Board of Trustees Building & Site Committee
TRAVERSE CITY —
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Record $1.28 million in NMC scholarships awarded
Number of student recipients rises 45 percent
Traverse City — Northwestern Michigan College has awarded a record amount of scholarship dollars to a record number of recipients this academic year, another example of NMC’s commitment to break down barriers to education, including financial.
As of Feb. 3, the college had awarded $1.28 million in scholarships to 964 recipients for the 2019-20 school year. That’s a 12-percent increase in dollars awarded and a whopping 45 percent increase in recipients. In 2018-19 the college awarded $1.14 million to 662 recipients.
NMC Director of Financial Aid Linda Berlin said the increase is the result of process enhancements undertaken to encourage more scholarship applications, so that available funds are fully awarded. Enhancements included a second application cycle, a communication plan to students and a reformatted, more user-friendly application.
As a result, applications grew from 22 percent of students in 2016-17 to 28 percent last year. Simultaneously, scholarship funds awarded rose from 74 percent of available to 82 percent. Berlin expects to see those numbers continue to improve this year and next.
“We’re trying to make (scholarships) more accessible to all our students, and we’re trying to get the message out, it’s not just about merit,” Berlin said. Financial need, area of study, and hometown are all common scholarship award criteria.
Scholarship funds are donated through the NMC Foundation, which has made scholarships one of four priority areas in its current $35 million Be What’s Possible comprehensive fundraising campaign. Read more.
Recipient Dani Valentine, 26, is in her second semester at NMC. For the fall 2019 semester, she got a $500 scholarship. This spring, she was awarded two more totaling $1,500. After earning her associate’s degree at NMC, Valentine plans to complete her bachelor’s through NMC’s University Center, and then complete a graduate degree in optometry at Ferris State.
“It’s definitely a long road, but because of scholarships I feel like I can do this,” Valentine said.
One of her spring scholarships is the Global Opportunities scholarship for students studying abroad. Valentine will use the $1,000 to participate in NMC’s first-ever trip to Iceland. She plans to earn NMC’s Global Endorsement in addition to her degree.
“I think it will help set me apart for anything I apply for in the future, as far as jobs or grad school,” she said.
The average 2019-20 scholarship award is $1,327. Berlin said that her office is trying to keep the average above $1,000. Tuition and fees for a student like Valentine — a Grand Traverse County resident enrolled in 12 contact hours per semester and studying an NMC general program — total $1,714 per semester.
“I’m really just super grateful for all these scholarships, not just for me, but anybody,” Valentine said. ‘It really does make a huge difference. Any small amount really helps.”
- To help students and families learn how to pay for college, NMC will hold its annual Financial Aid Fair from 4-7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 12 in the Osterlin Building. This event is a comprehensive overview of the cost of college, types of financial aid, finding and applying for scholarships, and a special session for Native American students. Individual assistance is also offered.
- A culinary scholarship-specific workshop will be held from noon-2 p.m. Friday, Feb. 14 at Lobdell’s Teaching Restaurant on the Great Lakes campus.
- A tech-aviation scholarship-specific workshop will be held from 12:30-1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 26 in Parsons-Stulen 217/219 on the Aero Park Campus.
Release date: February 5, 2020
For more information:
Diana Fairbanks
Executive Director of Public Relations, Marketing and Communications
dfairbanks@nmc.edu
(231) 995-1019
NON-DISCRIMINATION POLICY NOTICE
Northwestern Michigan College is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, disability, genetic information, height, weight, marital status or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. nmc.edu/non-discriminationSuccess Story: Record high dollars awarded to record number of recipients
February 5, 2020
Aspiring to an optometry degree, Dani Valentine anticipated many years of tuition bills. But thanks to NMC scholarships, in only her second semester she’s finding those bills substantially lower than expected.
Valentine is one of a record 964 institutional scholarship recipients this academic year, a whopping 40 percent more than in 2018-19. Collectively those students have been awarded a record $1.28 million, a 12-percent increase in scholarship dollars awarded over 2018-19.
“It’s definitely a long road, but because of scholarships I feel like I can do this,” Valentine, 26, said of achieving her goal of becoming an optometrist.
NMC Director of Financial Aid Linda Berlin said the increase is the result of process enhancements undertaken to encourage more scholarship applications, so that available funds are fully awarded. Enhancements included a second application cycle, a communication plan to students and a reformatted, more user-friendly scholarship application.
As a result, applications grew from 22 percent of students in 2016-17 to 28 percent last year. Simultaneously, scholarship funds awarded rose from 74 percent of available to 82 percent.
“We’re trying to make (scholarships) more accessible to all our students, and we’re trying to get the message out, it’s not just about merit,” Berlin said. Financial need, area of study, and hometown are all common scholarship award criteria.
Scholarship funds are donated through the NMC Foundation, which has made scholarships one of four priority areas in its current $35 million Be What’s Possible comprehensive fundraising campaign.
For the fall 2019 semester, Valentine got a $500 scholarship. This spring, she was awarded two more totaling $1,500. After earning her associate’s degree, Valentine plans to complete her bachelor’s through NMC’s University Center, and then complete a graduate degree in optometry at Ferris State.
Valentine will use her $1,000 Global Opportunities scholarship to participate in NMC’s first-ever trip to Iceland. She plans to earn NMC’s Global Endorsement in addition to her degree.
“I think it will help set me apart for anything I apply for in the future, as far as jobs or grad school,” she said.
The average scholarship award is $1,327 this year. Berlin said that her office is trying to keep the average above $1,000. That’s more than half the cost of tuition and fees for a student like Valentine — a Grand Traverse County resident enrolled in 12 contact hours per semester and studying an NMC general program — which total $1,714 per semester.
“I’m really just super grateful for all these scholarships, not just for me, but anybody,” Valentine said. “It really does make a huge difference. Any small amount really helps.”
Student Application for NMC Scholarships is open for 2020-2021
The Student Application for Scholarship is open for 2020-2021! Below is important information to share with our students and encourage all to apply!
Online Application:
- Please direct students to https://nmc.academicworks.com/
- Single sign-on with their NMC credentials
- Can take as little as 5 minutes to complete the General Application!
Upcoming Deadlines & Dates:
- Priority Awarding deadline for Departmental, Merit and Honors applications: March 1
- Deadline for Presidential, Founders, and Angell/Williams: April 1
- Scholarships will be awarded starting in April
- We will continue to award throughout the Spring and early Summer until funding is exhausted
Process:
- Once submitted, an overnight process needs to occur to transfer applicable data to help match the student to scholarship opportunities.
- Nearly 75% of our scholarships will automatically match to eligible students. They only need to submit the general application.
- Remaining scholarships do require further action: students will discover if they can apply to ‘recommended opportunities’ after the overnight process occurs.
- Students should periodically check back for new matches as new/additional funding becomes available throughout the award year.
Want to learn more, have suggestions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We look forward to the conversation!
Linda Berlin
Director of Financial Aid
lberlin@nmc.edu
Catherine Creighton
Financial Aid Specialist | Scholarship Coordinator
ccreighton@nmc.edu
NMC Magazine Seeking Submissions
BOOTLEG – NMC Magazine Spring 2020
Prohibition-era, broken promises, or empty pockets. Raised fists in the air, fighting against the grain. Power to the B-sides of the mixed tapes and the grassroots family scraping by. Share the secret password to your speakeasy with us. Submit your art and writing for our consumption.
Submitted works can include art, design, illustration, photography, sculpture, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, music, and more.
- Fiction/Nonfiction: 1000 word limit
- Poetry/Lyrics: 30 line limit
Students, faculty, staff, and alumni are all welcome to submit to NMC Magazine.
The deadline for submissions is Friday, March 13, 2020.
Send in your submission* to nmcmag@mail.nmc.edu. Hard copies can be delivered to Fine Arts (attn: Caroline Schaefer-Hills) or Scholars Hall 214 (attn: Alissia Lingaur). Visit nmc.edu/nmcmagazine to complete a submission form with each entry.
* Submissions unaccompanied by completed submission forms will not be considered for publication.
Get involved with the NMC Food Pantry!
The NMC Food Pantry team would like to invite NMC faculty and staff to get involved! With a fairly small time commitment (an hour or less every week or two), you can help NMC students in a very tangible way. If you’re interested in volunteering to pack food orders, please fill out this form to indicate your availability. If you have any questions, email Paul Kolak at pkolak@nmc.edu.
The NMC Food Pantry operates year-round in order to supply students with nutritious food and personal items in order to combat food insecurity. The pantry serves between 80 and 90 people per month.
NMC names first class of Experiential Learning fellowship recipients
Lisa Blackford
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Tamara Coleman
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Sarah Montgomery-Richards
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Caroline Schaefer-Hills
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Brian Sweeney
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John Velis
(click for high-resolution photo) TRAVERSE CITY — Northwestern Michigan College has selected six faculty members as the first recipients of an Experiential Learning fellowship intended to accelerate the prevalence of the high-impact instructional style across disciplines.
Each recipient will substantially convert or create a course based on EL principles, which include students working in teams, immersive experiences, project-based assignments and online. The recipients and courses are:
- Lisa Blackford and Tamara Coleman: The Science of Stress (new course)
- Sarah Montgomery-Richards: Western Religions
- Caroline Schaefer-Hills: Art Appreciation (online course)
- Brian Sweeney: Basic Metallurgy
- John Velis: Systems Analysis and Design
“It is exciting to see such a diverse group of faculty focused on innovation, collaboration and high impact teaching practices, as we uniquely prepare our students to live and work in the world of the 21st century,” said Kristy McDonald, director of NMC’s Experiential Learning Institute.
Montgomery-Richards said she hopes to overhaul Western Religions in order to boost enrollment. Currently the course draws half the enrollment of her Eastern Religions class.
“I think students feel like they know western religions,” she said. She hopes a new design will challenge that assumption and increase the relevance of the philosophy course, which most students take as an elective.
“How is an understanding of religion in general, and diverse religious perspectives, going to help them in the future?” Montgomery-Richards said.
Social work and psychology instructor Blackford and biology instructor Coleman are combining their disciplines into a new course, the Science of Stress. Slated to be offered in the fall 2020 semester, students will explore current research on stress and its impacts on body systems. It will meet in an anatomy and physiology lab, as well as in a simulation lab, and is intended to have practical applications, too, as students gain an experiential understanding of stress on learning, anxiety and depression and tools for resilience.
“The whole campus, we talk about how students’ stress has gone up,” Blackford said.
“We saw it as an epidemic,” Coleman added.
Each recipient will receive a $1,500 stipend. The fellowship, is one of the first initiatives of NMC’s Experiential Learning Institute, which launched in 2019 as a way to formalize efforts to expand experiential learning college-wide, which date to 2016. It will collaborate with both on-campus and community stakeholders to engage students and the community, locally, nationally and globally. The Institute will connect the community and NMC by seeking creative partnerships, serving ongoing community needs, and preparing learners for future employment.
Release date: FEBRUARY 3, 2020
For more information:
Kristy McDonald
Director, Experiential Learning Institute and Business Instructor
kmcdonald@nmc.edu
(231) 995-1059
NON-DISCRIMINATION POLICY NOTICE
Northwestern Michigan College is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, disability, genetic information, height, weight, marital status or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. nmc.edu/non-discriminationMedia Mentions for February 3, 2020
The following college events and stories have appeared in the media in the past week. 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 Osterlin Library.
Nick Nissley: Three Weeks In, NMC’s New President Sees Passion And Possibilities
The Ticker, Jan. 28 (more…)
Letter from the President: Reframing How We Think About and Approach Conflict
Dear NMC Community,
It’s been just over a month since I’ve been on campus meeting with you to listen and learn about our college. These first weeks have been exhilarating and positive! Since my Intercom communication with you last week about the foundational importance of trust, I had the honor to attend Governor Whitmer’s State of the State address in Lansing, as a guest of our State Senator Wayne Schmidt. That night, bearing witness to the political process in action, I was reminded of how important constructive conflict is to healthy, vibrant communities and organizations. It has inspired me to reflect on that experience as a learning opportunity for us at NMC. (more…)
Kudos!
KUDOS- (praise or respect that you get because of something you have done or achieved) defined by Merriam-Webster.com
What can accrued sick time be used for?
Sick leave will include all provisions in the Paid Medical Leave Act as of 3/29/19 which include: employee’s own or a family member’s (defined as child, parent, spouse, grandparent, grandchild or sibling) mental or physical illness, injury or health condition; employee’s own or a family member’s medical diagnosis, care or treatment for a mental or physical illness, injury or health condition; employee’s own or a family member’s preventative medical care; employee’s own or a family member’s domestic violence and sexual assault related matters, such as when the employee or family member is a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault for the purpose of medical care or psychological or other counseling for physical or psychological injury or disability, to obtain services from a victim services organization, for relocation purposes, to obtain legal services, to participate in any court proceedings related to or resulting from domestic violence or sexual assault; and matters related to public health emergency situations, such as closure of employee’s primary workplace by order of a public official due to a public health emergency, to care for a child whose school or place of care has been closed by order of a public official due to a public health emergency, or if it has been determined by health authorities that the employee’s own or the family member’s presence in the community would jeopardize the health of others due to a communicable disease.
Also, if you have accrued sick leave you can use 2 days per anniversary year for Personal Business Leave. Please see the policy HERE.
Maintain Don’t Gain Challenge Results
- 58 members participated in the challenge.
- 39 members MET the challenge (not gaining more than 3 pounds).
- 4 members did not meet the challenge.
- 15 members did not weigh out or provide a weigh out via email.
- 3 people lost more than 5 pounds.
- Congrats to Bill Czyzyk for being the drawing winner and $100 gift card.
Congratulations and thank you to everyone who participated in the challenge. I do wish all NMC members success as they continue on their well-being journey throughout 2020!
- Marissa Jarrett
Health Benefit Summary Documents
Please use the following links to access summary documents for your coverage.
Check your Life Insurance Beneficiaries in ADP
To check your beneficiaries, go to ADP > Myself > Benefits > Enrollments > View Benefits
- Be sure the date is in 2020.
- Scroll down to Employee Life section.
- If you are satisfied with the beneficiaries, no action is needed.
- If you need to make a change, click on the green pencil icon to edit.
- If you need to add a beneficiary who is not listed, contact Hollie DeWalt in HR.
Zuzu Acrobats Performance
The Student Life Office, in honor of Black History Month, is sponsoring a free performance of the Zuzu Acrobats Wednesday, Feb. 5 at 6 p.m. at Milliken Auditorium. Zuzu Acrobats a five-person Kenyan acrobatic show which embodies the Bantu Culture of East Africa. The show lasts one hour and features fast pyramid building, limbo, chair balancing, comedy, fast skip rope, juggling and much more all set to high energy lingala music.
The first 50 NMC students who show their student ID at the door will also receive a $10 gift card to the NMC bookstore.
For any questions, feel free to contact the Student Life office at (231) 995-1118.
Media Mentions for January 27, 2020
The following college events and stories have appeared in the media in the past week. 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 Osterlin Library.
Nissley takes over as NMC president in Traverse City
Interlochen Public Radio, Jan. 27 (more…)
Letter from the President: Trust – Relying On Someone Else to Do the Right Thing
Dear NMC Community,
Over the past three weeks – has it been just three weeks that I’ve been on the job? – my focus has been three-fold:
- maintain the momentum, ensuring that all the good work that our faculty and staff have already set in motion, continues to move forward;
- build relationships, with both our internal and external stakeholders; and
- learn about NMC, and how we do things around here.
That translates to more than 100 calendared meetings and events during these first three weeks – listening and learning – seeking to better understand who we are and how we serve our students and the wider community. (more…)
Academic World Quest
TRAVERSE CITY — NMC’s International Affairs Forum will host 18 area high school teams at its annual Academic WorldQuest from noon-5 p.m. February 6, at the Hagerty Center.
The teams will compete for the chance to participate in the national competition, the flagship youth education program of the World Affairs Councils, to be held in Washington, D.C. in April. Topics in the 2020 competition include preventing violent extremism, ocean protection and US-Russia Relations.
“Academic WorldQuest has a great atmosphere of friendly competition. Studying current topics in foreign affairs helped me expand my view of the world, and traveling to Washington, D.C. was a fantastic experience,” said Ted Roe, a 2019 Traverse City Central High School graduate and member of the Trojans’ winning team. Currently a freshman at the University of Notre Dame, Roe participated in AWQ for three years.
The event is free and open to the public. Sponsors include: The Traverse City Record-Eagle, Jimmy John’s, Shanty Creek Resort, Target, Best Buy, Common Good Bakery, Mundos Roasting & Co, Cicero’s Pizza. State Theater, Cherry Republic, Grand Traverse Pie Co. and Paesano’s Pizza.
Release date: JANUARY 27, 2020
For more information:
Julie Doyal
juliedoyal@yahoo.com
(231) 649-1781