About the Retreat

The Nevada EPSCoR Early Career Faculty Retreat is an innovative 2.5-day residential retreat designed to enhance the leadership skills of early-career faculty from the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE). Participants in this retreat will gain career-advancing skills and resources, as well as practices in group facilitation and leadership. Workshop sessions will be led by experts from Nevada and the NSHE.  Session topics will address:

Please submit the online application and email your CV to Michele_Casella@nshe.nevada.edu by May 2, 2016 to be considered for this opportunity.

This year’s retreat will be held June 13-15, 2016 on the campus at Sierra Nevada College, in Incline Village, Lake Tahoe, Nevada.  As this is a residential program, lodging will be provided in the campus dorms of SNC.  Meals will also be provided. Reimbursement for airfare and ground travel will be provided to all participants. See travel page for more details.  Please be sure to complete the Participant Application and send your CV to michele_casella@nshe.nevada.edu no later than May 2, 2016 if you wish to be considered for this opportunity.  Your participation in this program will be confirmed by May 6, 2016 so that you can make travel reservations through your department.

For more information contact:

Michele Casella
NSHE Sponsored Programs & EPSCoR Office
michele_casella@nshe.nevada.edu 702-522-7076

This workshop is sponsored by the National Science Foundation’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF EPSCoR), Award #IIA-1301726.

Travel Reimbursement

Invited participants will be reimbursed for all travel costs associated with the retreat.  Process travel through your department at your institution and after the retreat furnish a copy of your completed travel claim to michele_casella@nshe.nevada.edu to reimburse your department.

In the event more than fifteen faculty apply, applications will be reviewed by the Retreat Planning Committee and selections will be made based on academic and research interests and optimal group composition.  You will be notified by email if you are selected by Friday, May 6, 2016 in order to make your travel arrangements.

Please complete the online application and submit your CV to michele_casella@nshe.nevada.edu by Monday, May 2, 2016.

Lodging

The Retreat is meant to be an intensive and immersive experience and lodging will be provided in the Campbell Freidman Hall dormitory on the Sierra Nevada College campus.  Each participant will have a single dorm room with a private bath.

Check-in will be from 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm on Sunday, June 12, 2016 at the Front Desk in Patterson Hall.    SNC Campus Map

The dorm rooms come standard with 2 bunk beds with linens, each bed has 1 pillow, desk lamp, trash can, private bathroom with (1 bath towel, 1 hand towel), 1 bathmat, cups, soap and toilet paper.  There is no maid service, but if you would like clean linens or towels you can exchange the dirty ones at the front desk in Patterson Hall throughout your stay. Dorm Room Quick Facts

Reno Airport Shuttle

North Lake Tahoe Express runs shuttle service to and from the Hyatt and Reno/Tahoe Airport for $49 per person each way. *Passenger discounted rates valid for guests traveling on the same date/shuttle time, utilizing a single reservation.  For reservations and additional information on Lake Tahoe shuttle transportation, view their website.

Mel Minarik, University of Nevada, Reno

Her interest areas are leadership, knowledge building, health policy and administration, stress management, spirituality and health, quality improvement, organizational behavior, adult learning and integrative health. She works both on campus and in the community creating professional development training for leadership and staff.

In the University of Nevada School of Medicine, she works with faculty and students in an “Upstream Northern Nevada” project and is a Curriculum Director for MS 2 students.

Mary-Ann Winkelmes, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Mary-Ann Winkelmes is Coordinator of Instructional Development and Research and an Associate Graduate Faculty member in the Department of History at the University Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), where her aim is to promote teaching and learning initiatives, student success, faculty development and instructional research in all the University’s academic units. She also serves on UNLV’s Path to Tier One Executive Committee. She is a Senior Fellow of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and a partner in the AAC&U’s LEAP project—Transparency and Problem-Centered Learning. She also serves on the Nevada Humanities Board of Trustees.

Dr. Winkelmes (Ph.D., Harvard, 1995) has held senior leadership roles in the campus teaching centers at Harvard University, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois. She has consulted and provided professional development programming for faculty through the Lilly Endowment’s higher education grant-making and teacher training programs, and for teaching centers in the U.S. and abroad. She has also served as an elected member of the Board of Directors of the Professional Development Network in Higher Education (POD Network), and Chair of its Research Committee.

Her work to improve higher education learning and teaching, especially for historically underserved students, has been recognized nationally by the Chronicle of Higher Education and by the POD Network’s Robert J. Menges Award for Outstanding Research in Educational Development. She founded and directs the Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Project (TILT Higher Ed), which promotes direct conversation between teachers and students about methods of teaching and learning, and helps faculty to share data on students’ learning across institutions and countries. The impact of this project on students’ learning has been the focus of publications in the National Teaching and Learning Forum, Project Information Literacy, the National Education Association’s Higher Education Advocate and AAC&U’s Liberal Education.

Dr. Winkelmes advocates her view that research, teaching and learning are best practiced as a unified enterprise that benefits students and society in An Illinois Sampler: Teaching and Research on the Prairie. Dr. Winkelmes has also published book chapters and peer-reviewed articles on college teaching and learning and on the history of art and architecture in Renaissance Italy, Benedictine church design and decoration, acoustics, and religious architecture. She has received numerous teaching awards as well as grants for her art historical research from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Kress, Delmas, and Mellon foundations.

Andy Rost, Sierra Nevada College

Dr. Andy Rost is an Associate Professor at Sierra Nevada College where he teaches in the Science and Technology Department.  Andy first started teaching as an instructor for the Pacific Crest Outward Bound where ‘active learning’ strategies were deeply embedded into his pedagogy. After receiving his doctorate in Hydrologic Sciences from the University Nevada, Reno in 2010 he started teaching at Sierra Nevada College. Among his contributions to the Science department, Dr. Rost has developed and is currently delivering the undergraduate Earth Science curriculum. These courses employee active learning strategies and utilize the easily accessible outdoor classroom of the Lake Tahoe area. He teaches a wide range of classes including Introduction to Geology, Hydrology and Water Resources, Meteorology, Climate Change, Research Methods, Senior Research, Natural History of the Rogue River, Ecology of Aquatic Ecosystems, Environmental Systems, Lake Tahoe Basin Ecosystems, Environmental Engineering, and The Fundamentals of Environmental Education. His primary research interests include the physical, chemical, and biological constraints on attached algae in Sierra Nevada streams.

Meggin McIntosh, Emphasis on Excellence, Inc.

Dr. Meggin McIntosh, Professor Emerita (University of Nevada, Reno), is now known as The PhD of Productivity®.  After an award-winning and productive career at the University of Nevada, including being the founding director of the Excellence in Teaching Program, she decided to launch out on her own to focus on writing, teaching, and coaching.

She works all over the country with overwhelmed academics who would prefer to be overjoyed, instead.  Since one of the broad categories where bright people can get overwhelmed is completing (or not completing!) their projects, we wanted to bring in someone with practical, straightforward strategies to help all of us with time, project, and academic life management.  And we found Meggin!

Meggin has been called “an educational treasure”.  Her 6-word bio is, “Put on Earth to teach. Thankful.”  Learn more at http://meggin.com.

Cecilia Maldonado, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Dr. Cecilia Maldonado, a native of Ohio, earned B.A.s in Industrial Management and Elementary Education, an M.S. in Technical Education from The University of Akron, and Ph.D. in Workforce Education and Development from The Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Maldonado has held academic appointment at UNLV for 16 years, most recently serving the administration in various appointments within the Office of Faculty Affairs.

Dr. Maldonado has been an active member of the UNLV community having served on numerous committees with various functions at the department, college, and university levels. She has extensive experience working with administration in a shared governance capacity as the elected Chair of the Faculty Senate (2010-2011) during the economic downturn and one of the most challenging times at UNLV. She served the faculty (2009-2012) as an active member of the executive committee, all while holding the position of program and graduate coordinator for the Ph.D. in Workforce Development and Organizational Leadership.

Dr. Maldonado is generally drawn to work geared at improving the organizational culture and climate of the campus and the work life of faculty. As Provost Fellow, she had oversight for the induction of faculty including developing and coordinating new faculty orientation, onboarding and faculty mentoring. As Assistant and Associate Vice Provost, she continues this work on behalf of faculty in addition to having oversight and assisting with faculty processes, which involves applying the knowledge of shared governance and unit, school, and university policies that govern academic and administrative processes at UNLV.

She is also passionate about her work with students. She volunteered to serve on the Consortium for Faculty Professional Opportunities, a committee focused on the professional development of faculty after the elimination of the teaching and learning center. As a member of this committee, she advocated for graduate students by encouraging the development of seminars to improve graduate student teaching skills. Having this expertise, she developed and delivered workshops and for-credit seminars for graduate students for several years. She currently works very closely mentoring her doctoral students as dissertation committee chair. She is most proud of the fact that since 2008, she has successfully graduated 8 doctoral students and 5 master students writing theses.

Dr. Maldonado has one daughter, who is a UNLV graduate and lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Julie A. Hogan, Ph.D.

Dr. Hogan is an executive grant writer and has earned more than a whopping $38 million dollars in external grant funding since 1997!  She is an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno and also has a consulting business where she connects with people like you who want successful professional and personal lives.  She has a doctoral degree in sociology from the University of Nevada Las Vegas.  She is the author of three books (two in press), principle investigator of a number of grants and contracts, and the mother of two great girls who have black belts in U.S.A. Olympic Taekwondo. Additionally, Julie provides expert consultation in communication, grant writing, substance abuse prevention, and leadership.

Michele Casella, NSHE Sponsored Programs & EPSCoR Office

Michele Casella is the education, outreach and diversity administrator (EOD) for the Nevada System of Higher Education Sponsored Programs Office (NSHE SPO). In this role, she is responsible for ensuring that EOD activities are integrated throughout the three NSF EPSCOR projects currently funded in Nevada.

Through NSF-funded programs, Casella works collaboratively with other research-based projects to provide continuity in STEM education and research and to build a more diverse STEM workforce.

In 2002, Casella received her bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her formal education and professional experience working for state and federal agencies, as well as for-profit and non-profit organizations, has made Casella successful in planning, implementing and evaluating pathway programs for traditional and non-traditional students in a variety of different disciplines.