Let it Snow!

Nathaniel King, Dean of the Marydean Martin Library, and I had quite the snowy adventure last week when we attended the Cashman Good Government Award Dinner in Carson City. Out of 19 nominees the Marydean Martin Library and Academic Affairs were honored to be one of six finalists. The big winner was the Henderson Fire Department. Henderson was very well represented, including Mayor Michelle Romero and County Commissioner Dan Stewart. As a finalist, we received a lovely trophy, which will be displayed in the library.

After a treacherous snowy and icy drive from Carson City to the Reno airport at 7am, we arrived to find all morning and afternoon flights were canceled. The roads at high elevations were closed, making driving impossible. Our flight left Reno at 10:30pm, 13 hours after the scheduled time.

Congratulations and a Fond Farewell to Chris Garrett

It is with bittersweet emotion that I announce that Chris Garrett, Professor of Education and CTLE Director, has accepted a position at Brigham Young University. He will serve as the Assistant Director of Faculty Development in their Faculty Center, overseeing programming for faculty development across campus including new faculty training, mentoring, and leadership development for new department chairs.

Chris established our Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence in 2016. Over the past six years, he formed and led a team now comprised of three full-time staff and one CTLE Faculty Fellow. In 2017 he co-founded the Intermountain Consortium for Faculty Development, served as ICFD President, and coordinated the annual Teaching for Learning (T4L) Conference in 2018 and 2023. In 2021, Chris earned tenure and promotion to the rank of Professor in the School of Education. He also led the revisions to our Core Curriculum.

I am sad to see Chris go, but I know that he and his wife, Brenda, look forward to being closer to their children and grandchildren. Congratulations to Chris on this new opportunity, and I wish him all the best!

Tenure and Promotions 2023

Please help me congratulate those faculty members who have achieved tenure and/or promotion in 2023. The granting of tenure will not be official until announced at the next Board of Regents meeting on March 9th and 10th.

Promotion to Full Professor

• Dr. Laura Naumann, Psychology
• Dr. Leila Pazargadi, English
• Dr. Sandip Thanki, Institutional Effectiveness
• Dr. Aaron Wong, Mathematics

Tenure and promotion to Associate Professor

• Dr. Heidi Batiste, Business Administration
• Dr. Vanessa Mari, Education and ESL
• Dr. Rachel Bower, Math Education

I was in a 5-hour meeting Tuesday about the budget. That’s not an update, per se. I’m just trying to make you feel better about whatever it was that you were doing (in fairness, it actually was a great meeting, but occasionally you can have too much of a good thing).

In other news, I’m behind schedule on delivering my update, so let’s burn through this:

Student Success Equity Intensive

We’re a few months into a multi-year project that aims to promote equity in student success, and our campus team met recently to discuss 1) what we have already learned about the institution from student surveys and 2) what additional information we would like to collect from students in the form of surveys, focus groups, etc. As part of the effort, we worked with a group to distill over 1700 comments from recent surveys into a manageable array of themes, which you can find on slides 10-17 of the attached document. We’re in the “reflection” phase of a project that eventually will lead to a new effort that promotes the success of our student population. 

Assessment Conversations

We recently received a formal update on our mid-cycle evaluation from our accrediting body, the Northwest Commission on Colleges & Universities (or “NWCCU” to those “in the know”). The memo noted that we have fulfilled recommendation 1 from our 2019-2020 mission fulfillment evaluation, which was about establishing meaningful objectives and indicators of mission fulfillment, and concluded that we are “substantially in compliance but in need of improvement” on recommendation 2. This latter recommendation is about developing a comprehensive system of assessment that builds on existing efforts and supports institutional planning and resource allocation. Gwen & Chris Garrett have developed some excellent ideas in this area and, even though there’s still plenty left to do, I’m encouraged by the plan we are working on.  

Curricular Components

With support from Dennis Potthoff and Katie Dockweiler, I’m working on the submission of our Education Specialist (Ed.S.) in School Psychology to the NWCCU. It’s a more involved progress than our typical submissions because the Ed.S. is considered a new degree level for us – above a master’s and below a doctorate – but so far I think things have moved smoothly along.

Also, I am reviewing a LOT of curriculum proposals for the 2023-24 catalog. Sometimes quickly, sometimes not as much, but always surely. 

Dual Enrollment Field Trips

In a recent update, I mentioned that the team of President Pollard, Jennifer Lamoreaux, Gregory Robinson, and yours truly have been meeting with the principals of our dual enrollment partner high schools. We had a meeting with Rancho High School where we toured their Teaching Academy firsthand and met with three first-generation students who were glowing with excitement about coming to Nevada State as education students. I get to do a lot of rewarding things, but that was one of the most uplifting mornings I’ve had in quite some time. Even though I always knew that the Teacher Academies were doing great work, it was something else entirely to see it firsthand. Amazing work by everyone involved.