Nevada State Has Adopted Core Values!
After numerous hours of discussion and voluminous campus-wide input, NSC's leadership put their stamp of approval on the new core values for the College. Core values are the fundamental beliefs of a person or organization. These guiding principles dictate behavior and reflect prevailing attitudes in an organization. Core values also help organizations to determine if they are on the right path and fulfilling their goals by creating an unwavering guide. Core values are not marketing slogans. The new core values will begin to appear in internal materials and documents as early as this spring.
Excellence in Action!
Embrace the Journey
We foster a culture of high-achieving teams and empower individuals to be the difference.
Blaze Trails
If we think there is a better way, we look at the research, trust our instincts, and try it!
Climb Mountains
We aspire to be experts in transforming the lives of our students and their families. We strive toward excellence in our jobs and advancement in our careers.
Build Bridges
Diversity is our strength. We treat each other with care and respect and help one another be successful.
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Standards of Academe Taskforce Membership is Assembled
The taskforce is comprised of:
- Chair: Gwen Sharp
- 3 Deans (or Associate Dean as designee)
- Education: Shartriya Collier
- LAS: Jonathan Dunning
- Nursing: Doug Turner
- Library Director: Nathaniel King
- 3 faculty members (1 elected from each School)
- Education: Sarah Bryans-Bongey
- LAS: Joanna Shearer
- Nursing: Sherri Coffman
- 1 Library faculty member: Tiffany LaMaistre
- 1 Faculty Senate representative: Serge Ballif
The charge to the taskforce includes, but is not restricted to, the following considerations:
- The level of standardization across all four Standards of Academe;
- An in-depth look at how teaching evaluations are and should be used;
- Improving the definitions of excellence in pedagogy;
- Provisions in scholarship for community engaged scholarship (also called Scholarship of Engagement);
- How to evaluate administrators who are also tenure-track faculty when they go up for promotion;
- How to weigh grant activities: small grants, major grants, PI responsibilities, director responsibilities, etc.;
- Making sure that all four Standards have clearly delineated criteria for promotion from Associate to Full Professor;
- The degree to which this Standards of Academe Taskforce need to account for the addition of graduate programs.
2019 Nevada State College Organizational Climate Survey
The 2019 Organizational Climate Survey will run from March 9-23, 2019. Watch for portal announcements and emails directing you to the survey link. Participants can print the last page of the survey to get 10% off of 1 purchase at the Scorpion Café in the Rogers Student Center. The goal is for 100% of employees to take this survey. This includes full-time, part-time, administrative faculty, academic faculty, classified staff, and student workers.
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Fireside Campus Chat
Earlier in the semester, I announced my bold intention to steal Vickie’s idea and hold extended office hours around campus. There won’t be an actual fireside, per se, but the term reflects the hoped-for feel of the conversation – an easy place where you can ask me about things in my purview or give me insights that I need to know.
The first chat will be Tuesday, March 12 from 4-6 pm in LAS 127 (chosen in the hope that the “common time” will be available to most), and topics can include just about anything (except confidential matters, of course). Potential areas of interest include:
- The planned curriculum in data science/informatics;
- The past, present and future of academic advising;
- Enrollment management considerations (recruitment, retention, admission standards, etc.);
- Strategic planning stuff;
- Pretty much any old thing because it has been too long since we last spoke (okay, this one is mostly for me).
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Undergraduate Research and Creative Works Conference Accepting Abstracts
This Friday, March 8th, is the deadline for students to submit abstracts for the 2019 URCWC. They should go to
urcwc.weebly.com for information and to submit.
Presentations
- Several faculty and staff will present at the 3rd Annual Intermountain Teaching for Learning Conference, held March 21-22 at Utah State University:
- Vanessa Mari (Education) and Katie Durante (Criminal Justice), "Using Escape Rooms to Engage Students in Discussion."
- Becky Cash (History), "If you Built It, They Will Come: Scaffolding Writing Tasks for Student Success."
- Christine Draper (CTLE), "Refresh Your Lecture with Active Learning Techniques."
- Heather Lang-Cassera (LAS), "How Does that Relate to This? Activating Prior Knowledge."
- Siearra Adare-Tasiwoopa Api (CTLE), "Refresh Personalized Learning with Canvas MasteryPaths."
- Chris Garrett (CTLE), "Reinforce Learning in Discussions through Effectively Responding to Student Contributions."
Summer Institute Options
We have three institutes scheduled for summer 2019. Click the link for details and submission instructions:
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Gateways Steering Committee
NSC has a long history of helping students transition from high school into college, and we’ve received frequent recognition for our efforts at conferences and
in articles like this one. To coordinate these efforts across campus, we created the
Gateways Steering Committee (which Tony calls “Greatways”). This semester, the Gateways Steering Committee began exploring learning communities that connect a college success course with a content course, based on the LEAP model at the University of Utah. In U of U’s LEAP model, a student
signs up for a themed community, like the Engineering LEAP, Arts LEAP, or Pre-Law LEAP. Students in each group take two courses, one in fall and one in spring. The courses are connected by the theme, the instructor, and dedicated peer support. To develop something similar, subcommittees of the Gateways group are discussing the kinds of themes we might use, types of peer support we can integrate, and other ways we can increase support for our first-year students.
I’d like to thank these committee members for all their work so far: Cristina Caputo, Dawn Butler, Alena Principato, Myra Infante-Sheridan, Alicia LaMotte, Nathan Silva, Gwen Sharp, Nicole Wesley, Danette Barber, Bree Pitkin, Alex Kunkle, and Phil LaMotte.
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Most majors at NSC require 120 credits to complete. One of the Complete College America (CCA) strategies (appropriately called "15 to Finish") is to encourage students to enroll in 15 credits a semester (or 30 credits per year, including summers). Since our own data suggests that students who enroll in 15 credits per semester perform better and are retained at higher rates, NSC adopted 15 to Finish in fall 2014. The graph below shows that a higher percentage of our students are now completing 25 or more credits in a year, which is positively impacting our overall 1-year retention rate.
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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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