The NMC Board of Trustees will hold its regular monthly meeting Monday, April 24 at 5:30 p.m. in the Hagerty Center on NMC’s Great Lakes Campus. More information is available here.
For more information, please contact the President’s office at (231) 995-1010.
The NMC Jazz Lab Band and Jazz Big Band will be performing their final concert this semester on April 22 at 7:30 p.m. in the Milliken Auditorium. Selections by Niehaus, Yasinitsky, Hooper, Garling, Mingus, Goodwin, Beethoven, Shorter, Kubis, Jarvis, Barbieri, Lewis and Norman will be featured. The bands are hot and the music is cool so come on out and celebrate America’s premier art form: JAZZ!
Doors open at 7:00pm and the show starts at 7:30pm with a brief intermission between groups!
Tickets at the door are $15 for Adults, $10 for Seniors and free for NMC students with their student ID. Tickets can be purchased at simpletix.com.
The NMC Board of Trustees Policy Committee Meeting will meet Wednesday, April 19 at 9:30 a.m. in Room 112 at NMC’s Great Lakes Campus, and the Building & Site Committee will meet at 11:15 a.m. in the same location. More information and meeting agendas are available here.
For more information, please contact the President’s office at (231) 995-1010.
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.
TC Native Named One of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People
Ticker, April 14 (more…)
On Tuesday, April 18, join your fellow NMC community members to support an important cause on campus. Light up the Night is an evening of awareness and solidarity surrounding sexual assault and sexual harassment. Free food, a special activity, candle light vigil, and more will be provided.
Attendees should meet in the Timothy J. Nelson Innovation Center lobby at 5:30 p.m. The event is open to students, faculty, staff and the local community.
Join drum circle leader and facilitator Lori Fithian on Tuesday, April 18 at 4 p.m. for a Drummunity workshop that is a high-energy, fun, and empowering activity. A ‘Drummunity’ drum circle can promote stress release and relaxation!
Attendees should meet outside the Timothy J. Nelson Innovation Center, if the weather permits. Otherwise, meet in room Timothy J. Nelson Center room 106/107.
This event is open to students, faculty, staff and the local community. Prepare for loud drumming!
The NMC Student Green Team and the faculty/staff Campus Sustainability Committee have organized a series of events for 2023 Earth Week. There’s something for everyone!
Spring Clean Up Hike
Sunday, April 16, 1 p.m., Kids Creek Park (park in Kohls parking lot; carpooling available by filling out this form)
Get some fresh air, meet with other students and clean up our local environment. Join Student Success and the Student Green Team with cleaning up a local Traverse City hiking trail. You can come out and do a 2 mile loop or more! Snacks and Drinks provided.
Campus Clean Up
April 22-29
Help keep our campuses green and beautiful throughout the week. Sign up on your own or with a departmental group/team. Supplies for clean up are located in the Student Success office. Sign up here.
Future Generation Celebration Earth Day Concert and Mini Fair
Saturday, April 22, 10:30 a.m, tent near North Hall
Audio Tech is presenting the first ever Future Generation Celebration, a free music festival, in conjunction with a mini fair organized by the Student Green Team. Both events will follow the Big Little Hero Race.
Music lineup consists of:
Vegan Week
April 24-28, Hawk Owl Café
Learn more about a plant-based lifestyle by enjoying the vegan menu options served at the Hawk Owl Café.
Campus Birding Walk
Tuesday, April 25 (Wednesday, April 26 alt. rain date), 8 a.m., main entrance of the Timothy J. Nelson Innovation Center
Learn about local wildlife and a great hobby—birding! Walk will be led by Kirk Waterstripe, Laboratory Manager and Board Member of the Grand Traverse Audubon Club.
EGR 101 Grounds Maintenance Alternative Practices Presentation
Tuesday, April 25, 3:10 p.m., Timothy J Nelson Innovation Center room 106/107
Hear about the alternative grounds maintenance practices that students in Jay Smith’s EGR 101 have been researching for their semester project. This presentation will feature their recommendations to the college on creating more sustainable grounds maintenance systems.
Film Screening of Kiss the Ground
Wednesday, April 26, 3 p.m., Scholar’s Hall room 217
Learn about regenerative farming practices and join in a discussion led by Campus Sustainability Committee members Ryan Wilson, Kirk Waterstripe and Laura Jaquish. Snacks will be provided.
Environmentalist Mingle
Friday, April 28, 7 p.m., Timothy J Nelson Innovation Center room 107
Make new friends by connecting with other like-minded individuals who enjoy the outdoors and are working on environmental issues. Attendees will get to know each other’s prompts and musical preferences. Refreshments will be provided.
NMC is dedicated to spreading social, economic, and environmental change through education and action at the campus, community and national level. Join our mission by taking the sustainability pledge.
Kudos to Shannon Croll! She is always readily available for students and helps anyone who needs it. She is so patient and nice to the students and as the front desk employee, she also makes my job so much easier by answering any questions I have.
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!
These employees recently started working at the college. Let’s welcome them to the NMC community!
Melanie Griffith was recently promoted to Nursing Office Assistant. Congratulations, Melanie!
The Honors & Leadership Convocation for the class of 2023 will be held on Friday, May 5 in the Milliken Auditorium at the Dennos Museum. A reception will begin at 4:30 p.m. with the ceremony following at 5:30 p.m.
Recognition will be given for the accomplishments of students both inside and outside of the classroom over the last year, including academic area awards, student groups, leadership awards and more. Students who are being recognized at this year’s event will receive an invitation to RSVP for the event.
Faculty and staff who are presenting awards should contact Katie Sommer-Ford to confirm.
For questions, please contact the Advising Center at advising-frontoffice@nmc.edu or (231) 995-1040.
Are you an advisor looking to refresh your knowledge on how to guide your students through registering for classes with a corequisite? This video tutorial is the perfect resource for you. Students commonly have trouble registering for classes with corequisites like ENG 111/11 or BIO 106/106L, so don’t miss out on this opportunity to enhance your advising skills and help your students reach their academic goals.
Spring book rentals are due back to the bookstore by Tuesday, May 9. Books that have been purchased can be sold back to the bookstore during May 1–5.
Summer textbooks are now available. Stop by the store or check them out online at bookstore.nmc.edu. Looking to use financial aid for your books? Summer financial aid will be available April 24–June 27.
The NMC Board of Trustees will hold its regular monthly meeting Monday, April 24 at 5:30 p.m. in the Hagerty Center on NMC’s Great Lakes Campus. More information is available here.
For more information, please contact the President’s office at (231) 995-1010.
Back in 1998, philosophy instructor Michael Emerson was asked to join a small pilot group of NMC instructors trying something new: teaching online. A quarter-century later, Emerson now teaches all his classes online, nearly every NMC class has an online component, and the college’s strategic plan prioritizes more online offerings as well as greater student success in them.
That pilot project was an early adoption of the technology that would change the world, and NMC has maintained its position at the forefront of educational technology.
“We made this decision and committed ourselves long before other institutions did it,” Emerson said. “Now people are getting their masters and doctorates totally online.”
He and the other NMC instructors embraced the challenge of trying something new. At the time, online classes meant totally asynchronous instruction conducted essentially by email. Lacking today’s video capabilities, instructor and student were invisible to each other.
“I was initially kind of skeptical. The standard model was to be in the classroom,” said Emerson. The pilot group used what he called a “primitive” Learning Management System, or LMS.
Through the 2000s, 2010s and through COVID-19, which made online education almost an expectation, NMC continued to stay on the leading edge of educational technology, Emerson said. The college has used multiple LMS systems. Moodle, the current provider, is the tool that is found in almost every class.
NMC now boasts an Educational Technologies department of eight. Courses are offered in four different formats: lecture, online, hybrid and livestream. Accelerated and short courses offer more convenience to students. NMC’s strategic plan calls for increasing the proportion of online courses to 35% in fall and spring semester. Online enrollment is highest in summer semester, and will surpass 50 percent this summer.
Emerson sees many advantages of online education. Besides the flexibility and convenience it offers, students are more comfortable discussing the sensitive topics than can arise in his philosophy classes, he said. Participation can be leveled across the class, instead of being dominated by one or two people.
“The discussions have almost always been very very civil in the classroom, because there’s a sense of permanence,” he said. “All of us are more accountable in that regard, in terms of what we say.”
He estimates teaching online saves thousands of pounds of paper, and, as COVID demonstrated, keeps him and his students healthier.
NMC’s strategic plan also calls for improving already high rates of online class success through new teaching strategies. For online courses, the goal is 90 percent success/completion, up from 87 percent. The hybrid course goal is 95 percent, up from 92.
Not bad for what started as a pilot project.
“NMC was really at the very forefront of that, well before many traditional four-year schools,” said Emerson.
TRAVERSE CITY — The second annual Northwestern Michigan College Experiential Learning Institute Learning Symposium will celebrate learning from May 1–4 at the Timothy J. Nelson Innovation Center (TJNIC) on NMC’s main campus.
This symposium is a celebration of learning, with a variety of engaging activities and events for attendees to participate in. Throughout the event, attendees can browse poster displays and artifacts showcasing the innovative and high-impact projects that students have been working on across all academic areas at NMC. The schedule also includes:
Monday, May 1:
Tuesday, May 2:
Wednesday, May 3:
Thursday, May 4:
For a complete schedule of events, visit nmc.edu/experiential-learning/learning-symposium.html. These events are open to everyone. Anyone who is interested in experiential learning or high-impact learning is encouraged to attend.
Tracy Welch
Experiential Learning Institute Office Manager
elinstitute@nmc.edu
(231) 995-1170
TRAVERSE CITY — Students enrolled in Northwestern Michigan College’s (NMC) Professional Communications class and Audio Tech students invite the community to the first-ever Future Generation Celebration immediately following the eighth annual Big Little Hero Race on Saturday, April 22, underneath the big white tent behind North Hall on NMC’s main campus. The free music festival begins at noon and runs until 7 p.m. Food options, games, and activities are also available. This event is family friendly.
Music lineup for the festival is:
Registration for the Big Little Hero Race is still going on at biglittleherorace.com. The race is an experiential learning project to raise funds towards NMC College for Kids scholarships for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwestern Michigan. Last year’s event raised $5,000 for scholarships. Participants are encouraged to come in their favorite superhero costumes. Complete race details are at biglittleherorace.com.
Kristy McDonald
NMC Business Instructor (Big Little Hero Race)
(231) 735-1055
kmcdonald@nmc.edu
David Chown
Audio Tech Instructor (Future Generation Celebration)
(231) 883-6756
dchown@nmc.edu
Brady Corcoran
Audio Technology Coordinator (Future Generation Celebration)
(310) 909-3924
bcorcoran@nmc.edu
Alex Grassa
Social Media Specialist
(231) 883-8055
nmc4bbbs@gmail.com
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.
Career Tech health science students to receive college credit
Yahoo News, April 10
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