 |
Identity & Values
Meeting 1
October 02, 2007
10:00 am
Topic:
Location: Student Union 208 C
Meeting 2
October 03, 2007
3:00 pm
Topic:
Location: Foundation Blasco Event Wing
Meeting 3
October 04, 2007
3:00 pm
Topic:
Location: Stan Fulton International Gaming Institute Ballroom
Meeting 4
* topic wrap-up meeting
October 09, 2007
3:00 pm
Topic:
Location: Student Union 205
Read the Topic Summary Documents.
Post a comment.
Comments
| posted by: Neal Smatresk | 24-09-2007 | | Refining our identity and developing campus values are critical pieces of the puzzle for UNLV. How we acheive excellence needs to be guided by our committment to the community around us and the faculty strengths we currently have. We also need to recognize that our university needs to create a value set that reflects our unique nature and our responsibility to the state and region. | | | | posted by: Kendall Hartley | 25-09-2007 | I want to reiterate the importance of a commitment to diversity as a core component of our identity. A part of that commitment should include a concerted effort towards recruiting faculty and students that better reflect the community. The Clark County School District recently reached a significant milestone in terms of demographic makeup. This past year was the first year that the Hispanic population outnumbered all other ethnicities (39% Hispanic, 38% White). I would like to see our planning include efforts towards taking advantage of the local population to enrich our campus community.
Data source: Nevada Report Card (nevadareportcard.com) | | | | posted by: Marissa Blas | 26-09-2007 | As UNLV defines its identity and campus values, it is crucial that we continue to place value in retaining the quality professionals that we currently have employed. We can do this by first making it our goal as an institution to do small things extremely well. Diversity through action. Diversify the art on the walls that we see, the books we read, the people and faces that are identified in authority. Care through action. More advocacy for UNLV employees at the HR level.
Our basic needs: diversity and care for our people and students. I am excietd to see what the focus will become! | | | | posted by: Gregory Brown | 26-09-2007 | I'd like to put in a word for intellectual diversity.
There is an inherent value for any university, especially this one being where we are geographically and intellectually, to challenge the dominant values, especially the unexamined assumptions about value.
Our core identity should be an organized, coherent alternative to received ideas. We should encourage inquiry that is not necessarily going to produce instrumental knowledge which can be applied for remunerative purposes. What is distinct about a university is that its members do not perceive themselves as first and foremost merely an adjunct to the state's economy or a training academy that implants in students techniques that they can reproduce in their jobs.
Likewise, measures of "efficiency" at the university ought not be based on cost-benefit or return on investment analysis.
We owe our students, and our community, a university that is a place different from the dominant values in our society, especially at a time when so many feel so beaten down by those values. We should be a place where an ethos of community, of respect and reciprocity for ideas as a show of care for our fellow human beings is cultivated, encouraged and rewarded.
Our collective identity will be an impoverished one indeed if it leads us merely to think of ourselves as merely seeking how to reduce inputs and maximize outputs. | | | | posted by: Steven Farinella | 03-10-2007 | I believe UNLV needs to do a better job of showcasing the many talents of our faculty and staff, the research we are doing and the individual colleges. Through some of the publications like the UNLV Magazine we do get brief glimpses into some of the research programs and other programs that are happening here but, I am not convinced that these efforts are enough.
For example, in today's world we are concerned with the environment and pursuing a more "green footprint". Two instances come to mind when I think about the role UNLV plays/should pay in this regard. First, a couple of years ago there was a presentation made about the development of UNLV and main street UNLV. Presented were drawings of beautiful buildings and grand vistas of the proposed campus. After the presentation I asked the presenter what the transportation plan was for this grand plan and his reply was simply, "None." I thought to myself that I was pretty sure UNLV had a fine engineering school on campus so why wasn't the engineering school participating in this project? Certainly with the technologies emerging today we can do better than converging on golf cart gridlock or having mostly empty fossil fuel powered shuttles circle the campus.
In the same vain, just the a few weeks ago I was on my way to an evening class near the CEB and I saw a vehicle go by with markings indicating it was fuel cell powered. Again, I thought to myself, "How come I haven't heard about this?" Of course doing a search from the UNLV homepage finds The Center for Energy Research which does have some information however, nothing on this particular vehicle. I haven't seen that vehicle or heard about it since that evening.
As a rule I try to read the publications that arrive in my campus mailbox and, as much as I use the web, I do see the UNLV home page several times a day so I don't consider myself as being too far out of the information dissemination loop. I personally would like to see more publicity on these types of projects and I dare say that there are many more people like myself who are just as curious. Well prepared video clips that are kept current about these projects would be just one way of getting the word out. They could be posted to the web on places like our homepage, YouTube and the like as well as being used for TV spots and other video media outlets.
This is just one small example of how we can use the UNLV campus and the talents within our colleges to demonstrate to the community and world that UNLV is on the leading edge in higher education.
| | | | posted by: Jeremy Ashton Houska | 08-10-2007 | As our state develops its promising three-tiered educational system, we at UNLV must commit ourselves to academic excellence. Improving our academic reputation needs to be our foremost priority. Thus, our collective identity should be one that encourages and supports a culture of research. This identity must also value graduate/professional students and programs.
There need to be opportunities for the best and brightest undergraduates to get involved in the research enterprise. At the same time, continued support for faculty and graduate/professional students may prove to be the most efficient means of enhancing our institution’s reputation.
At the kick-off event there was talk of “watering the green spots.” To build on this analogy, our faculty, graduate/professional students, and post-baccalaureate programs are the green spots at UNLV. How so? Our faculty has enjoyed a 103% increase in grant funding and 99% increase in publications between 1992 and 2001 (see page 78 of http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf07320/pdf/nsf07320.pdf). However, our faculty cannot do it alone.
Junior colleagues (i.e., graduate/professional students) teach courses so faculty can dedicate more time to scholarly work. Graduate/professional students support their mentors’ research agendas and conduct their own research. For this significant role, graduate/professional students are in need of more “water” (e.g., increased assistantships) as well as the support of the university community. When someone says “student” or “student life” we should no longer assume undergraduate. We are no longer merely an undergraduate institution. Graduate/professional students and post-baccalaureate programs need to become part of our institution’s vernacular.
By neither supporting a research culture nor acknowledging the value of graduate/professional students our academic reputation is in doubt. I hope we make a concerted effort to get UNLV above the fourth tier of national universities.
| | | | posted by: Darrell Lutey | 09-10-2007 | I'd like to see UNLV become a model "learning community" and provide the spaces that help encourage this.
I think some of our future plans may help facilitate this (i.e, first year center), but am hoping this center will include spaces that will promote community among these students. These first year students should go to classrooms that are grouped closely together with labs and informal learning spaces that are sticky (which encourage students to hang around campus after class), to be around their fellow students (and maybe even faculty).
I’m also hoping this learning community could extend past these first year students, and make their way into colleges and departments. Some Colleges have spaces that encourage community and collaboration (i.e, engineering and the grand hall), the architecture building, the new Greenspun building (but many don't). I see our students (and faculty) moving from building to building to attend, and teach their courses, and wonder isn't there a better way. Maybe from a standpoint of efficiency, it makes sense to have XX classes being taught in CBC, TBE, FDH, MPE, LFG, Beam Hall, and who knows where else, but if you're trying to provide a sense of community for XX students, and to reduce the run around, certainly we can do better. | | | | posted by: Dave James | 11-10-2007 | | Many students, faculty and staff at UNLV have an entrepreneurial "can do" spirit. It would be great if UNLV could capitalize on this to develop an institutional identity that is energetic and innovative. Could we become known as an institution that embraces change, and in fact, takes the lead in the field of higher education? | | | | posted by: Alex Dolski | 16-10-2007 | I would like to see the Midtown UNLV project emphasized in discussion of campus development, because I think it is a really critical piece of our growth puzzle.
For example, we are the envy of many northern universities in that the climate here is ideal for walking and cycling nearly all year round. If the conditions existed by which more people could use these transportation options, it would reduce pressure on expensive auto infrastructure, improve the campus' aesthetic value, and enhance campus community. It is hard to build any kind of community when going home at the end of the day means walking for 15 minutes to a parking lot at the campus periphery in order to commute for 30 minutes to a place far removed from our university peers and colleagues. We would benefit by bringing more students, staff, and faculty closer to campus to live. The nearby tenements really do not cut it.
From the perspective of a pedestrian or cyclist, Maryland Parkway is a dangerous cesspool. If we intend to create spaces that promote community on or near campus, we have to scale them to fit us and not our cars. Walking or cycling near any edge of campus today is unpleasant and unsafe, due in large part to being buzzed by high-speed traffic. Of course, there is no reason for most people to want to walk near any edge of campus because there is very little to walk from or to. We are bordered by nail salons, hookah lounges, payday lenders, and other places that most people normally have no desire to go to - and it's a long walk across the asphalt sea even if they did.
From my understanding, Midtown UNLV involves, in some way, building a sort of Main Street along Maryland. We have to notice that the buildings on most main streets are physically right on the sidewalk with windows looking in and out. They are browseable via wide sidewalks yet still accessible by car ("Parking In Rear"). Traffic is controlled by stoplights timed to favor pedestrians. Construction is multiple-story, the opposite of concrete "landscraper" sprawl. I have heard on several occasions the notion that UNLV is landlocked. We have enough asphalt in any direction to double our size. Instead of using it for parking lots, we should strive to create a built environment at and around UNLV that we can be proud of and that will serve us. | | | | posted by: Porter Lee Troutman, Jr. | 23-10-2007 | UNLV DIVERSITY ACTION PLAN
A Diversity Action Plan should be develop for the University of Nevada Las Vegas to provide guidance for the University, for each college, school, administrative unit, academic department, students, faculty, administration, and classified staff. The purpose should identify strategic directions that should be taken by the University. It should set the boundaries for the types of activities that should be undertaken, and empowers individual colleges, schools, academic departments and units to create diversity action plans with specific prescriptive actions.
The Diversity Action Plan should reflect the University’s strong belief in equity (core value) and the importance of creating and maintaining an inclusive learning and working environment and in the benefits gained by all members of the University community from learning and working with people who come from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives. Assessment and accountability measures should be included in each plan. The Diversity Action Plan should recognize that problems and conflicts related to diversity exist on our campus and that changing demographics will present future challenges for the University. The Diversity Action Plan should be viewed as a call to action, one that requires attention at all levels and hard work by all members of the University community and of the external community.
The most important directive embodied in the Diversity Action Plan is the expectation that each unit undertake strategic planning focused on diversity issues, curriculum, and reevaluation of Multicultural requirement teaching, research and service. In CCSD, foreign students represent143 countires,speaking 105 languages. 87% of those students speak Spanish. 67% of students are diverse. These demographics are our challenges.
Those units that develop diversity models and institutionalize them should receive incentives.
| | | | posted by: Janet Reiber | 02-11-2007 | UNLV feels to me like a campus without a soul. Colleges are largely isolated from each other, which promotes a territorial atmosphere. Our students now have two large places to congregate, although the new student union has very few chairs for students outside the fast-food area. Faculty and Professional Staffs have no place to relax, talk and have a meal or a cup of coffee together. If collaboration is really a UNLV goal, then I would suggest a Faculty/Pro Staff dining room/lounge be created, located in a central place on campus, with food prepared by Hotel College students.
I would also like to suggest that better on-campus entertainment will draw students who live off campus to come here during evenings and weekends to create a greater sense of community. UNLV needs frequent, large concerts of popular music that appeal to university students. Entertainment on the strip can’t be a viable substitute for entertainment on campus. The Midtown UNLV should include an inviting area of restaurants and coffee houses with smaller scale entertainment that will draw students to the university, and perhaps provide places for faculty and students to interact.
UNLV can be a very chilly place. I would like to see it become a warmer and more inviting place for everyone. It might have a significant impact on recruitment, enrollment and retention of students, and recruitment of Faculty and Pro Staff.
| | |
Please submit your comments to provostofc@unlv.edu
|
