February 17, 2022
Vickie Shields
Celebrating Our Teacher Scholars
As Provost, one of my great pleasures is acknowledging the hard work and commitment of our faculty. This year, I am very proud to announce several promotions. They have all chosen an intellectual life as educators, scholars, and mentors. The new knowledge they produce through their scholarship contributes to intellectual debate, helps to enlighten our culture, and invigorates their teaching. They are committed to the notion that sending students out into the world who can question, analyze, contribute to high-functioning teams, and lead others is one of our greatest contributions to improving our community, culture, and our world. With promotion comes great responsibility! The newly tenured and promoted faculty are now part of the leadership of Nevada State College, responsible for its present and future greatness.

The Board of Regents will make tenure decisions official at their March 3rd, 2022 meeting, held here at Nevada State.

Full Professor:
  • Kebret Kebede, Professor of Biology
  • Lori Navaratte, Professor of Education
  • Anthony Scinta, Professor of Psychology
  • Zachary Woydziak, Professor of Chemistry
Tenure and Associate Professor:
  • Christine Beaudry, Associate Professor of Education
  • Cecelia Fernan, Associate Professor of Nursing
  • Samantha Jewell, Associate Professor of Biology
  • Michael Johnson, Associate Professor of Nursing
  • Laura Rosales-Lagarde, Associate Professor of Environmental Science
Senior Lecturer:
  • Brett Hess, Senior Lecturer of Nursing
Sabbatical Leave Awarded
Dr. Shantal Marshall, Psychology, has been awarded a one-year sabbatical for July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023. She will use sabbatical time to grow her professional identity as a “resident expert” in topics related to social cognition, including implicit bias, and social inequality. Dr. Marshall will generate new materials (i.e., intellectual property) that help to explain relevant concepts that are accessible and digestible by non-academic audiences and incorporate them into various professional development workshops to be offered throughout and after the sabbatical period. Developing her professional online presence with an updated and informative website will allow her to pursue opportunities to provide public commentary on relevant social issues via Op-Eds and posts on Medium.com.

The projects Dr. Marshall has planned will not only provide her with the opportunity for professional development, but greatly benefit our faculty and students, NS’s School of Liberal Arts & Sciences, and our community.

Update from the Office of Arts and Culture
Now through March 18th, the Office of Arts & Culture is hosting an exhibition at the Nevada State Gallery on the 3rd floor of the Rogers Student Center. Curated by Paula Morin and organized by the Nevada Arts Council, “Honest Horses: A Portrait of the Mustang in the Great Basin” is part of the Nevada Touring Initiative-Traveling Exhibition Program. It was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Nevada State Legislature. The Nevada Arts Council is a division of the Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs.

Nevada State Gallery
Rogers Student Center, 3rd Floor
M-F 9AM - 5PM

Please enter the gallery through the reception area.
Tony Scinta
Faculty Development Update
I provided an update on enrollment and student success at Faculty Development last week, but the highlight, by far, was the (relatively) new addition to our family, Boba Fetch (pictured below). As for the other info, the bottom-line takeaways were:
  • This has been a tough year, and we are down in both headcount and credit hours compared to spring 2021, but over the past two years we’re faring reasonably well within NSHE; whereas the System as a whole is down almost 5% in student FTE, we are up over 16% from fall 2019 to fall 2021.
  • When it comes to future enrollment growth, continuing students are a top priority; if more of them are succeeding, we necessarily are growing and improving our graduation rates (and we need to do both).
  • Several strategies will help us to get fully back on track, including a strong assessment of our enrollment/success strategies in light of best practices, a commitment to sharing our institutional strengths to prospective students (often from the perspective of our current students), and adherence to a concept I refer to as “institutional alignment,” which is the idea that the college will function better if its different component parts are aligned toward common goals (even if we all need to compromise a bit to make it happen).
Workforce Development
Our Director of Workforce Development, Tom Nicholas, continues to develop plans for unique offerings in this new division. For those who might be wondering – and it is eminently fair to wonder – the certificates and/or credentials that we establish in this area will not fundamentally change the nature of the institution, nor will it diminish the focus on excellent programs at the bachelor’s and master’s levels, which will continue to be the bedrock of the college. However, they ARE intended to provide new pathways to career success for our prospective students, and to do so in ways that complement our existing offerings. We want to ensure that we are not left behind in the wake of a changing world where universities and colleges are already exploring this space, including institutions in our own “backyard,” like UNLV and UNR, as well as established players who compete in our market, such as Arizona State University.

For now, I am consulting with Tom on different program options that range from Leadership, to Project Management, to Healthcare Administration. Tom continues to consult with NSC faculty and administrators as we address factors such as program composition and logistics (e.g., mode of delivery, time commitment for students), curricular considerations (e.g., knowledge and skills delivered), and target audiences.
Gwen Sharp
Publications, Grants, & Accomplishments
  • Erica Tietjen (Biology) had her contribution included in the New York Times's compilation article "30 Ways Science Educators Teach with the New York Times." Erica's is #29 in the list.
  • Jamie Palmer (Sociology) published her article "Teaching to Transgress in the Virtual Classroom: Tools for Implementing the Guerrilla Girls' Art of Complaining" in Films for the Feminist Classroom's "Special Feature: Audio-Visual at a Distance in Pedagogy and Practice."
  • Shartriya Collier (School of Education) is the Project Director on a successfully funded Nevada Institute on Educator Preparation, Retention, and Research (NIEPRR) Program grant. It will provide $638,000 for mini research grants and fellows and fund professional development.
  • Lance Hellman (Human Health Sciences) received the RAIN grant he applied for. It will provide $20,000 to fund his research with students.
  • Heather Lang-Cassera (College Success) had a series of haiku, "Sunrise," commissioned by Clark County Public Arts; they have been painted on the sidewalk as a permanent installation at Robert E. "Bob" Price Park. Her free verse poems "Such Small Wanderers" and "Delicate Enough to Be Risked" and her pantoum "Ghost Light" were all published in Black Fox Literary Magazine issue 22. Finally, Barnstorm Journal published her ecopoem "endangered."

Faculty & Staff Recommendations
Thank you to everyone who filled out the recommendations sheet at Professional Development Day! They're available, in no particular order, in this document. I'm excited to try some new restaurants and hikes!

Recording of Keynote Speaker
If you'd like to watch Dan Mosley, our keynote speaker, or share his talk with students, we have a captioned video available. You can also read a recent news story about the Pyramid Lake Paiute Nation's efforts to protect endangered fish.
Gregory Robinson
Crucial Conversations
For those of you who missed our fantastic presentation at Faculty Development, here are the slides we used. The short videos this presentation contains might be helpful even if you couldn't attend. For those of you in attendance, I hope you're getting to practice conversations where the stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions are strong.

Core Curriculum Update
We're making steady progress with the Core Curriculum revisions, mostly due to all of your hard work.

One of the projects I hope to complete this semester is a student-friendly definition of the Core Curriculum and the various categories (e.g., Natural Sciences, Cultural Diversity). I'm working with several stakeholders to refine these definitions, and I'd love to have your input as well.

In other news, the Faculty Senate Ad-Hoc Core Curriculum Committee is getting ready to review more proposals and several faculty are working on adding ELOs to classes. As we make progress, here are a few important points to keep in mind:

  • Students have to take 31-44 credits in the Core, which is around 12 classes. Currently, they have approximately 300 possible options, not including the courses that can be used in multiple categories. Many of the courses in the Core are rarely used by students to satisfy their Core Curriculum requirements.
  • Students need to take two classes in the Humanities and have over 170 possible courses they could take. 
  • The next biggest category is Cultural Diversity, where students need to take one class and have over 40 options. 
Stefanie Coleman
Sting Out Stigma 
Sting Out Stigma and Student Wellness are in full force with the mission to end the stigma about mental health at Nevada State. Visit Be Engaged for more information and to RSVP! Check out these upcoming events:
  • 3/24 It’s Real: College Students and Mental Health
  • 4/07 Sting Out Stigma Health Fair
  • 4/09 AFSP Out of the Darkness Walk
  • 4/14 It’s Real: College Students and Mental Health
  • 4/21 Talks Saves Lives
 
Welcome to Nevada State 
The Academic Advising Center has three new advisors. Please welcome Robin Hardin, Louis Jackson, and Jonah Foster
 
THANK YOU!
Once again, the Gene Haas Foundation has awarded the CARE Team an additional $20,000 to provide financial support to students in need. The process to apply for emergency funds has been reactivated. For more information, please contact Laura Hinojosa (Laura.Hinojosa@nsc.edu).
 
Black History Month 
In honor of Black History Month, I’m giving a public thank you to the following individuals for creating home security systems, potato chips, the stoplight, the drug physostigmine which treats my nephew's glaucoma, and one of my daughter’s favorite toys, the Super Soaker.
 
George Crum
Garrett Morgan
Marie Van Brittan Brown
Lonnie Johnson
Percy L. Julian
 
Sandip Thanki
What do our students think about their entire educational experience with us compared to what students say nationally? Yes, we do have this data! One of the many questions on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) is: How would you evaluate your entire educational experience at this institution? We have been using NSSE since 2005. In the recent years, over 400 students annually have provided us with thorough responses.

About 90% percent of our students find their experience with Nevada State College ‘Good’ or ‘Excellent.’ In most cases, this is significantly higher than the roughly 85% for our Carnegie Class (samples around 15,000), and also around 85% for the entire NSSE (samples over 150,000). The table below summarizes these numbers for past four years.
The difference is even more prominent if we just include students who rated their experience as ‘Excellent.’ The table below summarizes those data for past four years.
The NSSE instrument helps us learn about our students’ perspectives in great detail. If you would like to learn more about any of them items listed in the instrument, please reach out to Institutional Effectiveness.
Key Dates
2.21 - Presidents' Day, campus closed
3.7 - Deadline for students to submit to the Undergraduate Research & Creative Works Conference
3.7 - Deadline to apply to the Summer Scholarship Institute
NSC Office of the Provost | 702-992-2663 | http://nsc.edu/provost
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