her previous position, she was still deeply involved, and says they’ve “built a budget that’s sustainable for this year” – though getting there was painful at times, including a “higher number of course cancellations that felt really tough for students and faculty.” Also painful: The recent decision to go ahead with closing the acclaimed Pastry and Baking Arts program. “As designed, it is just not sustainable,” she said, costing $450,000 for a program with 30 students, “more than double the average cost per student of any of the other programs.”
Now it’s time to prepare for the future by immersing herself in learning about budgeting from her new perspective. This fall, she was “sitting down with every budget manager, listening and learning from them, asking how they build the budget,” even asking “what’s weird” about each budget. Being “internally critical of our operations” is vital, as they are “stewards of taxpayer dollars and student tuition dollars … what I’m demanding is a very high level of accountability.”
Another factor in financial viability is student retention. Once students arrive at SSC, “they’re ours to lose” – and yet when they do lose students, “we don’t always get that gift of knowledge of where people are going.” So often it’s a life circumstance – “maybe an ailing parent, or (the student) couldn’t get reliable child care, (or) had to help out at Mom’s shop … school fits into life when it fits in. It goes back to (the college) being student-ready, not the student being college-ready. We have to shift the conversation to see what we could have done for better support” of students.
Dr. Rimando-Chareunsap knows firsthand about balancing school and “life.” She has two children, a 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter, and raising them is “a really important part of my identity … on any given day I’m grappling with (some work-related issue) and suddenly my problem-solving skills go to, ‘where did my Lego set go?’ ‘he hit me!’ ‘no, he didn’t!’ … It’s a really amazing perspective shift.”
She describes herself as a “champion” for her kids – and it’s clear she is working to be the same for her school. “Community colleges, as a system, (are) really looking to legislators to make this our year” in terms of fixing financing. She cites a recent poll showing strong public support for community colleges’ value and fully funding them.
Will legislators rise to that challenge? Wearing a system-wide hat as well as her campus-leadership hat, Dr. Rimando-Chareunsap will be pushing them to do so. She repeats: “This is our year.”
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