Deans and Directors Council Meeting Notes

Vice President of Academic Affairs

Deans and Directors Council Meeting Notes

December 10, 2013

In Attendance:

Present: President Maria Sheehan, Jane Nichols, Lance Bowen, Elena Bubnova, Kyle Dalpe, Armida Fruzzetti,
Pam Hawkins, Andy Hughes, Estela LeVario Gutierrez, Fred Lokken, Karen Magstadt, Marie Murgolo-Poore,
Jim New, Barb Painter, Ted Plaggemeyer, Lee Schafer, Joan Steinman, Amy Williams, and Sharon Wurm.

Guests: Natalie Brown and Paula Lee Hobson

Campus Updates
• President Sheehan provided an update on the upcoming visit from Campus Works Consultants.
President Sheehan explained that the consultants will be looking specifically at TMCC IT operations.
The consultants will also visit with GBC and WNC. They will be assessing ways in which our
institutions can operate more efficiently, share services, and save money. President Sheehan asked the
Council to spread the word that the consultants are here to help us find better ways of doing business
and everyone’s cooperation in making time to meet with them would be appreciated.
• President Sheehan confirmed earlier this morning with Estela LeVario Gutierrez and Andy Hughes that
the provisional admission letters have been sent out to local high school seniors who are on track to
graduate
• President Sheehan recently attended the National Governor’s Association (NGA) conference where
participants focused on aligning education with workforce and economic development needs. Businesses
are approaching TMCC from many fields, most recently logistics, manufacturing, and mining. TMCC
has been criticized for trying to be everything to everyone given these demands from industry. President
Sheehan expressed that she would like to see TMCC become more focused, branded, and ultimately able
to answer the question “What is TMCC known for?” to help meet the region’s needs.
• President Sheehan also provided an update on the recent Board of Regents meeting. She was happy to
report that support for the northern community colleges was strong as funding has been cut. The
Chancellor and NSHE staff will on campus next week meeting with President Sheehan and key
administrators for an overview of TMCC’s budget requests for the next biennium.

New Program Director
• Ms. Wurm introduced Natalie Brown, who has been with TMCC for about three months. Natalie is the

new Program Director for Academic Advisement, Transfer Center and International Advisement.
Natalie explained that her primary goal is to re-engineer the academic advisement center by removing
barriers for students transferring to four-year institutions, strengthening relationships with academic
departments, and creating a more interactive orientation model (roll-out spring 2014 for summer and fall
enrollment), and to re-work the OnTrack workshops. Natalie noted that the plan is to have this new
model in place when staff recruit at the high schools. Dr. Nichols mentioned that going forward we may
want to look at doing orientation by field of interest, especially for students that are interested in
transferring to UNR. Dean LeVario Gutierrez added that if faculty and staff are interested in
participating in orientation, they should contact Natalie.

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Prior to joining TMCC, Natalie served as Director of University College Assessment and Assistant
Director of the Transfer Center at the University of Utah. Prior to her time at the University of Utah, she
worked at Salt Lake City Community College and the University of Nevada, Reno. She is finishing her
Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy.

Preliminary Spring Enrollment
• Ms. Bubnova provided a handout on preliminary spring enrollment. TMCC is currently down 14%, but
PeopleSoft maintenance may have been a factor as it caused difficulties for students trying to register via
MyTMCC. She also noted that in looking at the data the Wintersession students have a higher web
college enrollment rate and are also students that are on track to graduate. Elena hopes to see an increase
in enrollment in the coming weeks.

Wintersession Enrollment
• Mr. Hughes provided an update on Wintersession enrollment. The response has been very positive; there
are currently 863 students enrolled out of 1287 seats. Andy thanked the deans for their help and
responsiveness with opening new sessions of courses to accommodate the needs of the students. Andy
stated that grades for Wintersession are due January 27th by 10 a.m., he pointed out that the deadline is
two days after spring instruction starts, so the window is very tight should a student need to be dropped
from a spring course for not passing a Wintersession course. The group discussed the possibility of
offering another mini session at the end of the spring semester, late start courses for identified demand,
or block weekend courses.

Retention and Support Services
• Dr. Steinman provided a handout of spring 2014 retention and support services events. Key highlights
included Welcome Week (January 27-30), NSHE Hearing on regarding student tuition and fees
(February 12), SGA Elections (March 10-23), and Students Awards Ceremony (May 15).

Announcements
• President Sheehan announced that Dean Plaggemeyer will step down as Dean effective June 30, 2014.
She thanked him for his years of service and was delighted that he will return to TMCC as a faculty
member fall 2014.
• President Sheehan reported that The Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation
(DETR) awarded a $123,000 grant to TMCC to partner with Washoe County School District for an
innovative job preparation program for first-time college students and unemployed northern Nevadans.
TMCC will increase the number of Nevadans enrolled in the Jacobs Presidential Scholars Program to
120 students, including 18- and 19-year-olds who are close to completing their high school diploma, but
have “timed out” of traditional high schools.
• Dr. Nichols announced that the Budget Reduction Committee will meet on Friday, December 13th. She
noted that the committee is close to putting together its list of preliminary budget reduction
recommendations.
• Dr. Nichols added that the Regents’ Student Scholar for TMCC has been selected. She thanked Dean
Murgolo-Poore for the chairing the selection committee.

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• Dean Plaggemeyer announced that Dawn Ingraham will be out of the office until January and all
correspondence should be addressed to Toni Hibbert.

• Karen Magstadt shared that this year’s commencement will be held at the Grand Sierra Resort as TMCC
has outgrown the room at the convention center.

• Dean Levario-Gutierrez indicated that Student Services will be closed on Thursday, December 12th
from 3-5 p.m. for their holiday party.

• The TMCC Holiday party will be on Wednesday, December 11th starting at 3 p.m. in the Student
Center.

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