Keyboard shortcuts are a great way to streamline repetitive tasks in any program you are using. Here are a few quick tricks to help speed up your workflow while using web browsers, documents, and many other programs.
All players must be current NMC students. All teams must be co-ed.
Season starts Monday, March 9 for five weeks. Two games per week played Monday–Thursday at 2:10, 3:10 or 4:10 p.m. or (new time offering) Sundays at 8:10, 9:10 or 10:10 p.m.
There is a mandatory captains’ meeting and sign-up deadline of Thursday, March 5 at 3 p.m. in the PE Lobby.
For more information or questions please contact Steven Dixon at 995-1379.
Forms can also be picked up and dropped off at the fitness center desk located in North Hall.
On April 21–23, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. in the Osterlin Library, the Hawk Owl Cafe will offer free cookie decorating for student appreciation week. We are looking for NMC employees to help staff this station, decorate cookies with students, get to know students we don’t see, talk a little bit about programs they may not know, and in general just help put their minds at ease as they prepare for finals.
If interested please email Patrick at ptesner@nmc.edu.
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. Find a list of all upcoming scholarship events on the main NMC Financial Services page.
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.
Free winter water symposium scheduled for Feb. 17
Record-Eagle, Feb. 9 (more…)
Good afternoon NMC community, I hope the first month of your spring semester has been positive. It has been a busy and exciting time for me around campus! As we head toward the middle of the semester, when some of the new begins to wear off and we settle into routines, I’d like to talk with you about commitment. I promised you that weekly, over a five-week period, I would share a short personal reflection about the “Five Behaviors of Cohesive Teams.” To become a high performing and cohesive team, members must trust one another, engage in healthy conflict around ideas, commit to decisions, hold one another accountable, and focus on achieving collective results. This week, I turn our attention to commitment.
Great teams understand they must be able to make timely decisions and commit, even when the outcome is uncertain and not everyone initially agrees. It’s the desire for consensus and the need for certainty that prevents many teams from achieving commitment and making real progress. Teams that fail to commit find themselves revisiting discussions and decisions again and again. They encourage second-guessing, which creates ambiguity and lack of confidence about the team’s direction and priorities. Whether it’s avoidance of risk, excessive analysis, or fear of failure, a lack of team commitment means delay and lost opportunities. It also means a lot of wiggle room with fewer bases for accountability and an inattention to results.
As a new team, the President’s Council and I are seeking to build trust, and engage in healthy conflict so we can commit to decisions and, ultimately, hold one another accountable to focus on achieving collective results. We’re doing this by being intentional about how we structure our meetings and agendas, how we engage in decision making, and how we ensure follow-through with commitment to action. We’re being intentional about our development as a team and mindful of the opportunity to lead by example as role models for the rest of the college.
Too often organizations lack true commitment. Employees feign buy-in on group decisions because of their fear of conflict. Artificial harmony is sought over constructive debate. What does commitment mean to you? To me, it means sticking with it. It means not giving up, even if it gets messy and tough. Commitment usually evokes a strong sense of intention and focus. This week, after spending my first month focused on campus engaging with our students and employees, I ventured outside of NMC to visit with other stakeholder groups, specifically, our alumni and donors. Thanks to the generosity of our donors, I was able to travel to Sarasota and Naples, Florida, to engage with our NMC alumni and visit several of our key supporters and donors. These are individuals with intention and focus — intention to help transform students’ lives through their generous support, and focus on bringing the necessary resources to the table, to help NMC accomplish our desired outcome of student success.
Many of our students demonstrate incredible levels of commitment. I recently learned about an NMC student who found herself in a life-changing situation, needing to start over. She was a single mom in the military, which was not what she had envisioned for herself. She wanted to build a better world and pursue her passion of sustainability and renewable energy, and wondered how she could study environmental issues while caring for her daughter in northern Michigan. She heard about NMC through the college’s reputation for being a top school for veterans. Due to the commitment of our employees, and support from donors, we offer a dedicated office of Military and Veterans Services and multiple military-specific scholarships. In turn, this student feels supported and can remain committed to sticking with her education and not giving up on her goals. In fact, she finished her first semester at NMC with a 4.0 GPA.
Let me encourage us to follow this student’s example and be committed to sticking with it and not giving up. Also, let’s be inspired by the supporters and donors who are committed to NMC, as witnessed by their intention and focus. And, rest assured, the President’s Council will be ever mindful that commitment matters, because it fosters shared vision. In a workplace, a shared vision changes people’s relationship with the company. It is no longer their company, it becomes our company. At NMC we understand that we’re not just a community college, we’re the community’s college. A shared vision uplifts team members’ aspirations. It gives a higher purpose to work. It creates a sense of immersion, excitement and passion. A shared vision is what inspired cathedral builders of the Middle Ages to labor on cathedrals that could take 100 years to complete. It’s what inspired NASA to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. It’s what inspired Apple to realize its vision of a computer which people could understand intuitively. As I go about listening and learning to orient to NMC, I am seeking to understand the shared vision that connects the NMC internal community with the external community. What I am repeatedly hearing echoes the 1951 course catalog tagline, Community Centered – Community Serving, which speaks to the shared vision NMC has committed to for almost 70 years! I look forward to recommitting to that shared vision with you as we work toward continued success for our students and this community for decades to come!
Nick
A public device refers to any device, such as a computer, that is available in a public space such as a school, library, government office, or any other open-access area or business and may be used or accessed by multiple people.
NMC will be upgrading the most commonly used conference rooms with a new Mitel telephone that offers high-definition quality audio. There is a significant upgrade in audio quality and it is quite noticeable. Over the next 2 days, I will be replacing conference phones as scheduling allows. The following conference rooms will receive a new phone: Osterlin 201, Tanis 140, Founder’s Hall 109, Beckett 130, UC Gray, UC 106, GLMA 231 and PS 106.
This new Mitel 6920 telephone (right) is different from older phones. It has the same features but the phone itself looks very different and will require a slight learning curve.
TRAINING: This is always difficult in trying to set up any training classes, due to the multitude of daily schedules. I recommend a brief training session (10-20 minutes at most) to go over the basics, including making a conference call. I will leave multiple user guides in the conference rooms and also attach the guides to this email. I have 2 training classes already scheduled during Staff Meetings, so that appears to be the best time for a quick class. Training isn’t necessary, just helpful. Please contact Dave Gates at 5-1110 to set up a training class or individual training if needed.
FYI – the old saucer units will not work on these new phones. If the need arises, we can address the issue, but for now, we are giving these new phones a trial run without the saucers. We are not replacing any other phones at this time.
Alison Thornton
HRToolbench will no longer be available after February 29, 2020. The company that manages the software is closing. HR will be managing job descriptions and classification going forward. HR will have access to all of the data now held in HRToolbench, but if you want to save a copy of your job description for any reason, please do so before February 29, 2020. Let Hollie DeWalt know if you have any questions.
KUDOS- (praise or respect that you get because of something you have done or achieved) defined by Merriam-Webster.com
Please take note that it is important to check in with Priority Health on your current prescriptions. Find out if the medication is covered under their formulary and does it require a prior-authorization form? There will be some difference between Blue Cross and Priority Health regarding prescription coverage.
Priority Health Prescription Coverage is explained HERE.
TRAVERSE CITY —
(contact Info)
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.”
Diana Fairbanks
Executive Director of Public Relations, Marketing and Communications
dfairbanks@nmc.edu
(231) 995-1019
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.”
The Student Application for Scholarship is open for 2020-2021! Below is important information to share with our students and encourage all to apply!
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
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.
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.
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.
Lisa Blackford
(click for high-resolution photo) 
Tamara Coleman
(click for high-resolution photo) 
Sarah Montgomery-Richards
(click for high-resolution photo) 
Caroline Schaefer-Hills
(click for high-resolution photo) 
Brian Sweeney
(click for high-resolution photo) 
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:
“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.
Kristy McDonald
Director, Experiential Learning Institute and Business Instructor
kmcdonald@nmc.edu
(231) 995-1059
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…)
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…)
The deadline for nominations for the Imogene Wise Faculty Excellence Award and Adjunct Faculty Excellence Award is April 6. Nominate your favorite instructor now!
Award criteria include teaching excellence, rapport with students, innovation in the classroom, and a sense of dedication.
Learn more about the awards here and here.
KUDOS- (praise or respect that you get because of something you have done or achieved) defined by Merriam-Webster.com
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.
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!
Please use the following links to access summary documents for your coverage.