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The Western Alliance of Community College Academic Leaders (the Alliance) presented the 2017 Bernice Joseph Award to the University of Hawai‘i Community Colleges for its Sector Mapping Tool on Thursday, March 23, in Long Beach, California, during the Alliance’s Annual Meeting. This award recognizes the institution or organization whose tool was selected from those submitted to the Academic Leaders Toolkit during the academic year for its innovation, problem-solving capability, potential for impact, and replicability in the two-year institution sector.
Alliance member Peter Pinney of the University of Alaska Fairbanks presented the award to Peter Quigley, Associate Vice President of the University of Hawai‘i Community Colleges, and Paul Sakamoto, Web Application Development Manager. The 2017 award is named in honor of the late Bernice Joseph, a founding member of the Alliance and former Vice Chancellor for Rural, Community, and Native Education at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Joseph’s collaborative spirit and love for innovation were driving forces in the creation of the Alliance.
The winning Sector Mapping Tool uses data visualization and heat mapping to align Hawai‘i’s economic and workforce needs with academic offerings and production at the University of Hawai‘i system, making the connection between jobs and academic programs clear. Quigley conducted a demonstration of the tool for attendees of the Alliance’s annual meeting.
“The sector mapping tool provides complete visualization of Hawaiʻi’s economy and K-12 as well as university academic alignments in real time,” said Quigley. “This tool can benefit our academic program planning at the University of Hawaiʻi Community Colleges and it can inform policy decisions inside and outside of the university. Several states have expressed interest in having the tool.”
“The Alliance is pleased to present the 2017 Bernice Joseph Award to the University of Hawai‘i Community Colleges for its data-rich sector mapping tool, while honoring the memory of higher-education visionary Bernice Joseph,” said Jose Fierro, Alliance Chair and President of Cerritos College. “The tool is a prime example of the innovative solutions coming out of our two-year institutions to meet the changing demands facing higher education today.”
The Academic Leaders Toolkit is a peer-reviewed repository of useful profiles of tools designed to assist academic leaders in their decision making. Through this exchange of information on academic tools, colleagues aid one another in advancing the academic missions of higher education institutions, systems, and states in the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) region and beyond. The Academic Leaders Toolkit is used by members of both the Alliance and the Western Academic Leadership Forum, which represents four-year institutions in the WICHE region. Organizations interested in submitting an academic tool for peer review should visit http://alt.wiche.testing.brossgroup.com.
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The Western Alliance of Community College Academic Leaders (the Alliance) shares resources and expertise as its members address academic issues of common concern at two-year institutions and beyond the scope of a single institution or state. Alliance members, located in the WICHE states, are public and private community colleges and technical schools represented by their chief academic officers. System offices and state governing and coordinating boards associated with two-year institutions and represented by their chief executive or chief academic officer are also members.
The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and its 16 members work collaboratively to expand educational access and excellence for all citizens of the West. WICHE’s four units – Student Exchange, the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET), Policy Analysis and Research, Mental Health – and several other interstate collaborations are working to find answers to some of the most critical questions facing higher education today. WICHE’s 16 members include: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawai‘i, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, along with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam (the first two of the U.S. Pacific territories and freely associated states to participate as WICHE’s Pacific Islands member).
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