The Nicholson School of Communication faculty and staff take pride in our facilities and we strive to provide the best care of the spaces that we use on a day-to-day basis. The school aims to continue on with these efforts, so as a remind everyone using NSC classrooms, meeting rooms and any shared spaces on campus, please be mindful of costly equipment and turn off things such as projectors and lights when they are not in use. The cost of a replacement bulb for a projector, for example, can easily exceed $300. However, with your cooperation, the faculty and staff at NSC can prolong the life of equipment and help cut down on costs for our school and university.

For faculty submitting requests to IRB, if appropriate or fitting, in future submissions, please make sure to (continue to) add a note in the open comment field of the iRIS application that you are seeking confirmation of "exempt" or "not human subjects research.” This should help expedite the process. If you run into significant delays, please contact Dr. Boyd Lindsley.

NSC students can qualify for up to 20 scholarships found on the College of Sciences' website. Scholarships will be awarded at the end of the Spring semester and applications are open from Jan. 1 - Mar. 31, 2017. Please encourage students to apply at www.sciences.ucf.edu/scholarships.

UCF Provost Executive VP recently announced two new awards to celebrate the best ideas from across UCF to aid in institutionalizing our Collective Impact Strategic Plan.

The first, the Marchioli Collective Impact Innovation Award, is seeking nominations from unit directors for faculty and staff whose individual or group contributions are already helping advance our goals related to student success; strengthening faculty and staff; growing graduate and research programs; community impact; and innovation in higher education. This award will provide $1,000 to one nominee each fall and spring semester over the next three years. The deadline to nominate is Jan. 31.

The second, the Marchioli Collective Impact Ideation Competition, is crowd-sourcing new ideas from faculty and staff across UCF to help reach the goals set out in the plan. Three prizes will be awarded for the best ideas – $2,500, $1,000, and $500. The deadline to apply is Feb. 3.

You can find more Information about both of these awards as well as competition guidelines by reading the full letter.

The College of Sciences is looking for nominations of outstanding students from our departments and school that represent the college well. COS is looking for students who have an interesting or motivational story to tell, or someone very involved at UCF and in the community. COS wants to share their story and grow the college’s social media pages – and the departments’ pages too!

If you have a student in mind please e-mail project lead Elle Siebert (Elle.Siebert@ucf.edu) with information as to why they would make a good feature. If they are chosen for a social media spotlight, COS will ask you to connect them with the student.

This leadership workshop will be hosted from 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 9. Facilitated by Rachelle Lehner, Ph.D, manager of Learning and Organizational Effectiveness, this workshop will help you define your leadership or personality style. You'll gain a better understanding of how to improve your effectiveness with working with people, including your employees, family and friends. You can register for this even through self services.

Please be advised that student interns, from Facilities, will be making visits to UCF main campus buildings, over the next few weeks. The student interns will be travelling in pairs and have their student ID’s on lanyards, for identification. Their visits will be to verify fire system equipment locations in mechanical rooms, custodial closets, hallways, and staircases and should not affect daily operations.

In accordance with UCF policy number 3-101, each university building shall have a designated building coordinator who facilitates communications with building occupants and campus administrative offices regarding general building issues. The building coordinator for the Nicholson School of Communication is Debbie Doyle. Please contact Debbie with any questions you may have or for building related inquiries.

Meeting Minutes from the Dec. 13, 2016 program coordinator meeting are now available.

Rick Brunson
Who celebrates on Jan. 17