Tag: Nicholls State University

Nicholls State University Renames Two Buildings after Alumni

Recently, Nicholls State University announced that they will be officially naming two buildings on campus in honor of two alumni of Nicholls who have had a significant impact on the University, according to this news release from Nicholls. Towards the start of the Fall semester, the Board of Supervisors for the University of Louisiana System officially approved the renaming of the two Nicholls buildings, and it was announced that an official ceremony commemorating the change is set to occur later in the Fall 2022 semester.

Nicholls State University will be renaming their College of Education and Behavioral Sciences Building to Dr. O. Cleveland Hill Hall. The building will be named after Dr. O. Cleveland Hill, a Mississippi native who was initially offered a scholarship and recruited to play basketball at Nicholls in 1968. Dr. O. Cleveland Hill became the first black athlete to wear a Colonel uniform, and as a sophomore, his teammates voted him team captain. This made him the first non-senior to serve in that position in school history.

After receiving his Bachelor of Arts in 1973, he joined the army and then returned to Nicholls as a student assistant basketball coach while completing his Master of Education degree. Dr. Hill served as the head basketball coach and assistant football coach at East Thibodaux Junior High School before being hired on as an assistant basketball coach at Nicholls. He stayed at Nicholls State University as an Assistant Professor of Physical Education, and in 1999, he became the Dean of the College of Education.

Dr. Steven H. Kenney, Jr. is the Assistant Vice President for Human Resources, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, and Title IX Coordinator at Nicholls. Dr. Steven H. Kenney, Jr. commented on the appropriateness of naming the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences Building after Dr. Hill by saying, “placing Dr. Hill’s name on the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences building, from what he represents, gives all Nicholls students the audacity to hope that if Dr. Hill can go from a student to the dean of a college, I can do this as well.”

Nicholls will also be renaming the College of Sciences and Technology Building to Dr. Marilyn B. Kilgen Hall. The building will be named after Dr. Marilyn B. Kilgen, who dedicated more than four decades of her life to Nicholls. After she had received her bachelor’s degree from the university in 1966, Kilden earned her doctorate from Auburn University before returning to Nicholls. She went on to teach Biology at Nicholls for 41 years.

Outside of teaching Biology at the university, Dr. Kilgen is also known for being a nationally renowned microbiologist and seafood safety scientist who has received more than $7.5 million in research funding. Her research has been reported in over 80 presentations and over 90 scientific publications; furthermore, she has served on committees for the United States Department of Education. Dr. Kilgen served as the head of the Nicholls Department of Biological Sciences for 12 years where her substantial impact was seen in the Department of Biological Sciences winning one of only 17 Departmental Excellence Through Faculty Enhancement awards, making Dr. Kilgen’s department the only undergraduate program in the state of Louisiana to win the coveted award.

Nicholls Dean of Sciences and Technology, Alcee Fortier Professor, and Distinguished Service Professor Dr. John P. Doucet also spoke about Dr. Kilgen’s impact by saying: “not only was Dr. Kilgen one of the foremost scientists and accomplished faculty members in the 75-year history of Nicholls; she is also the architect of the modern biology department, having renovated the undergraduate curriculum and created the graduate curriculum from scratch, both of which we still use today.

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“Last Acadian Coast” Symposium Hosted at Nicholls

In Early October, Nicholls State University hosted a symposium on the particularly unique history and culture of certain Acadian descendants in both Lafourche and Terrebonne Parishes, according to this new release from Nicholls. The symposium, which is titled: “The Last Acadian Coast: A Symposium on Acadian History and Culture in the Lafourche-Terrebonne” was held on Wednesday, October 5, 2022, in the Jean Lafitte Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center in Thibodaux, Louisiana.

The event is hosted by Nicholls State University, the Nicholls Coastal Center, the Center for Bayou Studies at Nicholls, the Lafourche Heritage Society, and the Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center. Additionally, this event is a part of the larger Grand Réveil Acadien 2022, which is a multi-parish experience that is designed to celebrate the lasting cultural impact of the Acadian people across southern Louisiana.

The Last Acadian Coast’s Symposium on Acadian history and culture in the Lafourche Terrebonne Area did so by featuring several notable speakers at their public event who spoke on the Acadians of the wetlands. The following speakers and topics were featured at the event:

  • Glen Pitre, “Historic Lifeways in the Lafourche-Terrebonne”
  • John Doucet, “The Last Acadian Coast: Settlement and Succession of the Wetlands Acadians”
  • Windell Curole, “Shaped by Tide and Thunder and Terror: Historical Storms and the Shaping of Coastal Settlement in the Lafourche-Terrebonne”
  • Nathalie Dajko, “French on Shifting Ground: Development of Unique Language in the Lafourche-Terrebonne”
  • Donald (Don) Davis, ”Historical Wetlands Seafood Culture and Industry”
  • Patty Whitney, “A Cultural Gumbo: Terrebonne Parish’s 200th Anniversary”
  • Shana Walton & Helen Regis, ”Living off the Land in Lafourche: Hunting, Fishing, Planting and Community”

Prior to the “Last Acadian Coast” symposium, an event a part of Grand Réveil Acadien took place at Nicholls State University’s Chef John Folse Culinary Institute. The event was an “Acadian Chef Demo,” and it featured Chef Paul Thimot and Chef Shane Robicheau who cooked and prepared a traditional Acadian dish while highlighting the culture and food of Acadian culture and Nova Scotia in both the past and present.

After the “Last Acadian Coast” symposium, Grand Réveil Acadien also featured a Cajun Music Demonstration & Lecture at the Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center. This demonstration and lecture featured Chad Huval on accordion and Brazos Huval on fiddle as they demonstrated Cajun Music techniques while also teaching about the history of Cajun music and the preservation of music specific to Bayou Lafourche.

In providing more information on the Acadian descendants of both Lafourche and Terrebonne Parish, Nicholls provided the following information: “the migration of Acadian exiles to Louisiana largely concluded in 1785 with the landing of seven-passenger ships in New Orleans carrying nearly 1600 persons. Following earlier establishments of the First and Second Acadian Coast settlements along the Mississippi River, most of the 1785 Acadian immigrants were settled along the Bayous Lafourche and Terrebonne.”

The arrival of the Acadian immigrants didn’t only the largest single migration and settlement of Acadians in the entire world, but it also marked the final mass re-settlement of Acadians in history. Over time, these Acadian immigrants migrated south along the bayous toward the Gulf Coast, and they founded “not only the bayouside cities, towns, and villages we know today but also forging their own history and developing a unique wetlands Cajun culture.”

Furthermore, Grand Réveil Acadien described their multi-parish experience as a way to “encourage Acadians from around the world to continue to advance our unique lifestyle through shared memories, French-speaking events, bonding and fellowship over Cajun food and music, and the general celebration of our shared culture.” Because of this, there is no better sponsor than Nicholls State University to host a symposium on the rich tapestry of the history of Acadian people in both LaFourche and Terrebonne Parishes.

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BCBS of Louisiana Foundation Awards Nicholls a Disaster Response Grant

Nicholls State University will soon be able to offer need-based scholarships to help students return to campus after having previously left in the wake of Hurricane Ida. According to this news release from the school, a $100,000 disaster response grant will be utilized to create these scholarships, which will be helpful to students wanting to return to their degree plans.

It was announced by the university in May 2022 that a $100,000 disaster response grant was awarded by The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation. It was also announced that the funds would be utilized so that students who had halted their learning due to Hurricane Ida’s detrimental impact on the area would be able to qualify for a needs-based scholarship that would offset the cost of re-enrolling & returning to classes.

Nicholls State University President Dr. Jay Clune commented on BCBSLA’s award by saying, “even though others outside of South Louisiana have long stopped talking about the effects of Hurricane Ida, we are still feeling the impacts every single day. We are grateful for this partnership with Blue Cross Blue Shield. I don’t like to think of where we would be without the support of our wonderful industry and community partners.”

In the wake of Hurricane Ida, the destructive Category 4 Atlantic hurricane that made its landfall near Port Fourchon on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, it was reported that an estimated 25% of Lafourche and Terrebonne Parish homes were destroyed or declared uninhabitable. Additionally, approximately two-thirds of the Nicholls community reported that their homes were destroyed or uninhabitable. Once the storm passed, the BCBSLA Foundation had committed $5 million in funds to areas affected by Ida, and other communities across the Gulf Coast also stepped up.

Earlier this year, The Courier reported that Nicholls State’s spring enrollment had dropped 10% from the previous year, attributing the decline to Hurricane Ida as well as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In August of 2021, Nicholls President Dr. Jay Clune announced that the school would essentially restructure its retention and recruitment strategies. As a result, the university’s decision to have recruitment and retention efforts managed by the Office of Academic Affairs, specifically being led by Sue Westbrook, provost and president for Academic Affairs, and Renee Hicks, assistant vice president of Institutional Effectiveness, Access, and success.

It was then reported that the university’s fall-to-spring retention rate of first-time freshmen had increased by 7.9 percentage points from the previous year to be listed at 90.5%. This was the first time that this retention rate had surpassed 90% in over a decade, thus signaling that Nicholls’ restructuring was beginning to pay off. Renee Hicks interpreted the data by saying, “when we post retention rates like this, it means our entire campus community has come together to provide extraordinary support for our students during the recovery from a major hurricane on top of a pandemic.”

Dr. Clune commented on the promising data, saying, “in addition to our strong retention rates, we also see applications are up year-to-year. I attribute that to our data-led approach to recruitment and retention by Ms. Hicks and her team. With a new marketing campaign and increased recruitment and retention efforts, we anticipate a return to an upward trend in enrollment.”

Pair this earlier indicator of rising enrollment rates with these new needs-based scholarships established from The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation’s $100,000 disaster response grant, and it’s even clearer to see that not just the campus community of Nicholls is coming together to come out of Hurricane Ida stronger than before, but the surrounding community of Houma, Thibodaux, and the State of Louisiana is banding together as well.

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Nicholls Sees Decade-High Enrollment Retention

Despite beginning the school year amid a flurry of natural and pandemic-related challenges, the Fall-to-Spring enrollment retention of first-time freshmen at Nicholls State University is holding steady at the highest percentage rate in over a decade, as per this news release from the school.

As it’s true for many post-secondary learning institutions nationwide, the prolonged continuance of the COVID-19 pandemic and its lasting effects has cast a particular shadow on collegiate affairs, enrollments, and retention of students during the transition from the Fall to Spring semesters. In 2021, Nicholls students were facing an even more immediate and devastating disaster in the form of Hurricane Ida, which predictably led to an expected drop in Spring enrollment.

The University’s enrollment data for the Spring 2022 semester showed a 10 percent drop since Spring 2021, dropping from 6,165 to 5,531 students. Nicholls President Dr. Jay Clune reported that this result was expected. This expectation is due to the fact that the Nicholls’ community is still attending classes “amid an elongated pandemic” and still actively “recovering from a devastating hurricane.”

Attending school and earning an undergraduate or graduate degree amid a pandemic is quite the feat in and of itself, but Dr. Clune put the experience in perspective saying, “we have juniors here at Nicholls who have only known college through the lens of this pandemic. We understand how difficult that can be. I commend the students who have remained on campus and look forward to better days ahead.”

This past August, the Nicholls President announced that the University would begin restructuring its initial recruitment and ongoing retention strategies. On a whole, the restructuring efforts will be spearheaded by the Nicholls Office of Academic Affairs with Dr. Sue Westbrook, the provost and vice president for academic affairs, and Renee Hicks, the assistant vice president of Institutional Research Effectiveness and Planning, access, and success leading the charge.

Though only announced at the beginning of the 2022 school year, the positive impact has been immediately evident, as seen with this recent enrollment data. This year’s Fall-to-Spring retention of first-time freshmen at Nicholls was reported as being 90.5 percent, which is a total 7.9 percentage point increase from last year and the first time that the Freshman retention rate has remained above 90 percent in over ten years.

Renee Hicks commented on the positivity emitted from the milestone achievement by saying, “when we post retention rates like this, it means our entire campus community has come together to provide extraordinary support for our students during the recovery from a major hurricane on top of a pandemic.”

Dr. Clune was also one to attribute the strong retention rates to the efforts put forth by the Office of Academic Affairs. He said, “in addition to our strong retention rates, we also see applications are up year-to-year. I attribute that to our data-led approach to recruitment and retention by Ms. Hicks and her team. With a new marketing campaign and increased recruitment and retention efforts, we anticipate a return to an upward trend in enrollment.”

Colleges and universities calculate their annual retention rates by comparing the number of enrolled students (as of the 14th day of classes) and subtracting the number of students who have withdrawn or canceled their enrollment. Then this figure will be divided by the total number of enrolled students. This retention rate is then regularly compared to other universities in the area as well as the individual school’s rate across the years. This data is reported annuallyby the university and any fluctuations in data are typically attributed to a wide array of factors, but for Nicholls State University to have seen a milestone increase in freshmen enrollment retention  amid a pandemic and natural disaster is certainly quite the feat of the academic institution.

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Nicholls Receives Donation from Shell and the Bayou Community Foundation

The students of Nicholls State University are still seeing the effects of Hurricane Ida in their lives, but those effects aren’t being ignored by the supportive community around them. According to this news feature from the University itself, over $75,000 has been awarded to Nicholls so that affected students and their families can be supported many months after the storm has passed.  In total, both Shell and the Bayou Community Foundation have awarded Nicholls State University with a $77,760 reward to help with Hurricane Ida recovery efforts.

Colette Hirstius, Shell’s senior vice president for the Gulf of Mexico, had spoken on the long-lasting relationship between the company and the Louisiana community. She said, “The Bayou Region has been home to Shell for over 100 years and it was important to us to be able to help provide a home for Colonels and their families who lost theirs to the devastation of Hurricane Ida. We are grateful and proud to be able to provide safe, stable housing so that these students can stay in school and focus on their futures.”

Nicholls has reported that the funds will be utilized to meet the needs of students and families who have been displaced from their houses by Hurricane Ida. The funds will be used in a variety of ways, with a considerably large portion being used to provide temporary housing, address food insecurity, and give families basic living essentials like clothing, toiletries, medications, school supplies, and so much more. After the funds were awarded, processed, and tallied, it was announced that the money will cover the housing, meals, and living expenses for at least 20 students and their families, thus providing much-needed support in such unsure times.

The executive director of the Bayou Community Foundation, Jennifer Armand, said of the awarded funds, “Nicholls State University responded quickly after Hurricane Ida to provide temporary housing and meals to students, faculty and staff who lost so much during the storm. The Bayou Community Foundation is pleased to partner with Shell to support all of these important relief efforts.”

The Bayou Community Foundation, which was originally created in 2012, is the only community foundation that is specifically designed to solely serve Lafourche Parish, Terrebonne Parish, and Grand Isle, Louisiana. The Foundation was started after local leaders saw the continuing effects on the surrounding community following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as well as the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill. “Local leaders recognized the need for a community foundation to strengthen human services, education/workforce development, and coastal preservation efforts in our area, as well as to serve as “the community bucket” for national and international assistance in the event of a future emergency or natural disaster,” according to bayoudf.com.

As many are aware, Hurricane Ida made its landfall on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in August of 2021, and Ida’s turbulent winds and powerful storm surges had made it so that an estimated 25 percent of homes in Lafourche and Terrebonne Parish were destroyed or deemed uninhabitable. As a result, approximately two-thirds of the Nicholls State University community had reported that their homes had sustained damage from the storm, and one-in-five students reported their homes to be destroyed or uninhabitable.

The above estimates are only a small piece of the massive effects left behind by this storm as they only focus on living conditions. Many members in the Nicholls community saw access to reliable income, transportation, and much, much more disrupted by Ida, which is why this donation of over $75,000 from Shell and the Bayou Community Foundation is appreciated months after the storm.

Dr. Jay Clune, president of Nicholls State University, remarked on the donation with the following words, “many of our students and their families have literally lost the roof over their heads with estimates of weeks, months, and even longer for recovery and rebuilding efforts to truly take shape in the hardest-hit communities. Without the generosity and support of partners such as Shell and BCF, it would be impossible for Nicholls to enact our vision to be the intellectual, economic and cultural heart of the Bayou Region.” To donate towards the efforts of the Bayou Community Foundation’s Hurricane Ida Relief, click here.

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Nicholls Geomatics Program Receives NCEES 2021 Surveying Education Award

Recently, the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying recognized the Geomatics program at Nicholls State University with one of its prestigious 2021 Surveying Education Awards, according to this press release from the university.

The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, or NCEES, is a nonprofit organization set on developing, administering, and scoring the surveying licensure tests in the United States of America, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the United States Virgin Islands.

Since 2016, the NCEES Surveying Education Award has stood as an honor recognizing university programs that work to advance surveyor licensure in order to safeguard the public’s health, safety, and general welfare. This is the third time that Nicholls has received the honor, which will give the program $15,000 in awarded funds.

Dr. Esra Tekdal Yilmaz, the department head of Applied Sciences at Nicholls, had said the following on receiving the prestigious honor, “Nicholls Geomatics is uniquely designed to provide a well-rounded education on collection, analysis, interpretation and management of spatial data using conventional methods and emerging technologies. The unique nature of the program is clearly evident in every aspect of the curriculum design, instructional research support, advisory board, industry support, the quality of our students, and our faculty expertise.”

The only honor higher than the $15,000 Surveying Education Award that was awarded by the NCEES was the $25,000 NCEES Surveying Education Award grand prize. This prize was awarded to the University of MaineSurveying Engineering Technology program.

In total, Nicholls was one of three total universities selected by the NCEES Surveying Education Award jury to win the $15,000 prize. The other two were the Surveying Engineering program at the Ferris State University’s School of Engineering and Computing Technology and the Geomatics/Surveying Engineering program at New Mexico State University’s Department of Engineering Technology and Surveying Engineering.

The funds will be utilized by Nicholls’ Geomatics program to host a 3-day workshop in which high school STEM teachers can be introduced to the basic concepts and impacts of geomatics, which, according to Oxford, is the “branch of science that deals with the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data relating to the earth’s surface.” Dr. Yilmaz noted that “these sessions will also create a continuous working relationship between our faculty and local high schools.”

The NCEES jury had met to evaluate and determine the 2021 award winners on June 24, 2021, and in total one university was selected to win the grand prize of $25,000, and three universities were selected to win the $15,000 prize and the $10,000 prizes, respectively. Schools awarded with the  $10,000 prize were Florida Atlantic University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and the Oregon Institute of Technology.

The NCEES Surveying Education Award, as per the nonprofit organization’s webpage, “recognizes surveying/geomatics programs that have a broad and robust curriculum and best reflect NCEES’ mission to advance licensure for surveyors in order to safeguard the health, safety, and welfare of the public. The award is intended to encourage programs to engage their students with other professionals, introduce them to both historical and new technology, and promote licensure.”

Because the NCEES Surveying Education Award evaluates a university’s performance on national surveying metrics, graduates from the Nicholls Geomatics Program had passed the national exam for the Fundamentals of Surveying at a 95 percent performance rate. This is outstanding once juxtapositioned against the national average of a 54 percent performance rate. This resounding success undoubtedly proves the excellence evident in the Nicholls State University Geomatics Program.

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