We ask anyone who believes they were exposed to COVID to complete a self-report. It is the best tool we have in managing the pandemic. Also, the Office of the Provost created these guidelines to help you manage situations you may face this semester:
Mask Update
The Office of Finance and Business reports that we ordered 5,700 N95 masks from Medline Industries. They are now available at the RSC welcome desk for students, employees, and visitors. Securing the masks quickly required a Herculean effort from our purchasing office and the School of Nursing. Thank you to all who were involved! Also, thank you to Amey Evaluna and her team for creating this flyer about mask guidelines on campus. |
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Welcome back!
Spring is a time of spiritual and earthly renewal. Each year, the spring semester marks the beginning of our efforts to provide the highest quality teaching and learning environment for our Nevada State students. Although we’re all battle-worn from working through the grinding challenges posed by first the Delta variant and now Omicron, I’m nonetheless inspired by all the cars in the parking lot and the buzz in the air of students returning to campus! We find ourselves in a liminal space of both looking ahead and being extremely cautious in the present moment. Holding both at once will take resilience.
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Resilient people understand that stuff happens. (She phrases this point somewhat more colorfully.) Hone argues that everyone faces challenges and uncertainty. “If you are alive,” she says, “you will need to deal with tough times.” Understanding this inevitability keeps us from asking “why me?” when we face adversity.
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Resilient people choose carefully where they select their attention. We’re very aware of threats to our lives and our loved ones. This awareness has an evolutionary purpose – it helps us focus on things that could potentially do us harm. However, to be resilient, we need to recognize the negative while focusing on the positive. In her TEDx Talk, Hone discusses the death of a family member, which could have easily overwhelmed her. To manage her loss, she chose to focus on what she could control, recognizing there are things we cannot. She didn’t diminish the negative emotions she felt, but she found ways to focus on the positives, including the other members of her family.
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Resilient people ask themselves “Is this helping me or harming me?” The next time you are mad at the continuing pandemic or scrolling endlessly on social media, ask yourself this question. Considering the answer “puts you back in the driver’s seat. It gives you some control over your decision-making.” According to Hone, this single strategy has been the one that has generated the most positive feedback from others.
Professional Development Day
On Friday, February 11th, we will hold a professional development day for faculty and staff from 9 a.m. to 12:30 pm, with a boxed lunch to take away at the end. We will be honoring our newest faculty and staff hires and providing welcome remarks. President Pollard will also address the group. The keynote speaker, Dan Mosley, is a member of the Northern Paiute Nation and a graduate of UNR. He has worked with the Pyramid Lake Paiute for many years, primarily in water quality, environmental, and fishery programs. Dan currently serves as the Executive Director for Pyramid Lake Fisheries. His talk, “Climate Change: Re-establishing a Native Fishery During Challenging Times,” complements our Common Read: Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World.
Please RSVP by Monday, January 31st. We have modified the usual schedule to have a half-day event with either outdoor or boxed takeaway lunch.
Save the Date(s)
The Board of Regents meeting on March 3-4, 2022 will be hosted at Nevada State. Most sessions will be held in the CEB.
Policy Updates
- The policies on Merit are on their way to the Chancellor and Council of Presidents for final review. Chancellor Rose will be taking the policies from all NSHE institutions to the BOR meeting in March for formal adoption. I want to thank the Merit Task Force for excellent work and a heavy lift. I give a special shout-out to Faculty Senate Chair Samantha Jewell for her superior math and Excel skills.
- Dean’s Council is currently revising the Faculty Workload Policy to serve as a cross-reference to the Alternative Work Arrangement Policy. The first draft should be available at the end of January for faculty and executive input.
- Taskforce work and discussions on the ECC and Summer Pay policies continue.
- Revised Standards of Academe for the Schools and the Library have been submitted and are currently under review in the Provost’s office.
Budget
Budget conversations about strategic initiatives and academic/administrative faculty positions continue with the Dean's Council and Provost Office units. The ranked budget initiatives are due from the Provost’s Office to the Budget Office by January 27th. I am pleased that we committed to aligning our budgeting process with our strategic plan. It is the right thing to do and is also a major step in addressing the recommendations from NWCCU.
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As we marked the first day of a new semester, I saw something truly remarkable: a lack of parking spaces. That’s right, a sight unseen on campus for literal years – and seeming decades – has returned to us once more. Students are back.
I don’t make that observation lightly. I know we need to remain vigilant, and that we must not only be Back & Bold, but safe and circumspect (which, as a slogan, doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue). But I also have to acknowledge that this is a critical semester for the college, one that brings us another step closer to the best version of Nevada State (and moves us one step further away from the most challenging time in my 15 years at NSC).
The lead up to this spring has been a bumpy road, to say the least. On Nov. 15, roughly two weeks into registration for the spring semester, most of our students remained unvaccinated and enrollment lagged far behind the previous year in terms of headcount (-18.7%!!) and credit hours (-13.8%). Fast forward two months and the vast majority of our students are vaccinated, and the campus has significantly narrowed the deficit for headcount (-2.7%) and credits hours (-0.4%).
It’s not exactly where we want to be, of course, but it’s a significant improvement over where we were (or even where we could have been), and it was no small feat to get here. In that light, I want to close this “update” by once again thanking the many people who worked hard and worked smart to improve the fortunes of the college.
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Grants & Publications
- Angela Brommel (Arts & Culture) received a $6,500 grant from the City of Henderson to support the commission of a mural at the Raker Building.
- Lance Hellman (Human Health Sciences) applied for a $20,000 RAIN grant to support his research, as well as a $48,000 Pilot PLUS grant. If approved, these grants would also fund undergraduate researchers.
- Chris Garrett (CTLE Director) co-authored a book chapter, "Higher Education Faculty Certificate Program: Foundations of Reflective Teaching," that is being published in The Palgrave International Handbook of Academic Professional Development Centers, edited by Otherine Neisler.
Spring CTLE Offerings
The CTLE is offering nine FLCs in spring 2022. Please click here for the list, descriptions, and application. FLCs meet for about an hour once every 3-4 weeks for discussions on selected topics. Most FLCs include a free book as well as opportunities to engage in interdisciplinary dialogues and to share both our successes and challenges as teachers. The application deadline is January 27.
Midcycle Accreditation Report
Our next accreditation report, the Midcycle Evaluation, will be due in late summer, with a site visit occurring in late October 2022. I'm starting to work on the report and reaching out to some units to give feedback on language or update key metrics. Thank you to the Office of Institutional Research for all their help pulling data!
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Meetings This Spring
With our return to campus this semester, you may be wondering what meetings will look like now. We don’t have any official college-wide guidelines, so as a meeting organizer, you have some flexibility. If you want your group to meet in-person, try to schedule a room that allows for appropriate distancing. Also, make sure that your invitation and agenda state that in-person attendance is required since we’ve all gotten into the habit of logging in for meetings.
If you can complete all the required tasks without meeting in-person, you can continue to schedule meetings in a virtual format, using Zoom or Teams. You can also schedule meetings in a hybrid format, where some committee members are present and others join remotely. Keep in mind that in a hybrid format, meeting participants could be present on campus but not necessarily in the same room, reducing the overall number of people in close proximity. Also, meetings in a hybrid format require a little more preparation to allow remote attendees to participate. To help you manage this brave new world of meeting planning, we created these meeting guidelines.
Also, you may notice OWL 360 cameras in all our conference rooms. They literally make owl sounds when you turn them on. Check out the video below for a quick tutorial on using them. The OWL 360 camera is helpful for meetings where not everyone is present. If you want to use an OWL camera but don't have one in your room, you can check them out by writing to support@nsc.edu.
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NVTESOL Symposium
On Friday, February 11th, and Saturday, February 12th, we are hosting the NVTESOL Symposium on the second floor of the CEB building. It is an excellent opportunity to participate in sessions, learn about bilingual education, and meet other educators. NVTESOL defines itself as a "community of educators, researchers, and stakeholders that are working towards serving the population of emergent bilinguals in the state of Nevada."
The theme of the Symposium is "Getting to the heart of bilingualism: Conversations on current trends in diversity and language education." This event is FREE, and speakers include Nevada State's Associate Dean of Education, Shartriya Collier, and Dr. Luz Yadira Herrera, author of En Comunidad: Lessons for Centering the Voices.
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Welcome Back, Scorpions!
We are excited to see you on campus. We are still living under the umbrella of COVID but we’re going to make lemonade, lemon chicken, lemon sorbet, and lemon icebox pies from the lemons COVID is giving to the world. We can still provide a great Nevada State experience safely on campus. Students are receiving their Office of Student Life (OSL) passports (and swag), which incentivize the importance of engaging with the college outside of the classroom. The process is simple: attend an event and receive a stamp. Once a student's passport is full of stamps, they increase their chances of receiving a great prize.
Events for the rest of Welcome Week and Beyond;
- Wednesday, January 19th - Back & Bold Involvement Fair and BBQ
- Thursday, January 20th - esports Rocket League Tournament
- Friday, January 21st - Movie Night. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
- Saturday, Jan 22nd - Outdoor Adventure Series: Hiking at Calico Tanks Trail
Visit BeEngaged.nsc.edu for all of the most up-to-date involvement opportunities and the event schedule.
You can’t win it if you’re not in it!
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Student Wellness Services
The Student Wellness Team is here and ready to support all students! If you know a student who is struggling with hunger, safety, mental health worries, or ANY other concerns, encourage them to contact case manager Laura Hinojosa. To schedule a counseling appointment, email: counseling@nsc.edu Together, we can help meet those needs. Call 702.992.2514 | Website: www.nsc.edu/care
Transportation!
MLK Day of Service
I hope everyone took some time on Monday to either reflect on the reason for the holiday or provide some type of service for someone in need. My favorite quote from Dr. King was always a source of inspiration when I wanted to stop or quit anything that I perceived as too hard or too difficult:
“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is going to be a great semester! See you soon and stay safe!
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Enrollment
As of January 18th, our spring enrollment consists of 53,046 total credit hours, which is less than a percent lower than our enrollment last year on this day. These credit hours derive from an overall headcount of 6,833, which is about 3% lower than last year. This suggests that our students currently have a slightly higher course load than they did last spring. These numbers are close to our final count, but remember that they are still fluctuating as students add and drop classes.
Retention
For our first-year students starting in Fall 2021, current retention into spring is about 82%, similar to the retention rate of our Fall 2020 first-year students.
Graduates
Most of the Fall 2021 degrees are now posted. We have graduated 301 students, 22% more than last fall. This is fairly close to our projection of 300 discussed in the November newsletter.
Graduation Rate
Our most recent 6-year graduation rate for our first-time, full-time cohort starting in Fall 2015 is 29%. This is almost double the 15% rate we had for our Fall 2010 cohort. The 6-year graduation rate for the Fall 2016 cohort is already at 28% and we still have our upcoming Spring and Summer graduations, which can only further boost that number.
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1.21 - Movie Night. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
1.22 - Outdoor Adventure Series: Hiking at Calico Tanks Trail
2.11 - Professional Development Day, RSC Ballrooms
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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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