The September Bragging Breakfast meeting, hosted by NVC College Services, was a good way to usher in the new semester and hear about what the campus community is doing.
Northwest Vista College President Dr. Ric Baser started the meeting sharing that NVC ranked No. 1 in Texas and No. 6 in the nation on Niche, a leading website that helps people search for schools and colleges. Also in October, NVC and some of its sister colleges will receive a site visit from the Baldrige site team. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is the highest level of national recognition for performance excellence that a U.S. organization can receive.
Dr. Baser encouraged everyone to “Be Someone’s Hero” for the annual employee giving campaign, in which employees donate money for scholarships and United Way agencies. NVC’s goal is to have 24 percent of its employees participate.
NVC’s Steven Gonzales of Team 9, which includes Math and Engineering, Title V and Dean Russell Frohardt, were the current winners of this week’s challenge of a pizza party. His team proudly gave their pizza party earnings back to the campaign.
As part of the campaign, NVC has 11 department teams competing for weekly participation recognition and pizza. The second Pizza for Participation Contest will be held Sept. 19-26. All participation until Sept. 26 at 5 p.m. will count in this contest.
Librarian Nancy Kaida said the NVC Library is unveiling a new service from Overdrive and Swank where users can check items out and they will be able to download the resources to their devices. The library is also purchasing supplies to help make students successful in class, such as pens, pencils and even paper.
Dr. Scott Walker of NVC Geography, shared how he and Adam Aguirre took a group of NVC students over 5,500 miles from San Antonio to the historic region of Zawiya Ahansal in North Africa this past May for NVC’s first Adventure Science experiential learning project. Read more here.
Also Amanda Matocha of the NVC Math department shared how she found math in little known places in museums and art displays in her summer trip to several places that included Poland, Germany, England and the U.S.
Celebrations:
- The NVC Community Newsletter that goes out to NVC’s business and community partners was selected for a Medallion Award by the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations, a professional organization dedicated to community college communication.
- NVC was just awarded its second $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts matching grant for Community Arts. Tim Jones will be working with Dr. Sandra Garza, coordinator for the Mexican American Studies program, to enlist a local, professional artists, students from NVC are area high schools, and community volunteers to produce a new mural for NVC this year.
- NVC Faculty, Denise Tolan’s, “Because You are Dead” was published in Lunch Ticket literary magazine this year. It was selected as a winner by Aimee Bender and will be included in The Best Small Fictions 2018. The anthology will be published by Braddock Avenue Books this fall.
- The NVC Public Relations team gave the Wildcat Spirit Award to Dr. Ric Baser.
- Congratulations to Linda Garcia, senior specialist from the NVC Records area. She was recently selected district employee of the month. In March, she also received the NVC Employee of the Month Award.
- Congratulations to this year’s Innovation Grant Winners. Here are the proposals which will be funded:
- NVC Study Stateside – submitted by Sarah Ball and Neil Lewis — $2500
- Human Anatomy & Physiology Cadaver Lab Experience – submitted by Nadia Bakdash — $2500
- STEAM Makerspace – Submitted by Thomas Pressly, Mark Jurena and Richard Crabb — $2500
- Vista Vida Exploratory Committee – Submitted by Denise Tolan and Diana Kersey — $2500
