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, including our first Distinguished and Senior Lecturers. 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 on March 4th, 2021, during their virtual meeting.
Full Professor:
- Chris Garrett (with tenure), Professor of Education, School of Education
- Chris Harris, Professor of Communication, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Gwen Sharp, Professor of Sociology, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
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Tenure and Associate Professor:
- Jo Meuris, Associate Professor of Visual Media, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Raul Tapia, Associate Professor of Business, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
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Promotions for Lecturers
I am extremely excited to announce Nevada State’s first recipients of promotions for Lecturers. Full-time Lecturers had the opportunity to seek two different levels of promotion, depending on qualifications, and receive base salary increases with each promotion. After completing five years of service and with support from their program and Dean, Lecturers were eligible to apply to become a Senior Lecturer. After three full years of service at the Senior Lecturer level and with support from their program and Dean, Lecturers were eligible to apply for Distinguished Lecturer. Our newly promoted Lecturers are:
Distinguished Lecturer:
- Vu Duong, Distinguished Lecturer of Biology, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Pam Call, Distinguished Lecturer of Nursing, School of Nursing
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Senior Lecturer:
- Brian Martinelli, Senior Lecturer of Physical Sciences, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Nate Silva, Senior Lecturer of Biology, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Andra Scano, Senior Lecturer of Nursing, School of Nursing
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Update from the Office of Arts and Culture
The Nevada State Permanent Collection includes 110 works of art and cultural artifacts celebrating the work of Nevada artists, faculty, staff, students, and alumni. As part of The Campus as Museum initiative, the Office of Arts & Culture exhibits works in each of our buildings to enhance the learning and organizational culture experience.
Since last academic year, we have added 13 artists and 28 works to the collection, three of which were gifts to the collection through our Alumni in the Arts program. We are grateful to Kira Caraway ('19), Samantha Kerby ('19), and Ross Takahashi ('13) for making the inaugural gifts to this new effort.
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Either I’m time traveling . . .
. . . or my brain needs a tune-up, because it feels like I just wrote the previous newsletter two days ago (not two weeks back). That said, here are some developments that may be of interest:
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The Big Board – If you are a particularly avid reader of the newsletter, and bless you if you are, you may recall a concept we refer to as the “Big Board,” which is a collection of projects from the strategic plan that my team focuses on in a given semester. I can’t do it justice in this particular newsletter, but much of my focus in the past ten days has been on spring 2021 Big Board items, from student success vital signs, to a proposed expansion of centralized academic advising, to a project that aims to retain more of our students who had once planned to enter our nursing program. More to come on this matter soon.
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It feels more like “quadruple enrollment” – There’s almost no way the NSHE Dual Enrollment Task Force can be as interesting to you as it is to me (unless your name is “Dennis”), but it has made a number of cameo appearances in my life these past few weeks. Since I wrote my last update, I got reeled in as the chair of a subcommittee on instructor qualifications for dual enrollment courses and as a member of a subcommittee on the price we charge to students. It’s a tight squeeze to make it work with my schedule, but I’m thankful that NSHE gives Nevada State a voice in this conversation.
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Rise Peer Mentor program – Though it was just one small slice of my last two weeks, I’m compelled to mention a conversation with Alicia LaMotte and Stefanie Coleman about expansions and improvements to our peer mentor program (which relaunched last summer). The work they are doing is incredible and will almost certainly be a model for other institutions to follow when everything is said and done.
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Publications
Grants
- The Nevada Department of Education is providing $878,000 over five years to our School of Education as part of their successful federal School-Based Mental Health Providers Grant. The grant will support efforts to recruit more students into mental health careers and the creation of two new programs: a major in Education with a Concentration in Assessment and a Master's of School Psychology.
- Jennifer Edmonds (Environmental Science) submitted an NSF Planning Project grant proposal. If funded, it will provide $300,000 to create a partnership with UNLV, CSN, and the Nature Conservancy to develop informal learning activities centered on sustainability and agriculture; this planning would then become the basis for a larger implementation grant.
- We signed a letter of commitment for an NSF grant proposal submitted by Dr. Mark Daniel Ward (Purdue). If funded, the grant will create a national network of Data Science-related programs. Students in our new Data Science major, led by Timothy Malacarne, would have opportunities for mentorship and research opportunities with faculty at other institutions and corporate partners. They would also be paired with Purdue students to form peer learning groups.
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Five Things to Ask Before You Begin Any Project
I’m not going to tell you the five things here. Sorry. You have to come to my breakout session at the Faculty & Staff Professional Development Day on February 26th.
There are three possible breakout sessions on Development Day and you really can’t go wrong with any of them. Chris and Jennifer are leading a session on the Core Curriculum – a crucial topic for all of us. Gwen is leading a session on running better meetings, which is guaranteed to make your life better. My session may not seem as attractive initially, so here’s my best pitch:
It is so satisfying to get things done, particularly when it means solving a real problem and helping make Nevada State better. I love it. But with any project that involves several stakeholders (sometimes with competing needs), it can be difficult to get everyone on board, stay focused, and bring your idea to fruition. There are so many places where things can go awry.
The field of project management evolved as a way to solve this problem. Guided by a giant Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) and a small library of books that interpret the PMBOK, project management helps you bring all the separate parts together, a bit like a conductor leads a symphony.
In this breakout session, I’ll go through some of the key components of project management that will help you get started on a project the right way, using a method that has been thoroughly tested. Use these tools to help you manage a wide range of projects, such as:
- adding a degree;
- developing a new student service;
- planning an event;
- proposing the first NSC dog park;
- anything else you’d like.
For me, learning about these five questions was a game-changer. Join me on the 26th and see if they work for you as well.
Keep Up the Fight Against COVID-19
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College Night
Nevada State's DRC is partnering with CCSD and CSN to host College Night. This year’s event will take place virtually on Feb. 24th from 5:30 – 7pm. The event will provide high school seniors and their families with information about transitioning to college, registering with the DRC, enrolling in college, financial aid processes, and campus resources. It will feature a digital resources catalog that will be sent to students following the event.
Academic Degree Sheets
The Academic Advising Center has been working for the past several months with faculty and Marketing to revamp the Academic Degree Sheets and 4-Year Roadmaps. These revamped documents will pair with brand new program information packets to be used for recruitment and student advising. Once finalized, these new degree packets will be uploaded to each program website and be available for students when working with our Academic Advisors and Transfer Centers. We are very excited to share these with the campus community on March 1st. If you have any questions about these new packets, contact Alex Kunkle, Director of Academic Advising Center.
Mental Health Support at Nevada State
Student Emergency Funds: Students are encouraged to apply online for these funds or connect directly with Case Manager Laura Hinojosa at laura.hinojosa@nsc.edu or 702.992.2514.
Mental Health Screenings: Anyone who takes a screening is given an extensive list of on-campus, local, and national mental health resources.
All About You Counseling: AAU is now working with students three days a week to meet the high demand for mental health services. Students should call 702.754.0807 and identify as an NSC student to sign up for these free services. For community mental health services, students should contact Laura Hinojosa at laura.hinojosa@nsc.edu or 702.992.2514.
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In higher education, "graduation rate" tends to refer to the 6-year graduation rate of first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students. These are students who enroll full-time at a college directly after high school in a degree program. For us, this group's graduation rate climbed from 14% to 23% in the past seven years. This trend is expected to continue, as we have already surpassed our 4-year and 5-year rates for the most recent cohorts and 1-year retention is at a record high.
We can also look at our first-time, full-time seniors. These are students taking 24 or more credits a year who reached their senior status for the first time and started the prior year as juniors. As the chart below shows, in the past seven years, the 1-year graduation rate for these students has increased by 11 percentage points, the 2-year rate also increased by 11 percentage points, and the 3-year rate increased by 7 percentage points. IR has collaborated with the Academic Advising Center to expand our outreach to juniors and seniors so we can bring these numbers as close to 100% as possible. Ultimately, these efforts are expected to positively impact all our students, including first-time, full-time degree-seekers.
The size of our first-time seniors is in the high 400s if we include part-time students, and their 3-year graduation rates are around 75%.
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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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