UNLV

Here’s some good news about UNLV:

 

1. UNLV rolls out the welcome mat with one of the world’s best hospitality programs, drawing students from Nevada and around the world.

2. UNLV boasts one of the nation’s top creative writing programs, with faculty earning national/international awards.  UNLV is also one of few universities nationwide to offer a Ph.D. in radiochemistry, and all of its students find jobs after graduation.

3. UNLV students performed well at the Southern Nevada Business Plan Competition and swept Nevada Governor’s Cup for best business plans. The plans partner the creativity of engineering students with the business-savvy of MBA students. New inventions create new businesses.

4. With pedestrian safety a growing concern on Southern Nevada streets, UNLV's Transportation Research Center conducts outreach and research to make the streets safer for both drivers and pedestrians. 

5. U.S. News & World Report named UNLV the 12th most popular university in the nation – and one of the most diverse.

Truckee Meadows Community College

Here’s some good news about Truckee Meadows Community College:

1.       Truckee Meadows Community College provides On Track sessions to help students get on track to graduate by helping them plan and execute their college  career.

2.       Using federal funding, Truckee Meadows Community College developed a fast-track degree program (fasttrack.tmcc.edu) to help students complete their degrees.  The program will offer online classes in short, five-week sessions in criminal justice and business.

3.       Truckee Meadows Community College will host their spring commencement, anticipated to be the largest ever, on Friday, May 18 at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center.  More than 90 percent of Truckee Meadows Community College students remain in Nevada after completion of their program.

4.       For two consecutive years, 100 percent of students in the Maxine S. Jacobs Nursing program who took the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX-RN) achieved passing scores on their first attempt.  Truckee Meadows Community College remains the only institution in the state with a perfect pass rate.

Nevada State College

Here’s good news about Nevada State College:

1.       NSC’s current grant awards total approximately $6 million dollars, including a $900,000 HRSA grant just awarded, to support nursing, education, sciences and technology.

2.       Approximately 20% (1 in 5) of NSC’s graduates have entered or completed graduate programs at institutions within Nevada and throughout the country in a variety of the disciplines including business, law, social work, nursing, education, biology, public administration, psychology, counseling, and history.

3.       Nearly 30% of NSC’s tenured and tenure-track academic faculty members represent ethnically/racially diverse populations and 45% of NSC’s tenured and tenure-track academic faculty members are female.

4.       The School of Liberal Arts & Sciences has developed a new mastery-based model for delivering remedial math, giving students the opportunity to receive focused instruction in their areas of weakness.

5.       The School of Nursing NCLEX pass rate of its nursing graduates is one of the highest in the Nevada System of Higher Education.

6.       NSC students enjoy a state-of-the-art learning environment including a sprawling, 30-foot bank of high-definition monitors that provides business students live video, breaking news reports, and the market data that drive world economies.  

Good News About Great Basin College

Here’s good news about Great Basin College:

 

1.       GBC provides our communities with access to a variety of diverse cultural events.

 

2.       GBC provides accelerated degree and flexible program opportunities.

 

3.       GBC provides contract training for skills enhancement and development for private industry.

 

4.       GBC establishes and maintains successful partnerships with other Nevada System of Higher Education institutions for academic and training programs, and student services.

 

5.       Through technology, GBC provides global connections to the most remote of Nevada’s communities and citizens.

 

6.       GBC has a long history of successful delivery and administration of academic, training and student services programs across a 62,000 square mile service area.

Improvements?

If NSHE refuses to crack down on bad administrators, what else can be done to force improvements?  Tenure in Nevada does little to protect faculty from administrators bent on harassing them into accepting the status quo or quitting.  Just try filing a grievance over an improperly denied workload or withheld pay; you’ll soon grow very weary of hearing about administrative discretion and watching administrators close ranks to protect their own.  What we really need is good, strong whistleblower laws and funding for public agencies that investigate corruption.  Nevada has some of the weakest whistleblower protections in the nation, unless a federal agency, such as the EEOC, backs a faculty member’s claim, that person will usually continue to be harassed into silence.  Even when clear evidence of wrongdoing exists the Attorney General’s Office lacks the resources to protect dissenters from internal NSHE retaliation. It’s time to strengthen the legal remedies available so that the courts can shine some sunlight on the bureaucrats who are unwilling to act ethically and legally.

Grow Up

This economic downturn has proved that Nevada and its public agencies need to grow up.  The days of overflowing revenues to throw at problems and to extend graft to the lucky few are over.  We must live on a rational budget and must decide how to prioritize our spending.  We must purge graft and waste where it exists and we must raise the funds needed to provide necessary basic services.  Of course we could decide to do nothing and hope for the best, but our history tells us that such a path will probably lead to our major cities becoming ghost towns.  How then do we mature and get rid of the graft and waste?  So far the strategy has been to cut public agencies to the bone under the assumption that austerity will preserve what is necessary, while pushing out excesses.  Unfortunately, that’s not what has happened in many agencies for a simple reason.  In any organization those most likely to engage in graft and waste are at the top and wield the most power.  And it is those at the top who get the money first and make the decisions on operations as well as on who stays and who goes.  At the core, this is why we haven’t winnowed public agencies down to just muscle.  Thus, we’re now on version 2.0 of purging waste and graft.  In education, the new model appears to be performance funding; reward the competent and identify the slackers for removal.  But the only way for this to work is if every individual is judged on what he/she controls.  If an administrator controls what faculty can teach and more importantly how faculty can teach, is it appropriate to judge the faculty for those variable?  Obviously not, faculty must be judge on what they control and administrators must be held accountable for their decisions or nothing will change.

Performance Funding

In light of the new emphasis on performance funding, it’s likely that NSHE institutions will soon begin reviewing their internal faculty evaluation polices.  The intention will be to ensure that each policy is rigorous and accurately measures individual faculty performance.  Some may even try to slip in collegiality clauses.  How would a collegiality clause improve performance?  It could encourage faculty resistant to change to comply.  Yet, it also could become a tool for resistant chairs, deans, and vice presidents to punish faculty who wish to act in accordance with the legislative mandate for change.  The result will vary between institutions, but there is a high likelihood that at some institutions some reactionary chairs will use collegiality as a cudgel to attack anyone who supports upsetting the apple cart.  How can this happen?  First, at many NSHE institutions department chairs are never evaluated to ensure they know and follow policies and procedures and to examine each chair’s competence.  Second, as department members elect chairs, those who reject change, who are still in the majority in many departments, will be able to stop others from innovating by voting a colleague from their ranks into the chair position.  These administrators will then use things such as a collegiality to punish faculty who advocate for doing things differently.  Under such circumstances, the likelihood that NSHE will see improved outcomes in these departments is almost zero.  Ultimately, if NSHE really wants to become something better, the System needs to start by ensuring that all administrators are formally evaluated by independent evaluators, and that each be judged on his/her performance in guiding NSHE into a new model of outcome-based operations.  If this doesn’t happen the days of obstruction will not end.