September 5, 2019
Vickie Shields
NSHE Board of Regents
This week, Western Nevada College in Carson City is hosting the quarterly NSHE Board of Regents meeting. You can watch the meeting live using this link. I’ll be seeking Board approval on two major items: our 2020-2025 Strategic Plan and our new BS in Human Health Sciences. It’s exciting to show off all the great work we’ve done in support of these long-term projects and I believe the Board will be impressed with our efforts.  
Visiting Salzburg
In July of this year, I had the pleasure of visiting the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change, where Dr. Chris Harris is on faculty and four Nevada State students were participating. Our amazing students were Samantha Cortez, Ariel Hamilton, Claudia Larios, and Suman Randhawa. The Academy is a three-week immersive learning experience where both undergraduate and graduate students learn about and create critical journalism and engage with media studies from renowned international faculty. There are almost too many highlights to name, but here are two: I attended and was witness to a thought-provoking presentation by Dr. Harris entitled "Soulful Interactions and Fugitive Standpoints: Blue Pragmatism, Spinozan Joy, and the Undercommons." The discussion that followed was so engaging no one wanted it to end! A second highlight for me was the opportunity to give a Salon (seminar talk) on Women in Higher Education for the Academy faculty members. It was a rare opportunity to discuss decision-making processes necessary when moving from faculty member to higher education administrator. It was a joy to have this discussion with talented faculty members who are currently grappling with these very decisions. I hope my words of wisdom will serve as a help to these wonderful faculty members as they move forward in their careers. What a ride! 

Fun Fact: The Academy is held in the historic Schloss Leopoldskron, famous for being the backdrop in the Sound of Music. 
Tony Scinta
Our Mission Fulfillment & Sustainability Self-Evaluation Report was recently submitted to the Northwest Commission on Colleges & Universities. At the heart of this nearly 220-page document is the College’s assessment of whether we fulfilled our institutional mission and achieved our three Core Themes: 1) Promote Student Success, 2) Foster Educational Opportunity, and 3) Strengthen the Community.

To determine this, we assessed whether the College met the “achievement threshold” for a variety of indicators. For example, one indicator was our 6-year graduation rate, and the achievement threshold was that we would observe a yearly 1% increase during the accreditation cycle. Overall, according to our assessment, the College earned 18 of 22 possible points for mission fulfillment, leading to the determination that our mission was “acceptably fulfilled” (the NWCCU will, of course, conduct their own assessment). This summary document provides additional info as well as the complete rubric used for mission fulfillment.

Several upcoming dates are critical for the campus:
  • Tuesday, Sept. 17 & Sept. 24 from 4-6 pm: Gwen and Tony will hold open forums to answer questions and provide additional information regarding the accreditation visit
  • Oct. 9-11: A team of nine people assembled by the NWCCU will visit our campus and engage in discussions with campus constituents as part of their evaluation of the College. This team includes institutional leaders from other colleges and universities under the NWCCU umbrella. 

If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to contact Tony at tony.scinta@nsc.edu or Gwen at gwen.sharp@nsc.edu.
Gwen Sharp
Verify Attendance This Week!
Faculty, don't forget that this Friday, Sept. 6th, at 3 p.m. Pacific is the deadline to verify which students have begun attending your classes; this applies in all classes. Students who haven't begun attending will be administratively dropped from your class. Thank you to Jackie Semana and Anthony Morrone for putting together instructions for verifying attendance. If you'd like more information, check out the enrollment cancellation policy.

Accessibility Tip
Don't use underlining to emphasize text or set headings apart. Screenreaders interpret underlined text as a hyperlink, so save it for that purpose. Use some other method, such as bold text, to emphasize information or indicate a subheading.

Here's a short article with other tips, as well as links to a color blindness simulator and other resources.

Teaching Tip
I came across this brief post about giving good feedback to students. It links to other posts with specific examples for giving effective feedback.

Publications
  • Dr. Zach Woydziak (Chemistry) co-authored an article that has been accepted by the Journal of Organic Chemistry. The first author, Nicole Benson, is one of our students. It's extremely unusual for an undergraduate to be first author on a JOC article. This is an amazing opportunity for her, and we're so proud that NSC faculty are able to offer our students these types of experiences. Congrats to Nicole and Zach!
  • Dr. Sherri Coffman (Nursing) and Dr. Katie Durante (Criminal Justice) wrote an article, "Development of Students' Beliefs about Caring in Nursing: A Longitudinal Study" that has been accepted by the International Journal for Human Caring. Katie participated in this year's Summer Scholarship Institute in part to work on this project, and we're thrilled it paid off!
Gregory Robinson
Dual in the Sun
As of today, we have 1,120 dual credit students enrolled. These students are taking up to 16 credits with NSC while completing high school. This is an impressive leap of over 400 students from last fall. We hope these students have a great experience in these classes and choose NSC when they graduate. Notably, we added five new high school partners this fall. Three schools (Rancho, Shadow Ridge, and Spring Valley) offered only teacher preparation courses.

Jessica Strunck (our new Assistant Director of Admissions), Alyssa Clark, and Andrea Martin did an incredible amount of work to get these students enrolled. We couldn’t have done this without their hard work.

Online Quality Assurance
We've now completed two semesters of a pilot project where small groups of faculty created a rubric and used it to evaluate the online classes of several brave volunteers. We're getting ready to move this project out of the pilot phase and open it up to the entire campus, with a goal of evaluating ten courses this fall. I'll send out more information soon, but I wanted to thank Chris Garrett, the CTLE team, and all the faculty who participated in the pilot program.

Write On!
The Brown Bag Writing Group will meet on Tuesdays and Fridays (beginning Sept. 9th) from 11am to 1pm. Most meetings will be held in LAS 127. All members of the NSC faculty and staff are welcome to join, and we will provide ways for participants to take part remotely. If you’re interested in taking part (even intermittently), please email rachel.herzl-betz@nsc.edu
Stefanie Coleman
Academic Advising is hosting an official launch party for the Scorpion Success Network (Starfish) on Thursday, September 5th, from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm in the LAS building, room 126. Computers will be available for users to login and see the system. Light snacks and refreshments will be provided. If you cannot attend the launch party, members of the advising team will be hosting training sessions throughout September. Also, Academic Advising is welcoming three new advisors to their team: Bailey Evans, Alesha Allen, and Shannon Miller. Welcome to NSC!

All About You Counseling is now on campus four days a week. I would like to give a public thank you to the Student Vets club for graciously allowing All About You to share their space in RSC while Dawson was under construction. All About You Counseling has returned to the Dawson Building, Room 219 A and B. 

Sadly, another mass shooting took place in Odessa, Texas, over the weekend. We are not in a position to address gun rights and gun control. However, we all have a right to feel safe on campus. To add to the announcement posted by Dr. Edith Fernández, students, faculty, and staff should report any suspicious behavior that makes you feel uncomfortable. Please reach out to me and/or Campus Police; If you see something or hear something, say something. No member of our Nevada State College community should feel unsafe. 

I saved the best for last: WELCOME WEEK! Student Life and Academic Advising hosted a few events during Welcome Week and it looked like students (and a few staff members) had a blast. Scavenger hunts, rock climbing, a wing-eating contest, movie night, water balloon fights, Chill on the Hill; all great activities for students to meet other students and feel welcomed.
Sandip Thanki
Fall Enrollment Update
Where do we stand with our fall enrollment? As of September 2nd, we had a headcount of 5,586 students, an increase of over 13% compared to Fall 2018. We expect slight adjustments due to administrative drops and adds, but anticipate a final enrollment of over 5,500.
Key Dates
  • Sept 5: Starfish launch party (3-4:30 p.m.; LAS 126)
  • Sept 6: Deadline to verify student attendance in fall classes (3 pm Pacific)
  • Sept 17: Accreditation open forum (4-6 p.m.; location TBA)
  • Sept 24: Accreditation open forum (4-6 p.m.; location TBA)
  • Sept 27: Academic program assessment day on campus (9-4; Auditorium & NSE rooms)
  • Oct 9-11: NWCCU accreditation site visit
NSC Office of the Provost | 702-992-2663 | http://nsc.edu/provost
Be Bold | Be Great | Be State