Edupreneur Spotlight: Bart Patterson
Bart Patterson, President of Nevada State College, is the kind of man who looks at a deficit and sees opportunity. He has approached his work with an edupreneurial mindset, building programs that have made it the second-fastest-growing college in the country.
So it should come as no surprise that he sees the educational challenges posed by the pandemic as yet another opportunity for growth.
“It’s a time to think, and expand, and find that inner kind of creativity and imagination that is a spark in really all areas of life,” Patterson explains.
Sandi Herrera and the Educator Dynamics programs have contributed to Patterson’s success with NSC, and he believes they can help others now.
When Patterson came to Nevada State College, he found a young school with an unusually diverse student population. NSC lacked the foundations and pedagogical traditions to be found in older, more established schools. Undaunted, he seized the chance to do things differently.
He used his business background and experience with Nevada education systems to build from the ground up.
“We started to develop some pretty innovative programs that have received some national recognition in how we’ve gone forward in working with this diverse, first-generation student population that we love.”
He only hopes that NSC can stay “hungry, creative, innovative” as it—and its bureaucracy, “which can really stifle all of those qualities”—grows in size.
At NSC, Patterson has worked with Sandi Herrera and a variety of programs under the Educator Dynamics umbrella. He thinks Herrera’s well-deserved reputation owes a lot to her talent and knowledge-base, but goes further.
“Sandi’s sincerity about what she’s trying to accomplish, the passion that she has for making a difference—you know, improving the education system, improving the morale of educators, and more recently, really working with kids to help them find their own inner genius—all of those things are really important.”
