NOVA Leads in Technology Support

NOVA has been named one of the top community colleges in the United States for offering "exceptional technology support to students and educators." The Center for Digital Education and Converge magazine ranked NOVA as second in the United States among large community colleges (those with more than 7,500 students).

Alexandria Campus students and staff interact with technology in all of the service areas of Educational Support Services:

• IT provides computers and keep them running wherever the campus needs them;


• IS&D ensures that classroom technology is up-to-date and working for faculty;


• OCC offers software and tech support to students days, nights and weekends;


• Learning Labs and Testing use new technologies for improving reading, writing and testing;


• Library's website and online databases extend our resources and instruction to far beyond the Library's walls, 24/7

NOVA was joined in the large-school category by Tidewater Community College, and seven other Virginia Community Colleges were represented in the mid-sized and small college groups (Rappahannock, Lord Fairfax, Mountain Empire, Southwest Virginia, Patrick Henry, Piedmont Virginia, and Dabney S. Lancaster).

Congratulations to NOVA and our VCCS colleagues for leading the way in educational technology!

Matt Todd Elected VLA President

Matt Todd, Collection Development Librarian at the Alexandria Campus, has been elected Vice-President/President Elect of the Virginia Library Association.

Results of the statewide elections were announced at the October 30 General Session of the 2009 Virginia Library Association Conference in Williamsburg.

Matt is the first community college librarian to serve as President and is also the youngest person ever elected to that office. His presidential term will begin in 2010. He has been active in VLA for 10 years, having served on the Region V committee since 2001 and serving on the Executive Board as Treasurer in 2008-09.

L to R, Sandra Beeson (MPS), Matt Todd (AL), Sylvia Rortvedt (AL), Carol Sinwell (AN). Not pictured: Julie Combs (WO).

Four other NOVA librarians attended the conference. Alexandria Librarian and Associate Director Sylvia Rortvedt and Annandale Acting Director of Educational Support Services Carol Sinwell presented a session on succession planning, and Sylvia participated on a library directors' Q&A panel.

Educational Support Services has a new bulletin board. Library specialist Marion Mirehouse led the project to create a new bulletin board describing the resources and services provided by the Library, Testing and Learning Lab, Open Computer Center, IT, Webmaster and Instructional Support & Development units that comprise learning resources at the Alexandria Campus. The bulletin board is located on the Bisdorf third floor, in the hallway leading to Testing.

Kim Gross, Marion Mirehouse and Kevin O'Hagan

Marion conceived and developed the theme "Let the ESS put you on the road to SUCCESS." Created with help from Kim Gross, Kevin O'Hagan, Adella Brunner and Lisa Stedge, the new bulletin board describes the services offered by the ESS units along with photos of the staff. The ESS management team (Dr. Dave Williams and the heads of each unit) hovers in a helicopter above the winding road to success.

Marion has completed numerous bulletin boards for ESS during her tenure at the campus and creates new seasonal displays in the library as well. Check out her latest balloon festival landscape behind the circulation desk!

Goodbye and Hello in the Learning Lab

Alexandria Campus Testing Services bids farewell to Trainer and Instructor Erin Sumego. Erin has received a scholarship to continue her Master's degree program in education at George Mason University on a full-time basis. We are very sorry to see her leave but wish her well in her new endeavors!

Erin Sumego and Thom Hilanto

The good news is that Thom Hilanto, who began working in the Learning Lab on a part-time basis in Fall 2007, will transition to full-time at the beginning of the fall semester. To learn more about Thom, see the December 4, 2007 post.

Alumni Federation Honors Anne Anderson

Librarian Anne Anderson was honored by the Northern Virginia Community College Alumni Federation at its Spring 2009 banquet honoring NOVA Faculty of the Year nominees.

Anne was one of twelve faculty members from the Alexandria Campus nominated for the Faculty of the Year award for 2008-2009. The student in her LBR 105 class who made the nomination noted that she "clearly puts the needs of her students first...she is an outstanding motivator with a deep interest in teaching."

Congratulations, Anne!

Alexandria Campus Hosts Successful LRS Professional Development Day

On Friday, May 15, the Alexandria Campus hosted 136 people from Learning Resources units from all campuses, plus staff from ELI, the Technical Applications Center, IT, the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and Human Resources for a day of professional development centered on the theme "Hot Technology, Cool NOVA."

The day's activities included a welcome from Alexandria Campus Provost Dr. Jonathan Gueverra (with his bag of 20 years of examples of then-hot new technologies) and a keynote address, "Hot Technologies 2009" by Corinne Hoisington from Central Virginia Community College.


She also presented sessions on Google tools and applications, and a preview of Windows 7 and Office 2010. Other sessions focused on new technologies for online tutoring and testing, planning for new libraries, examples of how LRS staff are using Web 2.0 tools across the college, Second Life, multicultural/multigenerational relations, and strategies for dealing with the challenging student.

Breakfast and a salad lunch kept the participants' energy up for a full day of learning and networking. The online evaluation survey confirmed a very high level of satisfaction with the overall program and individual sessions.

Thanks to Planning Committee co-chairs Sandra Beeson from Media Processing Services and Ruth Stanton from the Medical Education Campus for their hard work in making this a very successful day of professional development. In the words of some attendees, it was "...the best LRS day I have ever attended" and "Better than New Horizons."

Learning Resources Staff Learn

Alexandria Campus Learning Resources staff keep on learning.

Dean of Educational Support Services Dave Williams, IS&D Supervisor Dave Lavis, and librarians Bruce Carroll and Jean Hogan attended the VCCS New Horizons conference in Roanoke April 1-3. Bruce and Jean participated in a session on library resources and services and helped staff an "ask your librarian" table near the vendors' exhibits.

Dave Williams, Dave Lavis, librarian Sylvia Rortvedt and Nan Peck, NOVA's Acting Coordinator of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, attended the Chronicle Technology Forum in Arlington on April 6. This event, sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education, focused on new technologies in higher ed including Facebook, Twitter, Google, and more. One session featured staff from the VCCS System Office presenting on the VCCS move to Google for student email and other applications. Sylvia particularly enjoyed the session on building and renovating libraries to strengthen the library's role in student learning.

On March 30 - April 1, librarians Matt Todd and Sylvia Rortvedt and library specialist David Anderson from the Arlington Center attended the Computers in Libraries conference in Arlington. Social networking, useful new websites, open source software and ways to embed library resources in Blackboard were some of the hot topics at this conference.

Erin Sumego was the Alexandria Campus nominee to attend the VCCS Classified Staff Leadership Academy which was held in Staunton, Virginia May 27-29. The Academy included workshops, discussion groups, training sessions and small group projects designed to enhance the leadership skills of this select group of classified staff from across Virginia's community college system.

Librarian Bruce Carroll attended the national ELUNA conference in Richmond in May. ELUNA stands for ExLibris Users of North America, and ExLibris is the integrated library system used by all of the VCCS college libraries. Bruce has led our campus library staff through several ExLibris upgrades to our circulation system and at the conference learned what changes and upgrades are in store for our library systems.

In May, library specialists Jane Maddan, Marion Mirehouse and Twynell Kimble attended the Virginia Library Association's annual Paraprofessional Conference near Richmond. They attended sessions on topics ranging from Google Scholar and Google Books to basic book repair, services to deaf and hard-of-hearing library patrons to Civil War history collections in Virginia libraries.