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Rebels, tune in to 'Let's Talk UNLV' with Dr. Sammie Scales. Your express pass to everything UNLV — campus highlights, programs, and the latest buzz. Join us weekly as we chat with student leaders, administrators, and faculty, diving into the core of what makes us Rebels.
The program brings guests from different areas of UNLV every week to discuss campus highlights, programs and services, research interests that are essential to being a Rebel. Let’s Talk UNLV places its emphasis on connecting with student leaders who represent the voice of students on our campus. Guests also include administrators, faculty and staff responsible for upholding the mission of the university, which is teaching, research and scholarship.
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Unknown Speaker 0:00
This is a Kun V studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Unknown Speaker 0:20
Hello, UNLV, and welcome to another episode. K, U N, V 91.5, and I'm excited today, because with this episode, we have Dr Chris heavey, the provost, here at UNLV. Dr heavi, thank you so much for joining us today.
Unknown Speaker 0:34
I'm delighted to be with you. Thanks for having me absolutely,
Unknown Speaker 0:36
absolutely as we start all of the shows. As I start out of the shows. I like to start with the origin story on how did you end up here at UNLV? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 0:45
So my wife and I got engaged at UCLA, and I went to Ann Arbor, Michigan as a visiting professor, and we were surprised by how long and cold that winter was. So we thought, let's go back to the West Coast. And we called Vegas, California adjacent, so we were both, you know, familiar with LA, and thought it would be a great place to raise a family. Wow,
Unknown Speaker 1:06
wow. So how long have you been here in
Unknown Speaker 1:10
So, 32 years. I arrived in the summer of 1992 got married that year and bought a bought our first house, and been here ever since, wow.
Unknown Speaker 1:21
So never any thoughts of, hey, I'm gonna leave Vegas for a while and come back. Just always here in Vegas,
Unknown Speaker 1:25
we've been super happy here. We raised two boys here, and they're both off doing great things now. They're kind of later half of the 20s, and love the community. Excellent,
Unknown Speaker 1:35
excellent. So let's get into just having a casual conversation. Can you tell me about the last book that you read and a really good TV program that you watch. Sure,
Unknown Speaker 1:45
you know, I had the pleasure of being on the stage with Malcolm Gladwell when he was here about two or three weeks ago with his new book called The revenge of the tipping point. So I had to read it over a weekend. It was a quick read, but it's an amazing book that tells a lot of interesting stories that weave into an important point about kind of how social change happens. And so great book and great experience, and hopefully a lot of our listeners got to see him talk at the Barrick lecture here on campus. Excellent,
Unknown Speaker 2:14
excellent. Well, can you tell us about the current role that you have here at UNLV, and tell us about some of the previous roles that you had here, because you said you've been here for 30 years. So tell us how that progress happened.
Unknown Speaker 2:27
Yeah, that's a that's good story. So I am the Executive Vice President and Provost, and most people don't know what that means. So when I out in the community and I tell people I'm the provost, they pretty much give me a blank stare. The most simple description of it is, I'm the chief academic officer, and so I oversee all the deans at the university and lead all of the academic initiatives. And I'm also the most senior of the vice presidents. And so sometimes the provost is also called the chief operating officer of the university, so I'm kind of the number two person to the president in helping the university run generally. And you know, it's been a long journey to get here. So I came as a young assistant professor. I was a psychology professor, and I came in to help start the new doctoral program in clinical psychology, which we did get started in 1999 a few years after I arrived, and then I took on a lot of different roles. I started being the coordinator of that program, and then I went to be the interim department chair, and then would be Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts for five years. And then I went up in the Provost Office and had a bunch of different positions, finally working my way up to Dean and then senior vice provost. And then I became the interim provost when our former provost left about five years ago. And then after President Whitfield got hired, he appointed me to be the permanent Provost back in 2021
Unknown Speaker 3:57
I think that was Wow. What do you like most about your role as the provost here at UNLV.
Unknown Speaker 4:02
Yeah, it's busy job, but I get to see all the great work that's happening across campus. So I'm pretty much you know, in meetings with students and academic leaders and faculty about the exciting things that are happening all the time. And it's fun sometimes to get to talk about some of those things that are going on, try to help people feel encouraged and inspired about all the great things that UNLV does. So there's a lot of fun parts of job. There's also some challenges. You know, I a lot of the problems of the university roll up to me, and so I spend a lot of my time trying to work with the all the teams across campus to solve some of the more difficult challenges that we run into.
Unknown Speaker 4:44
Okay, I can definitely understand that what's some of the best advice that you can offer students here on campus, best advice or words of wisdom that you can offer students here? And
Unknown Speaker 4:54
one of the things I've really enjoyed doing over the years is speaking at New Student Orientation, and the word that I. Use most at New Student Orientation is to think about the university as an opportunity. And what I say about it, sometimes I think it's the greatest kind of opportunity accelerator that exists in the world or on the whole planet, you know. So you can come here and learn to be an expert in just about anything, but to take advantage of that opportunity, students have to work hard, and they really have to strive to be excellent. And so my biggest advice is to really think about these years that you spend the university as an opportunity to build the platform for the future that they want, and they have to work hard to do it. So it's not the kind of thing that just showing up every day and, you know, sitting in the back of the classroom and nodding off, and you know, taking your test is gonna, you know, they'll give you some value. But there's the students who really come and try to take advantage of all the opportunities this place has to offer, walk out the door with a great platform for their future.
Unknown Speaker 5:54
Excellent, excellent. So what? What's being done from your office, from the provost office, to promote student success and campus initiatives.
Unknown Speaker 6:04
Yeah, there's tons of stuff that we do. And you know what I basically say to students and to the university faculty and staff is this whole place exists to support student success, and so pretty much every person's job on the campus every day is to try to make sure they're doing everything possible to help students be successful. And one of the things that I think is important to emphasize related to that is that it's a personal exchange between people. If people just wanted like the information that might be available in a class, they could go to the library and read a book, or they could go on the internet and find that kind of information. And so it's important for people, when they're thinking about student success, to really understand that they're dealing with a human being, and those human beings have challenges. They need encouragement, they need support. And so I'll give you a few examples what we do. So because we could talk all day about the different programs related to student success, but one of the things we do is we definitely try to monitor students engagement and try to reach out and give students nudges when we see that they seem like they're not being engaged as they should be. Because, you know, sometimes people get discouraged or things aren't going that well, and they need someone to say, Hey, come on, dust yourself off, pick yourself up. You might have hit a challenge, and let's get you back in the game. And so we do that with advisors. We have outreach specialists. The other thing is helping people navigate the complicated environment, because the university is a really complicated space, and all of the various things that students need to know to be successful. You know, sometimes people think, well, it's just showing up to class, but you got to deal with the financial aid. You got to get registered for all your classes. You got to make sure you're taking the right classes at the right time, in the right sequence, and so making sure that people have enough advisors, making sure that people can get their questions answered. We created a new chat bot, and they can go to the chat bot to ask questions, and if that doesn't work, they can get their question turned into a particular, what we would call a ticket, to make sure that someone gets back to them with the information they need. So trying to basically provide a full set of wraparound services. So if a student is here and engaged and looking for answers and asking for help when they need it, there's someone to give them that help and answer those questions.
Unknown Speaker 8:21
That's excellent. You know, one of the programs here on campus that I've noticed that really do an outstanding job with trying to make sure students stay connected and feel that sense of belonging on campus is over in STP student diversity programs. Yeah, that's I've been a part of that, and also I'm working with housing as well, and in both departments, but I've had, I've met students at some of those stpl lounge events that's come to me later with certain issues that they've needed to get resolved, and I've been able to connect them. One person was Dr Barlow, being able to connect this particular student with her to get the issue resolved. So coming to those events, getting involved, making sure that if they feel like they're a part of something. I've noticed that students do a lot better with their grades as well when they get connected with campus, versus those students that just drive the campus, attend class, get in the car and leave. So 100%
Unknown Speaker 9:12
couldn't agree more with what you're saying. And it's also an example you know, and thanks for doing it, of how someone you know reaches out and provides an opportunity for someone to ask a question, because sometimes they don't even know who to ask, and so they just ask the person they're talking to, and if that person was you, and you connected with them, with someone else, who will make sure that they get the help they need. And that's exactly the kind of kind of culture we want to create here in order to support the success of all the students. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 9:39
absolutely. You know, I definitely believe in that open door policy. That's one of the things Dr DMC, you know, has impressed upon us, making sure that your door is physically open so students can actually come and talk to you. So I sit in my office with the door open. Reyes, Imani, all of us do the same thing to make sure that the students feel welcome, that we're not closed off from them. And they feel like, Oh, I can't talk to this. Person because I got the door closed, but we make sure that we try to let students know we're family here, and whatever we need to do to make sure that you're okay and that you succeed, we try to make sure that we do that, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 10:10
well, and big shout out to Dr DMC. I'm a huge fan of hers, too. Oh yeah, she's a great addition to our team. Oh
Unknown Speaker 10:16
yes, wonderful. She's been an excellent role model as well. And, you know, making sure that I'm developing in my professional career. So definitely appreciate her for that. So how has your academic background in psychology influenced your career and leadership roles here at UNLV? Sure.
Unknown Speaker 10:31
So as I think I mentioned earlier, when I came in, I was coming to help start the psychology program, clinical psychology program, and I was actually a marital therapist by training. And so I would work with couples who were having challenges to help them try to, you know, improve their relationship. And it turns out, you know, the more I've gone up in administration, the more those skills have become relevant, because, as I said, also earlier, you know, problems often roll out to me. And so I frequently find myself sitting in rooms with people who are having trouble getting along or really disagreeing about things, and so my background in psychology makes me pretty comfortable with conflict and really help people work on communicating effectively with each other, so that they can get to a base place a better understanding and try to find, you know, good solutions To problems. One of the things, just to add on to that, I was here throughout COVID and in the provost role during that time, and so I developed a little kind of saying that helped me really stay grounded at time. And I use it a lot still. It's, I say, calm and care so when we're in the midst of challenges, first thing is keep everyone calm, because calm heads are able better able to solve challenges, and then just show that we care for each other and that we're trying to operate on an ethos of care as we work towards solutions to what are, you know, often, sometimes pretty challenging problems. Because when you get 1000s of people living together in a close proximity, they have disagreements about things. Sometimes those are pretty meaningful disagreements, and we got to find solutions to those things. So I try to say calm and care a lot, and try to use that in my own style of interacting with people.
Unknown Speaker 12:18
Yeah, I can definitely imagine, you know, all of these students that we have living together in a different dorms. And you know, when it came to my parents, it was just my sister myself, and we had disagreements every single day with just the two of us. So I can imagine what things are like here on campus. Can you explain, In layman terms, what does it mean to be an MSI, an HSI and an anapesi school? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 12:39
So we're really proud of the diversity that exists on our campus, and we have been officially designated as a minority serving institution, a Hispanic serving institution, and an Asian American, Native American and Pacific Islander Serving Institution. And the key word in all of those designations is the S is the serving and what does it mean to be a place that tries to create an environment that's welcoming and supportive for all of those groups of people and for everyone who's here? And one of the things I say about UNLV, also, when I get the chance to talk to new students and a lot of people, is the most fundamental task of humanity is to figuring out how to learn, learning to live and work with people who are different from yourself, and everyone's always a little different. And like you said, with you and your sister, even in the same household, you end up with disagreements. And you know, one of the rules, going back to my marital therapy background, is any two people in close proximity are going to have conflict. If you're interacting with people, there's going to be conflicts. And so we as a institution rich in diversity, have people coming from a lot of different backgrounds, and we need to make sure that we're understanding how to create an environment that serves those people well so they can have a great experience. And while they're here, they can learn to live and work with people who are different from themselves also. And so we try to put a lot of intentionality into the servingness of how we interact with each other and how we support our students, and figure out, for example, what it means to create an equitable environment. And so one example of that is something like, my two kids went to college, but my wife went to college and I went to college, and so we could give our kids advice on what the college experience is like, and we could say to them like, Hey, did you go talk to your advisor, or go get to know a professor or encourage them? A lot of our students are first generation students, and come from families where no one did go to college, and so those students maybe come in with fewer supports at home than students who have parents who went to college. And so sometimes that's described as the Hidden Curriculum, how you navigate the environment, the complex environment of college. And so how do we get our faculty and all of our staff to be thinking about how to put out a hand like you did, to answer someone's question and support someone when they don't know who to ask or they're just, you know, maybe need that little. Extra guidance to help them get on the right track.
Unknown Speaker 15:02
Yeah, with you saying that, it reminds me of the days when I was a professor at San Diego State, you know, I would get those first gen students as well in my classes, I taught English, communication history, history from a black perspective, FYE, first year experience. And a lot of these students, you know, when they would come to class, and we would get to having conversations, just in general, in class, and they will say, Well, I don't really bring anything to the class, because my parents didn't go to college. They have any cousins that went this is I'm the first one, and I make sure that I talk to those students about cultural capital, what that actually means, you know, and that they actually do bring something. You bring your experience to class. You bring your culture to class. There are things about you that you have that could help us learn from you and your culture in your environment. So I make sure that they know, yes, you do bring something to this classroom that's valuable. So awesome, absolutely. So MSI week is a week long minority surfing institution MSI and it's a week long of celebration. Could you tell us the significance of that week long celebration here on the campus of UNLV? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 16:04
we put a lot of effort also into planning the activities of that week. And as you mentioned, you know, Dr DMC and student diversity programs take a leading role in that. And really it's about kind of celebrating the diversity that exists on our campus and make sure all of the identities who are represented here feel appreciated and valued. And so, for example, you know, people say, make the point that people want to see themselves in their environment. And so we want to make sure that at that time in particular, we're highlighting the different diversity programming we have and celebrating the diverse groups who make up the rich fabric of this campus. All right, great.
Unknown Speaker 16:47
How has your leadership role as a provost influenced UNLV academic policies, especially regarding diversity and inclusion? Well,
Unknown Speaker 16:56
I think it goes back to what we've said about trying to have intentionality about the servingness that we evidence in our behavior every person, every day. And so, for example, one of the things I did when I became provost is I created the MSI committee, minority serving institution, student success committee, where we bring together people from a lot of different areas across campus to coordinate our activity and to make sure that we are planning how to build our cultural capital as an MSI. And so, for example, at the end of MSI week, we do an MSI Student Success Summit, where we put on, we bring in national leaders and cultural education and have them speak, have dialogs about it, try to educate the campus, try to highlight students at the event each year. It's a little bit different, but that's sort of one example. Another one we have put together is what we call the Educational Equity institute that we created for faculty and staff to think about having equitable practices in their classes. And so I'll just give you one real, concrete example, the a lot of faculty members, you know, were hired because they were good students. They weren't necessarily hired because they knew how to be a great teacher, and so it's part of our responsibility and their responsibility to learn how to be effective in supporting the success of all students. And you know, in a traditional class, you might have a midterm and a final exam. That's a really bad way to structure a class from an equity point of view, because some of those students like you mentioned, who don't, you know, come in with a lot of supports, they might kind of be not focused in the early part of the semester, if someone's not encouraging them, and then, if they only have two chances to prove their ability, like a midterm exam, they might do so poorly on that midterm that they've basically that class is done for them. You know, they can't recover from that before they even have a chance to learn from it. So one of the things in educational equitable practices is to start off with kind of low stakes assessments, so that in the first couple weeks of the semester, students can take a test to see how are they doing relative to the expectations of class. And if they're not doing well, they get a lot of time during the semester to try to improve their performance, excellent,
Unknown Speaker 19:20
excellent. And that's why I'm a fan of pop quizzes and classes. I like to do pop quizzes. I like to do other little tests, you know, leading up to a midterm, because I go back and all of those pop quizzes and little tests, that's what I would form my mid turn from, yeah. So yeah, I'm definitely a fan of that, and also of cultural plunges. Are you familiar with cultural plunges. No, that's where I would have students, and it's something that's not mandatory for students. I make sure they know that that up front. But a cultural plunge is when you take when a student is placed into an environment that they normally would not be in, and I have them write a one page write up on what the experience was like for them. How did they feel? Lot that people treat them those kind of things so and then they're able to get, you know, points at the end, if they need that, to make sure that they pass the class, or, you know, just have that as a cushion in case they don't do great on a particular test. So I definitely am a fan of doing cultural plunges when I was at Seneca state for students. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 20:16
it sounds like a win win, because students have an educational experience, but experiencing some different kind of environment, and also get a chance to do some learning along the way, absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 20:24
And since we're talking about the academic portion of this, do you miss teaching at all? I
Unknown Speaker 20:29
do a little bit. I think about going back. I haven't taught in quite a while, because I've been doing, you know, full time administration since, really, about 2008 so more than 15 years now. And teaching was a lot of fun. You know, when I was a teacher, I got a good number of teaching awards because I love to be, you know, in contact with students. And I think about the university environment is, you know, one of the most special places on Earth, where students come to make their lives better and faculty get to share some wisdom and take time with them, to help them, you know, build their skills for the future. So it's a pretty, pretty amazing thing that we have happens on our campus. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 21:07
you know, I definitely miss especially at the beginning of the semester with classes where students come in, they're all quiet, I do some icebreakers to get everyone talking, and you actually get to watch those students from being really quiet to actually coming out of their shell, especially by the end of the semester. So I've definitely missed that aspect of teaching, though. So could you tell us something that most people would be surprised to know about you? Well,
Unknown Speaker 21:32
I think people who know me know I love mountain biking and biking in general, but probably most people don't know me that well. So if you come to look for me on Morning of any weekend of the year, Saturday, Sunday morning, I'm probably out on my bike trying to ride 20 or 30 miles out in somewhere in Las Vegas. Lot of great bike riding here, and
Unknown Speaker 21:56
20 or 30 miles, yeah, you
Unknown Speaker 21:59
can go a long way on a bike. It's kind of surprising. So it's a lot of great trails, and we have a lot of fun riding the roads, riding the trails. Wow.
Unknown Speaker 22:08
20 or 30 miles, and I think to myself, when you say at that, thank God I have a car. That's a lot. 20 or 30 miles, that's a lot. So here at UNLV, and I know this is kind of a hot topic throughout the country, what does dei look like here on the campus for you at UNLV, sure.
Unknown Speaker 22:25
So just to make sure we know we're talking about, you know, diversity, equity, inclusion, and people use a lot of different terms for it. I the way that I talk about this. I say diversity is a state of nature, and nature, particularly human beings are diverse by our fundamental existence, and the key for us is creating an equitable and inclusive environment out of that rich diversity that we have. And like I said before, I do think that learning to live and work with people who are different from you is the most fundamental task of humanity. And if you you know, zoom out and look at the you know, the span of history, you see when people haven't figured out how to learn and how to live and work together productively. You see wars, you see racism, you see riots, you see all kinds of terrible things that come from that. And so what we're trying to do is we are proud of the diversity that exists on this campus, and create an inclusive environment where everyone feels like they're welcome. And it doesn't just mean, you know, people of color, it means everybody feels like they're welcome, but we definitely, like you said, we want to recognize that people sometimes come with different amounts of social capital and and that gets to the equity piece is, what do we need to do to give everyone an equal chance of success, regardless of the background that they came from? Excellent,
Unknown Speaker 23:48
excellent, excellent. What's the best advice that you can offer students here on campus? So
Unknown Speaker 23:54
yeah, I think part of it is the seize the day, and to remember that it won't go on forever. Because, you know, there's so many people you run into them after college, and they say, like, oh, man, I was like, in such a rush to get out into the, you know, broader world and and the world after you get out of college can be a lot tougher, and so the time that you have here in college is going to be precious, and to make sure that you recognize that to get the most out of it, both and not just in the classroom. Like you said, the programming that happens, co curricular, programming, getting involved in activities, clubs, other things that kind of happen to make friends that are often be lifelong friends, and it just, you know, have a good time as well. I had the pleasure over the summer of going to the 40 year reunion of some with some of my college friends, which means I'm pretty old now, but we had a lot of fun. And it's people who I. Spent time with, you know, back in the early 80s, we were, you know, looking back on those days, and we all, you know, most of us have gone on to have pretty amazing careers from what we learned, but also really appreciate the friendships that still continue from those early days.
Unknown Speaker 25:16
Man, that's excellent. Excellent. If money wasn't an issue at all. What would you like to see for UNLV, including like, whether it's buildings or money for students? What would you like to see here? Well,
Unknown Speaker 25:29
that's a fun question. So first of all, in many countries, education is much more affordable than it is here, so UNLV is affordable as a public institution, but we would rather have it be free. And so some of the countries that offer people an education for almost nothing, that would be really high on the list. I also, as the chief academic officer, know the importance of academic faculty, and when I talk to deans, they often, you know, really need more full time academic faculty to make programs be as well rounded as possible. So I'd love to have the it more affordable, less expensive, to be able to hire some more academic faculty. And we got a couple key buildings that, you know, we love to build we'd love to see the business building is going to be a key for our campus, because we need a more modern building to support that huge College and is so important to what we offer here. Music and Fine Arts is looking to build a new building. College of Education is looking to build a new building. And we need a interdisciplinary science building, because we're really growing our research as a campus, but in the next couple years, if we don't get going, we're going to be really tight on lab space for the scientists who are doing that work that leads innovation.
Unknown Speaker 26:53
So what that mean? Acquiring more property for all of these buildings? We probably
Unknown Speaker 26:57
have enough property right now. We've been able to acquire some property across the street, and so we actually have a pretty significant footprint on the other side of Maryland Parkway now. And so it's when we need to we can start putting some buildings on those pieces of land. And we have a few open spots on the main campus where we could build. I think we've basically got all of those buildings that I mentioned with available sites to do it. We probably need to put a few more parking garages in so that we're not using so much of our land for surface parking. But I think we can fit quite a few more key, really valuable buildings on the land. We've already got
Unknown Speaker 27:40
excellent, excellent. Any closing remarks for UNLV as a whole? Message that you would like to convey out to the student body, faculty, staff, everyone, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 27:49
So I think of this place as an incredibly special University, and I hope that everyone feels proud to be associated with it. You know, one of the things I say is that there's no university that is more vital to its city than UNLV is to the Las Vegas community, where young community rapidly growing with a lot of needs for educated people and professionals. And UNLV is the only research institution in this city. We produce a lot of doctoral degrees, medical degree, dental, law, all of the degrees. And so we're vital. Our success is vital to the success of Las Vegas, and I hope every person who works here feels proud of what we contribute to this city, because we're a young institution that's become an r1 we have an access oriented mission. We welcome in diverse, highly first gen population, and we send those students out to go all over the world, to NASA and Stanford and Harvard and wherever they want to go, to do whatever they want to do, and be doctors, lawyers and surgeons and a million other things. And just having been here 30 years has been really fun to see so many students who I knew go on to do amazing things. And I meet alumni every day who are doing amazing things, contributing back to this community. So great, great place to be. I hope other people
Unknown Speaker 29:05
agree. Thank you so very much. Provost, Dr Chris heavey, thank you so much for stopping by to Let's Talk podcast. We definitely appreciate it. Appreciate it. And anytime you want to come back, just send an email and we'll have you back. Thank you so much. Thanks
Unknown Speaker 29:18
so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.
Unknown Speaker 29:20
Thank you. That's a wrap.
Dr. Renee Watson 29:25
For more. Let's talk UNLV. Be sure to follow us on social media, where you can get the latest updates on the show, plus great behind the scenes content. We're on Facebook at, let's talk UNLV podcast, Twitter at, let's talk UNLV and Instagram. At, let's talk UNLV pod. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai