Let's Talk UNLV

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a KU NV 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.

Dr. Sammie Scales 0:20
Hello at UNLV, and welcome to another episode. KU NV, 91.5 Let's talk. UNLV. I am your host. Dr Sammy scales, and I have a special guest with us today, and I will let him introduce himself. Hi,

Dr. Jake Thompson 0:34
thanks for having me. My name is Dr Jake Thompson. I'm the Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and high impact practices here at UNLV. Welcome. Welcome to Let's Talk. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate the invitation, and I'm looking forward to chatting absolutely

Dr. Sammie Scales 0:46
the way that we start all the shows. I ask you your audience story, how you end up at UNLV, you know, when you get to undergrad, your masters, your doctorate. So whatever you can tell us that you know leads to how you sitting in this chair today? Yeah,

Dr. Jake Thompson 0:59
great question. I think it all started off in the 10th grade, when I did this activity in history class, and the teacher was like, Have you ever thought about joining the debate team? And I was like, No, tell me more. And so she told me a little bit about the debate team and our that that class was the ninth grade, and debate team starts in the 10th grade, and in the 10th grade, I joined the our high school debate team, and I fell in love with debate, and so I debated all through high school, and then I went to Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, where I did my undergrad, and I debated in college, I was on a scholarship to debate there little like an athletic scholarship, just nerdier, but, you know, less sweaty. And then I wanted to continue working with debate, so I applied to a great couple graduate programs that have debate teams, and I was a graduate teaching assistant to the University of Kansas, and I was an assistant coach for the University of Kansas debate team. And after I got my MA and PhD there, I applied to several different jobs. My first job out of grad school at the University of Northern Iowa, where I was for three years as the director of speech and debate, and after just a couple years there, we look for other jobs, and I was interested in applying in larger cities and our one institutions, and so we applied here at UNLV and got that job. And I've been here since 2007 Wow. I started off as the debate coach and a professor in communication studies right here in the Greenspun College of urban affairs, and moved up to administration about three years ago. Wow,

Dr. Sammie Scales 2:28
that is amazing. How have you enjoyed being here at UNLV?

Dr. Jake Thompson 2:32
I've loved my time at UNLV. UNLV is such a great place to work. I feel like it is. There's like this family atmosphere here. I'm really comfortable here, and I know that the work that we do here makes a huge difference in students lives. You know, like the students that get into some Ivy League universities, those, those students were going to be okay anyway, right? But here, UNLV, I know that we're making a difference in students lives, and that can mean, like, generational change, and so it's pretty easy to feel good about going to work every single

Dr. Sammie Scales 3:02
day. Wow. That is so important. What you just said, you know, this will be making, like, generational changes. So that is an excellent statement. So we're here today. We're going to mostly be talking about, on this, on this particular episode, about micro credentials. So can you tell us what, what exactly are micro credentials, and how do they differ from traditional degrees and certificate? Yep, that's

Dr. Jake Thompson 3:21
a really great question. So micro credentials are like smaller, bite sized credentials that you can get here at UNLV. It's a pretty new program, and we have some micro credentials that are for credit and some micro credentials that are not for credit. And in the for credit category, they're very similar to one another, but in the for credit category. We're talking about groups of classes put together between six and 11 total credits. And these credentials certify that you have a specific skill or a set of skills that are in high demand in the workplace. So one example that we have is there's going to be a podcasting credential that's going to come out. I know you better be careful. You need you might need some just, just watch out. Someone might be trying to steal the let's talk UNLV podcast from you after they get their podcasting micro credential. But you know, I think that it's interesting, because podcasting isn't an industry specific to itself, but like, you could work in hospitality and run a hospitality podcast for the hospitality company you work for, or you could work in the healthcare sector and run a podcast for the hospital that you work at, right? And so podcasting is one of those ancillary skills that might help you really differentiate yourself in the you know, when you're looking for a job out of college, we also have others that are highly specific to the the workforce itself. One example would be like DNA analysis. And so this is one that's being offered in the College of Science. It's supported by the Las Vegas Metro Crime Lab and the FBI as well. And they're like, these are the kinds of courses that we think students should take in order to be good at DNA analysis and in order to work in like, crime labs and analyze, you know, biological samples that might contain DNA to figure out, like, who done it? Wow.

Dr. Sammie Scales 4:59
So. So once getting that credential, would a student be able to be hired by, let's say, FBA, FBI, or police department or whatever?

Dr. Jake Thompson 5:05
Yeah, that's the whole goal of micro credentials is to give students these digital badges that indicate the specific skills that they've gathered in their education and help them kind of craft a story for employers that will help them get hired out of after, after graduation. Wow.

Dr. Sammie Scales 5:22
So, so far, we've heard about podcasting credential. We've heard about the DNA credentials. What others are there and how many classes are included? Is it like maybe three, four classes that they would take to get these credentials? Great

Dr. Jake Thompson 5:34
question. So in the four credit space, it's six to 11 total credit. So we're talking about depends on how many credits are in the course, but you're talking about probably two to four total classes in the not for credit space, in the non credit bearing space, those are going to be mostly like asynchronous and online courses that can take on your own time. They might be complementary to some of the four credit ones that we offer, but they're never going to kind of duplicate it. And they'll be more focused on they'll be more focused on soft skills that students need to develop durable skills, communication, professionalism, et cetera. And so, yeah, the goal is that students are able to take those micro credentials, display them on their resume, or put them up, post them on LinkedIn or some other form of social media, and also really craft a story for an employer in an interview and say, like, look, here are these specific skill sets that I have that can make me an asset to your organization. When students graduate here, you know, currently without micro credentials, what they have is a transcript with 120 credits on it and some course abbreviations. And sometimes it's hard for them to explain, even though we know that the education they get here is incredible, it's hard for them to sometimes explain, like, what types of skills that they develop that will help them be a benefit to an organization. And micro credentials are just a way to kind of repackage that information, make it more accessible to employers, make it easier for students to explain. Wow.

Dr. Sammie Scales 6:50
So what's what are some of the companies can you give us, like maybe three or four other companies that would actually come and look for those specific skills? You did mention FBI already, you did mention podcasting and in the various industries. But what are some of those other companies here, even if it's right here in Las Vegas, that would look at a resume and say, Oh, they have these skills from this micro credential class that we know about. And yeah, this is the person that we want. Yeah, some of those. I'll

Dr. Jake Thompson 7:15
give you three real quick examples here. The first one is really easy for Las Vegas. We have seven different credit bearing micro credentials in hospitality right now. And so students can get a micro credential everything from like exploring introductory hospitality stuff to advance like hospitality, food and beverage management micro credentials. And so think of any hospitality organization that you know in Las Vegas, I'm sure that they will be very excited about students that have those so, you know, even big strip resorts, small boutique hotels and everything in between. Wow. Secondly, is the Clark County School District. We offer a really important micro credential through the College of Education for folks who are who are working in schools currently, but aren't like fully licensed teachers, and we create this micro credential that helps them on the path to becoming a fully licensed teacher. And we know that there's a ton of need for additional teachers in the Clark County School District, and so this helps you move from a para into a full time teacher. And then finally, the health care sector. Here in Las Vegas, we know there's ton of need for health care in this town, and we offer three different credit bearing micro credentials through the College of integrated health sciences that would help you get hired in any healthcare industry that you may choose to specialize in. One example that I really like to talk about is called holistic patient communication, and it's really work helping medical providers work on their kind of bedside manner. It's often referred to and and be empathetic and communicate effectively with patients. We know that one of the number one complaints about medical service in this country is like, Oh, the doctor or or a provider didn't feel, didn't act like they cared about me, etc. And this tries to tackle that head on, to encourage folks in the healthcare industry who will work in the healthcare industry and move going to become healthcare professionals, to communicate empathetically, to listen carefully to people, to help better understand their problems and to work effectively with them and be better communicators. Wow. This is

Dr. Sammie Scales 9:06
information I did not know. And I you know, although I heard the term micro credentials here on campus, didn't really know what it was. So this is a great explanation on what it actually is. So let me go to another question here. Can you explain how UNLV ensures that its micro credentials remain relevant and align with the industry demands right now. Yeah,

Dr. Jake Thompson 9:26
that is really important to us here as well, because we want to make sure that we are partnering with industry and with local and national companies to ensure that these micro credentials are relevant to them and we are producing the types of students that they would want to hire. So we're working carefully with various industries, as I've kind of already explained, a handful of them, the Clark County School District, the hospitality industry here in town, I think that the origin of the holistic patient communication, micro credentials from Steinberg diagnostics, who was interested in helping the folks that work. Steinberg become better communicators, and so we work closely with those industries, and we're working also to make sure that the micro credentials we offer are either verified or validated, excuse me, or endorsed by employers. So we're hoping that I Heart Radio will endorse our podcasting micro credential, that the Las Vegas Metro crime lab will endorse or validate our DNA analysis micro credential, and that all of these micro credentials will essentially be verified, you know, quote, unquote, by employers.

Dr. Sammie Scales 10:30
So the professors that actually teach these micro credential class, are they a person from the outside that actually have this experience or work in that industry, you know, like, maybe a teacher where, you know, I use, like, let's say, a nurse that's working in a hospital in order to get the micro credential that a person would need for the bedside manners that you spoke about. What would someone that's working in that industry be teaching that class? Or how do you get your people for the classes that being off? Yeah,

Dr. Jake Thompson 10:58
the classes are staffed as they normally would be here at the university, but a lot of times, micro credentials revolve around more applied classes that are often taught by folks that are practitioners from the quote, unquote, real world. So we know that one of the people that teaches the class called podcasting here at UNLV has done a lot of podcasting in his lifetime, and works closely with professionals in that space. And we know that a lot of the folks who work in hospitality have worked in the hospitality industry and so on. Wow,

Dr. Sammie Scales 11:28
that's excellent. This is great information. Also, what is the process for earning a micro credential at UNLV? Are there any prerequisites for it?

Dr. Jake Thompson 11:36
That's a really good question. We have worked hard to lower the bar to make it as easy as possible for students to access micro credentials. Our unofficial policy is called automatic enrollment and automatic awarding. So for the for credit micro credentials, you don't have to fill out a form, you don't have to go to a website. All you do is register for the courses that are in the micro credential, as you normally would during any semester. So when you're filling out your courses for the fall, 25 semester, if you want a micro credential, you can see what micro credentials we offer, what courses are involved in those and if you want to take get one of those micro credentials, sign up for those courses. Once you complete those courses and you get a grade better than a C, you are automatically awarded the micro credential. There are no hoops to jump through, no bars to get over. We want to make this as seamless and easy as possible for students so,

Dr. Sammie Scales 12:24
so if you if they're going after one of those micro credential classes where they need three classes to get the credentials, so they can take one class this semester, and, you know, one the following and the following, or they can take two. They might

Dr. Jake Thompson 12:36
even be, depending on their schedule, they might even be able to take all three in the same semester. Are

Dr. Sammie Scales 12:40
they? Are they full length classes like the regular class? Yep. So they're regular, regular

Dr. Jake Thompson 12:44
courses. Some are, some are, you know, in some other some of the micro credential examples I'm aware of, there are one or two credit courses that are being offered. So there, they would take less time than a regular three credit course. I would say the vast majority of them have a two or three different three credit courses in them. And I'll also add, because you asked a question about prerequisites. Some of them, some of the courses in them, do have prerequisites. I kind of think of them as kind of falling into two categories for for credit. Some are more general. Almost anyone could take them, and some of them are discipline specific. So you're not likely to get the DNA analysis micro credential unless you're a student in the sciences, so you'll have to take a genetics class. And I don't remember the course abbreviation, but it's like bio 341 or something like that, right? And bio 341 has a couple prerequisites to it that are also biology classes. And so if you're a student in hospitality, the chances you've taken all three or four of those prerequisite courses to get into bio 341 genetics, they're pretty low. But it doesn't mean you couldn't do it. It's just there are prerequisites some of those courses, but for other micro credentials, and an example is podcasting, you just have to take a couple courses. One might be an intro course, so I know there's like a intro to digital and social media, and then that's the prerequisite for another one of the course, and there are no prereqs to that. And then there are a couple other courses in the podcasting micro credential, and almost any student at the university could take that and get that micro credential.

Dr. Sammie Scales 14:03
Wow, that's amazing. And this is very good information. I hope students that are listening, you know, will decide, you know, before graduation, hey, I want to be as prepared as I can be before graduation and take some of these classes so they can have that on their resume. I

Dr. Jake Thompson 14:16
really do too, and I think that that ought to be the goal, especially at a public university like UNLV that has an access mission. Our goal shouldn't just be to help students get through classes or to reach the stage of the Thomas and Mack Center for graduation, and graduation and commencement is like one of the best days at the university, but our goal really ought to be to support them post graduation, so that they can get meaningful employment, because that's why, basically, every student that's here is here, right? They want a job after graduation, and that's part of the goal for micro credentials. And one of the things I'm most passionate about that's

Dr. Sammie Scales 14:51
excellent. Do you have any success stories with the micro credentials that you can tell us

Dr. Jake Thompson 14:55
about? You know, I really wish I did, but they are so brand new that we. Actually, we haven't, like, given them out to students yet, like, about 700 students, quote, unquote, earned them in the fall semester. But we're, we're kind of building the plane as we're flying here, right? We wanted to get this project because we know it's so important. We want to get this project moving as quickly as possible. So right now, we have about 11 four credit micro credentials, about 700 different students earned those 11 micro one of those 11 micro credentials, in the fall semester, within a couple weeks, they'll be getting an email from us that says, Congratulations, you earned this thing. Here's how you access it, here's what you can do with it, here's how you can share it on social media. But we haven't actually told anyone that they've earned them yet, although they may well know that they have right but they just haven't gotten access to the badge itself on Canvas credentials or anything like that. So I think that by this time next year, you want to have me back 365, days from now, I'll have a boatload of success stories from students with that have these micro credentials.

Dr. Sammie Scales 15:54
That's awesome, and we'll definitely put that on the books back. All right, so how do the digital badges work? And how can students showcase them on resumes or professional platforms like LinkedIn? What

Dr. Jake Thompson 16:04
a great question they are. Essentially, the badge is a visual depiction of your achievement. But the beauty of the badge is that it is digital, so you it is clickable, and you can click on it and or an employer could, and when you click on it, you'll see the data inside of the badge, and the badge itself contains all kinds of information, like your name, who it was awarded to the award, or the university name. The most important things in there that it includes are the skills that the student learned or earned in their time in those courses or in the noncredit micro credential. And we generally like try and shoot for like three to five different specific skills that students can earn and learn, and how those skills were assessed, whether they were through laboratory experiments or presentations that the students did or projects, et cetera. And so what we're really trying to establish are these digital badges that have data inside of them that employers can say, like, look, now I know I'm getting a person who has the skill and that that skill was assessed specifically in this way by a really credible University, and will also contain any employer validation that we have, so students can share them. You know, they're they're transportable. They'll live in a place called Canvas credentials, which is built in, like to our Canvas LMS here, and so you'll be able to log into your Canvas backpack and see your path to obtaining these badges. Once you earn the badge, you'll be able to see the badge. You can copy and paste the badge into your LinkedIn or into other forms of social media, and that badge has this digital information in it that like lets people know that you have these specific skills that were assessed in a particular way and are hopefully validated by an employer. Wow, that's

Dr. Sammie Scales 17:43
excellent, man, I didn't know all of that. Can micro credentials be stacked into larger qualification, like certificates, minors or degrees? And if so, how does that work?

Dr. Jake Thompson 17:53
They absolutely can be depending on the micro credential. So an easy example here are the hospitality micro credentials. Pretty much every there are seven different hospitality micro credentials right now, pretty much every course inside of those micro credentials is one of the kind of required or important courses to help you get a degree in hospitality. So along your way to getting that degree, you may well be able to earn up to seven different micro credentials. Wow. Another example will be, we're going to have a Bachelor of Science in cyber security degree that's coming out very soon. I think it might be fall 2025 but it might not be until fall 26 anyway, one of our goals for that degree is also that like as you move through the curriculum, that you're earning micro credentials that have specific skills that help you will help you get employed in the cyber security field. Wow. So new things are happening all the time. The the micro credential front as new degrees come out and and folks who work in degrees that have already been established are really interested in helping students in their programs get jobs, and kind of also opening the door to their degrees so that people can see some of the great things that are happening

Dr. Sammie Scales 18:56
there. So how long has micro credentials been on this campus? Let me. Let me

Dr. Jake Thompson 19:01
check my watch. Here. It's been we started this process. We started working on this about a year ago, but we created our first official micro credentials in the fall semester of this year. So it was fall of 2024 so we had four credit micro credentials, and not for credit micro credentials in fall of 2024 and we have some. We have those same ones this spring. So seven for credit and six, nope, sorry, 11 for credit and six non credit micro credentials. And by fall of 2025 I think that we'll be in the neighborhood of 25 or 30, maybe four credit micro credentials here at UNLV. And I'm not sure how many non credit my credentials. So it's only been, it's been less than a year, and our growth has been really serious.

Dr. Sammie Scales 19:45
How has you or the person that decides what's credited and what's not credited? How's, how does that work? Well,

Dr. Jake Thompson 19:53
that's really, that's a great question, a faculty driven process, if faculty members want to propose a micro credential based on the. Courses that they're offering that would be for credit, but if they want to do something outside of or in addition to those courses that would be not for credit. So one example might be professionalism. Okay, so we have a professionalism, non credit bearing micro credential. It's a short asynchronous online class anyone could log into. It's like LinkedIn learning style course, right? And if I was teaching a course like, let's just say, a Communication Studies course, or maybe a business course, and I wanted my students to know more about professionalism and make sure that they had professionalism as a skill, I could embed that as part of my class, a non credit bearing micro credential, or a co curricular micro credential, into the course itself. But it doesn't have to be. Students could just do it on their own time outside of a class as well.

Dr. Sammie Scales 20:45
Wow, that's excellent. Let me ask you this. How do you know the micro credentials compare to similar programs at other universities? Or have you heard of this at other universities at all? Yeah,

Dr. Jake Thompson 20:55
that's that's interesting, because I think every five or 10 years, something comes around and someone's like, this thing is the future of higher ed, the future of higher education. And when they said that about things 10 or 15 years ago, they might not have been right, but when they said that about micro credentials, they are right. Micro credentials are the future of higher education. Students are looking for shorter ways to build specific credentials and to build specific skills that will help them get employed. And I think that this is the future. It doesn't mean that higher ed is changing fundamentally, because we'll continue to offer degrees, but hopefully we'll be able to segment those degrees in specific ways that make them more digestible for students, more understandable. It kind of gamifies education. UNLV is new to micro credentials. Some places have been doing them for a couple years now, and we talked to those places before we embarked on this journey. You know, there were the folks who in the State University of New York system who worked with us and kind of told us about the way that they did their stuff. The University of Ohio, the University of Texas and a variety of other folks have done great work the University of Colorado, Boulder have done great work in the micro credential space, and we've talked to all those folks. We took what we learned from them and we built a very UNLV specific version right here that we think works well for our students. Wow.

Dr. Sammie Scales 22:12
So you said earlier that students are definitely looking for something shorter where they can get into the work field. Earlier, do you think that micro credentials are gonna will actually shorten a student's time in college, or that they will enroll just to get the micro credentials that they want, and then leave and go and become full time employees somewhere. Yeah, I

Dr. Jake Thompson 22:30
don't think that we'll see a decline in enrollment because of micro credentials. I think that what is more likely to happen is that we'll see folks registering as non degree seeking students who might want to take one or two courses or two or three courses to get a micro credential, who then figure out, hey, higher ed is a place that I can be successful, and I could see myself, you know, eventually getting a certificate or a minor or a major or a full degree in, you know, this thing that is interesting to me when we talk to the good folks at the State University of New York system that has been their experience, they offer something like six or 700 micro credentials across the 50 different institutions of higher learning in the state system, and they found that it has helped bolster their enrollment rather than reduce it. Wow,

Dr. Sammie Scales 23:18
that is good to know. So what support or resources does UNLV offer to help students complete their micro credentials? Success?

Dr. Jake Thompson 23:26
Good question. It's the same support that they receive to complete any course here at the university, and we're committed to providing robust student support services, whether that's through student academic support services, through tutoring and the Academic Success Center, the Writing Center, the Office for undergraduate research and a variety of other services. Those are the same services that will help students complete any course here at UNLV. And just to be clear, our goal is to make the barrier to entry as low as humanly possible for micro credentials, so all a student has to do sign up for the class. Wow,

Dr. Sammie Scales 24:00
that's pretty easy and straightforward, exactly. So are there any costs associated with earning a micro credential, and are there financial aid or scholarships available to help, especially for those students that say, You know what, I don't want to go to traditional route, but I do want to take part in UNLV and take a couple of these classes. Is there financial aid scholarships? Anything available for that? So because they're

Dr. Jake Thompson 24:21
just regular classes, the same financial aid would be available for students that take those as students that take any other course. I don't believe that we offer financial aid to non degree seeking students currently, but I'm not a financial aid expert. Our goal has been to make sure that they're kind of woven seamlessly into the current curriculum that we have here at UNLV, so that if a student is taking a micro credential and they receive financial aid, they will receive financial aid to take that course, as they would any other course that they are taking. Okay, yeah. And one of our other goals is to make sure that as many of the noncredit micro credentials that we offer. For as possible are free, fully free, to students. And so if you want to learn about financial literacy, or you want to learn about how to become a more effective communicator, or you want to learn about, you know, cross cultural intelligence, all of those things are basically asynchronous online courses that you can take outside of your normal coursework for free. Online. Are

Dr. Sammie Scales 25:20
there any specific students that are more successful in these micro credential courses than others? You

Dr. Jake Thompson 25:26
know, they really just span the entire spectrum of courses here at the university. And so I think that we would see the same success rates in micro credentials that we see in every other course at the university. The thing that I think makes them different is that they are focused on a skill. And so I think that sometimes students have a challenge with higher ed they're like, they they might ask themselves in some classes, like, what's the point? Like, what am I getting out of this? And that should be very clear in any courses associated with a micro credential, because you are learning tangible skills that you can take into the works.

Dr. Sammie Scales 25:59
So so when it comes to something like the forensics part of this, dealing with the DNA, are they actually in labs doing this? Is this a hands on thing, or it's just, hey, I'm going to pass out these handouts and we're going to read these together. Yeah,

Dr. Jake Thompson 26:11
the students who are who are going to take the DNA analysis micro credential will be taking a course that's called genetics here at UNLV, where they're like, there will also be some genetics labs that they're taking they'll be extracting DNA samples, looking at things under microscopes. I am not a I'm not a biologist or a geneticist, and so folks that are a lot smarter than me and that know about this type of thing would be able to better answer the question, but they're really hands on, and the key to micro credentials is they are teaching you skills that should be transferable directly into the workforce.

Dr. Sammie Scales 26:42
Wow, that's amazing, man. That's a game changer, actually, right?

Dr. Jake Thompson 26:45
That's how we think of it. Is that this is a way to take things that we're kind of in lots of ways, already doing, but think about them just slightly differently. Put it in a little bit more student centered perspective, and really help students take what they're learning here at UNLV, level it up and then be able to get a job that is really one of their fundamental goals, and get a job in an area that requires a college degree, that will pay them a good wage, and that could change the trajectory of their life and the life of, you know, an entire generation, absolutely

Dr. Sammie Scales 27:14
so if a student wanted to get in contact with you concerning micro credentials, how could they do That? That

Dr. Jake Thompson 27:21
is a great question. We have a team of folks that work on micro credentials, and so the easiest way to get a hold of that team is to email micro credentials@unlv.edu with any questions that you might have. That email account is monitored every single day. They can also go online. And you know, it's hard to read out a URL here, but you can just Google UNLV micro credentials. And the micro credentials web page should pop right up, and so there's a lot of information on our web page. And if you have any specific questions again, email micro credentials@unlv.edu

Dr. Sammie Scales 27:52
Great. Thank you so very much for all of this valuable information that I clearly didn't know about. You know, like I said earlier, I had heard the word micro credentials being thrown around here on campus, but didn't really know what it was, so you definitely cleared that up.

Dr. Jake Thompson 28:06
Yeah. Well, I appreciate the invitation and opportunity to talk to you and to everyone that's out there listening about micro credentials, spreading the good word about them, because I do really think it is a game changer, and it can really help students get jobs. It can help them make a real, concrete difference in their lives. And you know, the more people that know about them, the better this place will

Dr. Sammie Scales 28:25
be, absolutely and you did commit yourself to a year from now coming back to talk about this.

Dr. Jake Thompson 28:30
Okay, you promise we will shake on it right now, absolutely shake

Dr. Sammie Scales 28:33
on it. All right. I love that. Thank you so very much for being my guest today. And I'm sure that the campus find this information valuable, and hopefully we see an uptick in students that are enrolling in these classes.

Dr. Jake Thompson 28:44
Hopefully. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much. Bye, bye,

Dr. Sammie Scales 28:47
and that's a wrap.

Dr. Renee Watson 28:52
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.