April 19, 2016 | SharkAdmin [image 1]In every team and department at Northwest Vista College, there are always great stories to tell that show faculty and staff going above and beyond. While it’s hard to capture every story, we hope to periodically share in this space some of the major accomplishments or projects that are taking place. Members of the executive team will write about important topics that they feel NVC employees should be made aware of. Let us know about the positive things your area is doing to help students or improve processes by contacting myself or NVC Public Relations. Erin Sherman, MAcc[image 2]NVC Vice President of College Services The faculty and staff at Northwest Vista College continue to amaze me with their dedication to serving the needs of our amazing students! This spring semester has been a busy time with budget development, capital improvement projects, institutional effectiveness and survey process redesigns, IT March Madness, and restructuring of the TLF department. Dr. Christine Shupala provided assessment training in February, and administrative units have been meeting since then for focused training on assessment plan and cycle revision. WEAVEonline training is soon to follow and can be requested for individual groups by contacting Felix Salinas, director of Information & Communication Technologies. In addition to working with individual units, Dr. Eliza Hernandez has been guiding the Institutional Effectiveness (IE) team through a new process for aligning our assessment practices with the strategic plan, accountability for the IE process, and updating our KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). These efforts will lead to continued improvement and the ability to tell the amazing story of NVC’s support for students. Eliza, who is also the director of Institutional Research, Planning and Effectiveness, is introducing the Qualtrics Research Suite. Qualtrics is replacing Survey Monkey as the survey tool and allows you to build and share surveys that are highly customizable, utilize embedded data, establish email triggers, and much more. In addition, Qualtrics is anonymous, and the data collected is maintained securely. A Qualtrics AlamoShare page is under development at: http://share.alamo.edu/nvc/IRPE/SitePages/Qualtrics.aspx. Please contact Eliza with questions or to receive training for this new tool. You may have been visited by IT employees participating in the IT March Madness. The goal was for IT employees to provide proactive service to faculty and staff before service requests were submitted. I know I benefited by receiving some AlamoShare assistance, and I hope you all benefited as well! Larry Trejo, in the full-time bracket, and Sabrina Cuellar, in the part-time bracket, were at the top of the IT March Madness brackets. The TLF team, with the help of a Public Relations Work Study employee, created a video to illustrate how to use the evacuation chairs in case of an emergency. The Evacu-Trac video can be viewed at http://youtu.be/z_J5eIURtUw. Please review the video so you are able to provide assistance in an emergency. Virginia Leggett and Laura Alvarez have been guiding the campus community through the FY17 budget development process, and the Resource Management team will not slow down once the budget is submitted. Several capital improvement projects are planned for this summer, including replacing existing wayfinding signage with improved vehicular and pedestrian signage. The first phase of the project will be completed this summer. Pedestrain safety improvements will be made near the Cypress Campus Center and Pecan Hall to adjust some of the traffic flow and add sidewalks and crosswalks in designated areas. And…drum roll…additional surface parking (300-375 spaces) will be added. Please contact Laura Alvarez for any capital project questions.
