Alan’s Monday Message for July 17th
Good Monday morning, Aggies! I hope you had a relaxing weekend. To start my work week, I pulled together a meeting of stakeholders and asked them to resolve the issue of where our NMSU Pride of New Mexico Marching Band can practice. From what I heard, the meeting was productive and there is a path forward. Congratulations to all involved. This is the way a team works together! For lunch, I met with Clayton Abbey, and Dean Yoshi Iwasaki to discuss legislative priorities. I walked over to the Engineering Complex I to see the NM PREP program in action. NM PREP builds STEM identity and subsequently, future Aggie engineers. The program is led by Clara Raley, STEM Program Manager, and Mario Garcia, STEM Program Specialist. They hosted 4 sessions this summer with 80 middle and high school students from the Las Cruces area in the College's STEM Studio.
On Tuesday, I met with the Chancellor, Leslie Cervantes, and D’Anne Stuart to review and discuss a variety of topics. Afterwards, I had a 1:1 meeting prior to attending the Deans meeting. Clayton Abbey attended the meeting to gauge the Dean’s legislative priorities and exchange thoughts on legislative engagement. The afternoon was devoted to administrative duties.
For Wednesday, I did administrative work in the morning. I had lunch with former Associate Provost for International and Border Programs, Rod McSherry ( he is currently Associate Vice President for Innovation and Economic Development at UTSA). I came back and attended to administrative duties before going to dinner with the Deans and their significant others at Hacienda de Mesilla with my wife and myself. It was a nice way to connect in a relaxed social environment. We enjoyed meeting everyone’s better half. :)
On Thursday morning, I attended a ribbon cutting and ground breaking ceremony for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture new headquarters building. Later in the morning, I participated in an EAB new Provost webinar before attending a luncheon with the Board of Regents at Fulton Center. After lunch, I presented an Academic Plan for advancing NMSU forward. I shared an environmental landscape in which NMSU is situated and identified the challenges and opportunities ahead. I shared some thoughts on what I envision the academic side of the house engaging in over the coming years. I finished my presentation by sharing a public dashboard to be housed on the Provost’s website. My goal is to have similar five year dashboards for every college and department to better understand their current status and trends on key metrics. In the afternoon, I toured the NMSU Police Station with Chief Andy Bowen. In the evening, I attended the 4-H Conference Awards at the Las Cruces Convention Center where I made welcoming remarks and praised the work of our 4-H people and the impact they have on the lives of youth around the state.
To start Friday morning, I attended a special meeting of the Board of Regents in the Education Service Center. The Board passed the new leadership re-organization as well as Goal 6 on Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity. The Presidential Search committee was announced. After the meeting, I did administrative work. After lunch, I met with all the Associate Provosts to share the changes in the Provost office. For example, all the Associate Provosts are now reporting directly to Senior Associate Provost, James McAteer. I anticipate enhancing the Senior Associate Provost’s portfolio and I also shared in the coming year, there is likely to be further changes to the Provost’s organizational chart. I met with Melody Rose of Witt Kieffer. They are doing the Presidential search. They anticipate a new President will be installed by July 1, 2024.
On Saturday, I flew to Sacramento to attend the summer meeting of American Public Land Grant Universities (APLU) Chief Academic Affairs Officers at UC-Davis. I participated in meetings on Sunday and Monday before returning to Las Cruces.
Announcement
Associate Vice President for Enrollment Services, Seth Miner shared the following: I am pleased to announce that Danielle Staley has been selected as the Director of Undergraduate Admissions and Orientation and began in the role June 26th. During her time at NMSU, Danielle has recruited freshmen and transfer students, oversaw NMSU’s Dual Credit program, led the creation of the Aggie Pathway program, served as the interim Director of Admissions and is very excited to work with everyone at NMSU.
NMSU’s Unsung Heroes
This week, I received three recipients for being NMSU Unsung Heroes including an office.
Erik Quezada (Senior Technology Support Technician) – As Dean Kevin Comerford shared, Erik tackles the challenging task of supporting technology users and the equipment needs at the Library. He is also expanding his skills in systems, helping the department by serving as a backup in critical areas. Always helpful and friendly, Erik has already proven indispensable to Systems and the Library. Thank you, Erik for helping library users with their technology needs and serving as a model for providing a helping hand.
Zandy Bunch (ICAN Nutrition Educator, Curry County Cooperative Extension Service) – As ICAN Southwest and Eastern Regional Coordinator, Brenda Weatherford noted, Zandy has worked to make her community and county a healthier place. She teaches nutrition education, physical activity, and gardening to youth and adults through the ICAN Program (Ideas for Cooking and Nutrition). Zandy has collaborated with others in her community to create classroom gardens and community gardens to teach youth how to grow their own produce. She has worked with the local food bank to get excess produce to people in need. She has mentored other nutrition educators and shared her knowledge of starting community gardens. Zandy cares deeply for the people in her community and is always looking for ways to reach the population ICAN serves. She also collaborates with the Agents in the Curry County Cooperative Extension office to provide programming at their local ag days. The ICAN State Team appreciates all the hard work that Zandy does for the people of Curry County. On June 27, 2023, Zandy received the 2023 Curry County Health Hero Award from the Curry County Health Council and Curry County Commissioners. https://www.currycounty.org/Home/Components/News/News/1065/16 Congratulations Zandy and thank you for what you do for NMSU and the Extension office.
The NMSU’s Office of Facilities & Services (OFS) – As Amanda Romero of HEST wrote, OFS always helps us when needed. Sometimes we submit a work order, sometimes it’s a frantic call or text – and sometimes, they see someone struggling and offer to help. Thank you, from all of us. Here at HEST, I can think of two recent examples of their tireless efforts to support us.
One being the morning of Monday, June 5 – we had a bit of excitement on the first floor of O’Donnell Hall when one of our employees was greeted for the workweek by a skunk! This was inside the building mind you. The furry visitor was reported to the Dean’s Office, and upon inspection there he was – huddled in one of our first floor conference rooms. Thanks to the swift response to our calls for assistance, members of OFS were able to safely get the little critter on his way (out of the building), but not before the little guy sprayed a few times as he wanted to stay indoors (do you blame him, given the heat! LOL!).
Another recent example would be the event help for the Celebration of Two-Years of HEST. When we planned the event, we didn’t expect a heat wave. While we had placed work orders for this event, as always, the folks from OFS went above and beyond to help our team – regardless of the extreme heat. We couldn’t do this without them. Truly. We are always grateful for the amazing support we receive from the OFS employees, but today we would like to shout-out these unsung heroes – thank you Rocky Puentes, Ricky Munoz, Anthony Montes, Eva Acero, Leticia Villa, Philip Cordero, Joaquin Bertoldo III, Chris Rausch, Ramiro Carrillo, Cecilia Silva, Esther Amezquita, Tim Dobson, & other team members!
Kudos
College of Engineering Dean Lakshmi Reddi shared with me this year’s COE honorees:
- Career Achievement Award – Linda Fresquez, Academic Operations Support Officer
- Synergy Teaching Research Service Award – Dr. Andreas Gross, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
- Synergy Faculty Leadership Award – Dr. Fangjun Shu, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
- Synergy One College Faculty Award – Dr. Samah Ben-Ayed, Engineering Technology and Survey Eng.
- Synergy Staff Leadership Award – Gabriela Cisneros, Director COE Operations, Office of Engineering Research
- Synergy One College Staff Award – Lisa Higdon, Engineering Technology and Survey Eng. Administrative Assistant, Intermediate
- Foreman Faculty Excellence Award – Dr. Ahmed Elaksher, Engineering Technology and Surveying Eng.
- Foreman Staff Excellence Award – Jimi Ickes, Program Operations Director, Undergraduate Studies
- Brumilaw Staff Excellence Award – Taylor Fresques, Senior Mechanical Technician, Aggie Innovation Space
- 2023 Top New Grant Recipients
- Dr. Fangjun Shu, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, $496,645.00
- Dr. David Mitchell, Klipsch School of Electrical and Computing Engineering
- Bhatti Family Graduate Assistant Awards
- Sarbajit “Sam” Basu, Doctoral Student, Klipsch School of Electrical and Computing Engineering
- Hanah Rheay, Doctoral Candidate, Chemical Engineering and Horticulture
- NMSU Distinguished Career Award, Spring 2023 – Dr. Abdessattar Abdelkefi, Klipsch School of Electrical and Computing Engineering
- National Society of Professional Surveyors Earle J. Fennell Award, Spring 2022 – Dr. Ahmed Elaksher, Engineering Technology and Surveying Eng.
- Donald C. Roush Award, Spring 2022 – Dr. Paola Bandini, Civil Engineering
- NMSU Aggie Legend, Spring 2022 – Dr. Kenneth R. White, Civil Engineering
- NMSU Distinguished Career Award – Spring 2021 – Dr. Jessica Houston, Chemical and Materials Engineering
