Updates from the Office of the Provost

November 17, 20222

Vickie Shields

Exploration of Statewide Mission with Truckee Meadows Community College

On Wednesday, November 9th, a small but mighty contingent of Nevada State representatives met with members of TMCC to explore future partnerships to benefit both institutions and further fulfill our statewide mission. President Pollard, Erin Keller, Edith Fernández, Tony Scinta, and I met with President Karin Hilgersom, Provost Jeffrey Alexander, representatives of the Visual Media program, and our Education advisor, Vannessa Nicholas, to discuss how we might capitalize on the success of the Visual Media 3+1 program we already share with TMCC.

Future programs we discussed included possible collaborations with Business/Leadership, Criminal Justice, Allied Health programs, and stackable credentials. We discussed degree completion programs where our commitment would be completely online and situations where we may hire faculty members to work on the TMCC campus. After our lunch meeting, we were treated to a campus tour led by an engaging TMCC student.

Tony Scinta

I have to level with you – this newsletter update feels like one of those filler episodes of a TV show when it seems like the writers just couldn’t figure out how to move the story along. Part of the issue is that I wasn’t especially grounded these past two weeks – literally – with a 3-day stint to an accreditation conference in Seattle and a one-day trip to Reno for a meeting with TMCC. And part of it is that this sounds eerily like the last update I did (“Didn’t we see this episode already?”). If there’s a silver lining, it’s that it was unusually sunny in Seattle, as you can see in this photo I took.

The Travel Combo

My recent jet-setting ways involved the aforementioned visit to Seattle for the annual meeting of the Northwest Commission on Colleges & Universities (NWCCU). Two takeaways: 1) the accreditors seem to be supporting an assessment approach that relies on a methodology that is less punishingly rigorous so we can put more effort into implementing improvements; 2) we may want to consider finally submitting Nevada State for one of their Beacon awards because our achievements seem to be at least on par with this year’s winners, if not better.

I also was part of our leadership crew that visited with TMCC leadership in snow-dappled Reno, and we have some ideas for potential partnerships that could work out great for both institutions (more on that later).

AASCU Project

Our student success project with the American Association of State Colleges & Universities (AASCU) is chugging along, with the latest development being the administration of a survey on different aspects of the college. If you got the survey, please know that your contributions are both anonymous and voluntary. If you didn’t get the survey and want to know why you weren’t invited to the party, let me know and I can provide additional info before sending you a link.

Workforce Development

This endeavor is ongoing, but I haven’t mentioned it in a while. Tom Nicholas is hard at work on the development of infrastructure for our workforce programming (e.g., a Canvas instance, web resources) and some initial programming, including a potential collaboration with Nevada Partners.

Accreditation Happenings

We received an initial draft of the NWCCU evaluator's report on the institution. It was a nice balance of acknowledging our achievements and institutional upsides, while also accomplishing its primary goal, which is to provide constructive guidance on what we should work on as we approach our next mission fulfillment evaluation in 2026. More details will follow when we finalize the report.

Gwen Sharp

Publications, Awards, & Grants

Kayla Bieser (Biology) is co-author on the article "The I.3.2 Developmental Mutant Has a Single Nucleotide Deletion in the Gene Centromere Identifier," published in microPublication Biology. The authors include 14 (!) NSC undergrads. Separately, the NSF Division of Undergraduate Education E-News Digest recently highlighted the IUSE project Kayla participates in.
Emily Hoover (English) won honorable mention in Cleaver Magazine's Flash Lightning Contest for her flash fiction "Mosaic for My Mother." And her poem "Let's Be Like the Internet" will be published in A Body You Can Talk To: An Anthology of Contemporary Disability.
June Eastridge (Nursing) learned that the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) has selected the SON as a pilot school for the AACN grant, "A Competency-Based Approach to Leadership Development and Resilience for Student Nurses." The grant is funded by Johnson & Johnson.
El Hachemi Bouali (Geosciences) got notice of $38,000 in awarded UROP funding. It will provide scholarships to students to engage in undergraduate research.
Irene Cepeda (HSI Grant Director) was named the Nevada Association of School Boards First-term Trustee of the Year.
Laura Hinojosa (Case Manager) received a $125,000 NSHE Mental Health Services Pilot subaward to support mental health services on campus.

Spring Professional Development Day Update

Our spring development day will be February 3rd. The keynote speaker is Dr. Anita Tijerina Revilla, from Cal State Los Angeles. She studies Chicanx/Latinx activism and experiences in higher education as well as feminist, queer, and immigrant rights activism in Las Vegas and L.A. Thank you to Rosemary Q. Flores and Irene Cepeda for the suggestion!

Responsible Conduct of Research Course

Our CITI subscription, which we use for human subjects protections training, also offers courses on responsible conduct of research. If you're overseeing student researchers, this might be a useful course for them to take. The courses cover topics such as conflicts of interest, data management and privacy, scholarly misconduct, plagiarism, and other topics. You can access CITI through the portal.

Thinking of Submitting a Grant Proposal?

Here's a handy timeline of our internal deadlines and processes.

Gregory Robinson

LNAP is this Friday!

You might be thinking: I hope the students have a great time, but this isn't an event for me as a distinguished Nevada State employee. You'd be a little right, but not entirely. LNAP is definitely a student-centered event on campus, but the students would love to see you. Cheer them on! Give them some sage advice. Tell them stories about how when you went to college, you wrote papers by hand and only the lucky kids with Commodore 64s got to submit typed work.

Writing Intensive Classes

A few years ago, we began a writing intensive classes program, where faculty from multiple disciplines altered their classes to make writing a stronger component of the class. Faculty received training in teaching writing, a reduced class size, and an embedded Writing Specialist. This was a successful program, but difficult to sustain with our available resources. We haven't forgotten about it though. Dr. Herzl-Betz and I are working on a grant proposal to bring it back and make it even better. As we did previously, this program will be open to all faculty and will make intentional strides to improve student writing across campus.

Core Curriculum and ELOs

My goal for this fall was to collect Essential Learning Outcome proposals for 15 Core Curriculum classes. That may have been overly ambitious, but I'm still committed to getting them done by the end of the semester. If you've got a class that you'd like to keep in the Core, this is a great time to complete a proposal and send it my way. Here are a few helpful links:

Key Dates

November 18: Long Night Against Procrastination

NSC Office of the Provost | 702-992-2663 | http://nsc.edu/provost

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