After 37 years in higher education administration, Dr. Liz Baldizan has decided to retire from UNLV effective Monday, August 31, 2015.
Dr. Baldizan has served UNLV for nearly 20 years and joined the UNLV Division of Educational Outreach (DEO) in September 2009 as Executive Director for Community2Campus, a unit she developed from the ground up and demonstrated her long-held commitment to enhancing the success of adult learners. Dr. Baldizan is recognized across the country for her work and publications in this arena. Most recently she was the lead author for a chapter in a National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) publication: Meaningful Community Partnerships for Adult Learners, “Increasing Adult Learner Persistence and Completion Rates: A Guide for Student Affairs Leaders and Practitioners,” August 2014.
Dr. Baldizan reached across campus and into the community to garner broad-based support for adult learners and for UNLV. Her work was in line with UNLV’s efforts to recruit adult learners and increase progression and completion rates. With a one million dollar endowment from the Osher Foundation and other gifts, Dr. Baldizan coordinated re-entry scholarships and, in 2014 alone, 36 scholarships were awarded totaling more than $93,000. She worked to assure that ongoing consultations with students via phone, e-mail, or in person were provided for all scholarship recipients as well as the general public interested in returning to UNLV.
Dr. Baldizan also coordinated an ever-increasing number of self-supporting academic credit classes and some state-supported classes held on UNLV Main and Paradise campuses as well as in venues across the Las Vegas Valley, reaching diverse learners. In 2014, 9,338 UNLV students took these classes, producing 23,689 student credit hours.
Dr. Baldizan will be missed at UNLV and specifically at DEO, but she will continue to be active in her scholarly discipline and in the Las Vegas community as she advocates for lifelong learning and UNLV. She is currently a member of the City of Henderson Senior Citizen Advisory Commission and was recently selected as a member of the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of College and Character, a publication sponsored by NASPA-Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education (2015-2018).
As we celebrate her many accomplishments, we wish Dr. Baldizan all the best and thank her for dedication and service to lifelong learning.