Dear colleagues,

As we celebrate Spring '24 graduations, I extend my sincere gratitude to all our faculty and staff for their contributions to student success. Whether it was offering guidance through difficult times, providing mentorship, or simply being there to listen, our faculty and staff play an important role in our student lives. This semester, we graduated 2032 students from our undergraduate and graduate programs, along with an additional 622 from the branch campuses. Last weekend was their ‘commencement’ – commencement of a new relationship with NMSU as proud alumni members of the NMSU family.

I wanted to share some exciting insights regarding the job opportunities in New Mexico and across the U.S., and how NMSU programs are helping meet the workforce needs. I thank Mr. Sashidhar Chintalapati for helping me with the data analyses.

In about 50 of our bachelor's programs, job postings in New Mexico outnumber graduates, with a median of 2.4 job postings per graduate over the last 12 months. According to the previous year's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the percentages of graduates produced by NMSU (relative to the total number of graduates from New Mexico), in the top 5 programs by job postings is as follows:

• 79% of Marketing graduates
• 39% of Accounting graduates
• 17% of Psychology graduates
• 14% of Nursing graduates
• 14% of Business Administration and Management, General Business graduates

Online learning has expanded significantly in the recent past, enabling New Mexico students to pursue their degrees remotely. There are about 40 schools, outside New Mexico, which are competing to attract New Mexico students in these five programs.

As job postings continue to outpace the number of graduates in many of our programs, we will use our data tools to monitor market trends, deploy new resources as necessary in the programs of increasing demand, and even open new programs with workforce needs.

Thank you once again for your dedication to our students’ success. Together, we can continue to adapt and respond effectively to the evolving workforce needs in New Mexico and beyond. We are NMSU.

Lakshmi N. Reddi
Interim Provost
New Mexico State University