April 10, 2026

Provoking Thought

Over the last few months, I have been talking about Cascadia’s values. As a refresher, these values were established early in the college’s history and have not changed since 2000. These values include:

• Equity and inclusion;
• collaboration;
• access (also found in our mission statement);
• success;
• innovation;
• environmental sustainability;
• global awareness;
• responsiveness;
• and creativity.

I’ve written about our commitments to equity and sustainability. These two values appear in our daily work, through our strategic initiatives, and in the workgroups we’ve formed. We also have documented strategic initiatives around access, equity, and superior learning…the three pillars of our mission statement.

There are a number of the above-mentioned values that don’t get as much limelight, however. Where do collaboration, success, innovation, responsiveness, and creativity appear in our work? They seem to be more like traits we embrace rather than tactics we employ. I think all of us can say that, yes, we lean into these things…but how do we nurture a culture with these underlying values?

I’ve seen faculty collaborate with UWB colleagues and with each other through the Teaching & Learning Academy and learning communities. I’ve seen staff collaborate on difficult projects like ctcLink and Guided Pathways.

Our metrics show us to be a very successful college and we strive for success in everything we do.

As a resource-limited institution, we are absolutely having to innovate. We even named a building because of this shared value with UWB and our students.

I pride myself on being a responsive person, and we encourage that in others and in our service to students…but I am not sure how we instill that value into our culture.

And creativity abounds…I see it everywhere from classroom assignments, to new programming, to new ways to look at work.

So back to the core question…we lean into these things, but how do we as an institution infuse the culture with this value set? Do we just say it over and over? Or do we actively teach, promote, and guide our habits with these traits?

At Convocation in the September, these questions will come back. It is my intention after all of the “state of the college” presentations that we will break into small groups with the following goals:

• Review our current value set. Are they still accurate?
• Determine if there are new values that should surface because they have become relevant to us now, almost 30 years later As an example, the word “community” was removed from our name before Covid. Should “community” be an official value? Note the Shoutout below from the Bothell City Manager. Community is in our DNA.
• Suggest Cascadia’s top 5 values. Each group will offer ideas on what is most important to Cascadia’s “way of being”.

From there, the College Advisory Council will sift through the feedback and suggest to the campus if there are changes to be made. If so, we’ll engage ourselves in more thought around that and eventually take a recommendation to the Board of Trustees.

I write about this now, because I’d like our campus community to begin thinking about this. Talk about it among your colleagues. Determine what is most important to you about Cascadia.

There’s one more “values” letter to come, on Global Awareness. It will hit the stands before commencement. 😀

Shoutouts

From the IN Box:

A shout out to Shawna, Jaspreet, and Jack

Thank you for your hospitality and care as the Bothell City Council, and then our Executive Leadership Team held retreats in Innovation Hall over the past two weeks. Together our work focused on furthering the Bothell City Council Vision for the future of our community and generated a new set of 3-year priorities to guide the work of the organization.

Being in the right environment with the right support is critical to making each hour of strategic meetings like these productive. We all had an exceptional experience supported by your professional care and attention to detail. Innovation Hall Room 131 was also phenomenal. We used a facilitator whom I've been working with since 2011, and she declared it to be among her top 5 retreat rooms in the country.

Thank you for supporting our community and being great partners to the City of Bothell.

AND

AR / Student Finance would like to extend a huge shoutout to the entire Enrollment team!

At the beginning of each quarter, we brace ourselves for a flood of student inquiries. For Spring 2026, we have received shockingly few! Can’t imagine that it’s because students have had fewer questions, so it must be because Enrollment has done an amazing job of answering them. Thank you so much for your hard work, expertise, and dedication to the success of Cascadia’s student body!

And a special thank you from me to Ozge Demirci-Richardson. She has been at the college for only a short time but has already been tremendous in improving processes for payment plans, student account holds, and overall student communication. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, experience, and being a wonderful collaborator!

Shoutouts can be sent to FLShoutout@cascadia.edu.