Thank you all for everything you do in pursuit of “Keeping Learning at the Center.”
Activities of Note: Faculty and Staff
- Thank you to everyone for your participation in the end of semester activities. Our Retiree and Recognition Reception, Scholarship Luncheon, Honors Convocation, Bridge Graduation, and Commencement all were great events and well received by honorees.
- As a note on student completion, we have encouraging news. The total degree and certificate counts are: Fall 263, Spring 364 applied for, Summer 83 applied for. This is a total of 710! (SD5)
- Thanks to the 48 faculty who will participate in the “Artifact Scoring Assessing for General Education Outcomes for Communications” this month. This process is a key piece of our process to determine how well our students are learning. (SD1)
- We received notice from the Higher Learning Commission that our reaffirmation of accreditation will be moved up to be completed not later than December 31, 2012. Our last report will be submitted within the next few weeks and I do not see any issues. Recall, we just had our site visit and review and we had no issues. (SD1)
- Many of our campus groups are participating in their annual planning and review processes this month. Three that will meet during May are CIE, ESIMT, and President Council. I thank all of these groups for their thoughtful and important participation. (SD2, SD4)
- Planning and Budget Council (PBC), Departmental leaders and President’s Council have been hard at work reviewing personnel requests for the coming year and working through other budget issues. PBC has provided me a recommendation for personnel action (attached) that I have accepted. Thank you to everyone involved.
- PBC has also provided me with a Draft Budget Recommendation. I am reviewing it now. This topic will be discussed at the May Board meeting and must be approved by the end of June.
- We have NMC engineering students safely in Russia for a multi-week learning experience. Other international learning experiences scheduled for the summer include Water Studies student trip to Costa Rica and Culinary student trip to France. Many of these students received scholarship assistance from the Global Opportunities Fund. (SD1)
Activities of Note: Tim
- I was privileged to be invited to participate on a panel at the Michigan Business Leaders Higher Education Marketplace Summit. The summit focused on the important role Michigan Higher Education plays in innovation, economic activity, and talent development. I’ve attached the agenda for your review. As you read about this event or review the MBL Plan for Michigan, it will become apparent that their attention is focused on state supported universities. We continue to work to educate people that community colleges are part of higher education; that almost half of all postsecondary students are enrolled in community colleges and that we are the most adaptive and responsive component of the higher ed community. I spoke to those topics and others as a panelist. Having said that, I believe we still have a lot of work to do.
- Tuesday of this week I was one of three panelists for the Bank of Northern Michigan’s Leadership Exchange program. The topic of discussion was on talent attraction, development and retention. I was able to share the good work that you have been doing here at NMC relative to that topic. Other panelists were Lisa Wehr, CEO of Oneupweb, and Bob Bleyeart, Founder of the Bank of Northern Michigan.
- The Campus Master Planning is continuing. I have asked TowerPinkster to provide a short presentation and discussion at the upcoming Board of Trustees meeting.
- I signed the agreement discussed at the April Board meeting between BATA and NMC that will allow them to use the Elm Lot this summer as a park and ride facility. Our hope is this will be helpful to the community as well as members of the college.
- Friday this week (today!), I will travel to East Lansing to meet with Assistant Secretary of Postsecondary Education Eduardo Ochoa. I am one of a group of higher ed leaders that have been invited to discuss the administration’s College Affordability proposals. As you have heard me say before, “If you don’t have a seat at the table, you are on the menu.” This is an important table to be invited to. I’ll let you know the outcomes when I return.
- I met with Faculty Council last Friday and two topics of discussion included my request that they be engaged in our upcoming project of Redesigning the Learning Experience, and questions they posed on the evaluation we are doing on merit pay compensation systems. Steve Drake gave a good presentation on how the current compensation system was established, how it works and what values it was designed to support. This topic is a component of our Talent project. A significant amount of work, research and discussion is still needed.
- As you know, I was recently appointed by Governor Snyder as one of the 11 MPSERS Board members. My orientation and first meeting are May 31 in Lansing. I will let you know how it goes.
- As we mentioned in the last update, the AACC has issued a report titled Reclaiming the American Dream. I have included a web link in the list of attachments and encourage you to read at least the executive summary, as I believe it will have an impact on NMC and Michigan.
- We continue to make progress with the ISD Early College. The ISD superintendents are meeting this week to discuss the proposals and next steps. I will report out when we hear the outcomes of their meetings. The early college will have three tracks (business, technology and health occupations) and will enroll 75 student cohorts each year for a maximum of 225 enrolled at any one time.
Legislative Issues
- I have attached the MCCA legislative summary. Things in Lansing continue to move rapidly and I seem to be dedicating more and more time to these issues. The MPSERS legislation has had numerous changes proposed, the last being eliminating the 60 year age requirement for healthcare and the application of certain fees to existing members. A bill calling for a constitutional amendment that would require community colleges to offer in-district tuition to veterans regardless of their residency is in the hearing phase in the House Higher Education Committee. While we are very supportive of serving our veterans, I do not see how this is helpful and in fact could hurt our ability to deliver services that are needed.
Further, to imbed within the constitution, issues of tuition rates is not appropriate in my mind. At best, this should be an issue of law, not constitutionality. I will keep you apprised of this status.
Miscellaneous
- We are refining our MOU with our China partner. They are ready to move forward and begin recruiting students for NMC. We hope to come to an agreement in the next week or so.
- Last week Marguerite Cotto joined a conference call regarding program reviews in ag. tech and related field applications of renewable energy technology. The short end of the conversation was an invitation to join a group (including HLC global review folks) for a one-week visit in June to Tokyo institutions looking at US accreditation for their programs. We are evaluating whether this makes sense for us.
- I discussed the Turkey higher education summit being managed by Prima Civitas. After careful consideration, I have decided not to have NMC participate this year. We need to do additional research to determine how best to interact with Turkey (if at all) and what the various value propositions would be.
- TEDx Traverse City is next Wednesday. It looks like a great program and I will see many of you there.
- Marguerite, Andy Dolan, Karen Reudinger and I met to design a process to ramp up our interactions with community groups and members. We will provide a calendar soon that will include these types of Community Connections:
- Breakfasts
- One-on-ones
- Special Interest Group Conversations – My expectation is that viticulture and value added agriculture will be among the first.
- I am continuing my conversations with private developers and other public organizations that could lead to collaborative efforts in areas discussed at the Board Retreat. I will present information as it is appropriate.
- We are approaching the end of the fiscal year and the time for the President’s Evaluation (mine) is coming soon. I have asked the office to contact the evaluation