Not so long ago, Dr. Laura Decker developed our first Writing Intensive Courses program. Selected faculty from across disciplines received specialized training in writing pedagogy and taught courses with embedded writing specialists. What I loved about the program was how inclusive it was – students in multiple majors took courses at various levels where writing was a crucial component.

The program has been on hold for a few years as we’ve managed the pandemic, developed the Core Curriculum, and considered how we could make the program more sustainable. Ideally, I’d love to see every major have at least one writing-intensive course embedded in it, providing students with a versatile, cross-cutting skill that will benefit them no matter what they choose to do after they graduate.

To help us get an understanding of how writing is currently taught in our classes, Dr. Herzl-Betz (Director of the Writing Center) developed a short survey. If you teach a class, we’re hoping you could complete the survey for us. It will take about 5 minutes or so.

On a related note, Dr. Decker wrote her dissertation on writing-intensive courses, so if you want more information about them, check out The Noise from the Writing Boundaries: Collaboration and Tutor Identity in Writing Intensive Courses. If you are into reading dissertations, please do not read mine. I've grown a lot since then.

I hope you’re excited for this semester’s hybrid Long Night Against Procrastination (LNAP) on Friday, Nov. 19th from 5pm- Midnight! The Writing Center and a range of other campus resources (including the Academic Success Center, the Marydean Martin Library, Nepantla, the Office of Student Wellness, Student Advising, NSSA, and the Blue Sage Writer’s Guild) will provide a Youtube livestream, one-on-one support, guided meditation, workshops, games, food, study space, and a remote open mic, so students can avoid that end-of-semester panic. Most of all, they have the chance to make connections with their classmates and find their place in this wonderful academic community. 

A casual Google search suggests that we have the longest-running Provost newsletter in the history of the world. You can view all the archived newsletters here or check out the first one we did on February 21st, 2017, where we welcomed Alex Kunkle as our brand new Director of Advising.

Nevada AHEAD is sponsoring a discussion on recent issues in post-secondary disability under Section 504 and Title II. You can learn more about how to join here.

Students can apply for all scholarships; they are not limited to just one.

The deadline is Sunday, 11/21/2021 at 11:59pm. All scholarships are found on: https://beengaged.nsc.edu/forms

We have a few more NSSE reports that you may be interested in. The high-impact practices report shows our students' participation in one or more HIPs. Our seniors report higher participation in service learning than students in the comparison groups do, but our students have lower participation in other forms of HIPs. And the engagement indicators report summarizes responses to a range of measures of engagement. Both our first-year and senior students reported higher levels of nearly all the engagement indicators.

Finally, the consortium report asked about a variety of factors, such as what gives their lives meaning and how the institution has inspired them to think differently. As you look through the report, a blue (up) arrow indicates our students provided higher scores than the national comparison group, while a purple (down) arrow shows that our students' ratings were lower. Some areas where students rated the college higher: