After over thirty years of steadfast dedication, enthusiasm and emotional investment in the success of the North Seattle College community, Continuing Education Program Specialist Janet Sekijima will retire at the end of August 2019. Janet has seen a world of change since she first started work at North in 1989 and much of that change was thanks to the speed of advancing technology. “One of my oldest memories of working here was getting to send my very first email using the UW Pine system,” she recalls. “I was so excited I couldn’t decide who I should send it to or what I should say and was real nervous that I was going to break something.” 
Fortunately, Janet’s fears never materialized and her lack of familiarity with new campus technology did not result in a massive system failure.
Thirty years is a considerable span of time to watch an institution change and evolve. “Not surprisingly,” she says, “technology has caused the most radical changes to campus operations in the way that students learn about us, apply, register, get financial aid, find employment, and interact with instructors and each other. When I first started working at North in Career Services, we typed up paper job notices on an IBM Selectric typewriter. When we made typos, we corrected them with a whiteout tape cartridge. That was also the age of those dreaded 3-part carbon forms that had to be typed and always got so messed up you had to do them over.”
From our perspective thirty years on, what Janet describes seems equivalent to working with animal skins and stone knives. “There were no streaming movies or YouTube, just VHS videotapes and overhead projectors which you wrote on rolls of Mylar,” she recalls. “I went from storing information on gigantic floppy disks to CDs, then thumb drives. With no email, we were typing letters and memos using a Wang word processing machine.”
The culture of North has also changed considerably from her early days and Janet has enjoyed the opportunity to take part in the college’s efforts at accepting and supporting cultural diversity. In particular, she greatly enjoyed partaking in diversity book groups and having the chance to study and discuss topics involving race, equity and inclusion. “I love that we have so much more diversity in the student population now with students from all over the world, especially Eastern Europe, Sudan, Somali and the Middle East.”
Janet’s first campus job was in Career Services, an assignment only budgeted for 10 months out of the year, leaving her to find summer work to make ends meet. “This job involved telephoning employers to develop openings to list for students looking for work, helping students write resumes, and coaching them on interviewing skills and how to conduct an effective job search. I also used to make guest presentations at the Employment Security office on Aurora.” She says some of her most rewarding moments came when a former student or graduate would stop her to say, “Hey! I got that job!”
Janet’s position in Career Services would expand to cover Internships and Worker Retraining. “When my position in Career Services was reduced to 50% time, I took a position in Continuing Education in 2009,” she says. “Continuing Education had recently undergone massive turnover with new leadership. I came in as the new program coordinator and processed tons of registrations.”
With her skill set and work history, at any point along the way Janet could have chosen an alternate career track and joined a different college department, or left the institutional environment all together. Those choices were simply not written in her stars. She realized as a lifelong learner herself, Continuing Education was the place she could make her greatest contribution. She says she found Continuing Education’s positive mission of personal enrichment and lifelong learning something she could easily get behind. “Students are excited and enthused about taking our classes and I liked building a community of learners.” In addition, Janet says she loved the wide range of subject matter taught by many unique and talented instructors. She says she particularly appreciated those teachers with interesting and quirky personalities. Most of all, she is proud to have helped Continuing Education become a sustainable program relying entirely on self-support.
As a programming specialist, Janet got to know a Continuing Education class from its inception, starting with reviewing the course proposal and hearing the instructor’s pitch, to helping them set up class schedules and room assignments. It also gave her a bird’s eye view of what classes she would like to take herself. We’ve lost count of how many classes Janet took during her tenure, but it numbers in the dozens and ranges in subject matter from Birding and Qigong to Poetry and Photography. “One of my favorite classes has been Virginia Paquette’s Abstract Oil Painting and Cold Wax Medium class,” she says. This year Janet’s fondness for painting was rewarded when she entered in the 5th Annual Continuing Education Student Art Show and received an Honorable Mention for her painting, “Spring Walk.”
Obviously, Janet has no plans for slowing down upon her retirement. She just might shift into a higher gear with her next chapter…once she has caught up on several pending issues. “First thing, I want to sleep in and binge watch season 2 of Stranger Things and Mind Hunter,” she says. “I want to keep traveling, far and wide. I can’t get enough of it. I will try my hand at doing Life Coaching for new or soon-to-be retirees to help them figure out what’s next in their lives. 
I have a new grandniece who I’ll be spending lots more time with. And I will continue to do abstract oil painting as well as landscape painting outdoors. I have already signed up for Nancy Mattheiss’ Core Matters Pilates – Level 1 Mat class and the new class taught by Christina Chang called Race and You: For Your Consideration in Fall Quarter.”
Janet says leaving Continuing Education will not be an easy transition, particularly when it comes to leaving her team. “I will dearly miss my Continuing Education colleagues, each of them are good friends and like a second family to me,” she says. “I am proud of the way we have pulled together through thick and thin and worked so hard to be the best program we could be. Each of us made up a great team, each person brings different abilities and talents to the group, truly the sum is much more than the parts alone or however that saying goes!” she says. “A bright future lies ahead!”
We wish Janet the best of everything and will miss her company.