Student Services Highlights

Hello! My name is Dr. Harvey Duncan, and I am the Director of Student Services here at City University of Seattle.

As the Director of Student Services, my job is to make sure that we not only comply with state and federal equality and anti-discrimination laws but also look for ways to increase equity and justice on our various campuses and in the online environment. This includes updating Disability Support Services (DSS), resolving DEI issues and complaints, and complying with Title IX regulations and anti-sexual harassment/discrimination laws. In addition to these services, we have also incorporated the Career Center under my supervision. We have had a productive year, and I would love to share with you some of our accomplishments and goals for the future.

Student Services from FY24

Disability Support Services (DSS)

• Last year, my office partnered with the Learning Design Team at CityU to upgrade our accessibility standards in the online environment. This is a huge undertaking as all university programs will now have to work diligently to meet the new standards.
• I have also been leading departmental trainings and workshops with program directors and deans in the US and Canada to make sure that they know the accommodation process and how to best serve our students registered in DSS. For example, this past week I led a workshop with the Social Justice Coalition to learn more about ableism and ableist language.
• At the beginning of the 2023/2024 school year, DSS rolled out the new faculty response checklist; the checklist has been very helpful in guiding instructors on how to administer reasonable accommodations to students.
• The DSS support page in the student portal was also updated to give more information about student rights and responsibilities. We have links to important information for both US and Canadian students. If you haven’t seen the page recently, go ahead and take a look!

Career Center

• As you might have seen in your inboxes, the Career Center has partnered with Handshake. Handshake is akin to LinkedIn, except it is designed to directly connect employers with students, recent graduates, and alumni. Handshake is used by hundreds of universities to give their students an inside track in the job market. There are many tools that Handshake has at your disposal to help you increase your chances of finding employment after you graduate or, if you are currently employed, how to move forward in your current career.
• Resume services coming soon! CityU is working with Résumé Goat – a resume and cover letter writing service that can help you get your resume to the top of the hiring stack! These days, it is difficult to write a resume and cover letter in a way that beats the AI tools that companies use to filter applicants. Résumé Goat will be available to you later this year to help you get an edge on the competition. Résumé Goat can help you write cover letters and cultivate your LinkedIn and Handshake profiles. Their services also include personal time with a real human to answer your questions and concerns. Résumé Goat also specializes in civilianizing the resumes of service members so that they can be ready to enter the civilian workforce.

Title IX and Anti-Discrimination Updates

• This year, there have been a lot of politics surrounding Title IX and anti-sexual discrimination laws in the United States. For example, the new Title IX regulations proposed by the Biden Administration have been disputed by some states. Luckily, Washington State has enjoined the new Title IX regulations, which became effective August 1, 2024. The ongoing fight in some states largely centers around the definition of Trans rights and the participation of transgender students in university activities. CityU remains committed to justice and equity. We will continue to update our policies to be inclusive and to uphold the human rights and dignity of all of our students regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, or expression.
• A major improvement that we implemented this year is related to how we serve pregnant and new parenting students. New laws in the US provide a comprehensive framework on how to accommodate students experiencing pregnancy and pregnancy-related issues. Since the standard of care is much more comprehensive in the US than it is in Canada on this topic, all of our campuses will adopt the US standards for accommodating pregnant students.

Net Impact Student Club

• FY24 saw the advent of Net Impact, a student club that replaced Enactus. Net Impact has hundreds of chapters globally and hundreds of thousands of members dedicated to sustainability and social entrepreneurship.
• Our Net Impact team was extremely successful in its first project- making the CityU Student Store sustainable and engaging students with the new annual Hoodie Design competition. Over 450 students voted in the competition to select our new student-designed, limited edition 2024 hoodie. The hoodies are produced using 100% recycled fibers which helps us to lead the fight against the wasteful fast fashion industry. Net Impact has partnered with Swagger, a sustainable, women-owned business that donates a portion of its profits to sustainable initiatives. The proceeds of our hoodie sales fund our future projects in the community, so if you want to make a sustainable difference, be sure to visit the Student Store and purchase one today!

These are just a few of the major changes we made this year to bring up accessibility standards at CityU. Student Services work tirelessly to make sure student rights are protected and that systemic barriers to equal access to education are removed or mitigated.

Student Services Goals for the Upcoming Year

In the last year, we were able to do a lot, but we still have work to do. Here are a few of our goals in student services for the 2024/2025 school year:

• One of the main goals for the upcoming year is to streamline the process of acquiring and making accessible materials and alternative formats of textbooks available to students who need accommodations. Currently, working with publishers who staunchly safeguard their IP is difficult when requesting alternative formats. DSS is working closely with the Library to strengthen our partnerships with publishers and to increase our access to alternative formats.
• Strengthening the Career Center is a top priority. According to a recent Forbes article by Brandon Busteed, Executive Director of Education & Workforce Development, the career services offered by an institution of higher learning are rapidly becoming a determining factor for new student enrollment. We would like to meet that challenge and offer robust career services in FY25. This means more than just having an active job board and resume services. We would like to launch events, job fairs, panel discussions, competitions, and other activities designed to make our students more visible and desirable to employers.
• Growing Net Impact will also be a priority in FY25. Net Impact is a way for our students to get real-world practice in project planning and implementation. These skills are invaluable to a resume, especially since they will give our students a chance to build experience in project management, computer science applications, and business administration. If you are interested in joining Net Impact, please contact me.
• In Title IX, we will continue to update our policy and procedures in accordance with new laws and regulations in the US and Canada. We are also looking for ways to make our policy and procedures more inclusive and update the language to emphasize equity, inclusion, and belonging. We encourage any student who notices an area of improvement to reach out to my office and let me know about it.

I am very excited to achieve our goals for FY25 and I am sure more goals will be added as the year progresses. If you have any questions about any of our student services or comments on how they can better serve our students, please feel free to reach out and let me know. My door is always open.

Have a great 2024/2025 school year!

Harvey A. Duncan II, Ed.D
Director of Student Services
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 206.239.4873