Strategic Planning
At the risk of sounding like a one note melody, I would like to give you an update on strategic planning efforts.
1. I have sent out invitations to members of our campus community to serve on the first-ever Strategic Planning Council for Nevada State College. The Strategic Planning Council will be an on-going standing committee in charge of strategic planning coordination, oversight, implementation, and assessment. Active participation is not only critical to the strength of the College, it is also very much appreciated. The planning process is our way of prioritizing the activities and resources that support our mission. The Strategic Planning Council will support and monitor the planning process as it moves through various stages.
The composition of the membership includes:
- 3 Executive leaders
- 3 Deans or Associate Deans
- 3 Academic faculty representatives
- 3 Administrative faculty representatives
- 1 Student representative
- 1 Classified employee representative
Council leadership:
- The Provost and Executive Vice President will serve as Chair of the Council (Vickie Shields)
- The Project Manager will be appointed by the Provost (Sita Sales)
- The Director of Institutional Research will be a standing member (Sandip Thanki)
2. Each of the five Themes/strategic goals of the Strategic Plan has been assigned an Executive Sponsor:
- Students – Tony Scinta
- Organizational Culture – Amber Lopez-Lasater
- Curriculum & Instruction – Vickie Shields
- Growth and Capacity – Kevin Butler
- Community Engagement & Economic Development – Edith Fernandez
3. Sponsors are currently putting together work teams who will be developing the major initiatives for each Theme/strategic goal. The work team will be provided with all the notes and input thus far in strategic planning sessions relating to their theme/strategic goal. The group will then develop initiatives and prioritize them. Ideally, the work teams will deliver a final product by December 14th, 2018.
4. Sponsors, with their working groups, will run at least one more town hall meeting to gather more input from interested constituencies in November 2018. Be on the look-out for dates and times for these meetings.
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Strategic Planning – Festival of Feedback
To enhance our efforts with institutional and student life strategic planning, we will be soliciting input from campus stakeholders during the week of November 4th. This “Festival of Feedback” will include open sessions on several days of that week, at different times of day, to give anyone on campus another chance to share their thoughts on strategic initiatives regarding student life and the “Students” theme of the overall strategic plan (particularly our students, who have not yet had a great opportunity to give feedback on our comprehensive strategic plan). The sessions will build on the already strong foundation established for both of these areas through prior work and feedback (including a campus-wide workshop at fall convocation).
Sometimes We Love Audits
NSHE recently completed an audit of our transfer agreements with CSN, and they provided encouraging news all around. On the one hand, they were generally quite pleased with the agreements, which pave a largely seamless pathway for CSN students to transfer to NSC without a loss of credit. On the other hand, the recommendations they provided should help us improve both our transfer pipeline and our relationship with CSN, which is great news for students with an associate’s degree who want to earn a 4-year degree from NSC. My thanks to our transfer team, led by Andrea Martin, Erin Hall, and Lee Christopher, for their work on this initiative.
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I am out of town until October 21st. My responses to email will be delayed this week.
Publications, Honors, & Awards
IRB
Sarah Bryans-Bongey (SOE) will serve as the IRB Chair this year. I greatly appreciate her willingness to take on this critical role for our campus.
Local Conference
UNLV’s annual
Conference on Academic Research in Education (CARE) will be held February 25-26, 2019, at the Flamingo Hotel. The deadline for submitting proposals for the conference is November 7th. They accept presentations on a broad array of education-related topics.
Policy Library
I am slowly building a policy library on the portal. As new campus-wide policies are approved, and as existing policies are converted to an accessible format, they are given a tracking number and uploaded to the portal. This isn't yet a comprehensive collection of all campus-level policies, but will grow as we convert and add them.
To access the policy library, login to the portal, go to the Documents tab along the top and select the Policies folder. Policies are divided into several categories (Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Public Safety, and so on).
Student CARE Team
The 2018-19 CARE Team members are Laura Carroll (Case Manager), me, Roberta Miranda (LAS), Sandi Patton (DRC), Andra Scano (SON), Vanessa Mari (SOE), Baden Fox (SON Student Support Services), and Anthony Morrone (Financial Aid). Thanks to everyone who is serving, and to all the faculty, staff, and students who have made referrals.
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Henrietta Lacks Week
We had a terrific series of events on October 4th and October 6th in support of the Common Read. Highlights included a panel from our biology students, two days of HeLa cell viewing, an incredible talk on organ donation, and a powerful presentation from NSC’s Black Student Organization (BSO). Thank you to the students and the Common Read Committee for all their hard work.
We’re working on showing the film adaptation of
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks during the week of November 12th. I’ll send out specific dates soon.
This Disruptive Norm
I spent much of last week at a conference at Point Park University, learning about the ways that small colleges support online classes and programs. One of the more helpful documents we reviewed is titled
Online College Students 2018: Comprehensive Data on Demands and Preferences, which makes some useful observations using a survey of 1,500 past, present, and prospective fully-online college students. If you are interested in having more discussions about the ways we're exploring online learning, please feel free to
write or stop by RSC 356.
Our First Master's Degree
In two weeks, we'll start accepting applications for our MEd in Speech-Language Pathology. Congratulations to
Dr. Angel Ball and her team.
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How does online enrollment relate to student success? The following charts show 1-year retention or eventual graduation for three sets of students (Fall 2013 to Fall 2017): all students, freshmen only and freshmen with HS GPA below 2.5. In all three, students who mixed online classes with in-person classes show higher 1-year retention or eventual graduation rates.
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NSC Office of the Provost | 702-992-2663 | http://nsc.edu/provost
Be Bold | Be Great | Be State
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