Dear Campus Community,
We are pleased to announce that the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) has formally reaffirmed the accreditation of Nevada State College. This is an outcome that all of us can be proud of, and it stands as a genuine testament to the many excellent contributions made by our faculty and staff. It affirms what we have done well as an institution and also provides critical guidance on where we need to improve.
The
full memo confirms the four commendations and two recommendations bestowed upon the College in the initial NWCCU evaluation report. In the coming months, we will engage in additional conversations with the campus about how we can address the recommendations in preparation for our Fall 2022 Mid-Cycle Review.
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Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
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Remembering and Celebrating Dawn Butler
As friends, colleagues, and students will attest, Dawn was simply radiant. She was positive, playful, and deeply committed to Nevada State. Her sacrifices in the service of others will not be forgotten.
To honor Dawn and her contributions to campus, we will hold a campus-wide memorial next week. This will be an opportunity to share stories about Dawn, write notes in her memory, and celebrate a life well-lived. We are working to schedule this event during a time that allows Dawn’s family to attend.
If you have photos of Dawn that you’d like to add to a memory book, please
upload them here. You can also add stories to the memory book by contacting
Tricia Ramos. Once it is completed, we’ll give the book to Dawn’s family.
This fall, we will purchase two bricks in Dawn’s honor with her name and the phrase “Scorpion Forever” engraved into them. One brick will be placed near the scorpion sculpture on campus and the other will be presented to Dawn’s family.
For those of you interested in sending Dawn’s family a card, please bring them to one of the following contacts by 10am on Thursday, March 12th:
Ivelina Petkova in LAS 142
Shantell Torrence in KAB 312
Leo Peña in the Provost’s Office
I feel fortunate to have known Dawn and I’m proud to be a part of a community that helped her feel loved and supported. Together, we’ll keep Dawn’s memory alive by staying positive, being kind, and helping our students achieve their dreams.
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One Step at a Time
No groundbreaking updates this week, but still some encouraging progress mixed with a few places where I wish we had gained more ground.
Progress
- Continued to help guide the search for a new NSC Dean of Nursing with the support of a superb search committee.
- Worked with faculty and staff – including Alicia LaMotte and Shantal Marshall at the forefront – to develop an outline for a summer success program that would be mandatory for incoming first-year students with a high school GPA below 2.5 (and encouraged for other students).
- Assisted with the final preparations of a proposed Bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Education. Vickie presented it to the Academic Affairs Council and it passed without any objections. Many thanks to the great team in the School of Education who worked magic on a tight schedule.
Less Progress
- Enrollment management initiatives are moving along (a little), but I’m doubling down on efforts to make more substantive progress in the near future.
- Partnerships with CSN and WNC need a shot in the arm, particularly our plans to establish a dual admissions program with each institution.
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Thank You
The past few days have been quite difficult, as we learned of Dawn Butler's passing and began to deal with the many tasks involved in making necessary notifications, supporting her family and students, finding replacement instructors for this spring, and many other responsibilities. I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to everyone who has stepped up to help out in one way or another. In particular, thank you to Stefanie Coleman, Laura Hinojosa, Shantal Marshall, Adam Davis, Lance Hignite, Joanna Shearer, Amey Evaluna, Edith Fernández, Betty Kim, Yecenia Gonzalez, Danette Barber, Brian Chongtai, Bill Miller, Anthony Morrone, Heather Lang-Cassera, Elia Curls, Tricia Ramos, LaNelda Rolley, Stefany Sigler, Leo Meyer, and Rick Briscoe and the Facilities team for everything you've done.
Volunteers Needed
We're recruiting judges and moderators for this year's Undergraduate Research and Creative Works Conference. This is a great opportunity to support and encourage our students. All faculty and staff are welcome!
The conference is Friday, April 24th. You don't need to be available for the entire day; we'll assign you to a session that fits with your availability. Sign up
here.
Policy Updates
Grants
We got word that two projects were funded:
- Shartriya Collier (Associate Dean, School of Education) got word that the Nevada Department of Education has approved her grant submission! The project, Sankofa Abodo, will provide $77,000 for a one-year program to support African American students interested in Education degrees.
- Kayla Bieser (Biology) has received a $10,000 INBRE Pilot Grant to fund her project, "Development of Research-Based Bioinformatics Curriculum."
In addition, Melanie Murray (Education) coordinated a team from SOE as they developed a proposal for another Department of Education institutional HSI grant. If funded, the grant will provide $2.8 million over five years to support additional teacher pipeline programs. A tremendous thank you to Dennis Potthoff, Shartriya Collier, Irene Cepeda, and Rosemary Flores for their efforts and input on the project, to Sandip Thanki for providing a wealth of data, and to Christine González, our Grants Specialist, for helping manage the project, tracking down necessary information, and taking care of all the small tasks that are part of submitting a federal grant.
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The Nepantla Mural is Coming Soon!
Nepantla has a busy semester of events planned. One of the most exciting projects is the creation of a new mural, which will be located in the LAS Building. It will be unveiled in May.
Click on this calendar to see some of the other scheduled Nepantla programming.
Common Read
The Common Read Committee looked at all of the faculty/staff suggestions and debated the merits of several possible choices for this year’s Common Read. We hope to have next year’s book ready to announce at Convocation on March 20th. We're also working on scheduling some events to close out our current Common Read,
Educated by Tara Westover.
Write Away
One of the benefits of working in the Writing Center is the opportunity to do writing scholarship:
- Nicole Benson, Eduardo Mabilog, Eimy Vasquez, and Torrie Martin successfully presented their research at the Southern California Writing Centers Association Conference at UCLA on February 29th.
- Hugo Virrueta, Keith Wasserstein-Monsanto, Kayla Arceo, and Riayn Pyne received a $1000 national grant to present a roundtable at the International Writing Centers Association Collaborative in Milwaukee, WI on March 25th.
- Hannah Guenthoer, Brittany Cox, Kayla Arceo, Sandy Vasquez, Breanna Tavernini, Eduardo Mabilog, and Dr. Rachel Herzl-Betz will present their respective research projects at the Conference on College Composition and Communication March 26th-28th.
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Advising Updates
Advising Holds
Advising has placed registration holds on 1,498 students!
Registration for the summer and fall terms begins April 6th based on the number of credits earned (seniors register first, first-year students last). From now until then, Advising is offering one-on-one appointments with students to remove their advising hold. During Registration Week (April 6th-10th), Advising will offer walk-in appointments on a first-come, first-serve basis from 8:30 am until 4 pm, but please advise any students that walk-in week typically can see wait times of 1-2 hours.
Registration Week occurs during Spring Break; please advise students that other campus resources may have reduced hours during this time.
Staffing Changes
Shannon Miller is now part of the School of Education advising team. She joins Esmeralda Carretero Rodriquez as the second dedicated Education major advisor. Clare Harris, who currently works in the Office of the Registrar, will join the AAC as an advisor on the STEM Team on March 19th. Welcome, Clare!
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DRC College Night
Sharneé Walker and her DRC team hosted a very successful College Night on February 27th. The event is a partnership between CCSD/CSN and NSC for CCSD students with Individualized Educational Plans to learn about services available at both colleges. Seventeen families attended our event! Congratulations to the DRC for planning a successful night.
Bring a Donation to Convocation
Convocation is Friday, March 20th, and the CARE Team invites faculty and staff to bring a donation to help the NSC Food Pantry. While all non-perishable food items are welcome, we are well stocked with canned vegetables right now.
This list provides suggested items. Donation bins will be available in the ballroom.
NSC’s Got Talent
On March 5th, the Office of Student Life will host NSC’s Got Talent! Come out and support our talented students. The event starts promptly at 5:30 in the Ballroom.
Women’s History Month
This month NSC is celebrating Women’s History Month with weekly celebrations. We just finished our first event - a panel on women in leadership moderated by NSSA President Nicola Opfer. The next event is the Women's History Month Luncheon.
On this Day in Women’s History
On March 3rd, 1913, the Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC, gathered over 8,000 women to demand a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote.
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Many of our efforts across campus help students be successful in their classes. Now that we’ve tracked DWFI rates (that is, the percent of students earning below a C- or withdrawing from a course) across several years, we can see how this investment in student success has produced some impressive results.
This video shows enrollment in courses on the y-axis and DFWI rates on the x-axis for the past 10 fall semesters. It is limited to degree-seeking students in 100-level classes or higher. To ensure we don't skew the data with courses with small enrollments, the minimum enrollment is set to 20. Watch how the middle line (representing the average DWFI rate) moves to the left over time! Our DFWI rate average began at 22% in Fall 2010 and decreased gradually. By Fall 2019, it was at 13%.
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- 3/5: NSC Talent Show, 5:30-8:30 pm, RSC Ballroom
- 3/9: Deadline for students to submit a project to the Undergraduate Research & Creative Works Conference
- 3/10: Women's History Luncheon, 11:30 am-1:00 pm, RSC Ballroom
- 3/11: Deadline to RSVP with lunch preference for Spring Convocation
- 3/19: Women’s Suffrage Speaker, 12:00-1:00 pm, KAB Auditorium
- 3/19: Women's History Movie Screening, 3:30-6:30 pm, KAB Auditorium
- 3/20: Spring Convocation. Keynote by Dr. Lisa Wade, "Hookup Culture on Residential Campuses: What We Know, What to Expect"
- 3/30: Block Party, 12:00-3:00 pm, RSC Plaza
- 4/13: Seed Award applications due
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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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