NMU Faculty and Staff,

A lot of work has been going on in Northern's newest division, the Division of Extended Learning and Community Engagement. I want to give you an update on our progress.

Staffing searches
As NMU's newest division, I have been working on staffing the division's main office. Our first position search was suspended when we gained an administrative assistant position through the changes of the university realignment plan. That position became vacant due to a retirement, so we engaged in an internal search. We will be interviewing candidates shortly. We might also be searching soon, both internally and externally, for an operations manager. Our original plan had one person doing elements of both of these jobs. However, there is significant benefit to having an operations manager with a strong financial background working in a cost-recovery unit such as ours. In the future, we hope to add additional staff to work directly with online students. That position (or positions) would be funded, in part, by the online education fee that is meant to provide material and student service resources for online learners.

Interim dean
As President Erickson wrote in his last Campus Connection update, part of the university realignment has been to allow the Technology and Occupational Sciences programs to become their own college. This college will report to the Extended Learning and Community Engagement Division with a reporting line to Academic Affairs for academic issues such as curriculum and accreditation standards. The new college will include only the Technology and Occupational Sciences programs; the Engineering Technology programs will remain a part of the College of Health Sciences and Professional Studies and will most likely be moved to the "main campus" with some laboratory facilities in the Jacobetti Complex. As part of the ELCE division, each Technology and Occupational Sciences program will be creating a strategic plan that includes cost-recovery components. I have been meeting with TOS program directors and the NMUFA president to finalize the dean's position description.This advisory group and I plan are compiling a list of internal candidates who we will ask to meet with to gauge their interest, as well as their strengths and weaknesses, before I make an appointment decision. The goal is to have the interim dean in place before the end of the semester.

International outreach
As you may recall, international student recruitment and the English Language Institute were moved into the ELCE Division; international student services remains a part of the Dean of Students Office.

We have made an offer to our preferred candidate for the English Language Institute director position that has been verbally accepted and we are now completing the final background checks. We hope to have that person in place by the end of April. We're also well into the development of a revised budget model to make ELI and international recruiting more financially sustainable.

On the international recruiting front, we are already realizing results from last fall's trip to China. We will have a visiting scholar from Shandong University coming to teach in fall 2016 and Lesley Larkin, a member of the NMU English faculty, will teach in China. We've also had interest in customized ELI programs for students and faculty from some of the universities we visited. With the hiring of the new ELI director, we'll be able to pursue these more intently. During the trip, we visited six universities and signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) with three of them (Shandong University, Xinzhou Teachers University, and Anyang Technical Institute) to begin developing new programs and cross-promoting existing ones. I haven't had a chance to publicly thank Dr. Yan Ciupak of the Sociology and Anthropology Department for her work as the faculty coordinator of the fall China trip. Through her efforts, this trip went beyond the traditional administrative-level meetings and included a high level of student and faculty interaction through academic presentations, informational sessions, classroom visits and informal conversations.

Right now, the countries receiving the most focus for recruiting opportunity are China, Korea and India. We are also looking at Cameroon, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Hungary and Peru as possibilities, and there are compelling reasons to explore partnering more closely with universities and high schools in Finland and Sweden. In our new faculty/staff-led international recruiting model, these are nations where we have someone on campus with a connection to the country, as well as a student population interested in gaining a U.S. education. In the new model, we've added what we are calling faculty "country specialists" to help us research international student potential and serve as leaders for recruitment trips. We are also in discussion with an international marketing firm that specializes in marketing select programs in high-demand fields, although we've not made any commitment yet to work with such an organization.

Online Programs
I have been holding discussions around campus about the idea of creating a "global campus" portal for online and off-site students. This is a model used successfully by many universities in the online space. A global campus model means having student recruitment, retention and general services that are specific to students who likely will never physically step on our Marquette campus. This would include such things as a special website, streamlined application and registration processes, pre- and post-admission advising processes, technology and library assistance, orientation and student advising – all designed for the student who isn't physically here. These are all of the elements that the $50 per credit online course fee that was implemented this semester for undergraduate students (and will be implemented for graduate students in fall 2016) will help us build and support. We can't expect to grow our online population if we do not have the student and faculty support for online learning and teaching.

Other activities related to online growth include a new advisory working group that is reviewing policy, budget models and priorities, as well as developing clear-cut definitions for our various course formats. Currently we have a wide variety of course category types – online, hybrid, off-site, weekend, weeknight, etc. – with loose definitions as to what each entails. Because fees are being charged for online courses and most likely will be charged for other non-traditional course types, having clearly understood definitions becomes important.

Finally, a new revenue-sharing budget model has been developed for academic departments; the model has been shared with the deans and department heads. The model provides seed money for new online programs and returns a percent of the net tuition dollars (about 45%) to the departments engaged in online learning. It is slated to go into effect for fall 2016. I am excited about the online program options that have already been proposed and I expect to hear of more soon. I'll be sure to share an update on those at a later date. Provost Schuiling has also started the Program Innovation Fund, a fund that will provide funding for new academic initiatives, and has developed and shared a faster program development process. ELCE will have a similar funding mechanism for online programs and, as a way for faculty to gauge market demand for a new proposed program, we have enlisted the services of a research company.

Off-site Programs
The Northern Promise, our program that provides U.P. high school students access to college courses, is continuing to grow. We now have more than 120 concurrently enrolled students from Westwood, Escanaba, Kingsford and Forest Park high schools. We anticipate another 2-3 more schools participating next year (Gwinn High School, Marquette High School, North Star Academy, Norway High School, and schools in Charlevoix and Beaver Island have shown significant interest). In addition to math, which makes up most of our concurrent enrollment courses right now, we also hope to offer more than one English course and courses in art and design and computer science next year. Taking a concurrent course in Michigan means there is no cost to students (or their families). The costs are covered by the high schools and through a tuition discount on the part of NMU. The Middle College, which is also a part of the Northern Promise and is offered in partnership with MARESA, focuses on offering high school students many of the courses that they will need to complete an associate degree. The Middle College grew from 11 students to 25 over the past year.

One other off-site program that is accepting students is the Manufacturing Production Technology Certificate, which will be offered in Escanaba this summer. A number of U.P. manufacturing sponsors are providing guaranteed interviews, scholarships and/or reimbursement to students who complete this program. We are also working on other off-site programs, including one with the Marquette Branch Prison. I will share details about those as they become available.

Community Engagement
The Extended Learning and Community Engagement division also oversees Northern's efforts regarding support for the area's entrepreneurial environment, workforce development and continuing education. Our priorities here are focused on working with regional business and community leaders to assess workforce needs, employee needs and fostering entrepreneurial opportunities.

We continue to look for ways to expand the success of Invent@NMU. We recently developed a new online, non-credit customer service course. We are planning an expanded summer camp for kids focused on skilled trades that will be held July 11 - 15 and 18. This is the second year we have held this camp. We're also helping Marquette County assess the community impact of potential area layoffs. We've been meeting with representatives from Cliffs Natural Resources, and will soon be meeting with staff from the Lake Superior Community Partnership and Michigan Works to develop a plan for training and providing educational opportunities for employees affected by a potential shutdown of the Empire Mine in Ishpeming. We will be establishing an internal NMU work group for this effort. Obviously we want to be as much assistance to those impacted as we can.

The Extended Learning and Community Engagement Division is new and it is still growing and developing, but I'd like to think we're already making a big impact on Northern and the surrounding community. We'll keep working hard to do so.

I've reserved 604 Cohodas for three information sessions next week to discuss these topics in more detail. Here is the schedule:

11 a.m. - noon, Monday, March 21 – Technology and Occupational Sciences programs as a separate college, timeline for appointing interim dean and community outreach

2-3 p.m., Tuesday, March 22 - online learning, concurrent enrollment and a global campus

3-4 p.m.,Thursday, March 24 – international recruiting and the English Language Institute and general ELCE efforts

If you have ideas or questions you'd like to share but can't make one of the information sessions, please don't hesitate to contact me at svanden@nmu.edu or 227-6766.

Sincerely,
Steve VandenAvond, Vice President
Division of Extended Learning and Community Engagement