For the February Bragging Breakfast, Northwest Vista College’s Academic Success department hosted a 1995 theme – the year the college was created. Employees dug deep in their closets to get their best ’90s themed clothes and oversized jackets.
NVC President Dr. Ric Baser started the meeting sharing some goals for the college which includes:
- Spring 2020 Enrollment headcount target of 16,162. The current headcount is 16,152 with a smart growth of 1.3%.
- Spring 2020 Enrollment contact hours (same day comparison) last year: 119,424. This year 119,913.
- Fall 2019 official enrollment was 18,010 – which surpassed goal of 18,000
NVC Vice President Debi Gaitan talked about the college-wide strategic enrollment Plan or “SEP” currently underway on campus. Three different teams of employees are looking at topics below. She added in March patterns will start to be identified and topics will be narrowed down in order to strategize in certain areas.
- Schedule build
- Enrollment intensity
- Payment deadlines
- Student advocacy
- Duplication of efforts
- Using high school teachers as influencers
- Evening students and support.
NVC Vice President of College Services Erin Sherman provided an update on campus construction. She said the four-level new Desert Willow Welcome Center is expected to be completed in May. Renovations at the Cypress Campus Center will begin after Student Success moves out in May and improvements/construciton to Cypress are expected to take a year and a half. The new STEM building is estimated to break ground soon to be ready for a fall 2021 completion date.
NVC Vice President of Academic Success Daniel Powell said his area is also assessing lessons learned from the new Wintermester semester (during holiday break); and how to tackle expected growing pains in 2021. They are looking at classroom space needed for more students due to a projected enrollment increase.
Dr. Shelah Simmons of NVC’s Business Council’s Board of Directors shared the vision of her group which aims to be a leading model of collaboration among businesses, organizations, and educational institutions for student success. She said in the several years her group has been together, they have brought business speakers to the college, funded scholarships, hosted events, helped students with their resumes and coached and mentored them. She said many NVC students have received jobs from members of the Business Council.
Academic Success Highlights:
- Eight Digital Video & Cinema Production students are on internships this spring.
- Monitors for computer systems in MLH 200 and part of MLH 202 have been replaced with more to come. These monitors are used by many of the NVC Animation and Game Development students.
- Departments such as NVC English & INRW had to weather the storm of going from 100 sections in student development to now just a handful due to state recommendations.
- The NVC Science department’s team of “Mad Scientists” are active in the community visiting middle schools to promote science.
- The Kinesiology department will host an O’Connor High School Career day this spring.
- Attendance was up 40% for NVC’s fall music festival.
- The NVC Math & Engineering department has been conducting evening and adjunct support sessions to keep adjuncts informed and engaged since 50% of their classes are taught by this group.
- Government 2305 & History 1302 will host its second annual Study Stateside where students get to travel to historic places in the US to learn about history and culture.
- Nearly a dozen current and former NVC psychology students will be presenting their research at this year’s annual meeting of the Southwestern Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science.
- NVC Mass Communication is looking for more students to be a part of the online student newspaper, NVC Times.
Announcements:
- Congratulations to NVC’s Steven Kolnes who has already given 20 gallons of blood in on-campus blood drives, thus saving many lives.
- The Wildcat Spirit Award went to the NVC Business team.
- Touchstone of the Month: Openness:
- From Academic Succes: “We engage in open and honest communications that create an atmosphere of trust and an openness to change for the benefit of students.”
- The next Bragging Breakfast is April 17.