New additions to Library of Things collection

Mar 6, 2025 | Intercom, Student News

To find these selections and more, browse our full collection of Library of Things in the online catalog.

Games & Puzzles

Game – Azul

In the game Azul, players take turns drafting colored tiles from suppliers to their player board. Later in the round, players score points based on how they’ve placed their tiles to decorate the palace. Extra points are scored for specific patterns and completing sets; wasted supplies harm the player’s score. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Game – Monikers

Monikers is a party game based on the public domain game Celebrities, where players take turns attempting to get their teammates to guess names by describing or imitating well-known people. In the first round, clue givers can say anything they want, except for the name itself. For the second round, clue givers can only say one word. And in the final round, clue givers can’t say anything at all: they can only use gestures and charades.

Game – Cascadia

Cascadia is a puzzly tile-laying and token-drafting game featuring the habitats and wildlife of the Pacific Northwest. Players compete to create the most harmonious ecosystem in Cascadia. Turns are simple – select a tile/token set and place each into your expanding ecosystem. Earn points by fulfilling wildlife goals, and creating the largest habitat corridors.

Game – Fiasco

A game about powerful ambition and poor impulse control, Fiasco is an award-winning, GM-less game for 3-5 players, designed to be played in a few hours with six-sided dice and no preparation. During a game you engineer and play out stupid, disastrous situations, usually at the intersection of greed, fear, and lust. It’s like making your own Coen brothers movie, in about the same amount of time it’d take to watch one!

Game – Tabletop shuffleboard and curling

Bring the shuffleboard and curling courts to the tabletop with this 2-in-1 game design, where you can effortlessly transition from shuffleboard to curling by just flipping the gameboard! The full set includes 8 mini rollers, including 4 red and 4 blue pieces, for both games. The rollers easily glide across the surface just like real shuffleboard and curling courts!

Puzzle – Women in art

This jigsaw puzzle features a diverse array of fifteen accomplished artists, from well-known figures such as Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keefe to lesser-known trailblazers including nineteenth-century African American sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis and Hopi-Tewa ceramic artist Nampeyo.

Instruments & Music

Mustang micro guitar headphone amp

Mustang Micro is a complete personal guitar amplifier featuring a wide selection of tones from the wildly popular Mustang series amps. Plug Mustang Micro directly into your guitar, connect a pair of headphones, and choose your amp and effects. This all-in-one personal headphone amplifier with onboard DSP has 12 amp models from Mustang GTX for a wide range of clean and dirty tones. It also offers 13 effect models with parameter modify control. It’s ideal for any player from beginner to pro, making it quick and easy to get great tones when jamming silently at home or on the go. And you can play along to your favorite tracks or instructional videos using the built-in Bluetooth audio connection.

Portable Bluetooth speaker

The JBL GO 3 is a full-featured IP67 waterproof and dustproof wireless Bluetooth speaker with a shockproof Megen case. JBL Pro Sound delivers surprisingly big audio and punchy bass from GO 3’s ultra-compact size, with up to 5 hours of playtime on a single charge.

Art prints

Storytelling by Trevor Grabill

“I grew up in central Michigan, and have spent my life in small cities and villages around the great lakes. My work draws on these places, which represent a combination of incredible natural beauty, rust belt decay, and rural midwestern neglect. These are places (or their inhabitants) that are readily passed by, rendered neutral by force of habit. My work highlights the essential strangeness, both beautiful and terrible, of the everyday. Our world is shaped by very specific forces (often capitalism or resistance to capitalism) and, as such, absolutely nothing is inevitable.”

Tiguaq (Adopted) by Ninginkulu Teevee

Born May 1963, Ninginkulu is one of the most versatile and intelligent graphic artists to emerge from the Kinngait Studios. Since her first prints appeared in the collection in 2004, she has demonstrated a comprehensive knowledge of Inuit legends and a fine sense of design and composition. Ninginkulu has had numerous solo shows of her bold and resplendent drawings and some of her work has been featured in exhibitions in major public galleries and museums.

Summaries and images adapted from publishers.

Success Story: Community College Guarantee offers families a brass ring

Mar 5, 2025 | Intercom, Student News

March 5, 2025

As college choice season looms and initial financial aid offers arrive, NMC has an important message for area families: the Michigan Community College Guarantee could cover up to $11,000 for tuition and fees — but they might not see it on those initial offer letters.

NMC Financial Aid Director Linda Berlin said the CCG, which offers free in-district tuition and fees for high school graduates, can’t be awarded until students register for classes. At NMC, that won’t start until new student orientation in April. Some won’t register until May or June.

Meanwhile, the Michigan Achievement Scholarship, the four-year counterpart to the CCG, will appear on financial aid offers arriving now. But the CCG covers more of the cost. Berlin said 94% of the 552 2024-25 recipients at NMC had their costs covered completely with combined grants and scholarships, receiving $1.7 million in CCG aid.

Garnet Mullet, a 2024 St. Francis High School graduate, pictured right, and Ty Atwood, a 2024 Traverse City West High School graduate, are two of them.

“There’s so much I’ve gotten from the Michigan Community College Guarantee. Not only am I given an opportunity to get started on a degree for free, but also, through NMC specifically, I can transfer out and pursue my goal of becoming a pharmacist,” Atwood said.

He hopes to earn his associate degree by 2026 and then transfer to Ferris State University’s pharmacy school.

St. Francis’ Mullet had originally committed to an out-of-state school to play volleyball. The tuition bill was an unpleasant surprise.

“It ended up being a lot higher than we originally thought,” said Mullet. “It was definitely a big hit to us.”

Then, she was injured. She returned to Traverse City for rehab and decided she didn’t want to go back to the New York university, where she had direct entry into a physician assistant master’s degree program. Instead, she met with an NMC advisor and found out about the CCG.

“That was pretty amazing, to come back and not have to worry about the cost of school,” said Mullet, who discovered she liked NMC better. She especially enjoys studying in the lower level of the Timothy J. Nelson Innovation Center.

“The community is a thousand times better,” she said. “I came here and I felt like I belonged. The community really just embraced me.”

In order to play volleyball again, Mullet will transfer to Grand Rapids Community College in the fall. But she could be back again. Two weeks ago she attended the Physician Assistant preview day held by Grand Valley State University at the University Center. 

“I was really impressed with that,” said Mullet, who works at Kalkaska Memorial Health Center. She also plans to  attend tomorrow’s Career Fair. 

“The community here is really strong, with all the opportunities outside academics,” she said.

Both Atwood and Mullet are in-district students, living in Grand Traverse County. For out-of-district students, Pell grants, other state aid and NMC scholarships typically cover the higher tuition rate, Berlin said.

The CCG was introduced in July 2024, when many students had already made college plans. This year, Berlin expects “much greater participation.” She’s thrilled to be able to make the awards, pointing out that increased funding correlates with student success.

“Overall, NMC student completion rates are increasing each year, while financial aid has increased each of the past couple of years. In addition, NMC has received grants and substantially increased student success support,” she said.

Learn more about the Community College Guarantee here.

Learn about Michigan Reconnect, which offers free tuition and fees to in-district students 25 and up who don’t already have a degree.

T-shirt sale at the bookstore

Feb 26, 2025 | Intercom, Student News

Get ready for spring with a new NMC t-shirt! All t-shirts at the bookstore are $5 off during March 3–14.

March mobile food pantry distributions

Feb 26, 2025 | Intercom, Student News

NMC will host two mobile food pantries during the month of March on Monday, March 3 and Monday, March 17. The distributions will occur from 3-5 p.m. in the Maple Lot at the Front Street campus.

This program is specifically designed to support NMC students (and their households) by supplementing their diets with fresh, healthy produce while helping to free up financial resources to cover other household expenses. Even if you’ve never come out before, check out our pantry and see how we can help support you!

All food is distributed free of charge, the only paperwork is just a sign in sheet in case of recall. There are no financial requirements or means tests. Our recent distributions have included menu items such as granola bars, pasta, oranges, grapefruit, carrots, and instant mashed potatoes. Each household should expect to receive at least 40 lbs of fresh foods and some shelf-stable products.

Walk-up and drive-thru options are both available. Come over and drive-thru or bring a backpack or reusable bag and take what you and your household can use in the next 7-10 days. 

These pantries are made possible in partnership with Feeding America.

Success Story: Tower gardens notch quintuple win in first year

Feb 19, 2025 | Intercom, Student News

FEBRUARY 19, 2025

At Lobdell’s Teaching Restaurant, NMC’s Great Lakes Culinary Institute has shortened the concept of farm to table to hallway to table.

The six hydroponic tower gardens that greet guests in the second floor hall on NMC’s Great Lakes campus have 1) saved money, 2) provided fresher produce, 3) improved sustainability practices, 4) offered an experiential learning opportunity and 5) benefited recruitment since they were installed in January 2024 through a donation.

The six-foot-tall towers, from which lettuce, herbs and edible flowers sprout under a purple glow, were installed as a year-round way to supply herbs and greens for use in Lobdell’s and improve sustainability practices.

“”Our instruction emphasizes the importance of minimizing food waste,” said Chef Les Eckert, GLCI director. As part of the culinary program’s recent reimagination, GLCI integrated additional principles of environmental stewardship. The Tower Gardens represent a significant focus area, reflecting current trends and challenges within the industry.

“How can we reduce our waste in general? What if we could literally start growing our more expensive items that have a short shelf life?” said Eckert.

Items like basil, used both fresh and to make popular sauces like pesto, which students make and freeze to use in the restaurant.

“We started doing the math, and came up with a rough estimate that we saved about $1,000,” on basil alone, Eckert said. At about $1,000 each, one tower — which was purchased with donated dollars – has already paid for itself.

Each tower has a 13-gallon reservoir, an automated water pump and lighting system.

“They simulate a long summer day,” Eckert said.

Students enrolled in GLCI lab courses make use of the produce cultivated in the Tower Gardens, which involves learning the correct techniques for trimming, snipping, and harvesting lettuce greens, herbs, and edible flowers. A committed team of students, the “Tower Garden Care Team” is responsible for the maintenance of the tower gardens, which includes tasks such as replenishing the water reservoirs, adjusting pH levels and lighting, as well as seeding, trimming, and harvesting the plants for use in the lab classes throughout the week.

The ultimate unexpected success of the towers lies in their ability to attract prospective students who visit GLCI.

“When the admissions team conducts their tours, it becomes a significant focal point at the entrance into the Institute,” Eckert said

Eventually, Eckert would like to have more towers to further reduce GLCI’s carbon footprint as well as to supply other campus food operations, like the Hagerty Center and Hawk Owl Cafe. For the short term, however, she just wants to get better

“This second year is taking what we learned,” she said. “What did we do right, and improving on our yields and the efficiencies the towers can bring.

“I see it as a great part of the curriculum.”