TMCC Designated a Voter-Friendly Campus
TMCC is now one of over two hundred campuses in thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia designated as a “Voter Friendly Campus.” The initiative, led by national nonpartisan organizations Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project (CVP) and NASPA – Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, held participating institutions accountable for planning and implementing practices that encourage their students to register and vote in 2020 elections and in the coming years.
The mission of the Voter Friendly Campus designation is to bolster efforts that help students overcome barriers to participating in the political process. Our campus was evaluated based on a campus plan about how we would register, educate, and turnout student voters in 2020, how we facilitated voter engagement efforts on our campus, and a final analysis of our efforts- all in the face of the upheaval caused by a global pandemic. The designation is valid through December 2022.
As part of our effort to be designated a voter-friendly campus, despite great challenges presented by COVID-19, TMCC worked to break down barriers and empower students with the information and tools they need to participate in the political process which led to historic youth voter turnout and opened the door to lifelong civic engagement. Through the assembly of a multi-disciplinary team that included academic faculty, administrative faculty and students to show support and grow civic learning and democratic engagement among our campus community.
The Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Committee, which included TMCC faculty and staff: Dr. Precious Hall, Fred Lokken, Nicole Shimabuku, Cameron Tuttle, Camille Vega, Brian Fletcher, Joseph Domitrovich and TMCC students/Campus Election Engagement Project Fellows Fernanda Cardenas and Maggie Dostal, met during the fall semester to brainstorm, plan and implement civic learning and democratic engagement programs. Cardenas and Dostal were instrumental in implementing events, conducting research and creating a draft of an electoral engagement plan for our campus.
TMCC has made a strong statement about the civic mission of higher education to prepare students to be engaged participants in our democracy and is excited to continue engaging students through 2021, 2022, and beyond through the development of an electronic handbook and website that would include voting information, education and student testimonials as well as possibly hosting early voting and candidate debates or forums.
The institutions designated Voter Friendly Campuses to represent a wide range of two-year, four-year, public, private, rural, and urban campuses. Notably, the list of designated institutions includes many Minority Serving Institutions and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The program is ultimately serving millions of students.
TMCC’s New Mission Statement Approved by Board of Regents
Early this month, the Nevada Board of Regents approved a new mission statement for the college that was the result of over a year of brainstorming, compiling and creativity on the part of TMCC students, faculty, staff with the assistance of an outside consultant. According to Dr. Melissa Deadmond who spearheaded the project, TMCC’s new mission statement began its journey during an exercise at the last in-person Kick-Off in January 2020 in which those in attendance—faculty and staff from across the college—offered their insights into TMCC’s strengths and where they see the institution’s future.
The exercise, in which participants submitted their responses electronically through a polling software was collected after the event as were the handwritten responses. Deadmond, along with the assistance of student workers, compiled the responses and she began looking for themes.
These themes were presented to a special task force comprised of around 35 individuals: administrative faculty, academic faculty, staff and Dan Barnett of Make or Break Execution, a consultant who works with organizations to develop their mission, vision and goals. Barnett had the task force participants rank the statements that had been compiled based on both the material collected from the college community in January 2020 and from the work of the task force according to their emotive capacity.
His goal was to help TMCC to develop a “limbic mission statement”—one that spoke to audiences on an emotional tenor, but that also invited them to not only remember it, but to live it. Under Barnett’s direction, the task force created statements that were ranked and presented for feedback to several stakeholder groups, which included TMCC students, the Student Government Association, the Planning Council as well as the President’s Cabinet.
The result is TMCC’s new mission statement:
Create a future you will love with accessible, innovative educational opportunities at TMCC. Together we can make it happen.
“What strikes me about this mission statement is that it not only has emotion, which is what Dan was helping us to create, but also that it is outward facing...it really speaks to students directly about the life that they can create from their education here,” said Deadmond.
TMCC Nursing Program Continues to Grow and Succeed
The TMCC Maxine S. Jacobs Nursing Program has a long and rich history of promoting student success through rigorous and relevant training that prepares these frontline health workers for a meaningful career in the nursing profession. Last December, 100% of the nursing graduates passed the NCLEX exam despite the difficulties presented by learning in times of COVID-19.
The Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, which opened its application early this month, has already received its first applicants. The program is fully online and will provide its students with the credentials to become a leader in their field, along with the analytical and information management skills to succeed.