Spring 2023 Health Forum of Northern Michigan

Health forum flyerJoin us for a free community discussion related to adult mental health in Northern Michigan presented by GVSU Traverse City and NMC. Panelists from across the community will share information and local resources related to this important topic to care for our community.

Wednesday, April 12, 2023 (7:30–9:30 a.m.)

  • Registration and Continental Breakfast: 7:30–8 a.m.
  • Program Start: 8 a.m.

Location:

The Hagerty Center at Northwestern Michigan College
715 East Front St,Traverse City, MI 49686

This event is free and open to the public. For more info and to register, go to gvsu.edu/hfnorthernmich/.
Registration deadline is Monday, April 10.

The Health Forum of Northern Michigan is offered in the fall and spring of each year. It is a collaboration between the GVSU Traverse City Regional Center and Northwestern Michigan College. It is supported by a planning committee of community leaders in the Grand Traverse area. The event is sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield of West Michigan.

IAF to host former U.S. Ambassador to Oman to discuss Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran and more

International Affairs ForumNMC’s International Affairs Forum continues on Thursday, April 20 at 6:30 p.m. in the Milliken Auditorium with a discussion on the evolving dynamics on the Arabian Peninsula, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen and more. IAF will host Ambassador (ret) Greta C. Holtz for this in-person event with livestream available.

Greta Holtz headshotAmbassador Holtz served 35 years as a career diplomat with extensive experience in the Middle East region. Holtz served as Senior United States Coordinator for Operation Allies Refuge in Qatar from August-October 2021 and as Chargé d’affaires in Qatar from June 2020 until April 2021. She was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, and she was the Senior Foreign Policy Advisor (POLAD) to the Commanding General of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) from 2017-2019. She served as the United States Ambassador to Oman from 2012 to 2015.

Jack Segal International Affairs ForumJack Segal, a former senior U.S. diplomat and former IAF Board co-chair, will moderate the discussion. Segal served in the U.S. Embassy in Israel as counselor for political/military affairs during the first Intifada and the Gulf War. In the Clinton administration, Segal was the National Security Council director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, and served 10 years as senior political advisor to the NATO Commander where he was responsible for Afghanistan policy. He is an active instructor at NMC Extended Education on a variety of global affairs topics.

The event at Milliken Auditorium is open to the public and will be available to livestream, including a public Q & A. The event includes a welcome reception with appetizers from Food Arabia at 5:30 p.m..

In-person tickets are required and available for purchase at TCIAF.com or at the door for $15 per person. Attendance for students and educators is free. Registration is required to livestream.

For in-person tickets, livestream registration, and all event details, visit TCIAF.com.

Media mentions for March 27, 2023

The following college events and stories have appeared in the media recently. We want to share your media involvement too. Please send information about your NMC-related interview or appearance to publicrelations@nmc.edu. If possible, please include a link to the piece and information about where and when it was used.

Please note access to some stories may be limited by paywalls set up by the media outlet. This includes the Traverse City Record-Eagle, which limits free clicks to five per month. You may also read Record-Eagle articles in the print edition at the NMC Library.

‘It’s a noble profession’: Land surveyors are aging and retiring in Michigan amid ongoing needs
MiBiz, March 26

Taking care of teeth: Dental assistant program addresses Native American needs
Washington Times Herald, March 26

Up North Aquaman
Northern Express, March 25

Mary Bevans Gillett: Advocating for the arts today and tomorrow
Record-Eagle, March 24

Bay Mills, NMC partnership could help dental care in Native communities
Interlochen Public Radio, March 22

High school, college students help local filmmaker create his next film
9&10 News, March 23

Anishinaabe sculptor Jason Quigno to be honored with Legacy award
Benzie Record-Patriot, March 23

The Great Lakes need innovation
Navigator newsletter, March 2023

Educational agreements to increase ranks of dental assistants in Native areas
Intertribal Life, March 20

InfoSec: Using public Wi-Fi

Be wary of using a public Wi-Fi. If you access one, it is best to use a VPN like Nord, Proton or other secure VPN!

WiFi security

Fraudsters will often set up a Wi-Fi hotspot of their own and disguise it as genuine public Wi-Fi. 

Kudos!

Kudos to Kristy McDonald, Amy Burns Bailey, and Lindsey Dickinson for finding funds to support the free professional headshot event for NMC students and employees. This was a great opportunity for students to have a professional picture for their email, LinkedIn profile, resume and other professional endeavors!

Kudos to Chad Schenkelberger, Esther Nance and the Hawk Owl Café team! A big congratulations to Chad, Esther and the entire team at the Hawk Owl Cafe. The offerings in the last month have been thoughtful and well-made. A few favorites: Black History Month soul food, Lenten Friday cod sandwich, Italian wedding soup, lamb gyro and the Holi celebration chicken and vegetable shawarma. Thank you for organizing a collaborative team, who is ready with a smile and great service. Your variety of dishes are inclusive and honor all types of cuisines.

Kudos to Tracy Welch and Amy Burns Bailey! Tracy and Amy brought in Chaim Shapiro who was an excellent presenter and very knowledgeable on LinkedIn and how to fully utilize the platform’s capabilities. The presenter helped me grow my knowledge base personally and professionally. I am very thankful for the presentations. Kudos to them both.

Kudos to Carl Rocheleau and the UAV department. Carl gave a great unexpected tour to a group of Beaver Island students in town for the FIRST robotics competition. These students were excited to see the technology and drones deployed in our program.

Kudos to Tracy Welch and Amy Burns Bailey on a great training session for LinkedIn users. The training was well attended by students and faculty/staff. Thank you.

Kudos to the Student Success Center Team for planning and offering a series of very successful events as part of the “Mid-semester Reset” for students. Leadership from our coaches, Student Ambassadors, and Residence Life staff made events such as study bunnies, zen gardening and succulent planting, self-care workshops, sip and paint, and guided meditation all possible. The week was rounded out with root beer floats and several days of welcoming McKinley the therapy dog to the Testing Center to help students calm their nerves before exams. A special thanks to coaches for engaging students at events, Katy Knight for her organization and planning, and Katie Sommer-Ford for logistics support. This was a great team effort by all with a direct positive impact on our students.


Experts suggest maintaining an “attitude of gratitude” increases positivity for yourself and for others. Please encourage your colleagues by submitting a KUDOS. Let them know you appreciate their hard work and are thinking of them!

Welcome our newest hires

These employees recently started working at the college. Let’s welcome them to the NMC community!

    • Nicholas Gates – Custodian
    • Joshua Shivley – Adjunct Flight Instructor
    • Brittany Ambrosius – Adjunct Surgical Technology Instructor
    • Lisa VonReichbauer – Director of Admissions
    • Luis Qian, Student Employee – Enrollment Services Office Assistant
    • John Rose – Adjunct Culinary Arts Instructor

Internal promotion

Lisa Eiden was recently promoted into a new role and is now the Director of Student Financial Services. Congratulations, Lisa! 

Success story: Dental assistant program looks to the U.P. for students

March 22, 2023

NMC Dental Assisting program students pose with a giant toothbrush
To address another workforce sector where employer demand exceeds labor supply, NMC has formally partnered with Bay Mills Community College in the U.P., seeking to admit more dental assistant students.

Bay Mills Community College logoLast month, NMC and Bay Mills, a tribally-controlled community college in Brimley, signed an articulation agreement that will allow Bay Mills students to transfer to NMC’s dental assistant program after their first year. NMC’s yearlong dental assistant curriculum allows them to sit for the state exam to become a registered dental assistant (RDA). NMC Dental Assistant Director Beckie Wooters will make a recruiting visit to Bay Mills on April 17.

Ability to earn RDA licensure is a key advantage of NMC’s program. NMC has an outstanding exam pass rate, exceeding the state of Michigan’s average in both the clinical and written portion of the exams. Since 2019, at least 96 percent of NMC graduates have passed the clinical portion.

“With a registered dental assistant, a dentist can see about 60 percent more patients. They can do more clinical procedures under the dentist’s supervision,” said Dr. Jessica Rickert, a now-retired Traverse City area dentist who hired NMC graduates in her practice.

Rickert is also the first female Native American dentist in the United States, and remains the only one in Michigan. She now consults with insurer Delta Dental of Michigan and leads Anishinaabe Dental Outreach, whose goal is to improve dental health in Native communities. She saw an opportunity to connect NMC and Bay Mills to better serve the Upper Peninsula, where the shortage of dental professionals is especially acute.

“The scarcity of timely dental care is causing serious hardship,” Rickert said of the U.P. “They have a wonderful program at NMC. Dental assisting is such a great career, and it’s really fulfilling and it’s necessary. Let’s make this happen.”

Wooters said the agreement is another way to boost enrollment. NMC’s dental assistant program currently has 13 students, and can accommodate 24. Need is great in the lower peninsula as well, she said.

“We’re not filling the needs for all of the jobs,” said Wooters.

NMC recently invested $52,000 in new equipment for the dental assistant program. It has six fully-functioning patient rooms and some of the latest technology, including an intraoral scanner.

In addition to dental assistants, NMC has been working to increase the ranks of professionals in multiple fields. In just the past nine months the college has introduced several programs in response to employer demand and labor shortages:

NMC partnership aims to increase regional dental workforce

NMC and Bay Mills Community College, near Sault Ste. Marie, are helping bring dental care to the underserved UP. In February, NMC and Bay Mills, a tribally-controlled community college, signed an articulation agreement that will allow Bay Mills’ students to transfer to NMC’s dental assistant program after their first year. NMC’s yearlong dental assistant curriculum allows them to sit for the state exam to become a registered dental assistant (RDA). NMC Dental Assistant Director Beckie Wooters will make a recruiting visit to Bay Mills on April 17.


Who’s been a Hawk Owl Helper or Hero for you? Let us know at publicrelations@nmc.edu!

Media mentions for March 20, 2023

The following college events and stories have appeared in the media recently. We want to share your media involvement too. Please send information about your NMC-related interview or appearance to publicrelations@nmc.edu. If possible, please include a link to the piece and information about where and when it was used.

Please note access to some stories may be limited by paywalls set up by the media outlet. This includes the Traverse City Record-Eagle, which limits free clicks to five per month. You may also read Record-Eagle articles in the print edition at the NMC Library.

Travel bookings on the rise
Record-Eagle, March 19
(more…)

InfoSec: Password security!

Here’s how to create a long but memorable password: use four random words that you can remember. Don’t forget to throw in some numbers and special characters to increase complexity.

Remember — the longer, the better!

 

NMC IT Security

Honors & Leadership Convocation nominations

This year we embarked on reimagining Honors Convocation after many scholarships were restructured. This change led us to think critically about the purpose for Honors Convocation: to celebrate students’ academic achievement and outstanding accomplishments. Last year, we debuted another event to recognize students with our first ever Student Leadership Luncheon. This event focused on the work student groups do on campus and our amazing student leaders. We saw an opportunity to combine and elevate the profile of both events to celebrate students’ work inside and outside of the classroom with this year’s Honors & Leadership Convocation on May 5.

We are asking for your assistance nominating the Student Leader of the Year, Student Group Recognition and Adult Student of the Year, which we have decided to bring back as recognition and not a scholarship.

All nominations are due by March 24. We recognize this is a tight deadline; please know that we have worked diligently to be able to continue to offer an event recognizing our students this year on a shorter time frame and under unique circumstances.

Faculty: To streamline the process, your department chair and office manager have the link to nominate a student for academic area awards. Please connect with them for additional information!

We are grateful to everyone who helped reimagine this year’s event and look forward to the celebration. Thank you for all you do to support NMC and our students!

Safeguarding sensitive data while working remotely

NMC IT SecuritySince the Covid-19 pandemic swept the country, you may have noticed the line between home and the office is much more transparent. Personal laptops that were once used to watch cat videos and organize photos from a vacation (that now seems all-too-long-ago) are also being used to run sensitive reports and hold important meetings.

Ensuring that sensitive data doesn’t find a way to “leak” out of our closely-monitored network is a high priority for NMC. While there are many measures in place to ensure the confidentiality of data, such as using a VPN and enforcing special email quarantine policies, you are still our best defense against an information security incident or data privacy law violation whether you are working from home or on campus!

So, even though you can pet your dog, make a sandwich, wear your pajamas, AND process a FOAPAL, when you access data from NMC systems on your home network, treat the process the same way you would as if you were on campus! This means:

    • Use Workspace to save files to the NMC network drives (S:, Q:, J:, and N:)
    • Use Google Drive or Google Drive for Desktop
    • DO NOT permanently save files to your personal desktop or “C” drive, which is the local storage on your computer.
      • If something happens to these files the recovery process is not guaranteed and NMC is not responsible for devices that are not our own.
      • Because of this, you risk exposing sensitive information by saving files on a network outside of our control.

🚨 👉Special care must be taken with Banner data on your home machine. While working remotely, you may temporarily download it to your machine but once you are finished working on it for the day, save it to a network or Google Drive and ERASE all of the data from your machine. The data that you work with in Banner is classified and protected by FERPA regulations and therefore cannot be saved to a personal computer.

So remember, whether on campus or remote, save your data and files to the appropriate locations. For remote access users, this means utilizing Workspace to access our Network Drives such as S:, Q:, J:, N:, and using Google Drive/Google Drive for Desktop for other NMC-related file management.

For more information on using Workspace see the Workspace Tip Sheet

For more information on using Google Drive see the Google Drive Tip Sheet

For more information on Google Drive for Desktop see the Google Drive for Desktop Tip Sheet

 

 

Spring 2023 Quick Bytes classes

Join Alison Thornton at an upcoming Quick Bytes class to learn about technology available to employees at NMC. Each class is one hour, full of information and includes time for questions.

Google Slides

Tuesday, March 21, 12-1 p.m.
This multi-purpose tool in Google Applications allows you to create great presentations, blogs, interactive notebooks and more!
Register

Google Arts & Culture

Thursday, April 6,  12-1 p.m.
Bring culture into your classroom with Google Arts & Culture.  It’s a great tool for writing prompts, art history, historical figures, DEI understanding and culture.  View images from the world’s museum in interesting and enlightening features.
Register

Mastering Gmail and Google Calendar

Tuesday, April 11, 12-1 p.m.
Learn how to use multiple calendars, duplicate events, configure settings and apply labels and filters. This course will help make your communication and scheduling easier! 
Register

Canva Basics

Thursday, April 20, 12-1 p.m.
Canva is a graphic layout program for flyers, newsletters, infographics, mind maps, and more. With thousands of templates, Canva is a great resource for design.
Register

Canva Advanced

Thursday, Apr 27, 12-1 p.m.
Canva has new and exciting potential! This advanced class will cover topics such as as frames, color palettes and filters. The new Canva presentations feature will also be covered.
Register

 

Is there a specific topic that you’d like to see featured in an upcoming Quick Bytes class that you don’t see listed above? Email athornton@nmc.edu.