Since 1977, Peter White has served UNM as professor of English and American Studies, vice provost for Undergraduate Education, and dean of University College. White now takes his experience to Santa Fe where he serves as Secretary of the New Mexico Higher Education Department.
Photo: Peter White
Working 12 hour days since taking the role mid-May, White met with the Legislative Finance Committee his second day on the job. Reporting on programmatic issues is part of the job, White said, adding that he is anxious to make substantive improvements in higher education in New Mexico.
General education reform is at the top of his list. “We need to change the core curriculum across the state – streamline it, modernize it,” he said, calling the core a “35 hour hurdle.” He’s setting up a committee of faculty members from across higher education in the state to redesign it.
“We need skills oriented classes,” he said. Needed skill sets include writing in the major discipline, problem based learning or research methodology, critical and innovative thinking, and math. He notes that the current core requires Algebra 123. “But, if we allowed students to take courses that offer the same computational skills and data analysis through say, math for teachers, a computer science course or a statistical course for sociology or psychology, it might fit the interests of the students and keep them motivated,” he said.
He said that the core requirements keep faculty from being able to teach certain courses. “Faculty don’t want to force feed, they want to offer and teach what students want,” he said.
White knows what he’s talking about. He helped raise freshman enrollment to its highest in UNM history and the university set a freshman retention record. He established and expanded programs that fostered recruitment and retention, including Freshman Learning Communities, and was instrumental in securing funds to support these efforts.
White also casts a critical eye at the funding formula. Currently, it is “input driven.” Institutions are funded by credit hours generated. “It entices colleges and universities to go after students regardless of their qualifications. It creates a vicious cycle of funding institutions that graduate roughly four in ten students in six years,” he said. New Mexico is 11th in the nation in sending high school graduates to college, and 87 percent of the national average in third semester retention, but 45th nationally in college graduation rates, with UNM and NMSU graduating 83 percent of the bachelor degrees in the state.
White said he would like to see the formula become performance based. “It would reduce the incentive to take inappropriate students,” he said.
Taking unprepared students is negative statistically, and too many students never make it to the level where research universities receive adequate funding, White said.
White points out one solution would be for New Mexico to establish a three-tier educational system, like those seen in California, New York or Texas. Currently, New Mexico students can attend a university or a community college.
“What we need are four-year state colleges. Many students aren’t prepared for or interested in attending a large research university,” White said. He proposes that the UNM campus under development in Rio Rancho and the Dona Ana campus of NMSU be recast in that model. “They would be smaller, more intimate, more flexible and innovative and yet still provide students with a four-year degree without all the rigor and expense of a research institution,” he said.
“What keeps students in school is their classroom experiences, the quality of their educational experience and their ability to pass classes,” he said.
Included in his decision to take the helm of higher ed was the opportunity for White to continue to teach his UNM violin making course, the creative outlet he pursues as director of the New Mexico Musical Heritage Project.
He’s playing our song.
Story by Carolyn Gonzales