Thank you all for everything you do in pursuit of “Keeping Learning at the Center.”
Activities of Note: Faculty and Staff
This section recognizes the good work being done and linkages to the Strategic Agenda, Strategic Directions and Goals are provided where possible.
- On Saturday, April 16, 2016, the Student Life Office held its 5th annual Sweet Earth Music and Arts Festival at the Hagerty Center. The annual Sweet Earth Arts and Music Festival is an all- inclusive Earth Day Celebration, and is intended to engage students and the greater community through art and music to learn about environmental issues of local and global importance and to connect with ways to take action. Choosing the Hagerty Center as our venue allowed for more vendors, community partners and attendees to participate. This year we featured 22 artist vendors and 26 community organizations, along with live music and poetry from Michigan artists around the state. The event drew approximately 1,200 attendees. (IE1, IE2, IE3, IE4).
- Seven students from our Fruit and Vegetable Crop Management, Landscape Management and Viticulture programs participated in the 2nd annual Equipment Operation and Maintenance Clinic at Gillison’s Variety Fabrication in Benzonia on April 22-23. During the clinic students gained experience operating equipment such as fork lifts, excavators, loaders, tractors, zero-turn mowers, and dump trucks. Students also gained experience in maintaining agricultural equipment and small engines. This clinic was a great example of industry partnership, which involved instruction from representatives of businesses and organizations such as Gillison’s Variety Fabrication, Michigan Farm Bureau, TruNorth Landscaping, and Cunningham Viticultural Services. (IE1, IE2)
- NMC and the Construction Technology program hosted the “Building Tomorrow” construction careers awareness event on April 21-23. The objective of the event was to highlight career opportunities within the construction industry to high school students. The hands-on event, sponsored by the construction industry, focused on careers in welding, electrical, HVAC, heavy equipment, concrete and carpentry. There were 427 students who attended the three-day event from all areas of northern Michigan. (IE1, IE2)
- The Technology Help Desk instituted a system of Visual Management Boards for both the Tanis and Beckett building sites. The Visual Management Boards assist clients to know when, how, and where they can receive technical assistance on and off-campus at any time. (IE3)
- Michelle Schneider and Sherry Trier, of Educational Media Technologies, worked with faculty member Tom Gordon to help create an alternative course materials option for students. They collaboratively worked with the librarians to create an Open Educational Resource (OER) that would be accessible to all students. This included applying accessibility principles such as heading structure, alternative text to all images, and creating meaningful links. A Screen reader was also used to ensure principles were properly applied. This OER was created to insure all students the same opportunity. (IE1)
- Media Technology facilitated the opportunity for Dr. Dan Weber and MSU medical students to come to the NMC Nursing Simulation lab to work with standardized patients. The focus for the day was mental health simulation. Simulation allows students to practice in a safe environment prior to working in the clinical setting with actual patients. (IE1)
- Educational Media Technologies has continued support for students with video captioning needs by proactively captioning faculty recorded lightboard videos and videos posted in Ensemble (a video repository and lecture capture recording tool used by faculty and staff). The lightboard is an innovative teaching and learning tool that enables instructors to capture lectures in an exciting, engaging format. It solves a few problems presented by current lecture capture methods. Recording a lecture on a whiteboard leads to poor video quality and the instructor’s back is turned toward the camera. When using the lightboard, however, instructors maintain eye contact with their students, and because they are facing their students other nonverbal behaviors critical to content delivery aren’t lost like they are with traditional methods. An agreement with new captioning/transcription vendor has made it more budget friendly to achieve this accomplishment. (IE3)
- Media Technologies collaborated with the International Affairs Forum to record and live stream this season’s events. They produced video content for the Training Department, International and Local Service Learning and the Make-A-Wish Foundation. (IE2)
- Social Sciences instructor Sonja Olshove presented with a panel of teachers at the Western Psychological Association Conference on The Heroic Imagination Project. (IE2)
- Lisa Blackford and Joe Verschaeve, Social Sciences instructors, traveled to Ghana with Social Work, Psychology, and Criminal Justice students examining Ghana through the lens of development challenges surrounding health, education, and water. (IE2)
- Brian Heffner, in his first full year as the Police Academy Director, had 14 students graduate from the Police Academy this year. The following have already been hired: 2 – Grand Traverse Deputies, 1 – Michigan State Police, 1 – Antrim County Sheriff’s Office, 1 – Mackinac Island Police, 1 – Menominee City Police, 1 – Leelanau County Marine Patrol. The rest of the graduates are in final interviews with a variety of Michigan departments, as well as the US Customs Service. (IE2)
- Nick Roster presented an update to the NMC Foundation Board on his Innovation Grant funded ‘gamification’ learning process that has been well received. He has also started a Faculty Learning Community around gamification that has 8 faculty members, from all parts of the college, working on learning how gamification works. (IE1)
- Taoufik Nadji hosted the Michigan Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers (MIAAPT) in the fall of 2015, and will present at the national conference this summer about the blending of the arts into the teaching of Physics and Math. He will also have his latest article published in an upcoming edition of The Physics Teachers. (IE1)
- Nancy Parshall, full-time faculty member in the Communications Academic Area, recently had a piece of her flash fiction published online at kysoflash.com. KYSO Flash publishes one-of-a- kind works of art and memorable literature. (IE1)
- Retention and completion continue to be a focus across Student Services Areas. To increase student engagement in the academic planning and registration process, the Advising Center coordinated efforts for a registration “push” following NMC’s spring break. Banners and posters were created and displayed around campus, student-focused announcements were placed on monitors, and targeted email messages were sent to encourage students to register for fall classes. The Advising Center also created “Register Now” buttons worn by Enrollment Management & Student Services staff and offices around campus helped promote registration by asking students about registration. Additionally, the Advising Center held Open Registration and Academic Planning Labs in the Student Success Center and assisted students with using My Academic Plan (MAP) to check progress toward degree completion and select courses for summer and fall registration. (IE3, IE5)
Activities of Note: Tim
- I met with Tonya Hare, a Senior Director at the Education Advisory Board (EAB), in early April while she was in Michigan and again on May 4 during my trip to Washington, D.C. EAB provides research and advisory services, offering a far-ranging set of resources to meet the unique needs of member community colleges. They organize the vast amount of data to inform their members with strategy setting, support change management, and drive campus implementation. An EAB membership will provide access to national and international data and allow our Office of Research, Planning and Effectiveness to work on more specific projects for NMC. NMC has signed up for a one-year membership and will evaluate its value at the end of that year.
- We had the opportunity to host Governor Snyder and his staff during his visit to the Aero Park Campus on April 21. The governor was able to experience firsthand the equipment that was purchased through the CCSTEP grant last year. The event concluded in a panel discussion featuring Kent Wood, Director of Government Relations at the Traverse City Area Chamber of Commerce, Kevin Schlueter, President of Kalkaska Screw Products, Jasper Manifold, an NMC Engineering Technology student, and myself. Among the topics discussed were skilled trades and talent investment. Piper, Cherry Capital Airport’s resident dog, also attended the event.
- We had wonderful NMC Honors Convocation and Commencement weekend April 29-30. Over 200 students celebrated their achievements at Commencement on Saturday. Korvyn Hansen, Michelle Witkop, Therese Renis, and Capt. Dean Hobbs were honored as Outstanding Alumni while the Imogene Wise Faculty Excellence Awards went to History instructor Jim Press and Humanities instructor Jim Bensley. Over 700 students earned degrees this academic year. Congratulations, NMC Class of 2016!
- NMC Vice President Marguerite Cotto and Hans Van Sumeren, Director of the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute, met on May 3 with U.S. Senator Gary Peters to discuss hazardous material spill response in the Great Lakes. With state and federal response plans and teams already in place, the group discussed how NMC could support these plans by helping to create a Freshwater Center of Excellence. NMC could potentially assist in training and deployment of assets, providing monitoring and response capabilities should such an incident occur in the Great Lakes.
- On May 4, Gabe Schneider and I attended multiple meetings in Washington, D.C., with the offices of Senator Debbie Stabenow, Senator Gary Peters, Congressman Dan Benishek, and Congresswoman Candace Miller. We discussed a proposed amendment to the Water Resources Development Act which would allow for needed repairs to be made at the Great Lakes Campus Harbor.
- TEDx Traverse City celebrated its 6th anniversary on May 11 with another daylong event at the Dennos Museum’s Milliken Auditorium. Dynamic speakers gave inspirational, engaging speeches relating to Re-Evolution: citizenship, contribution, community, and courage. Our own Diana Fairbanks was one of the speakers this year. Great job Diana!
Legislative Issues
- State Budget Update—With the May Revenue Estimating Conference meeting this week, on May 17, the state will have less revenue for the current and upcoming fiscal years than officials had predicted in January. Therefore, legislators will be paring back the increases included in both budgets across the board. Whatever changes are needed to the budgets are expected to be worked out quickly and legislative leaders hope to have targets reached by the end of this week (5/20/16). Once they have their agreed upon final target number for their budget, final budget work will begin and it is still expected that the budgets will be completed by early June.
Between the reduction in revenues forecast compared to the January conference and increasing Medicaid and human services caseloads, there is $460 million less available than projected in January. While we were pleased that both the House and Senate budget bills included an increase for community colleges and NMC, it is unclear how this most recent revenue forecast will affect our final budget. However, with education making up 30% of the state’s total expenditures, there will most likely be some impact. - Capital Outlay Update—We remain cautiously optimistic that the West Hall Innovation Center capital outlay project will stay in the final House/Senate joint capital outlay bill that we believe will be unveiled in the next week or so. From our continued conversations with our Northern Michigan elected officials, including Senator Darwin Booher, Chair of the Senate Appropriations Capital Outlay and Community Colleges subcommittees, there is the indication that the West Hall project both remains on the list and that the final combined bill will move along with the regular appropriations bills. We should know more about the likelihood of this happening within the next few weeks.
- Legislation to Block Community Colleges from Levying Property Taxes—This week, the House Tax Policy Committee held a hearing on HB 5611 and HB 5612 which would prohibit a community college from levying property taxes, if it operates a baccalaureate degree program. The bills would not apply to current baccalaureate programs previously approved by the legislation according to bill sponsor Rep. Jeff Farrington. The understanding is that this legislation was introduced, and a hearing held, in pushback to SB 98 which would allow for additional four-year degrees, such as nursing, outside of the existing allowed baccalaureate programs. The Michigan Community College Association provided testimony at the hearing and NMC weighed in with the Northern Michigan legislator on the committee, Representative Lee Chatfield. Ultimately the committee took no action on the bills, but they remain in committee.
- Dark Stores Legislation—The House Tax Policy Committee, this week, took up and passed out HB 5578 which would require that the Tax Tribunal take basic appraisal practices into account during property tax assessment appeals, such as the subject property and comparable properties having the same highest and best use. The bill is a response to the so-called “dark store” strategy, whereby certain national chain retailers are using deed restrictions to limit their property tax assessments. This not only allows those retailers to shirk their support for local services, but grants them an unfair competitive advantage over locally owned retailers. Locally, the Traverse City Area Chamber of Commerce has been a vocal opponent to this practice and is supporting HB 5578. NMC also is supportive of HB 5578 as we see the use of the “dark store” strategy as a threat to our local tax base.
Miscellaneous
- The weather forecast for Sunday’s NMC BBQ looks to be a warm sunny day. Let’s all do the BBQ!