Nevada State College arrives: Building offers permanency

It used to be a joke. Not even a whole joke; a punch line.

What do you get when you pump millions of dollars into a school with no building?

Nevada State College.

But those days are over, say its fans.

The school, which opened in 2002 with 177 students and temporary headquarters, is finally legitimate. It has its own, permanent, beautiful, state-of-the-art building.

Which makes it real. An actual place with a permanent address and classrooms and labs and offices and landscaping and fancy bathrooms and squishy chairs and a group of professors who know all of this and are more than excited by it.

Like Gwen Sharp.

Sharp, 32, is a sociology professor. In fact, she's called NSC's "awesome sociology professor" by an associate dean. She joined the faculty last year.

She remembers driving up to the old building, a remodeled vitamin warehouse that looks exactly like what it is, on the inside and the outside. She remembers panicking, just a little.

"I had that moment of going, 'I think this is a fake university,'" she said the other day, laughing.

But they won her over. So there she was, in that warehouse, sharing cubicle space with two other professors like an unpaid intern.

Her stuff sprawled. Books, especially, expanded outward and upward. She got ... a reputation. She got razzed about it the other day.

"Sociologists require lots of books," she said.

Now, like other professors in liberal arts and sciences, Sharp has moved into the new building, a couple hundred yards away. She has a corner office. She has lots of bookshelves and enough space to talk with three or four students. At the same time.

Students will be the biggest beneficiaries of the new Liberal Arts and Sciences building, said Andy Kuniyuki, associate dean.

Kuniyuki, a biologist by trade, showed off the four new science labs like a kid showing off a new bicycle.

They've got row upon row of digital microscopes that can be hooked up to laptops, and technology that lets professors interact with students like never before.

"We're using these," Kuniyuki said, gesturing toward all that equipment, "as extensions of our senses."

Physics and astronomy professor Sandip Thanki, who chairs the physical sciences department, said having the same equipment that's used in the private sector will help students in the long run.

"Average students are going to be able to participate in research projects that somebody at a graduate school would do," he said.

In addition to the new offices and the labs, the building also offers common areas, a computer lab and a seismograph.

The building is the first in a planned series of buildings on the campus.

Since its inception, NSC has been in that old vitamin factory, leased from the city of Henderson for $1 a year.

The school is also leasing office and classroom space in downtown Henderson.

The school was created as a midlevel between community colleges and universities. Its main purpose was to help plug the gap in Nevada's teaching and nursing cores.

Its enrollment has grown from fewer than 200 to more than 2,000.

A few years ago, 500 acres near the temporary campus was secured on a hillside. That's more space than UNLV has on its main campus. A plan was put into place.

This building came first. It spans 42,000 square feet, and cost $23.4 million to build, $1 million from the NSC foundation and the rest from the state.

Spencer Stewart, a school spokesman, said the next planned building is the 60,000-square-foot nursing and sciences building. It will cost $40 million. School officials hope to get funding from the Legislature in next year's session, but that could be a long shot given the state's budget woes.

Already, university system regents are butting heads with Gov. Jim Gibbons over budget cuts the governor wants and regents have refused to make.

So, this one new building might have to do for a while. Which is fine. Things are better than they used to be.

"We had humble beginnings," said Tony Scinta, chair of social sciences. "It's still humble. But we're moving up."

Student Derick Manabat, 24, also works at the school. He was helping move new equipment into the new building last week.

He said he's been fielding questions from other students, who are preparing to come back to school next week, Aug. 25.

"They will be amazed," he said. "They'll be like, 'Now I can study. Now I can reach my full potential.'"

Math professor Jason Lee said that's the point. Students, he expects, will identify with the new NSC like they never did before, when everything was temporary.

The new permanency will catch on. It will instill pride. It might, he suggested, even change the argument from why NSC exists to how to make it better.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.