Amongst the protesters in Washington DC, one woman’s handwriting on a makeshift cardboard sign reads simply, “Ruth’s Worst Nightmare.” Indeed, RBG fought her entire life and legal career to protect the reproductive rights of girls and women. Countless feminist scholars have raised their voices and staked their careers on extolling the wisdom, the common sense, of allowing women to choose for themselves what happens to and upon their bodies. I spoke with a woman veteran in Sea-Tac airport last week about the state of the world. She kept iterating to me that “freedom is not free. No, freedom is not free.” What do you think Margaret Atwood is thinking in her Canadian wisdom while witnessing the fallout for her sisters to the South after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs Wade? The Handmaid’s Tale was supposed to be cautionary fiction of a dystopia that “could be” if we turn our heads and forget that “freedom isn’t free.” Why, instead, does the decision haunt us as if we are living the Handmaid’s Tale's origin story? I weep for my daughters, who are terrified for the future of their baby girls. A moral and political correction will come, but how long will it take? What other rights will be swept up in the Court decision’s wake?

As of July 1, 2022, the revised ECC policy (HR 4) is approved and in effect. The revisions address several concerns faculty and staff had with the existing policy. Perhaps most importantly, we created an ECC Minimum salary of $75,000 to use in place of the base salary for anyone who earns $74,999 or less. This raises the ECC cap for those at lower salaries. The cap for A-Contract employees was raised to 25% of base salary or ECC minimum (whichever is higher), and the cap for B-Contract employees is set at 67% of base salary or ECC Minimum over the entire fiscal year. B-Contract employees will no longer have to separate out different academic terms when calculating their ECC total.

Thank you to the ECC revision committee members, Kevin Butler, Eric Gilliland, Gwen Sharp, Sam Jewell, and Logan Kennedy, for their efforts to improve the policy.

At the request of the local Air Force ROTC program, President Pollard and I recently approved an Aerospace Studies minor for our Air Force ROTC students. These students take all their ROTC courses at UNLV but get credit for them at NSC. However, they had no easy way to get financial aid for those required courses. Packaging them as a minor allows students to get financial aid for those courses (since they now apply to a program). The courses will continue to be offered at UNLV through our MOU with them.

I’m happy to announce that Dr. Christine Beaudry is now Faculty Senate Chair. Thank you to Dr. Samantha Jewell for her excellent leadership over the last year. I’m also pleased to announce that Dr. Leila Pazargadi is the new Acting Nevada Faculty Alliance (NFA) President. This is the second time that Dr. Pazargadi has stepped up to take on this important role.

In June, the Office for the Arts installed two new permanent works at the Glenn and Ande Christenson School of Education Building. Mount Scorpion in Technicolor by Eric Vozzola on permanent display in the back courtyard of CEB. Mila May's Mojave Magic can be found across from the Dean's Suite on the second floor of the building. This year Executive Director Angela M. Brommel will continue to curate new works that celebrate the School of Education, teachers, and learners.

I’ll start with the good news. Since our last update I carved out time for a family vacation to Washington, DC and New York City, and based on our experience I assembled these handy “travel tips” for anyone who might be interested:

Tip 1: Make sure none of your family members test positive for COVID on the second day of your vacation on the other side of the country.

Follow this worldly advice, fellow travelers, and be prepared to enjoy a scintillating experience in two of our nation’s most vibrant and storied cities! (editorial note: this newsletter is based on true events, but fortunately it was a very mild case and everyone is now safe and sound.)

Now, the less good news. As you may have heard, the re-enrollment of our continuing students has lagged behind the pace we set in recent years. We hope that many of these students are simply slower to enroll, and will eventually continue their pursuit of a degree, but we also recognize that multiple circumstances – including a historically high cost of living paired with rising wages – may have compelled some students to postpone their college studies.

In May we were as much as 20% behind last year’s enrollment of continuing students (comparing, for example, a specific date in May 2022 to that same date in May 2021). In June, it ranged from about 10% to 15% behind, and very recently it fell below 4%, but our data strongly suggest that by next week we will be closer to 9% to 10% below last year’s same-day enrollment numbers. We’ve been working hard to bring students back, and we know that we have a great college to bring them back to, thanks to your efforts to create it. I cannot say where we will wind up as we continue this push into the summer months, but for now, I want to recognize some of the efforts that have been underway.