Appointments
Montoya
to serve as SHRI interim director
UNM Vice
Provost for Research Terry L. Yates has announced the appointment
of Margaret M. Montoya, UNM professor of law, as interim director
of the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute (SHRI).
Montoya
succeeds Felipe Gonzales who will return to his full-time position
as professor in UNMs Department of Sociology.
UNM will
conduct a national search next academic year for a full-time
director for SHRI. Montoya will serve in the interim and assist
with the search.
She will
also coordinate the National Association of Chicana and Chicano
Studies (NACCS) conference to be held in Albuquerque next spring.
The conference will draw about 1,500 professors, teachers and
students to Albuquerque for a three-day agenda of presentations,
speakers and awards.
This summer
and early fall, SHRI will collaborate with the UNM School of
Law to sponsor a series of meetings with professors, judges,
lawyers, academic administrators, public policy makers, alumni/ae
and the media to explain the Supreme Courts decision in
the Grutter and Gratz affirmative action cases. Montoya is part
of a national coalition of civil rights organizations and activists
preparing an immediate response to the decisions.
Montoya
is also working with UNM School of Law Dean Suellyn Scarnecchia
to have a coordinated public response about the case soon after
the opinion is released. She has begun organizing some of the
meetings with the Hispanic Bar Association, the Black Lawyers
and Indian Bar Associations, as well as key figures in the judicial
system.
Montoya
is a graduate of the Harvard University Law School. She joined
the UNM School of Law faculty full-time in 1992. Before that,
she was an adjunct and visiting assistant professor in the law
school, and special assistant to former UNM President Gerald
May on affirmative action and diversity.
Gonzales
headed SHRI for seven years. He generated funding and secured
resources for a variety of interdisciplinary research and educational
outreach projects. Among them was sponsorship in 2000 of the
New Mexico portion of El Río, one of the Smithsonian
Institutions primary public programs in Washington, D.C.,
and featuring folklife of the culture region along the Rio Grande/Rio
Bravo River basin. In 2001, the institute organized Tradition
and Destiny, a symposium which reviewed the current status of
Hispanic land grants.