Nevada State College president cheers growth, sets new goals

Standing inside a gleaming new lecture hall at Nevada State College, President Bart Patterson cheered the school's recent $54 million expansion and laid out big ambitions for the growing campus Thursday night while delivering his annual State of the College address.

Addressing a room packed with about 300 community leaders and campus employees, Patterson detailed upgrades at NSC that have tripled the footprint of its main campus and boosted classroom space by 50 percent over the course of 18 months.

"I once said that we're not a traditional college with a classic brick-and-mortar campus," Patterson said. "That being said, it's nice to have some brick and mortar."

The project, completed this summer, was sparked by steady enrollment hikes at the 13-year-old campus, where enrollment has ballooned from 176 students in 2002 to 3,549 in 2014.

Before the expansion, the college was little more than a cramped two-story building at the southeast edge of the Las Vegas Valley with a small secondary campus in downtown Henderson. Two new 60,000-square-foot buildings now consolidate most operations at NSC, which eventually will funnel all resources onto its main campus at 1125 Nevada State Drive.

Patterson led Thursday's speech by touting that growth before presenting ambitious new goals for the small state college, including efforts to "soon have the largest education project in the state" and to eventually have on-campus housing for its students.

Patterson's speech was briefly interrupted when NSC junior Moee Turbin asked to take the stage to thank the president for his efforts to grow the campus.

"I'm so happy to be part of this change," Turbin said. "I would not want to be anywhere else but NSC."

Contact Ana Ley at aley@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5512. Find her on Twitter @la__ley.