Good things are happening throughout Nevada’s education systems starting with K-12 all the way through postgraduate. From proposed funding under new state leadership to dual enrollment programs paving the way to college for high school students, education is getting the attention it deserves.
In January, Governor Lombardo’s proposed budget included raising K-12 per pupil spending by $2,000. In Washoe County that means $9,318 per student; in Clark County $9,361.
Governor Lombardo also recommended restorations to allow Nevada universities to fill open positions throughout campuses and make cost of living adjustments for faculty and staff.
The proposed budget also includes increasing graduate student stipends. “Those students have not received increases in a long, long time, and they’re important for our research mission,” said Dr. Keith Whitfield, president, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). “They’re in our labs, they’re assisting or even teaching our courses so that our professors can do more research.”
More good news for UNLV: funding to enable expansion of medical school classes. “One of our goals for starting that medical school was to create more physicians for the state,” said Whitfield. Proposed funding would allow the School of Medicine to continue instruction for 60 students a year. “That’s what we’ve been doing for two years, and it’s been very successful. The last group of students, I believe 100 percent of them were placed in residencies.” The goal is to build to 120 students.
Another important component of the Governor’s budget is $60 million for buildings maintenance. “You can appreciate with a 140-year-old campus there’s a lot of maintenance needs, and we want to ensure our campus is completely accessible with regard to ADA; that would allow us to complete all the ADA projects across campus,” said Brian Sandoval, president, University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). A $75 million appropriation from former Governor Sisolak will facilitate construction of the new state health lab on UNR’s campus. The state health lab is where all COVID testing was done. UNR is also in final planning stages for construction of a new business building.
In addition, UNR received the donation of a new campus in 2022. Sierra Nevada University became University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe. “That campus will provide a lot of opportunities for our students,” said Sandoval. “We hope to have study abroad, a study in Tahoe-based curriculum in sustainability and we also will increase our research activities up at Lake Tahoe by virtue of that campus.”
Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) Board of Regents reviewed and approved UNLV’s Maryland Parkway Master Plan, which outlines improvements spanning more than 10 years with goals for physical campus improvements and development of buildings, open spaces, signage and pathways.
Governor Lombardo’s proposed budget includes heightened funding for K-12, which also received federal funds during the pandemic.
“The last couple of years we’ve seen unprecedented investment from the three stimulus bills that the districts received. In many ways we’ve never seen that level of investment put into public education,” said Dr. Susan Enfield, superintendent, Washoe County School District (WCSD). “We are now looking at how to reevaluate our use of those funds over the next couple years to address where we are at this moment.”
Proactive Academics
One issue facing postsecondary institutions is the need for remedial math and English education for students entering institutions. What was once remediation, requiring students to take noncredit courses to catch up while losing time and money, today is known as corequisite (coreq) courses. Corequisites were designed after NSHE Board of Regents adopted five strategic goals for education and implemented changes statewide.
“The way corequisite courses work, they’re a college-level gateway that would be an entry position, if you will, for English and math,” said Byron Brooks, chair, NSHE Board of Regents.
Basically, coreq means mainstreaming students who need extra help, rather than stigmatizing them with the noncredit classes. Corequisites happen simultaneously with entry level classes, like tutoring inside the course.
Enrollment
One of the biggest challenges facing higher education today stems directly from the pandemic—enrollment. Statewide, enrollment in many institutions is down.
At UNR, enrollment is basically flat from a year ago, and down from pre-pandemic levels, in part due to there simply being fewer high school seniors today than there were before. “People think with all the growth happening throughout the state and in Washoe that there actually would be more seniors enrolled,” said Sandoval. “There’s not.”
“This past fall, in a preliminary report done by NSHE, we’re seeing enrollment and head count year over year down 1.2 percent in credit hours and flat as it relates to head count,” said Dr. DeRionne Pollard, president, Nevada State College (NSC). “Interesting that Nevada State is slightly up in credit hours and down 1 percent in head count. What this tells us is, this is an uncertain moment for a lot of folks. They’re trying to reconcile how to pay for school, if they’re going to go to school, if they’re going to work, and for a lot of our students who are oftentimes living more complex lives, having to make those choices are significant for them.”
“We’re over 80 percent online,” said Joyce Helens, president, Great Basin College (GBC). “When we all shut down due to the pandemic and everybody was tanking, our enrollment was actually up.” With 80 percent online courses, students weren’t as impacted when COVID caused institutions to close. “Our students took a hit in jobs and health, all those terrible things that were happening, but they were telling us when everything else in the world was changing, we were consistent.” GBC’s online courses are a draw for working adults who can study according to their own schedule.
UNLV was not impacted to the extent other institutions were. The University welcomed its largest freshman class ever in the fall of 2022 with 4,500 students.
“Nationally you’re seeing numbers between 7 to 10 percent drop in enrollment,” said Whitfield. “We never vacillated that wildly. We were down a couple ticks of a percent, but usually within .2 percent above or below.” Fall 2019 to 2020 showed a dip in enrollment as the pandemic set in, but retention of students remained high.
One possible solution for decreased enrollment is dual enrollment—letting students leave high school with college courses already completed.
“CSN (College of Southern Nevada) does a great job in terms of dual enrollment offerings and if we take a look at the practice of dual enrollment, it is a pipeline into the NSHE system,” said Brooks.
Dual enrollment is seen as a positive solution to support and induce students who graduate from Nevada high schools to move on to college. Some students graduate high school with a year of college already under their belts.
“We are working with partner high schools in some very key areas,” said Pollard. One is the teaching pipeline, and the other nursing. “We’re seeing some pretty remarkable data as we look to students coming here; anywhere from 9 to 12 percent of our currently enrolled students in any given semester are former dual credit students.”
“Ensuring our students have qualified teachers in their classrooms is crucial and will support them in meeting milestones and lead to improved academic outcomes,” said Dr. Jesus Jara, superintendent, Clark County School District (CCSD). “By focusing on the teacher pipeline through investments in current students who seek to become educators, and those educators who have retired and would like to continue teaching, we will close the vacancy gaps we are currently facing.”
To further encourage dual enrollment, UNR has established academies in Clark County. Ten high schools now offer University courses to approximately 3,000 CCSD students who are earning college credit for free while completing high school.
The courses, taught on high school campuses, started at two high schools; CCSD has requested UNR add six more to the program. Discussions between Sandoval and Enfield are in progress to add two pilot high schools in WCSD to the program in the fall of 2023.
CCSD has also established Central Technical Training Academy, a nontraditional high school focusing on career technical coursework, credentialing, and work-based learning opportunities. Coursework includes construction technology and advanced manufacturing, with opportunities for students to earn industry-recognized credentials and participate in internships. Flexible scheduling incorporates distance learning, hybrid and in-person options.
Remote, Virtual, Hybrid, on Campus
Another change accelerated by the pandemic is how students attend classes. One possible solution for boosting enrollment numbers is more online classes, supporting both incoming students and adult learners already in the workforce.
Pre-pandemic, NSC was 80 percent in-person instruction versus hybrid. The numbers flipped completely mid-pandemic but have returned to roughly 65 percent in-person. Pollard doesn’t expect numbers to return to pre-pandemic given all the progress the college has made in delivering virtual instruction and the flexibility that comes with it.
The amount of choices for postsecondary learning that exist today may be partly responsible for lower enrollment numbers. With the ability to take online classes from anywhere in the world, NSHE institutions are competing with global institutions.
During the pandemic, universities saw classes balanced between in-person and remote or online classes. That led to offering hybrid education, a combination of on-campus and online.
“One of the other things we could do to support enrollment is having the institutions really focus on their initial mission statements for why they exist to begin with, particularly when we take a look at some of the workforce issues that we have,” said Brooks. “That could certainly be an area where there could be some very demonstrated processes for success by supporting workforce development. I don’t think it’s any surprise that when we talk about areas that could use some support in the state of Nevada, we could use more teachers and nurses.”
Nearly half of all bachelor prepared nurses in Nevada come through NSC; most of them remain and work locally. NSC offers 40 programs of study. Nursing and teaching remain center stage. The nursing program at GBC is the top rural nursing program; students routinely have a 100 percent pass rate on the national exam.
Nevada State College was built and geared toward driving support for nursing and teaching degrees, said Brooks. “It’s an example of really maintaining those initial core values and mission statement to be able to support things that are happening in Nevada.”
Another example of supporting what’s happening in Nevada: GBC, which offers two and four year degrees both online and through campuses in rural Nevada, is creating a Career Technical Education program, a Mining Center of Excellence in partnership with UNR. “Some classes will be taught in Elko that would otherwise have been taught on our campus,” said Sandoval. “I’ve said over and over we need to be a modern university and go where the students are, because not every student can come to our campus, and it’s a very competitive market. There are a lot of universities out there that are offering online courses and we need to be in that space.”
GBC’s Mining Center of Excellence is an example of how NSHE institutions work with Nevada economic authorities to customize curriculums and meet workforce needs and ensure students have jobs when they graduate.
“We’re also a great pipeline for students to be able to do their internships with the different companies,” said Sandoval. “It’s a small sample size, but companies I talk to are very, very happy with our students and almost without exception they make offers to students who have been in those internships. It’s really important that it be a seamless transition from our campus to the respective companies.”
“We’re pleased that we saw an expansion of about $24 million if I’m correct, proposed dollars [in the Governor’s budget] to go toward workforce and economic development programs at the community college and state college level,” said Pollard.
The link between workforce, economy and education isn’t only at postsecondary levels. “I feel really strongly that the link between education and economy is an inextricable one,” said Enfield. “A strong school system is going to lead to a stronger local and state economy because we’re going to be graduating young people who are highly skilled and prepared for the industries within our region and state. That’s critically important, that our employers both locally and statewide can hire graduates from the state of Nevada to do their work and not have to look elsewhere.”
Maintaining Wellbeing
Mental health is always a challenge in rural Nevada; the pandemic exacerbated that challenge. GBC was awarded $62,000 in grant monies from the state to create mental health first aid training for staff and students. On campus, the Behavioral Intervention Team does in-service and training for staff and students responding to students who need mental health services.
Mental, physical and economic health all need to be taken into consideration, Helens said. While in rural areas there may be fewer resources, there’s still a need to include community in wellness programs.
Whitfield has seen four major effects of the pandemic on mental health of students, faculty and staff: stress, anxiety, depression, and isolation. The University created UNLV Practice to provide low cost, high quality psychological services to the community. UNLV also nearly doubled mental health counseling and psychological services staff; UNLV students launched You at UNLV, a website offering tips and tools for mental and physical health.
UNLV also created the Digital President, an AI that serves as connector for future and current students and families. The AI accesses information from the University website and provides a person, however digital, people can talk to at all hours.
“It’s been a really difficult last few years for students, faculty and staff,” said Sandoval. “One of the most important things we could do is make our students, faculty and staff aware that we do have highly professional and highly effective resources available on campus for mental health counseling.”
CCSD has approximately 185 school psychologists, 700 counselors, and 195 social workers to support its 305,000 students. The district works with social-emotional wellbeing systems to connect families with mental healthcare providers and has used information from more than 220,000 surveys to conduct in-person wellness checks and provide nearly 80,000 referrals for families needing help. More than $20 million of the district’s American Rescue Plan and ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund) funds have gone to support student mental health services.
“The pandemic certainly contributed to anxiety, disconnectedness, fear and uncertainty, and we are seeing that play out in behaviors in our schools right now, so the need for mental health services and support is as great as it ever was,” said Enfield. WCSD is partnering with local agencies to match the needs of students, families and staff.
“So how is it that we can train and support our staff to meet these heightened needs of our students in a post-pandemic era? We’re trying to figure out where we need to invest to help our students and staff recover. I think it would be naive for us to think the effects of the pandemic are over. I believe that we will feel the effects of the pandemic for years to come, in different ways, especially when it comes to our children. So, we’re being very intentional and strategic in how we use those dollars to meet those needs,” said Enfield.
