The Dogwood Lot will be closed from Monday, June 15 through Friday, June 19 to accommodate local law enforcement training exercises. Access to the lot will be restricted beginning Sunday, June 14. Campus safety would like employees and students to remove their vehicles before the restriction takes effect.
For questions, please contact Garrett Croon at (231) 995-1747 or gcroon@nmc.edu
To help ensure the continued safety of our campus community, fire alarm and sprinkler system testing will take place throughout NMC campuses this summer. Please do not be alarmed if you encounter testing activity in the buildings listed below. Testing is scheduled as follows:
July 24
Scholars Hall
Health & Science Building
Timothy J. Nelson Innovation Center
Beckett Building
North Hall
Parsons-Stulen Building
July 29
Okerstrom Fine Arts Building
Aviation
Automotive Service Technology Building
Power House
July 30
Osterlin Building
Tanis Building
1880 Apartment
Front Street Flats
Aero Park Labs
July 31
Rajkovich Physical Education Building
Aug 4
Founders Hall
East Hall
Rogers Observatory
Aug 5
Dennos Museum (7 a.m.)
Les Biederman Building
Great Lakes Campus
1882/1884 apts
Aug 6
Oleson Center for Continuing Education
If you have any concerns about the scheduling, please reach out to Nancy Durecki at (231) 995-1112 or ndurecki@nmc.edu.
TRAVERSE CITY — The Audit Committee of Northwestern Michigan College’s Board of Trustees will meet at 2:30 p.m. Monday, June 1 in the Timothy J. Nelson Innovation Center, room 104/105 on NMC’s Front Street campus, 1701 E. Front St., Traverse City. The official meeting notice is available here.
For more information, please contact the President’s office at (231) 995-1010.
Student Health Services will be closed to appointments for the summer starting Monday, June 1. They will reopen Monday, August 10. If you have questions during this time, please contact their office at (231) 995-1255 or studenthealthservices@nmc.edu.
To contact the Nurse Practitioner directly, email kkerlin-spigarelli@nmc.edu, or call Student Life at (231) 995-1118.
TRAVERSE CITY — Registration is now open for College Edge, a free program NMC is hosting this summer to help college students prepare for their fall semester.
Running July 13-Aug.7, College Edge is a four-week program to help prepare students to succeed before they start or continue college at NMC this fall. Interested students can register for one of two options:
Students will also receive success coaching tips and tools like time management and studying smarter. For completing the program, students will earn a $250 scholarship toward NMC’s fall semester and a free graphing calculator. Find out more at nmc.edu/edge
College Edge hosted by NMC debuted in 2023. It is part of the investment the state of Michigan is making in its student-age population. State scholarships available now include the Community College Guarantee for the high school class of 2025 and 2026, and Michigan Reconnect for adults 25 and older who don’t already have a degree.
Diana Fairbanks
NMC Public Relations
dfairbanks@nmc.edu
(231) 995-1020
Traverse City Central High School will host a track meet on Tuesday, May 26 at 4 p.m. Please be aware that there may be some congestion in the Cedar Lot during this time.
Dear NMC Students,
If you have previously downloaded the Microsoft Office suite to your personal computer, you may have encountered a message similar to the following:
This message results from recent changes implemented by Microsoft regarding licensing provision for educational institutions. Without delving into technical details, these changes have affected our ability to provide direct access to the downloaded applications for students. Going forward, Microsoft now limits student access to the Office applications through office.com.
While most of you are utilizing the Google suite of applications, there remains a significant number of users relying on the Microsoft download applications. We recommend transitioning to Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides as alternatives to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. A key benefit of the Google suite is its ability to transfer files from Word, Excel, or PowerPoint to Google Drive, where they can be opened with the appropriate Google applications, saved in the original format, and downloaded as needed.
In certain cases, there may be a necessity to use the Microsoft Office applications locally. We are currently awaiting assistance from a Microsoft licensing specialist to determine the appropriate number of licenses required for these rare instances where using the desktop versions of Word or Excel is essential for coursework.
David Hosler
Director of Systems & LAN Management
Northwestern Michigan College
Congratulations to the 1,066 students who made the Dean’s List for the spring 2026 semester, earning a grade point average of 3.5 or above out of a possible 4.0 while taking five or more credits.
TRAVERSE CITY — Northwestern Michigan College has recognized several employees for excellence in the 2025-26 academic year:
Faculty excellence award winners are chosen by a student selection committee. Criteria includes teaching excellence, rapport with students, innovation in the classroom and a sense of dedication.
Kristen Salathiel (download high-resolution photo)Imogene Wise Faculty Excellence Award: Kristen Salathiel, Communications. Student nominators said of Salathiel, an who began teaching at NMC as an adjunct in 2002 and moved to full-time faculty in 2009.
Initiated by a contribution from longtime NMC benefactors Harold and Imogene Wise in 1970, the award was first made to a full-time faculty member in 1971.
Daniel Grim (download high-resolution photo)Adjunct Faculty Excellence Award: Daniel Grim, Communications. Student nominators said of Grim, who has taught two years at NMC:
The Adjunct Excellence award was created in 1999 as a companion to the Imogene Wise Faculty Excellence Award. This is the first time both the full-time and adjunct faculty winners have been from the same department. See a full list of all past faculty and adjunct faculty excellence winners at nmc.edu/cie.
Criteria for the team and staff excellence awards includes commitment “above and beyond” the NMC mission, vision, and values.
NMC Grounds Team (download high-resolution photo)Team Excellence Award: Grounds Team – Dan Hoseit, Max McColl and Jeremy Maloney. Cited for stewardship, collaboration and excellence, Grounds’ duties include plowing campus parking lots and sidewalks. Despite being down one staff member and the challenges of a very snowy winter, including an unprecedented three consecutive snow days in March, they rose to the task and helped keep the college community safe. Their efforts earned them nominations from four different sources.
Marcus Bennett (download high-resolution photo)Staff Excellence Award: Marcus Bennett, Associate Dean of Campus Life. Bennett, who joined the college in 2011, epitomizes going above and beyond in his work. He and his family live in East Hall and he is available to students 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. He works both behind the scenes, one-on-one with students, and in the spotlight, organizing large public events like the annual fall Welcome Week, when students move into the dorms, and the recent 75th anniversary Student & Community Block party.
Cari Noga
NMC Communications Director
cnoga@nmc.edu
(231) 392-1800 (Call or text)
The Bayshore Marathon will be held on Saturday, May 23, from approximately 5:45 a.m. until 4 p.m. This event begins and ends at Central High School and impacts NMC’s Campus including College Drive and multiple parking lots. The main entrance to NMC at College Drive and Front Street will close at approximately 5:45 a.m. that day and other entrances to campus will close shortly thereafter. Barricades will be set up to block parking lots along College Drive to prevent exiting vehicles for the safety of the runners.
The Cedar lot will close Friday afternoon, May 22, and barriers will be set up around the Timothy J. Nelson Innovation Center in preparation for the event.
Please be patient when traveling to campus during these times.
The Michigan Virtual EdTech Pitch Contest and Innovation Bootcamp is built for Michigan educators, school leaders, parents, recent grads, education professionals and anyone connected to our education ecosystem who has an idea for a technology-driven solution and wants to take it further. The Bootcamp gives participants hands-on training in startup fundamentals, and the Pitch Contest awards over $22,000 in grant funding to help winners bring their ideas to life.
All the details — eligibility, how to apply, and program structure — are available at michiganvirtual.org/edtechcatalyst.
Please note: This is for idea-stage programming. The Conquer EdTech accelerator, focusing on growth and scale of already founded companies, will open for applications later this summer.
Yesterday, May 7, Instructure, owner of the Canvas Learning Management System utilized by NMC, experienced additional unauthorized activity relating to the same security breach reported earlier this week in Intercom. At this time, there remains no indication that NMC student data has been compromised. Our information security teams are continuing to investigate and monitor this fluid situation, and we will provide updates as they become available.
After a brief outage last night, NMC’s Canvas system is online and fully functional. As Instructure and the media continue to commmunicate on a wider scale, the best place to get information about how this situation affects NMC students, staff and faculty will be communicated directly through NMC channels like Intercom. Thank you.
May 6, 2026
NMC’s class of 2026 increased by 10% and the number of degrees and certificates those graduates earned rose nearly 12% over 2025, a rise most likely due to two state scholarship programs.
An NMC graduate receives her diploma during the 2026 Commencement ceremonyA total of 579 students earned 632 degrees and certificates over the 2025–26 academic year, pending final grades. More than a third of the graduates are recipients of the Community College Guarantee or Michigan Reconnect, the statewide scholarship programs. The CCG offers free tuition to recent high school graduates, while Reconnect is for adults 25 and older who don’t already have a degree or certificate.
The CCG was first offered in fall 2024. It imposes no income or GPA requirements, but does require full time enrollment (minimum of 12 credits per semester.) Research shows that the likelihood of graduation is associated with full-time enrollment, due to the momentum students establish.
“Scholarship programs like the Michigan Community College Guarantee are the spark for many students,” said Lindsey Dickinson, NMC’s director of student success and retention. “But their ability to shift their attention from financial burdens to ‘completion mode,’ where they can focus on the finish line of graduation, is the engine that keeps them moving forward.”
Reconnect started in 2021 and requires students to be enrolled in at least 12 credits for the academic year. Both programs were implemented to meet Michigan’s Sixty by 30 goal of having 60% of the working population with a post-high school degree or certificate by 2030. The region started at 34.2% in 2017 and now stands at 53%.
The high school class of 2026 is eligible for the CCG for 15 months. Class of 2025 graduates are eligible until the start of the fall 2026 semester.
Commencement ceremonies also honored NMC’s 75th anniversary. Each graduate wore special green cords with their caps and gowns, in recognition of the anniversary. Watch the recorded ceremony on NMC’s YouTube channel.
Instructure, the company that creates Canvas, NMC’s Learning Management System, experienced a security breach April 30. The organization claiming the attack released a list of 8,800 K-12 schools, community colleges and universities whose potentially Personally Identifiable Information (PII) was leaked. NMC was not included in the list.
Instructure has not corroborated the list, but at this point, to the best of our knowledge, no NMC student, faculty or messaging information stored on the Canvas servers was compromised. We will update you if that changes. Instructure also maintains a public status record.
To find these selections and many other new titles, see the NMC library catalog.
On Monday, May 4 from noon to 8 p.m., and Tuesday, May 12 from 4 to 8 p.m., Central High School will host track meets.
Campus Safety Coordinator Garrett Croon has given verbal permission for the organizers (Traverse City Area Public Schools) and attendees to park on NMC’s campus. School buses will park on the south side of the Maple Lot.
Be aware that parking may be difficult in the Cedar Parking Lot during these times.
The Hawk Owl Café will switch to summer hours of operation on Friday, May 1.
OPEN
8 a.m.–2 p.m.
OPEN: SELF-SERVICE KIOSK ONLY
24 hours a day, 7 days a week
Espresso Bay coffee, bakery items, and Swoop ‘N Go items available
Monday–Thursday: 8 a.m.–1 p.m.
Swoop ‘N Go items available
24 hours a day, 7 days a week
*subject to change for holidays & special events
TRAVERSE CITY — Commencement ceremonies for Northwestern Michigan College’s Class of 2026 will be held Saturday, May 2 in Milliken Auditorium on NMC’s Front Street campus. Three ceremonies will be held, with graduates grouped by degree or credential earned.
Each ceremony will feature faculty and student speakers. Ceremonies will be streamed live at nmc.edu/video and NMC’s YouTube channel.
NMC’s Class of 2026 has earned 632 degrees and certificates, including the Associate in Nursing, Associate in Science and Arts, Associate in Applied Science, Associate in General Studies and Certificate of Practical Nursing. Bachelor of Science degrees in Maritime Technology and Marine Technology will also be awarded.
More than a third of the graduates are recipients of the Community College Guarantee or Michigan Reconnect, statewide scholarship programs. The CCG offers free tuition to recent high school graduates, while Reconnect is for adults 25 and older who don’t already have a degree or certificate.
Commencement ceremonies will also honor NMC’s 75th anniversary. Each graduate will wear special green cords with their caps and gowns, in recognition of the anniversary.
NMC will also hold its annual Honors & Leadership Convocation at 4:30 p.m.. Friday, May 1 at the Dennos Museum Center. Awards to be presented include:
For more commencement details, go to nmc.edu/commencement.
Release date: April 29, 2026
Cari Noga
NMC Communications Director
cnoga@nmc.edu
(231) 392-1800 (Call or text)