This content was published: June 25, 2018. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
2018 Academic Professionals of Distinction
Posted by mariah.cisse
The Academic Professionals Institute (API) was held on Monday, June 18th at the Rock Creek Event Center. This year the planning committee created a way to formally recognize the work of their colleagues at all campuses and centers by creating the Academic Professionals of Distinction. Over 30 APs were nominated by employees across PCC in the following categories;
PCC Community Engagement: Work involving interactions with community members outside of PCC or work which takes place outside of a PCC campus/center; for example, someone who works with a local high school, non profit, faith-based group, or business.
PCC College Impact: Involves working with or developing college systems or structures; for example, someone who works in grant writing, institutional effectiveness, or workforce development
PCC Students/Clients/Participants: Work involving service to students, clients, program participants, or other “front line” customer service areas; for example, someone who counsels, advises, assists students, clients, and/or community participants.
After the initial nominations were made, the API planning committee scored them based on a rubric, narrowing down to three nominations for each category. APs were then given the opportunity to vote for the top nominee for each category.
Please join me in congratulating the following Academic Professionals! You can read their nominations below.
PCC Community Engagement: Heidi Edwards, Admissions & Recruitment Coordinator, Rock Creek Campus
As Admissions and Recruitment Coordinator for the Rock Creek Campus, Heidi Edwards has demonstrated a high level of dedication to PCC’s prospective students. Heidi is enthusiastic for the work she does helping students navigate the admissions process at PCC. In addition, she is committed to the mission of the college and to making sure all students can fulfill their academic goals at PCC.
For many people in the community, Heidi is the face of PCC. She is the first contact many prospective students have with a PCC staff member. In this type of work first impressions are critically important, and Heidi has an energy and enthusiasm that makes prospective students feel wanted, welcome, and appreciated. She is a fantastic presenter, able to convey perceivably confusing or overwhelming amounts of information into manageable and concise actionable tasks so that students have a clear understanding of the college admissions process and the steps they need to take to make college a reality for them. I am convinced that Heidi’s involvement in PCC’s recruitment efforts has led to many students deliberately choosing to begin their college education at PCC.
Heidi is also a great ambassador, interfacing with our high school partners on a weekly basis. She has developed strong connections with counselors and teachers throughout the multiple schools she covers in her territory. And Heidi is also a collaborative and present team player, always willing to pitch in and when coverage is needed.
Heidi is an exemplary Academic Professional and deserves this recognition.
PCC College Impact: Susan Wilson, Academic Support Coordinator, Sylvania Campus 
Susan Wilson’s contribution to the college in her current role as Academic Support Coordinator is quiet but mighty. She organizes, facilitates and shepherds people and data, spreadsheets and workshops, for many projects from assessment of student learning, to Program Review, and always with care, thoughtfulness and good humor. While all of her work has been impactful, the systems that she has developed to support college-wide assessment of student learning in General Education have been extraordinary, and critical to PCC’s accreditation.
When we entered the national MSC (Multi State Collaborative to Advance Quality Student Learning) project, Susan was the point person for faculty, explaining what they needed to do, connecting with IE to get key student information from class lists, obtaining and redacting the student work (removing any indication of student, faculty, college or state, from 300-600 student artifacts per year), and uploading the documentation to the project. Susan was selected to score for the national project, and brought that training home to conduct norming and scoring sessions for PCC faculty, so that we could score the same student work “in house.” For that internal scoring, she coordinated the distribution of artifacts and the collection and organization of scores.
This work involved so many layers of talent and skill: working with faculty, student work, multiple software systems, documents, spreadsheets, project timelines and rules, internal timelines and needs. Susan’s work helped us understand how to make this functional going forward, the value of which was emphasized our recent mid-cycle accreditation evaluation.
PCC Students/Clients/Participants: Salvador Castañeda, Apprenticeship & Trades Coordinator, Swan Island Trade Center
Salvador Castañeda was instrumental in the design and implementation of the Maritime Welding Career Pathways Initiative–an immersive, cohort-based model wherein students weld 32 hours per week for 22 weeks and complete job ready.
To develop a robust, wrap-around student support system designed for students in struggle, Sal spent 3 days in Seattle, consulting with South Seattle Community College’s student support team for a related, cohort-based immersive welding program.
In addition, he worked collaboratively with PCC’s Career Pathways Team, building a model that coupled South Seattle’s best practices with Career Pathway’s.
The result has been a student services model that leverages the strengths of Career Pathways and the resources of the Swan Island Trades Center to afford trades students with unprecedented support in negotiating the most daunting challenges–poverty, food insecurity, homelessness and histories of incarceration.
His work has had an extraordinary positive impact on our community and has provided the Apprenticeship & Trades Department with a powerful collection of new best practices.