To the teams from Advising, Student Enrollment Services and IT who are pitching in to ensure that Fall semester registration gets off to a smooth start this Wednesday. Registration is a critical step in enrollment. Thank you!
Thank you to NMC’s Academic & Career Advising Center and Northwest Michigan Works for returning the 16th annual Career & Employment Fair to an in-person event for 2022. The free, public event will be held 2–6 p.m. Thursday, March 3 at the Hagerty Center on NMC’s Great Lakes Campus, and employer capacity is limited and face masks recommended to help keep participants safe. The event follows three days of student prep workshops hosted by Employment Readiness specialist Lisa Baldyga.
Congratulations to everyone involved in creating a new partnership between NMC and Michigan Technological University to offer a series of professional development courses this spring and help meet statewide workforce development needs. The short-format courses are aimed at survey, civil engineering and infrastructure specialists and will let busy working professionals earn credentials while fulfilling continuing education requirements. Registration is expected to open by the end of the month. Learn more about the partnership and the course offerings here.
Thank you to NMC Fine Arts student Gavin Bebb and instructor Glenn Wolff for designing and pulling together the Voices Project, an experiential education project to bring awareness to Black Americans as part of NMC’s Embrace the Dream program. The results of their collaboration can be seen in the poster-size portraits of Black Americans hanging in NMC academic buildings and corresponding to their subjects’ fields — from journalist and NAACP co-founder Ida B. Wells-Barnett to Captain Hugh Mulzac, the first Black merchant marine naval officer to command an integrated crew. Learn more about the Voices Project here.
Congratulations to Water Studies Institute Director Hans Van Sumeren and everyone else involved in making NMC’s Bachelor of Science in Marine Technology program the fourth most-focused ocean engineering program in the nation, according to CollegeFactual.com. Northwestern Michigan College is the only community college and the only non-coastal school to make the online ranking of the nation’s top ocean engineering programs. Read more about the ranking here.
Thank you to everyone who’s pitching in to help keep the campus community safe through the latest wave of COVID-19: Instructors reporting cases, Health Services assisting with contact tracing, testing, tracking and and last week’s vaccination clinic, Human Resources and the business office with tracking and supplies, including KN95 masks, and the Reimagining Committee for working on guidelines for class safety.
Visit nmc.edu/covid-19 for links to the COVID-19 Case Dashboard and other safety information, including a printable version of the proper face mask wearing poster that’s posted around campus.
Thank you to the more than 1,000 participants in NMC Next, the year-long strategic planning process and plan scheduled for final approval by the Board of Trustees tonight.
NMC Next is the result of the effort and energy expended collegewide, from answering a survey to participating in a feedback session to serving on the work team or steering committee.
Thanks to the Embrace the Dream team for their excellent work creating a program of events that aligns with the new DEI area of NMC’s strategic plan and celebrates Martin Luther King Day and Black History Month: Amanda Clark, Amy Pflughoeft, Brandon Everest, Jason Dake, Jeff Cobb, Jeremy Heinlein, Lisa Thomas, Lori Hodek, Meg Young, Sally Smarsty andTony Jenkins.
For a full list of activities, including dates, times and locations that you can copy directly to your Google calendar, check out the Embrace the Dream calendar.
Thanks to the roughly 250 people who attended and took part in the January opening conference. More than two dozen new employees were introduced, an update on the strategic plan was provided, and Marcus Bennett, Ed.D. was introduced as Special Assistant to the President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, starting July 1. In addition, Dr. Paolo Guadiano gave a highly engaging presentation on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Watch a recording of the conference and Dr. Guardino’s presentation here.
Watch your mailbox next week for the success stories of colleagues, students, alumni and friends in the next issue of Nexus magazine.
From strategic planning to Steve Drake’s math teacher disciples to the new restaurant that the owners (and GLCI alumna) of Frankfort’s Birch & Maple are cooking up, you’ll only read about it in Nexus.
Congratulations to everyone who helped EES implement and launch their new, improved, user-friendly registration site. Check it out yourself. One new feature is that NMC employees will see the discounted rate before checkout. The Marine Center utilizes the system, too.
Implementation team members: Ed Bailey, Maureen Carlson, Bill Czyzyk, Dan Gentry, Kristy Jackson, Lindsey Lipke, Laura Matchett, Jackie Schenk, Elizabeth Sonnabend
Go Live Additional Team: Christa Abdul-Karim, Lisa Boike, Steve Kellman, Paul Martin, Bryce Turner
A BIG thanks to all employees who made a gift on #GivingTuesday!
Because of you and community donors, the Dennos Museum Center raised more than $21,000 to preserve works of art and support the greatest needs of the museum. Additionally, you made it possible for students to pay for classes next semester with your generous gifts to the NMC Scholarship Fund.
Thank you and Go Hawk Owls!
Congratulations to the NMC Aviation Division for winning a $90,000 aviation workforce development grant from the FAA. Funds will be used to offer UAS training to high school teachers. Competition was “rigorous,” and the college is “to be commended for an extraordinary response to the FAA opportunity,” according to the grant award letter.
To the Public Relations, Marketing and Communications team whose magazine Nexus won the top gold award in a regional community college competition.
Judges said the spring 2021 issue highlighting the college’s pandemic pivots, textbook heroes and Futures for Frontliners had “great content,” “beautiful, clean design” and “interesting, well-written articles.”
Nexus previously won a gold award at the national competition.
To students in Kristy McDonald’s Professional Communications class, who distributed more than 125 Thanksgiving meals to fellow students and community members Monday.
The eighth annual Food For Thought project teaches students how to professionally communicate through experiential learning.
To faculty members Brandon Everest, Lisa Blackford and Melissa Sprenkle, whose students in sociology, social work and communications, respectively, will participate in the Walk for Health and Housing, a guided tour of downtown Traverse City from the perspective of people experiencing homelessness and the providers who serve them, departing from NMC’s Great Lakes campus parking lot at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 17.
The sixth annual walk, open to the public, is an example of Experiential Learning at NMC and held as a part of National Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week, observed the week before Thanksgiving.
Scott Herzberg, NMC’s Military Point of Contact for the college’s military and veteran students since 2012, is leaving the college Tuesday after 25 years of service to the college and its students.
In recognition of his work to increase the services that NMC offers student veterans, Herzberg won a 2015 John and Suanne Roueche Excellence Award from the League for Innovation in the Community College. He was also a Foundation Excellence Award winner in 2000 and 2016.
Thank you, Scott!
The Dennos Museum Center will display an exhibition of artwork by NMC faculty starting Wednesday, Nov. 3. The exhibition by Art Department faculty members — each a dedicated educator as well as a working professional artist — is the first on campus in over five years.
The artwork, by Coreene Kreiser, Mathew McGovern, Randolph Melick, Caroline Schaefer-Hills, Leah Schroeder, Rufus Jame Snoddy, Zach Tate, Adam VanHouten and Glenn Wolff, will be on display through January 2, 2022. Learn more here.