UNM will recognize 14 outstanding teachers at the annual Teaching Award Ceremony and reception on Thursday, May 6, at 2 p.m. in the Student Union Building, Ballroom C. President David Schmidly will present the Presidential Teaching Fellow Award to Howard Waitzkin. The Presidential Teaching Fellow is the highest recognition for teaching awarded by the university.
Photo: Distinguished Professor Howard Waitzkin to receive the Presidential Teaching Fellow Award.
Deputy Provost Richard Holder will present the Outstanding Teacher of the Year Awards to Sanjay Krishna and P.J. Woods and the New Faculty of the Year Awards to Marissa Greenberg and Maria Lane.
The Online Teacher of the Year Award will be presented to Janis Anderson. Holder will also present the Outstanding Adjunct/Lecturer of the Year Awards to Karolyn Cannata-Winge, Aurora Pun and Alisha Ray.
Dean of Graduate Studies Amy Wohlert will present the Susan Deese-Roberts Teaching Assistant Awards to Elena Avilés, Whitney Purvis, Samantha Tetangco, Dan Darling and Mel Strong.
Waitzkin, distinguished professor, Departments of Sociology, Family and Community Medicine, and Internal Medicine, coauthored the proposal for a single-payer national health program published in the New England Journal of Medicine and later introduced in the U.S. Congress. He was recognized as a Fulbright New Century Scholar and for other awards.
Courses Waitzkin has taught at UNM include globalization and health, public mental health, social medicine in Latin America and the first seminar in the new B.A./M.D. Program, Contours of Health in New Mexico. He directs the New Mexico Mentorship and Education Program in Mental Health Services Research. He also sees patients as a primary care practitioner in rural northern New Mexico.
Krishna, associate professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and associate director, Center for High Technology Materials, is interested in incorporating novel pedagogical teaching techniques such as active learning techniques in the classroom. His research interests include growth, fabrication and characterization for mid infrared detectors. Krishna received the Gold Medal from IIT, IEEE Outstanding Engineering Award, 2009 UNM regents lectureship and other recognition.
P.J. Woods, clinical education assistant professor, College of Nursing, and coordinator, nursing administrator master’s degree concentration, joined the nursing faculty after retiring as chief nursing officer and associate dean for clinical nursing services, UNM Health Sciences Center. Woods developed the first Academic Nurse Residency Program in the nation, led a curriculum revision for the nursing administration concentration and chairs the Doctorate of Nursing Practice Curriculum Committee.
Anderson, research associate professor, Department of Psychology, has worked with New Media and Extended Learning to develop online psychology courses at UNM and with UNM psychology faculty to assess the impact of activities such as online quizzing on student learning. Before joining the psychology faculty at UNM, she engaged in specialized research and clinical activities as a psychologist. She is also assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and associate psychologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Greenberg, assistant professor, Department of English Language and Literature, teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in early English literature, especially Renaissance drama. She developed strategies to make early English literature personally engaging and professionally useful for students in diverse disciplines. She is faculty sponsor for English honor society Sigma Tau Delta at UNM. She received a National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Research Award and other awards.
Lane, assistant professor, Department of Geography, has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in world regional geography, physical geography, Southwest and New Mexico geography, geographic research and independent study for students in geography and other disciplines. She works extensively with undergraduate and graduate students as research assistants. She’s working on a historical geography of irrigation science in the American West, funded by the National Science Foundation.
Cannata-Winge, lecturer, Department of Communication and Journalism, uses her more than 20 years of professional experience in visual communication, design, print journalism, advertising and public relations to give her students real-world examples and a glimpse of what they will encounter in their careers. She also serves as the department’s faculty internship coordinator and adviser to the American Advertising Federation’s UNM student chapter.
Pun, lecturer, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, has taught introductory geology courses since she was a graduate student at UNM. She pioneered collaborative learning activities in large classes and was among the first UNM instructors to use clickers to encourage peer interaction and obtain real-time assessment of students’ conceptual learning progress. Her work includes curriculum development and instructional supervision for graduate students teaching physical geology laboratory sections.
Ray, lecturer, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, became interested in teaching as an undergraduate at UNM, when she worked as a math tutor at CAPS, Center for Academic Program Support. She continued at CAPS as a supplemental instruction leader after graduating and completed her master’s degree at UNM.
Avilés, teaching assistant and doctoral student, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, has taught courses in Spanish as a heritage language and Chicano studies. She is assistant coordinator of UNM’s Sabine Ulibarrí Spanish as a Heritage Language program and was part of a SUSHL team that presented at the First International Conference on Heritage/Community Languages. She helped develop research-based assessment for language learning outcomes.
Darling, teaching assistant, Department of English Language and Literature, started teaching during a high school year abroad in Sweden, where he taught juvenile ex-convicts to juggle. At UNM, he teaches creative and expository writing courses. He receives a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing in May.
Purvis, teaching assistant, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, and doctoral student, Department of American Studies, will serve next year as assistant coordinator, Spanish as a Second Language Program. Her academic focus is on race, class and ethnicity on the U.S.-Mexico border, performance in U.S. culture, and fictitious autobiography as a literary genre. She is also a fiction writer.
Strong, teaching assistant and doctoral student, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, has taught laboratory classes to undergraduate majors, earth science to sixth graders and physical science to UNM elementary education students. His dissertation research focuses on the climate of New Mexico.
Tetangco, teaching assistant and Master of Fine Arts student, Department of English Language and Literature, She has served as a mentor for incoming English teaching assistants, participated in the Freshmen Learning Community program and taught courses in composition, creative writing and expository writing. She is editor of the Blue Mesa Review and is finishing her first novel.
Media Contact: Sari Krosinsky, (505) 277-1593; e-mail: michal@unm.edu
Contains new initiatives to strengthen core mission
The University of New Mexico Board of Regents has approved a $2.1 billion consolidated budget for fiscal year 2011, which begins July 1. Earlier in April, the regents approved a combined tuition and student fee increase of 7.9 percent, which included the 5 percent state tuition tax credit approved by the New Mexico Legislature.
The UNM budget includes new funding initiatives focused on strengthening its core mission – expansion for the College of Nursing, new faculty hires, expanded advising and increases in merit and need based aid. In order to balance the budget, the university also had to find funding for items like health insurance and restoring the budgets of the student ethnic centers.
Regents and university administrators agreed that balancing this year’s budget was especially difficult, given the persistent economic downtown. State instruction and general appropriations, or I&G funding, for main campus declined by more than $12.8 million from the FY 2010 I&G base. After the pass-through of the 5 percent state tuition tax credit and use of one-time stimulus funding, the university still had an I&G shortfall of $2.76 million. Added to this is the additional $5.3 million for the new funding requirements, bringing the total shortfall to just over $8 million.
In order to cover this shortfall and balance the budget, UNM will undertake $6 million in cost containment initiatives. The remainder of the shortfall will be covered by UNM’s portion - 3.5 percent - of the tuition increase.
By law, the university’s consolidated budget must be in Santa Fe by May 3.
Media Contact: Susan McKinsey, (505) 277-1807; e-mail: mckinsey@unm.edu
The UNM Health Sciences Center won three awards at the 2010 Cumbre Awards banquet on April 29 held by the New Mexico Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).
The HSC Communication and Marketing team won a Gold Award for "HSC TV," its entry in the Internal Communication category, and a Silver Award for "HSC YouTube Page," entered in the Social Media category. The HSC Office of Research won a Silver Award for "Annual Report of Contracts & Grants, 2009" in the Collateral Material category.
The New Mexico PRSA chapter holds the annual Cumbre Awards competition to recognize excellence in the practice of Public Relations.
The Anderson School of Management will host an open meeting of its Investment Management Program on Monday, May 3, at 6 p.m. in the Paul R. Jackson Student Center. Attendees will hear presentations by students currently enrolled in Anderson investment management courses.
Additionally, investment professionals, who comprise Anderson’s Investment Advisory Committee, will evaluate students’ stock and portfolio recommendations and assist the students in their investment analysis.
Under the guidance of Anderson faculty, Anderson students manage millions of real dollars in investments on behalf of the Regents of The University of New Mexico, and in the near future, on behalf of the NM State Investment Council. Committee members represent the N.M. State Investment Office, local investment firms, banking institutions, and other business community partners. The committee offers valuable first-hand feedback to student stock analysts and portfolio managers.
Note: this meeting is not an information session or lecture. Rather, the meeting provides a venue for students interested in upper-level and graduate finance investment courses to view interaction between Anderson students and professional financial advisors. The Investment Advisory Committee members will have the opportunity to pose questions about specific stock presentations offered by students. Others in attendance are asked to take an observational role only.
For more information, contact Jennifer Bayley, Program Manager, at bayley@mgt.unm.edu
Popejoy Hall has announced its 44th season of events, including the Broadway blockbuster Wicked. This Sunday, May 2, Popejoy will host its first New Subscriber Party. Anyone who did not subscribe to the Popejoy Presents season last year is welcome. This will be the first opportunity for the public to subscribe to the 2010-11 season.
The event will be held on the Popejoy stage from 2 to 4 p.m. and refreshments will be provided. Popejoy staff members will be on hand to offer one-on-one assistance, where needed, and to answer any questions about the upcoming season. To attend, simply enter Popejoy at the red canopy on the east side of the building.
Another event for UNM community members only will be held on May 17.
Native American writer, activist, and former United States vice presidential candidate Winona LaDuke will be visiting the University of New Mexico to speak to Native American students, faculty, and area community members on Friday, April 30, at 2:30 p.m. The conversation session will be held in the Isleta Room at UNM Student Union Building and will include an overview of LaDuke’s current work and her 2005 book, Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming.
Photo: Winona LaDuke
“The campus community is extremely pleased to have the rare and valuable opportunity to host such a tremendous advocate and expert of environmental issues affecting native peoples and lands whose tireless efforts continue to raise public awareness and support internationally,” said Pamela Agoyo, director of American Indian Student Services and Special Assistant to the President for American Indian Affairs.
Attendees will have the opportunity to engage the Harvard-educated activist and environmentalist on topics including Climate Change, Sustainability and Biodiversity. UNM Native American Fraternity Beta Sigma Epsilon and American Indian Student Services are sponsoring the free and public event. Space is limited.
LaDuke is an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg who lives and works on the White Earth Reservation. LaDuke is the recipient of numerous honors and awards. In 1989, she received the Reebok Human Rights Award. In 1994, Time magazine named her one of America’s fifty most promising leaders under-40 years of age, and in 1997 she was named a Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year.
Other honors include the Thomas Merton Award, the Ann Bancroft Award, the Global Green Award, and the prestigious International Slow Food Award for working to protect wild rice and local biodiversity
LaDuke will be in town and is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the Office of Equity & Inclusion’s 2010 Diversity Celebration and Fundraising Dinner on April 30 at the Student Union Building Ballrooms at 6 p.m. For more information about the evening event which will recognize diversity efforts at UNM visit: 2010 Diversity Celebration.
The College of Education has set a dedication and formal opening for its new building on Wednesday, May 5 at 4:45 p.m. The COE Building is designed to influence how the practice of education is taught in the next century. The building was designed to incorporate new teaching and learning practices and to encourage collaborative and interactive learning; integrate advanced media technologies and wireless capacities; and provide comfortable, durable and stimulating surroundings.
The new building, with more than 26,000 sq. ft., houses classrooms, learning areas and administrative offices, and is the second building on campus to adhere to the Governor of New Mexico’s Executive Order requiring new buildings acquire a minimum of silver certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Green Rating System established by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).
The COE currently has submitted an application to the United States Green Building Council for LEED Platinum status. This is the highest level of energy sustainability that can be achieved in constructing new buildings. If all points are accepted by the council, the College of Education building would be the first to achieve LEED Platinum status on campus.
In March, the Biology Department opened a new research wing in Castetter Hall that was designated LEED Gold status, by the U.S. Green Building Council, in recognition of its environmentally-conscious design.
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu
Early voting in the June primaries begins in two weeks, but New Mexico’s election season is already heating up. “New Mexico in Focus” puts the N.M. Governor’s race in the spotlight starting this week with one-on-one interviews with Republican candidates Janice Arnold Jones and Pete Domenici, Jr. The candidates will discuss issues ranging from the economy to immigration reform and more. “New Mexico in Focus” airs Fridays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 6:30 a.m. It also airs KNME Digital Ch. 9.1 on Saturdays at 5 p.m.
Also on this week’s episode, panelists on “The Line” debate the fallout from Arizona’s controversial new immigration law, and discuss the Albuquerque budget battle tying teacher pay to student performance.
Host/Commentator:
• Gene Grant, Weekly Alibi Columnist
New Mexico In Focus Correspondent:
• Gwyneth Doland, editor, New Mexico Independent
Guests:
• Janice Arnold-Jones, Republican Gubernatorial candidate
• Pete Domenici Jr., Republican Gubernatorial candidate
Guest Panelist:
• Stephen Spitz, Public Affairs producer, KUNM radio
Panelists:
• Sophie Martin, managing editor, DukeCityFix.com
• Laura Sanchez, former executive director, New Mexico Democratic Party
• Jim Scarantino, editor, New Mexico Watchdog
Viewers can also watch New Mexico In Focus online at: KNME. Additionally, get updates, watch, and follow KNME on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more.
“New Mexico in Focus” is produced by Kevin McDonald and Kathy Wimmer and closed captioning has been made possible by a gift from Mrs. Elspeth G. Bobbs.
Media Contact: Evy Todd, (505) 277-1812; e-mail: etodd@knme.org
Information Technologies (IT) Deputy CIO Moira Gerety recently awarded an iPad to Gregory M. Segura at the IT Building recently. Segura took part in IT's campus-wide e-survey on e-mail and calendaring needs for students, faculty and staff. The e-mail and calendaring initiative is one of many projects aimed at streamlining technology and cost savings across campus. Segura is a first-year law student.
Watching the watchers
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jed Crandall and Ph.D. student Jong Chun Park are preparing to go to Genoa, Italy this summer to present their latest findings on Internet Censorship to the 30th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems. Their latest paper titled, “Empirical Study of a National-Scale Distributed Intrusion Detection System: Backbone-Level Filtering of HTML Responses in China,” outlines their investigation of the way the Chinese government has tried to censor information via the internet.
An increasing number of nations are trying to shield at least some elements of the internet from their citizens. In a Washington Post story Google’s chief legal office says more than 40 governments censor information today. The company reports on its blog that Google products are blocked at least partially in about 25 countries. Countries have a long list of reasons for censorship. Some try to block child pornography, some try to block hate speech. Some try to block sensitive political information. But Crandall says it’s very difficult for countries to completely block anything.
The paper that Crandall and Park will present details their monitoring of Chinese government efforts to filter HTML responses, a technique the Chinese censors abandoned between August 2008 and January 2009. Crandall and Park could see that it wasn’t working well, and guess that Chinese censors arrived at the same conclusion. The paper details the technical problems of backbone level HTML response filtering and offers a look at the way the Chinese government tried to censor specific items of information.
Soon after the time that their study indicates the Chinese government gave up on HTML response filtering in the backbone, the censors made another attempt at content filtering called Green Dam. That project required software to be installed on individual computers, and faltered when computer manufacturers refused to install the software. Now the Chinese are looking at a technique they are calling Blue Shield.
Crandall says, “Blue Shield is more local network filtering. When they were trying to filter on the backbone they would just see packets fly by. They would try to reset connections whenever something happened but they were not really seeing the whole state of the connection.”
Blue Shield requires a major strategy change. Censors can no longer monitor information at the centralized backbone.
“Every little network has to implement Blue Shield,” Crandall says. “It’s not something they can just throw up in a few places on the backbone and monitor.” While the Chinese put Blue Shield into place, Crandall and Park will be looking at another kind of censorship. They are interested in what happens when the country decides to simply block a website.
Crandall compares that to traffic in Albuquerque, which has two interstate highways passing through it.
“You’ve got I-25 north and south, and I-40 east and west, and so if you wanted to block certain kinds of cars from entering Albuquerque you might block in those four places, but there’s still little back roads people might use to get in and out of Albuquerque, and that’s the question that interests us.”
He and Park want to know whether complete blockage of web sites is always successful. “Do they try to block at the borders or do they block on the major pathways and how pervasive is the blocking?”
Read more about Crandall and Park’s work in New Scientist.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
Nora Dominguez, director of the UNM Mentoring Institute, has been selected to serve a four-year term on the Board of Directors for the International Mentoring Association -- the major international contributor in building strong mentoring programs for institutions of higher education, K-12, business and industry, and governmental organizations.
Photo: Nora Dominguez
IMA President Dr. Linda Coy recently announced the appointment of Dominguez by unanimous vote of the membership to its board of directors.
“We are grateful to have a person of Nora’s caliber on the board; her knowledge and experience is critical for the future growth and development of the organization” said Coy. "IMA looks forward to partnering with Nora and UNM Mentoring Institute to create mentoring initiatives for New Mexico’s organizations by offering access to membership that are nationally and internationally recognized leaders in mentoring."
“My appointment at IMA represents an opportunity to show at the global level the great work that UNM students, faculty, and staff are doing on a daily basis and to consolidate strong partnerships to better serve our extended communities,” said Dominguez.
The UNM Mentoring Institute was created on 2007 with the mission to instill, foster and promote a mentoring culture at UNM and across the State of New Mexico. The Institute has established a Mentoring Annual Conference that has brought to UNM more than 500 scholars and practitioners in its past two editions.
For more information, visit: UNM Mentoring Institute.
The Mentoring Institute is funded by the New Mexico State Legislature as a component of the UNM Division of Student Affairs. A mentoring council, with members from university and community organizations, will support and advise the work of the Mentoring Institute. The institute is located at 608 Buena Vista Drive, alongside the Title V program.
For more information, contact Nora Dominguez, director, UNM Mentoring Institute, 608 Buena Vista, Room 108, 277-1484.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Graduate student Monica Madrid has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship that includes a $30,000 stipend and a $10,500 tuition allowance per year for up to three years. In its notification to Madrid, NSF's Division of Graduate Education said "Your selection was based on your outstanding abilities and accomplishments, as well as your potential to contribute to strengthening the vitality of the U.S. science and engineering enterprise."
Madrid conducts her research in collaboration with her faculty advisor, ECE Assistant Professor Jamesina Simpson. She is also a research assistant at UNM's Center for High Tech Materials. Working with Simpson and ECE Professor Majeed Hayat, she is helping to construct full Maxwell's equation models of the interaction of specific synthetic-aperture radar pulses with vibrating structures in a project titled, “Co-registered Vibrometry & Imaging: A Combined Synthetic-Aperture Radar & Fractional-Fournier Transform Approach.” The project began in 2008 and is funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
Madrid also received support for her research in 2009 from a Selected Professions Fellowship of the American Association of University Women, and she has been selected as the 2010 Outstanding Female Graduate Engineering Student by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Albuquerque Section.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
The local women’s fraternity Pi Beta Phi will host its first-ever philanthropic community kick ball tournament on April 30, beginning at 5:30 p.m., at UNM’s Johnson Field. Kick It With Pi Phi will raise money for First Book, a non-profit organization that provides new books to children in need nationwide.
UNM staff, faculty, students, alumnae, greek life and community members are encouraged to assemble their own teams of eight members or less. The teams will compete in a bracket style tournament, battling to be deemed the first-ever Kick It With Pi Phi Champions. The community can support the cause by joining or forming a team with a minimum donation of $3 per person.
“We are really excited for our inaugural Kick It With Pi Phi,” said Pi Beta Phi Chapter President, Bridgette Madrid. “Teams are already in the making and we can’t wait to see the final turn out!”
Kick It With Pi Phi was established to raise illiteracy awareness, provide funds for the First Book organization, and to bring the community together for a fun day of philanthropic service. This cause was established when Pi Beta Phi fraternity wanted to inspire and motivate the community to provide more access to books for children in need. The public is invited to join the effort by joining a team or contributing donations, as community support is the first step to awareness.
Pi Beta Phi is a national women’s organization with a mission to promote friendship, develop women of intellect and integrity, cultivate leadership potential and enrich lives through community service. The UNM chapter of Pi Beta Phi was established in 1946.
For more information visitt Pi Beta Phi at UNM.
Media Contact: Abby Hull, (505) 804-6367; e-mail: ahull25@unm.edu
The dramatic clash of cultures and moral universes in the Whaley case is a centerpiece of the book, “Defying the Odds.” The book puts the Tule River Tribe in the middle of late 19th century national controversies, policies and events that were designed to elminate the existence of the tribes of the United States. Authors Gelya Frank, professor of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy and Anthropology, at the University of Southern California and Carole Goldberg, the Jonathan D. Varat professor of Law at the University of California-Los Angeles, discuss the book and the case of U.S. v Whaley et al (1888).
UNM Anthropology Professor Les Field leads a discussion with Frank and Goldberg about the book as part of the Department of Anthropology Colloquia Series. The Whaley case revolved around four tribal members who admitted executing an Indian shaman who was believed to have poisoned their chief, and whether the federal government had authority over crimes on the reservation. The repercussions of Whaley affect law and order in California through the present day.
The lecture is sponsored by the UNM Department of Anthropology, the the UNM Graduate Program in Occupational Therapy in the Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, UNM Program in American Studies and the UNM School of Law.
‘Tule River Tribes Struggle for Sovereignty’
(Runs: 1:21:27)
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying has announced the UNM Civil Engineering Capstone Course (CE 497/499) will receive a $7,500 award for engaging students in collaborative projects with professional licensed engineers. UNM’s submittal for the award emphasized the capstone courses’ unique integration of construction management and civil engineering skills into a design/build project format.
The submittal highlighted a project for a new wastewater treatment pond system in Magdelena, New Mexico, as an extension of an existing system. The students visited the project site and determined how the site reflects the needs of diverse populations. The students drew on information from their work in structures, geotechnical engineering, water quality, hydraulics, structures, and construction management. "We learned how to solve real world engineering problems while working in a true professional team environment," said Darren Mortenson, senior in Construction Management. "The capstone class prepared me for a career in design/construction." The students were mentored by Allen Bolinger from Smith Engineering, Inc.
For more information visit: NCEES Engineering Award.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
On Thursday, April 29, from 12:30 - 1:30 p.m., the Geography Department and the Office of the Provost will present a free lecture featuring University of Arizona Associate Professor Carl Bauer. The lecture, titled "River Governance and Water Markets in Chile: Law, Economics, and Geography" will take place in room 120 at Dane Smith Hall.
Bauer is in the School of Geography and Development at UA, where he also directs the Graduate Certificate in Water Policy. He was formerly a research fellow at Resources for the Future, in Washington, D.C., for seven years, and he has been a consultant to numerous international organizations.
He has written two books on water rights and water markets in Chile, a country where he has lived and worked for many years. Bauer has a Ph.D. in Law and Social Science from the University of California-Berkeley Law School, an M.S. in Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a B.A. in Geology from Yale University.
Local celebrity architect Bart Prince will be at the University of New Mexico Bookstore to sign copies of the book The Architecture of Bart Prince on Saturday, May 1 at 2 p.m. Prince will be accompanied by Christopher Mead, who edited this magnificent volume showcasing Prince’s unique works.
Prince’s work is recognized internationally for both its seminal creative vision and for carrying on an American tradition of individualism in architecture originating with Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and Bruce Goff. Prince shares with these pioneers a fundamental way of thinking about modern American architecture, which in his work he has combined with a firm belief in the experimental impact of a building to render a contemporary style all his own.
Born in Albuquerue in 1947, Prince was awarded the Record House of the Year Award in 1989 for the Brad and June Prince Residence and again in 1991 for the Joe and Etsuko Price Residence. Other accolades, among many, have included featured works in numerous exhibitions, the 2004 International Excellence in Design Award, and Prince is recognized as one of The AD 100 by Architectural Digest.
Mead is a professor of architecture and art history at the University of New Mexico. He lives with his wife, photographer Michele Penhall, in a house designed by Bart Prince.
The UNM Bookstore is located at 2301 Central Ave. NE at the intersection of Cornell and Central. Parking will be validated in the parking structure for up to one hour with purchase. For more information call Lisa Walden at (505) 277-7494.
Eight fellows at the Center for Southwest Research will present short talks on Tuesday, April 27 in Room B48 of Zimmerman Library on UNM’s main campus. The fellows will present in two sessions, a morning event from 9 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. and an afternoon session from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
The fellows are researching and organizing portions of the center’s extensive collections. The talks each spring are part of the fellowship.
Tuesday, April 27
9 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Sarah Wentzel-Fisher
Sarah Wentzel-Fisher, the Ruth W. Armstrong Fellow, is in her final semester as a Master’s student in the Community and Regional Planning Program in the School of Architecture. In addition to her degree in planning, Sarah will also receive a certificate in Historic Preservation and Regionalism. After graduation she hopes to continue her work in regional heritage preservation through research, work in special collections and field studies in historic preservation. Her talk is titled “Highlights from the Moving Image Collections: Chicano Studies, Native American Studies, Regional Studies.”
Char Peery
Char Peery is a Ph.D. candidate in the Anthropology Department. As the Anderson Fellow, she is on the CSWR reference and instruction teams, and managed the instruction program throughout the fall 2009 semester. Her area of study is linguistic anthropology with an emphasis on indigenous languages. Her dissertation addresses some of the challenges of language documentation programs by exploring the Navajo language documentation project undertaken by Robert W. Young and William Morgan. Her talk is titled, “Lost in the Archives: Helping Students Navigate Primary Sources.”
Brian King
Brian King, the Sophie D. Aberle Fellow, is a third year Ph.D. student in the Department of History. His research focuses on the U.S. West and Frontiers and Borderlands. In particular, King is exploring the concept of freedom – physical, psychological, religious, and spiritual – in the U.S. West, with an emphasis on humans’ interaction with and perception of the natural world. His talk is titled “The Miguel Antonio Otero Collection and the New Mexico Centennial Project: Selecting Items for Digitization.”
Jane Sinclair
Jane Sinclair is the Beatrice Chauvenet Fellow and a Ph.D. candidate in the American Studies Department. She works with architectural drawings and papers in the John Gaw Meem Collection of Southwest Architecture. Her dissertation explores how the art and architecture of Indian casinos can attract tourists, represent native identities and address issues related to sovereignty and resistance. This fall she designed and taught an upper-division American Studies course “Get Your Kicks on Route 66” with an emphasis on local architecture ranging from diners to gas stations. Her talk is titled “The Walls of Acoma and Beyond: Adobe Construction and Architect Paul Graham McHenry.”
Tuesday, April 27
1 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Ramona Caplan
Ramona Caplan, the Doris Duke Fellow, is a doctoral student in the History Department with a focus on the Trans-Mississippi West and Native American Studies. She is an active oral historian and conducts oral history interviews for the NM Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum and the Valles Caldera Federal Preserve. Kaplan is currently writing her dissertation: “Lee Marmon: The Blue-Eyed Indian” a biography of the world famous Indian photographer.
Jordan Biro
Jordan Biro, the George I. Sanchez Fellow, is a first year doctoral student in the History Department at UNM. She is currently working on a scholarly article for publication based on her master’s thesis “Out of the Closets and Into the Streets: Ritual Commemoration of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender History in the late Twentieth Century.’ Her talk is titled, “So Let Me Paint, R.C. Gorman and the Art World in San Francisco, California.”
Clare Daniel
Clare Daniel, the Pictorial Collections Fellow is a Ph.D. student in American Studies. Her M.A. thesis focused on welfare reform policy debate in the mid-1990’s. Her talk is titled “Southwestern Art and Industry: Processing the Lee Marmon Collection.”
Kari Schleher
Kari Schleher, the New Mexico Digitization Fellow is a Ph.D. candidate in the Anthropology Department. Her area of study is the archaeology of the American Southwest, with an emphasis on the prehistoric and pueblo groups. She has just completed her dissertation on the social implications of pottery production at San Marcos Pueblo spanning and pre and post-Spanish contact period. Her talk is titled “Portraits of Native American Potters: A History through Images.”
The talks are free and the public is encouraged to attend.
Kathleen M. McIntyre, a doctoral student in History and a Ph.D. fellow in the Latin American and Iberian Institute received a 2010-11 American Association of University Women $20,000 dissertation award. McIntyre's dissertation project, "Contested Spaces: The Rise of Protestantism in Oaxaca, 1920-1994," directed by Distinguished Professor of History Linda B. Hall, examines how religious plurality challenged collective identity in indigenous communities.
Photo: Kathleen McIntyre
Oaxaca has the highest growth rate of Protestantism in Mexico and indigenous women outnumber men in conversion. Yet few studies on religion in Oaxaca have examined how indigenous women have negotiated religious conversion with traditional customs and rituals. Using religious conflict cases documented in Oaxaca's municipal, state and judicial archives, oral histories of Zapotec and Mixtec converts, and transnational missionary literature, McIntyre traces the early expansion of mainline Protestantism and the subsequent explosion of Pentecostalism in Oaxaca.
In 2005, McIntyre completed a master’s in Latin American Studies at UNM. She served as a western civilizations teaching assistant in history from 2005-2008 and a LAII Ph.D. fellow from 2008-2010. As a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellow, she studied the Mixtec language in Oaxaca and the gendered impact of migration in sending communities. Prior to graduate school, she worked for two years as an advocate for Latina immigrant victims of domestic violence at Grace Smith House in New York. Her scholarly interests reflect her interest in social justice.
UNM history professors Manuel Garcia y Griego, Kimberly Gauderman, Elizabeth Hutchison; Anthropology Professor Les Field; and Cynthia Radding, history professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, also serve on McIntyre's committee. McIntyre will use the award to complete and defend her dissertation.
Since 1888, the AAUW's prestigious American fellowship has recognized outstanding graduate women through financial support of their writing, research and publications.
The award is highly selective: last year five percent of applicants received the award. The AAUW supports and advances educational opportunities for women, and its competitive dissertation fellowship is part of the AAUW's mission to "recognize outstanding women around the globe" and fund "pioneering research" related to women. The award is based on scholarly excellence, teaching experience, and active commitment to helping women through service in their communities, professions, or fields of research.
For a related story visit: Office of Graduate Studies Announces Awards.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Student Health and Counseling, along with the American Medical Student Association, Premedical Chapter at UNM, present the 2010 Student Health Fair on Wednesday, April 28 and Thursday, April 29, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. in Cornell Plaza.
The fair aims to increase health awareness and access through education and prevention. It features a pre-health career fair and information on health screenings, dancing and yoga workshops, alternative and multicultural healing, holistic medicine, substance abuse prevention and cessation, and other health care issues.
Participants can also take part in prize drawings, music and healthy sack lunches. A silent auction will benefit the Native Health Initiative and Casa de Salud.
Students, faculty and staff are encouraged to participate. The event is free and open to the public.
For more information about the health fair, visit Student Health Fair or call (505) 459-4793.
Story by Jazmen Bradford
The Art Education faculty and Masley Gallery presents the 2010 All Graduating Art Education Students exhibition April 30 through May 15. The artwork will be on display beginning Friday, April 30. Presentations and a reception will be held on Saturday, May 15, following the CoE convocation at approximately 3:15 p.m. at the Masley Gallery on the UNM Campus.
The UNM community is cordially invited to attend the exhibition featuring featuring the diverse and exciting work of the 2010 graduating art education BA and MA students. Each student will be showing 1-2 pieces of artwork
completed during his or her degree program.
Masley Gallery is located in Masley Hall on the north side of the UNM campus. Gallery hours are Monday - Friday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
For more information e-mail parted@unm.edu or call, 277-4112.
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu
Christopher Shultis, composer, scholar and regent’s professor of music, has been selected to deliver UNM’s 55th Annual Research Lecture on Tuesday, May 4, at 7 p.m., in the George Pearl Hall auditorium. A reception begins at 6 p.m. The Annual Research Lecture is one of the highest honors UNM bestows on its faculty.
Photo: Scholar and Regent's Professor Christopher Shultis
Shultis will discuss “The Dialectics of Experimentalism,” a decade-long research project that delves into the separation between experimental composers in the United States and continental Europe. He will also discuss his place as a composer within, or between, this divide.
“The Dialectics of Experimentalism” in its entirety is a book-length study, representing Shultis’ most recent work as a researcher.
Shultis joined UNM in 1980. He has received numerous honors, including two Fulbright awards. As director of percussion studies 1980-96, Shultis worked closely with renowned composers including Ernst Krenek, Lou Harrison, Michael Colgrass and John Cage. His performance of Konrad Boehmer’s “Schreeuw Van Deze Aarde” for solo percussion earned him an Edison award for best new music recording.
In 1993, KNME television produced a half-hour program, “Model and Reality,” devoted to Shultis’ work. His activities as a scholar and creative artist continually draw on his previous activities as a solo percussionist and conductor of the acclaimed UNM Percussion Ensemble.
Shultis has served as artistic director of UNM’s John Donald Robb Composers’ Symposium since 2001. His book, “Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition,” is one of two books on John Cage recommended in the Grout History of Western Music.
“Professor Shultis has opened up new areas of intellectual inquiry within a very interdisciplinary context. In this regard, he has at least two substantial careers – one as a superb musician and performer and another as a scholar with great curiosity, cutting across a range of intellectual domains,” said Nancy Uscher, provost, California Institute of the Arts.
Media Contact: Sari Krosinsky, (505) 277-1593; e-mail: michal@unm.edu
Associate Professor of Journalism Richard Schaefer gave a presentation on his stay at a migrant shelter, Casa Migrante, at the Crises and Opportunities in Latin America conference at the University of California, Riverside recently. The presentation relates on-going work of the Cross-Border Issues Group.
Photo: Richard Schaefer
Within the last six years a system of church-funded, privately run migrant shelters has developed throughout Mexico. At the direction of church groups, two or three lay people will typically rent or buy run-down warehouse space near the rail yards where Central American migrants hop freight trains to come to the United States.
After minimal renovation the albergues invite migrants in to get warm meals and spend the night. Casa de Migrante, located north of Mexico City in the municipality Tutitlán. The mission, adjacent to the Lechería freight yard, opened its doors in early 2009. Like most albergues, it has traditionally only permitted migrants to spend three nights before resuming their perilous journeys.
The overwhelming majority of the migrants in the albergue are Honduran men who hope to become part of the undocumented labor force in Northern Mexico and the United States, but a few may be returning to Honduras or Guatemala after working for months or years in the United States.
To view the video visit: Casa de Migrante: An Albergue System Profile.
Dr. Steven Brueck has been named as the first STC.UNM Innovation Fellow. Brueck, a Distinguished Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Physics & Astronomy, was recognized as one of UNM’s top innovators at the 7th Annual STC Creative Awards Reception held recently.
Photo: Steven Brueck
Lisa Kuuttila, President of STC.UNM, said, “Steve Brueck has a long career of innovation at UNM, including 28 issued patents and 9 license agreements, with many commercialization successes. This award recognizes his significant achievements in translating his research results into commercial applications.”
Brueck has been an integral part of ECE and is the long time Director of UNM’s Center of High Technology Materials. The center celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. Brueck is a Fellow of IEEE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Optical Society of America, and he is a recipient of the IEEE Third Millennium Award. He was honored in 2009 by NM Business Weekly as one of it’s first-ever “Who's Who in Technology” award recipients. He was named in the Technologists category. In addition, Brueck is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) at Sandia National Laboratories and on the Board of Directors of LightPath Technologies.
Brueck’s research group at CHTM is actively involved in the extension of optical lithography to the 32-nanometer half-pitch industry node and beyond. The researchers are interested in using these nanoscale lithographic capabilities to investigate nanophotonics and nanofluidics aimed at biological application.
Brueck has more than 350 refereed publications, has presented more than 200 invited papers and seminars. In addition, Brueck has served on a number of National Academies panels, including a recently published study on nanophotonics.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
In the wake of the tragic loss of UNM graduate student Stefania Gray and Professor Hector Torres, the UNM Department of English and the Women Studies program are organizing a symposium in September 2010 to raise awareness of domestic violence by placing it within a broader socio-cultural and political framework.
“We seek to educate the community on how to identify and understand the problem, to inform the public about the resources available to deal with the issue, and to ensure that victims of domestic violence are adequately protected and defended by our legal and juridical institutions,” said Raji Vallury, assistant professor, Foreign Languages and Literatures.
Organizers seek proposals for individual presentations or panel sessions from a variety of disciplinary perspectives: cultural, historical, sociological, psychological, aesthetic, criminal, legal and political. They welcome contributions by representatives of advocacy groups as well as community outreach and public services.
Individual presentations may range from 15 to 20 minutes, and panel sessions from 60 to 90 minutes.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following questions:
1. What is domestic violence? How do we define it? How can we map its historical genealogy? How is it coded in our cultural or social imaginary? In juridico-political discourse? What are the recognizable forms through which it is produced and understood? How is it represented in music, film, fiction, art, and the media? How do such cultural representations tolerate, "normalize," or even encourage domestic violence? How do these ways of framing or coding domestic violence prevent us from addressing the problem in a more effective manner?
2. What are the signs of domestic violence? How do we treat the problem? What are the available modes of intervention? How do we stop it? How do we cope with it? How do we defend or protect ourselves against it? How can we improve modes of legal, juridical, and penal protection? What community resources are available to victims of domestic violence?
To participate in the symposium, email a title and a 250-300 word abstract of your presentation or panel session to Raji Vallury (rvallury@unm.edu) by June 1. Submit as a Word document. Advise at time of submission of any audiovisual equipment needs.
The organizing committee will convene shortly thereafter and inform contributors about format and structure of the program. The exact date of the symposium will be established by midsummer.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
The Latin American and Iberian Institute hosts the OPECOBO group from Peru, Colombia and Bolivia presenting, "Indigenous women and the traditional use of land, seeds and natural resources," Wednesday, April 28 at noon in the SUB Acoma Room. Attendees are welcome to bring their lunch.
The speakers’ main focus is the land (madre tierra) and its sustainable use. Each presenter focuses on her local reality, the cultural meaning of the land, its ancestral use, the cultural use of natural resources, the preservation, selection and use of seeds and the land's relation to indigenous languages and the role of indigenous women.
These indigenous sisters have been working with native education, language preservation and in the recovering of heritage songs, histories, dances and games. They are currently studying eco-tourism at Alamo College in San Antonio.
The program opens with a traditional blessing by an elder, followed by the panel which will include songs, dramatization, a presentation and questions and answers.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
State and community leaders, as well as students from the state’s high schools and universities will discuss the Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act at the DREAM Conference at the University of New Mexico, Tuesday-Thursday, May 4-6.
An information table at UNM’s Student Union Building, is the place to start to learn more about the DREAM Conference, which aims to educate the public about the DREAM Act and its effects, while also starting discussions about the issue broadly.
On Wednesday, May 5 conference events begin with morning workshops, a lunchtime Cinco de Mayo celebration, a forum with state senators, UNM faculty and community leaders speaking and a screening of the documentary “Papers.”
On Thursday, May 6, events are geared toward the UNM campus community – a second showing of “Papers,” a mock graduation and a Critical Issues Round Table.
If passed, the DREAM Act provides a path to citizenship for those who came into the country before they turned 16 years old, graduated from high school and join the military or enroll in a higher education institution.
The controversial issue has gained support in recent years and was introduced into the Senate in 2009. The College Board, Microsoft, Harvard University and several other universities around the country have embraced and expressed support for the DREAM Act.
Sponsors include: Albuquerque Dreamers in Action, College Democrats, College Enrichment and Outreach Programs, El Centro de la Raza, Engaging Latino Communities for Education, Lambda Theta Phi Latino Fraternity, Inc., League of United Latin American Citizens, Mexican Student Association, Movimiento Estudiantíl Chicana/o de Aztlán, Project for New Mexico Graduates of Color, Raza Graduate Student Association and Somos Un Pueblo Unido.
For more information contact Andrea Salazar, asal19@unm.edu; or visit Conference Schedule.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
The Student Union Building celebrates its 50th birthday this year. From Wednesday, April 28 through Friday, April 30 the SUB will host events from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the atrium. Students, faculty and staff can enjoy 50’s music, a yo-yo and bubble gum blowing competition, photo booth, mini-burgers, fries and Pepsi on Wednesday; a jitterbug anonymous performance, Twister and Hula Hoop competition, canoli and cheesecake on Thursday; and chili dogs, lemonade and birthday cake on Friday.
Over the years, the SUB has grown and accommodated more than 60,000 students who enter the SUB each week. The Student Union Building was opened in the late 1950’s for 7,000 students. Its future vision remains committed to providing facilities and services supportive of the daily needs of the student as well as the University community.
For a complete schedule of events visit: SUB Celebrates 50 Years.
Media Contact: Corine Gonzales, (505) 277-0839; e-mail: corineg@unm.edu
New Mexico Press Women recognized UNM with 14 awards in its annual communication contest.
Six first place awards went to:
• Jana Fothergill and John Sumrow, University Communication and Marketing, and Ellen Biderman, Family Development Program, College of Education, for “Watch Me Play, Watch Me Learn.”
• Laurie Mellas, Parent Relations, and Kim Jarigese and Sharon Steely, Extended University, for UNM Family Weekend. Mellas also received a third place award for Parent Matters, a monthly e-newsletter for parents of UNM students.
• Linda Thornton, UNM-Gallup, for “Anthropology Student Takes Knowledge Home.”
• Mara Kerkez, UCAM, for “Dancing with a Tiger By the Tail” in Mirage Magazine.
• Sherri Burr, School of Law, for “Keep Film Rebate Caps on Shelf” in the Albuquerque Journal and “Minding Finances,” a Southwest Writers column.
First place winners go on to national competition.
UNM staff and faculty also received seven second place awards:
• Chellis Glendinning, KUNM, for “Reconcito en El Cielo.”
• Carolyn Gonzales, UCAM, and Richard Schaefer, Department of Communication and Journalism, for a UNM alumni profile blog.
• Sari Krosinsky, Jana Fothergill and Gonzales, UCAM, for the print edition of UNM Today.
• Megan Kamerick, KUNM, for “Nonprofit Blues,” “Women’s Focus: Chicana Badgirls” and an interview with Anne Weaver.
• Sherri Burr for her speech “Good Job + Right Path = Life Purpose.”
In addition to the communication contest, NMPW’s Zia Book Award was given to Jeanette Boyer’s “Junkyard Dreams” (UNM Press), and scholarships were awarded to three UNM students: Abigail Ramirez, Florencio Olguin and Gabriela Elise Campos.
For information visit New Mexico Press Women.
Media Contact: Sari Krosinsky, (505) 277-1593; e-mail: michal@unm.edu
On Monday, May 3, Raven Compact Discs will release nationally, “Dream a Little Dream,” a new album by Las Cantantes, the UNM women’s choir, with Director Maxine Thévenot. The CD features 12 pieces, including the premiere recording of UNM Professor Bradley Ellingboe’s “Getting Used to Heavens,” which sets to music part of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. In celebration of the new release, Las Cantantes will perform on Friday, May 7, at 7:30 p.m. at the Cathedral of St. John, 318 Silver Ave. SW.
The piece describes personal interactions and responses to art and music. Ellingboe is director of choral activities at UNM and founded Las Cantantes in 1994.
The title song, “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” was first recorded in 1931 by Ozzie Nelson and his orchestra and most famously in 1968 by Mama Cass Eliot. National Public Radio declared “Dream a Little Dream” as one of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. It was composed by Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt, with lyrics by Gus Kahn. Glenda Tippett arranged the song for treble choir.
Other works on the CD include the rarely-heard “Messe bréve” by Leo Delibes; settings of two gospel songs, “Steal Away” and “My God is a Rock;” works recently composed for women’s choir by Imant Raminsh, Robert Nelson, Eugene Butler, Richard Kidd, Nicholas White and Daniel Kallman; “Five Motets” by Jean Langlais; and “Tantum ergo” by Gabriel Fauré.
The 20 women of Las Cantantes and their director recorded the album in Keller Hall and at the Cathedral of St. John. The accompanists are pianist Anne Laird and organist Iain Quinn. Thévenot accompanies one work on piano.
The May 7 performance includes selections from CD. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for seniors over 65 or $5 for students at the door.
For more information visit: Las Cantantes.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Undergraduates at UNM and high school students who qualify can receive up to $5,000 a year as part of a new grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Principal Investigator Tariq Khraishi from Mechanical Engineering says students will have to demonstrate financial need as well as potential for academic success. A 3.0 grade point average will be needed. High school students must be admitted to the School of Engineering at UNM as well as to the university in order to be eligible.
This is a multi-year grant and scholarships can be renewed if student continues to meet criteria. Faculty members involved as co-principal investigators are Steve Peralta director of Engineering Student Services (ESS), Heather Canavan assistant professor of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering, Ganesh Balakrishnan assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Andrea Mammoli associate professor of Mechanical Engineering.
Students interested in applying for the scholarships can mail or hand-deliver the complete NSF STEM Scholarship Application package to:
NSF Scholarships
Engineering Student Services
MSC01 1145
Centennial Engineering Building
Room 2080
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico 131-0001
The deadline for submitting applications is July 1, 2010. Students who have questions (including those wanting to obtain the application forms) can contact the NSF Scholarship Coordinator, Elsa M. Castillo, at nsfstem@unm.edu or call (505) 277-5064.
Vijay A. Ramchandani, investigator and section chief on Human Psychopharmacology at the Laboratory of Clinical and Translational Studies at the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism will present a talk on Thursday, April 29, at 11:45 a.m. in the MRN Large Conference Room of Pete and Nancy Domenici Hall on the UNM North Campus.
Photo: Vijay Ramchandani
The talk is titled, “Relationship between Alcohol Pharmacodynamics and Alcoholism Risk: Human Laboratory Studies.” Ramchandani says the overall goal of research in his group is to evaluate the determinants of variability in the pharmacokinetics and CNS pharmacodynamics of alcohol, using behavioral, neuroendocrine, electrophysiological, and functional imaging measures, towards understanding the relationship between the acute and adaptive response to alcohol and genetic as well as environmental risk factors for the development of alcoholism.
Two alcohol administration paradigms form the foundation of the work are: (1) the alcohol clamp, and (2) computer-assisted self-infusion of ethanol (CASE). Both methods employ intravenous (IV) administration of alcohol solutions, which when combined with a physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model for ethanol, results in systemic (and therefore brain) alcohol exposures that are extremely precise and well-controlled.
“We have used these methods to evaluate the influence of risk factors including sex, age, drinking history and genetic polymorphisms on alcohol responses and alcohol self-administration behavior in our human laboratory studies,” said Ramchandani.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Leigh Johnson, doctoral candidate in American Literary Studies, received the 2010-11 American Association of University Women’s $20,000 dissertation fellowship for, “Domestic Violence and Empire: Legacies of Conquest in Mexican American Writing.” The AAUW supports and advances educational opportunities for women, and its competitive dissertation fellowship is part of the AAUW’s mission to “recognize outstanding women around the globe” and fund “pioneering research” related to women.
Photo: Leigh Johnson
The award is based on scholarly excellence, teaching experience and active commitment to helping women through service in their communities, professions,or fields of research.
Johnson’s dissertation project, directed by Jesse Alemán, associate professor, English, spans the 19th-century to the present and examines how Mexican American writers represent and critique domestic violence as it occurs in the home but also as a form of colonial violence that implicates Mexican and U.S. forms of patriarchy in the treatment of women. Johnson’s project examines such writers as María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Maria Cristina Mena, Sandra Cisneros and Demetria Martínez, to name a few, and portions of it have already been published in peer-reviewed journals.
“Leigh’s work corresponds with her commitment to combine her interests in literary studies, women’s studies and Chicano/a studies in the classroom and in her scholarship,” Alemán said.
UNM professors Tey Diana Rebolledo, Spanish and Portuguese, Barbara Reyes, history, and Sonia Saldívar-Hull, UT-San Antonio, English, also serve on Johnson’s dissertation committee. She plans to use the one-year tenure of the AAUW fellowship to complete and defend her dissertation in spring 2011.
For a related story visit: Office of Graduate Studies Announces Awards.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
The UNM Office of Graduate Studies recently announced the winners of several new scholarships and awards for 2009-10, as well as the Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship.
“These awards – for faculty and graduate students – are designed to support timely completion of theses and dissertations and promote mentoring initiatives. They also provide the opportunity for future faculty to attend institutes and conferences to do something they can’t do at UNM to prepare them for professorship,” Harrison said.
OGS also awarded several President’s Assistantships, Provost’s Assistantships, Assistantship Supplements, Research Project and Travel grants and Higher Education Department 3 percent awards.
The Graduate Research Supplement is for ABD (all but dissertation) students pursuing advanced writing and research.
Recipients:
Subhadra Bobban, biomedical sciences, “Shrimp anti-bacterial toxicity”
B. Erin Cole, history, “Environment, race and the shaping of urban/suburban space in Denver, Colorado, 1947-1990”
Jamie Reed, chemical engineering, “Fundamental detachment mechanisms of smart polymers”
Lyman Persico, Earth and Planetary Sciences, “Holocene climate change impact on Greater Yellowstone ecosystem”
The Future Faculty Awards support summer coursework, research or development opportunities not available at UNM that prepare students for higher education careers.
Recipients:
Ryan Scott Crow, Earth and Planetary Sciences, to attend a workshop on the origin and evolution of the Colorado River System. This workshop is only offered every 10 years, Harrison said.
Gregory Evans, English, to work at the Jefferson Library and Hannah Arendt Center focusing on hermeneutic and post-process pedagogies for teaching critical thinking
Jessica Nodulman, Communication & Journalism, to attend “The Teaching Professor” conference and pre-conference workshop for future faculty.
Faculty Mentor Awards go to faculty who demonstrate excellence in mentoring activities that benefit graduate students in his or her own or other departments.
Recipients:
Karen Foss, professor, Communication & Journalism, who presented numerous advising workshops on creating advising relationships, writing and publishing for graduate students. She works with graduate students across the department on data analysis, committee selection and negotiating a job search. She mentors in forming research teams, panels for convention programs and established a graduate student exchange program.
Wendy Hansen, professor, political science, who publishes peer-reviewed articles in top journals with graduate students; helps other colleagues’ students with research methods, co-authors conference papers with graduate students and received five grant awards to support graduate student research. Additionally, Hansen helps graduate students with grant proposals and funding efforts.
Graduate Student Mentor Awards go to graduate students who demonstrate excellence in mentoring that benefits students in his or her own or other departments.
Recipients:
Elizabeth Dickinson, Communication & Journalism, who is a mentor for master’s and doctoral students, is a C&J buddy for incoming students, is involved in recruitment and retention programs and participated in PNMGC (Project for New Mexico Graduates of Color) mentoring. She also helps other students mentor effectively.
Ilse Biel, anthropology, who has long-term service with the Anthropology Graduate Student Union. She serves as a bridge between graduate students’ interests and faculty and college/university, she mentors incoming and current graduate students in academic matters and support services. She mentors undergraduates, as well.
Heidi Pitts, economics, organized regular coffee club discussions for graduate students, established a series of talks and a seminar on the job market and mentors in academic issues and support.
The Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship provides $8,000 to the recipient:
Michele Leiby, political science, “Why Soldiers Rape: Understanding Wartime Sexual Violence in Latin American Civil Wars,” a comparative analysis of the prevalence and use of rape during Latin American armed conflicts, with particular focus on the Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Peruvian civil wars.
Dean’s Dissertation Scholarships provide recipients with $1,000 each:
Mary Avila, Art/Art History
Connie Constan, Anthropology
Margaret Frisbee, History
Joseph Garcia, Latin American Studies
Alison Green, OLIT
Hongbo He, Mechanical Engineering
Hari Kutawi, Economics
Jessica Metcalfe, Physics & Astronomy
Ethan Mills, Philosophy
Cleophas Muneri, Communication & Journalism
Shadi Naderi, Mathematics and Statistics
Jamie Reed, Chemical/Nuclear Engineering
Zonia Rodriguez, Spanish & Portuguese
Agripino Silveira, Linguistics
Higher Education Department [HED] Graduate Scholarships provide $7,200 per year and are renewable. Recipients provide 10 hours per week of unpaid internship.
Harrison said, "The 47 HED Graduate Scholarships went to underrepresented graduate students in departments ranging from Anthropology and American Studies to Educational Specialties, Public Administration and Community and Regional Planning."
Recipients:
Frank Alvarez, History
Mona Angel, Community & Regional Planning
Valorie Aquino, Anthropology
Antonio Barreras, Public Administration
Geneva Becenti, Language, Literacy, Socio-cultural Studies
Matthew Berch, History
Kevin Brown, Anthropology
William Burnside, Biology
Jodi Burshia, Language, Literacy, Socio-cultural Studies
Santos Contreras, Educational Specialties
Jaelyn deMaria, Communication & Journalism
James Dory-Garduno, History
Kathryn Fischer, Juris Doctor
Dina Gilio, American Studies
Breanna Griego, History
Lucinda Grinnell, History
Laura Guerrero, Philosophy
Martin Gutierrez, Public Admin
Yasmin Khan, Community & Regional Planning
Tarah Kesse, Latin American Studies
Michelle Kiser, Linguistics
Kathryn Lenberg, Psychology
Clifford Lucero, Individual, Family and Community Education
Javier Martinez, Law
Marcial Martinez, History
Andrea Mays, American Studies
Carmen Mosely, Anthropology
Nydia Mozingo-Martinez, History
Vangee Nez, Language, Literacy, Socio-cultural Studies
Xavier Ortiz, Speech Language Pathology
Maria Otero, Art History
Bianca Paiz, American Studies
Mark Paz, Architecture
Keira Philipp-Schnurer, Latin American Studies
Luanne Redeye, Art & Art History
Jessica Roberts, Latin American Studies
Karen Roybal-Montoya, American Studies
Riti Sachdeva, Master of Fine Arts
Lisa Sanchez, Political Science
Carmen Samora, American Studies
Sarah Santillanes, Language, Literacy, Socio-cultural Studies
Kelley Sawyer, Anthropology
Elizabeth Silva, Language, Literacy, Socio-cultural Studies
Johnnita Tsabetsaye, Economics
Norion Ubechel, Community & Regional Planning
Kristen Valencia, American Studies
Melanie Yazzie, American Studies
AAUW Dissertation Fellowship provides $20,000 for dissertation work.
UNM had two recipients: Leigh Johnson, American Literary Studies, for “Domestic Violence and Empire: Legacies of Conquest in Mexican American Writing.”
For a related story on Leigh Johnson visit: English Doctoral Student Garners AAUW Dissertation Fellowship
The second recipient is Kathleen M. McIntyre, a doctoral student in History and a Latin American and Iberian Institute Ph.D. fellow. McIntyre's dissertation project is, "Contested Spaces: The Rise of Protestantism in Oaxaca, 1920-1994."
For a related story on Kathleen McIntyre visit: History Doctoral Candidate Earns $20,000 Dissertation Prize
Santa Fe AAUW provided two scholarships. The recipients are Brittany Branch, Nano Science and Microsystems, who received $2,000; and Sara Abercrombie, Individual & Family Counseling, who received $1,500.
The University of New Mexico Technology Business Plan Competition was held recently and the excitement for the 5th annual event and $40,000 in prize money including a $25,000 first prize. Protocell LLC, took the top prize and the Michael Gallegos Prize for Entrepreneurship. Second place and $10,000 went to Southwest Bio-Recycling, while Mimic Tracking Systems took third and a $5,000 award. The annual event is hosted by the Anderson School of Management.
Photo: Provost Suzanne Ortega (left) and Anderson School Dean Douglas Brown (far right) award the Michael Gallegos Prize for Entrepreneurship to James Massengale, Carlee Ashley, and Lindsey Wesenberg of Protocell, LLC.
The goal of Protocell, LLC and team members Carlee Ashley (Ph.D., Engineering), James Massengale (MBA) and Lindsey Wesenberg (MBA), is to take the newly invented protocell technology through Phase I clinical trials for the treatment of cancer. Due to its stability, specificity, and cargo capacity, this nanoparticle, when coupled with a drug or therapeutic agent, is one million times more effective than current delivery methods available for the treatment of cancer.
Protocell, LLC will assist in moving this technology forward through the FDA approval process for the treatment of liver cancer, pediatric leukemia, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, and ultimately for any arbitrary cancer.
The TVC Lockheed Martin Prize amd $10,000 went to second place Southwest Bio-Recycling including team members Olena Dziuba (BBA) and Khoi Le (MBA). The entity provides collection, filtration, and transportation of waste vegetable oil for blending of clean bio-diesel, reducing the environmental impact of restaurant food production and reducing dependency on imported energy by recycling waste into renewable energy.
The City of Albuquerque prize and $5,000 went to third place finishers Mimic Tracking Systems. Team members include Adam Heying (MBA), Whitney Sanzero (MBA) and John Soladay (MBA). Mimic Tracking Systems seeks to address the needs of high communication and situational awareness for first responders by providing the Umbra, a hand-held, real-time, secure tracking and communications device.
Media Contact: Jennifer Bayley, (505) 277-6172; e-mail: bayley@mgt.unm.edu
The Tamarind Institute at UNM presents “Bleeding Hour,” an exhibition of lithographs by members of Tamarind’s Professional Printer Training Program and their teacher, Master Printer and Education Director Rodney Hamon. The exhibit runs Friday, April 23-Friday, April 30, with an opening reception on April 23, 5-7 p.m. at the Tamarind Institute, 110 Cornell Drive SE.
The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public. Works are for sale. Participants include Preston Christensen, Peter Haarz, Jen Slezak, Jon Vogt and May Yang.
The gallery is open Monday-Friday, from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Contact Arif Khan, gallery director, at (505) 277-3901.
Forty years ago the Earth Day phenomenon was born. This week, New Mexico In Focus takes a closer look at the modern day environmental movement with a focus on our relationship with food. New Mexico In Focus airs on Friday, April 23 at 7 p.m. and repeats Sunday, April 25 at 6:30 a.m.
Other discussion items include...
• How New Mexico Schools Are Helping Students Reconnect
With The Earth, By Growing Their Own Gardens
• Environmental Debates Now Brewing Here In The Land Of
Enchantment
Guests this week on New Mexico In Focus...
• Le Adams, Regional Lead, "Farm to Schools" Program
• Jennie McCary, Wellness Manager, Albuquerque Public Schools
• Bruce Milne, Director, UNM Sustainability Studies Program
Additionally, viewers can also watch New Mexico In Focus online at: KNME. Get updates, watch, and follow KNME on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more.
“New Mexico in Focus” is produced by Kevin McDonald and Kathy Wimmer and closed captioning has been made possible by a gift from Mrs. Elspeth G. Bobbs.
Media Contact: Evy Todd, (505) 277-1812; e-mail: etodd@knme.org
A UNM Earth Day event, “Mapping the Field(s) through Time and Space: Earth and Environment across the Disciplines,” is set for Thursday, April 22 from noon to 4:30 p.m. in the Student Union Building Scholar’s Room. The event is free and open to the public.
Program
Noon to 12:45 p.m. - Introduction and Opening Remarks
Keynote by Bruce T. Milne, biology professor and director of UNM’s Sustainability Studies program, presenting, “Lenses for the Transition to an Ecological Era.”
1 – 2 p.m. Panel A
Daniel Schwartz, sociology lecturer, “Perfect Storm and Paradigm Shifts”
David Groenfeldt, adjunct associate professor of anthropology and director, Water and Culture Institute, “The Next Nexus: Environmental Ethics, Water Management, and Climate Change”
Allison Hagerman, philosophy doctoral candidate, “An Uncanny Nature: Exploring the Potential Virtue of an Undervalued Environmental Aesthetic”
2:15 – 3:15 p.m. - Panel B
Dino Gilio, master’s student, American Studies, “An Indigenous Approach to Environmental Justice”
Monique Belitz, master of fine arts student, drawing and painting, “Traces of Humanity”
Alex Curtas, master’s student, philosophy, “The Nature in Man; or, So Many Walking Monsters”
3:30 – 4:30 p.m. - Panel C
Russell Duvernoy, master’s student, philosophy, “Signs of Life: Heidegger and Animals in Being and Time”
David B. Visser, doctoral candidate in literature at UC Boulder, “Maps, Half-Naked Women, and Armadillos: Exoticizing and Eroticizing the New World”
Katherine Alexander, doctoral candidate, English, “Georgia O’Keeffe’s Garden: Her Palette of Flowers – Beautiful Spaces in Sublime Places”
For more information, contact Erin Penner at epenner@unm.edu.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Ewart becomes first MWC Player of the Year to win honor four consecutive seasons
Senior Jodi Ewart shot a 1-under 71 to win her school-record fifth individual title and lead 21st-ranked New Mexico to its third straight Mountain West Conference women's golf championship today in Seaside, Calif. The Lobos finished at 898, nine shots better than TCU at the Black Horse Golf Course. The Lobos earn the MWC's automatic berth to the NCAA Championships. The 20th-ranked Lobos will compete next, May 6-8, in Indiana in the NCAA Central Regional.
Photo: Jodi Ewart
New Mexico has won seven of the 11 conference championships since the MWC started in 2000. Ewart was also named MWC Player of the Year for the fourth straight season. She is the first student-athlete in any MWC-sponsored sport to earn the award four times.
For the full story visit: Ewart sets school record.
For the second consecutive year, University of New Mexico Hospital Pulmonary Services Department has earned the Quality Respiratory Care Recognition (QRCR) under a national program aimed at helping patients and families make informed decisions about the quality of the respiratory care services available in hospitals.
The QRCR program was started by the American Association for Respiratory Care (AARC) in 2003 to help consumers identify those facilities using qualified respiratory therapists to provide respiratory care. Hospitals that earn the QRCR designation ensure patient safety by agreeing to adhere to a strict set of criteria governing their respiratory care services.
Respiratory therapists are specially trained health care professionals who work under physician’s orders to provide a wide range of breathing treatments and other services to people with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis, lung cancer, AIDS, and other lung-related conditions. They also care for premature infants and are key members of lifesaving response teams charged with handling medical emergencies.
A list of QRCR hospitals can be found on the AARC’s web site at: Your Lung Health.
UNM architecture students recently participated in the 2010 Head to Toe Annual conference on school based health care. Gabriella Gutierrez, associate professor, School of Architecture and Planning, engaged 11 architecture graduate students last fall in investigating and designing a school based health care center for a middle or high school founded on method of prefabrication.
Photo (l. to r.): Vanessa Garcia, Luis Marquez, and Kristin Flurry present their design ideas during the Head to Toe conference on school based health care. Not pictured - Edgar Mata.
Design work by four of the students – Vanessa Garcia, Luis Marquez, Kristin
Flurry and Edgar Mata – was selected by board members of the New Mexico Alliance for School-Based Health Care because “the board believed their projects were realistic and beautifully worked out and, most importantly, they could imagine them replacing some the not-so-great environments that school based healthcare programs are housed in around the state of New Mexico,” Gutierrez said.
The New Mexico Alliance for School-Based Health Care, a non-profit advocacy organization, invited the students to participate in conference events at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Their work was exhibited at the convention center and they were recognized for their design work.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Anne Snider, database coordinator with Information Technologies (IT), passed away April 14, 2010. A longtime UNM employee, Snider started at UNM in 1982 in the University Architect's Office. She also worked with the Office of the Medical Examiner, before starting with IT in 1991. A memorial service for Snider will be held Friday, April 30, at 10:30 a.m. in the Alumni Chapel.
For more information contact Val Anzalone at 277-8375.
8 teams fill up with members for annual Lobo Club mmbership drive
It was Draft Day for the Lobo Club Ambassadors Program on Saturday, April 17. Draft commissioner Chris Cates supervised the proceedings in the Lobo Club Board Room. After 12 intense rounds of the Lobo Club Draft, eight teams were finalized and each team is looking forward to another exciting and competitive Lobo Club Membership Drive. Like all UNM student-athletes, these individuals strive to make UNM the best in the Mountain West.
The Ambassador Program assists the Lobo Club, the fundraising arm of UNM Athletics, in annual Lobo Club renewals with the overall goal of increasing Lobo Club members and donations. The Lobo Club raises money for UNM student-athlete scholarships, building the foundation on which all success is built and providing opportunities for excellence in Lobo Athletics.
Throughout the next two months, Ambassadors will be working to renew donor memberships, along with encouraging others to invest in UNM Athletics and its student-athletes through the Lobo Club! There also are many incentives and competitions with exclusive prizes to keep the Ambassador teams motivated.
Do not be surprised if an Ambassador asks you to join the Lobo Club in the near future! Hopefully when you receive the call, asking you to invest in UNM Athletics, you will proudly join The Team Behind the Teams. Your investment will pay dividends in the form of conference championships, individual accolades and most of all, degrees for UNM student-athletes.
There are numerous benefits to being a Lobo Club member, including men’s and women’s basketball and football priority parking and seating, weekly Lobo Tracks email, exclusive event invites and much more with contribution levels starting at just $50.
For more information about how you can make an impact on UNM Athletics, by serving as a Lobo Club Ambassador or as a member of the Lobo Club visit: Lobo Club or call (505) 925-5014.
Media Contacts: Judy Willson, (505) 925-5851 or Carly Newlands, (505) 925-5600
Water Update - Wednesday, April 21, 6:11 p.m.
Information from the State Labs report that there are no unusual concentrations of bacteria, Volatile Organic Compounds, or metals in the samples submitted. UNM has experienced a non-contaminating, non-hazardous discoloration of our well water. UNM remains on City water until further notice.
Water Update - Wednesday, April 21, 6:33 a.m.
The UNM Physical Plant has cleared all of UNM main campus and HSC for normal use of the water system, which has been fully switched to city water. Tests are being conducted to determine what caused the discolored water found in some main campus taps yesterday.
Water Update - Tuesday, April 20, 8:27 p.m.
Tonight, the UNM Physical Plant has cleared all UNM residence halls for normal use of the water system, which has been fully switched to city water. The remainder of main campus and HSC will be notified of clearance for normal water usage early tomorrow morning, April 21.
Water Update - Tuesday, April 20, 4:30 p.m.
Physical Plant employees continue to flush the campus water system after discolored water was found coming from some main campus taps this morning. The system has been switched to city water and PPD continues to check buildings, with priority being given to housing and food service areas. Those are expected to be back in full service this evening. Campus Housing Services will keep dorm residents informed.
It is anticipated that the rest of campus will be back to full service by morning. Until notified, please continue to refrain from drinking tap water on campus.
Water Alert - Tuesday, April 20 - 10:40 a.m.
UNM main campus and HSC: Please refrain from drinking or using any tap water on campus until further notice by request of Physical Plant Department.
The Anderson School of Management continues its successful Business to Business Breakfast series on Tuesday, April 27 at 7:30 am with Wells Fargo Senior Economist & Vice-President Dr. Eugenio J. Alemán. Alemán will look at the state of the world economy in his presentation The Financial Crisis and Its Effects on the U.S. and World Economies.
Photo: Eugenio J. Alemán
While the financial crisis originated in the United States the consequences of the fallout can be traced all over the world. Excessive risk taking gave ground to excessive risk aversion with a very interesting twist: capital flew into the U.S. rather than out, strengthening the U.S. dollar during that period. During the crisis, worldwide trade plummeted and the world economy was at the edge of an abyss. Strong fiscal and monetary policy across the globe prevented a total collapse of the world economy.
At Wells Fargo, Alemán forecasts national, regional, and international economic trends. His primary focus is the United States, including interest rates and the Texas economy and he is also an expert on the economies of Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. He has served as an adjunct professor of economics at Drexel University since 1999 and his commentaries have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. Dr. Alemán has also been featured on CNBC and in U.S. Hispanic media outlets.
The presentation will take place in the Jackson Student Center at the Anderson School on the UNM Campus and is offered free of charge. A light breakfast will be served.
Seating at the Business to Business Breakfast series is limited, please reserve a space via e-mail at, rsvp@mgt.unm.edu or by phone at (505) 277-6413. Free parking is available in the parking lot north of the Anderson School on a first come, first served basis. Additional spaces may be found in the parking structure next to Popejoy Hall for a nominal fee as well as at paid meters along Las Lomas.
This presentation is made possible in part through generous support from Wells Fargo N.A. and by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI-B Business and International Education Grant.
Media Contact: Leslie Venzuela, (505) 277-7117; e-mail: venzuela@mgt.unm.edu
Anderson's Annual Native American Career Fair gives businesses of all types the opportunity to recruit students from a pool of highly diverse candidates. This year's fair will be held Thursday, April 22, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Jackson Student Center.
Coordinated by the students of the American Indian Business Association, the Native American Career Fair is open to all Native and non-Native businesses and organizations who are interested in recruiting highly qualified individuals who will soon be receiving their college degrees.
Objectives
The Anderson Native American Career Fair began in April 2007 initially as an avenue for Native American businesses and organizations to recruit students from the Anderson School of Management. However, it was discovered that the career fair also attracted non-Native companies who were interested in recruiting Native American students. Thus, the Native American Career Fair is open to all Native and non-Native businesses and organizations who are interested in recruiting highly qualified individuals who will soon be receiving their college degrees.
The University of New Mexico and the Anderson School of Management have a diverse population of students who are eager to begin their careers in the various fields of Management. Therefore, the Native American Career Fair is a perfect fit meeting the needs of both recruiter and job seeker.
For a complete list of participating employers visit: Native American Career Fair.
The Accessibility Resource Center will host its first-ever "Student Week' Monday-Friday, April 26-30 around the UNM Campus. The week is designed to recognize employment, service and academic excellence for students with disabilities through workshops/seminars on work incentives, career planning and will include the second annual initiation ceremony for Delta Alphi Pi International Honor Society.
Additionally, a special day will be dedicated to students with disabilities transitioning from high school to UNM.
For more information and to RSVP for any of the events visit: Student Week, ARC Informational Week Agenda. Additionally, interested individuals may call Guiovanna Aguirre at 277-3506 or e-mail, gaguirre@unm.edu.
Media Contact: Dorene Dinaro, (505) 277-5299; e-mail: ddinaro@unm.edu
UNM-only talent show to benefit Center For Life Preventive & Integrative Medicine Clinic
In the spirit of Star Search and American Idol, UNM has tapped its most talented for a variety show that includes a jazz quartet, a classical pianist, dancing, vocalists and so much more. Whittled from 45 auditions to 12 highly entertaining acts performed by faculty, staff and/or students, You Got Talent? is slated May 8, 7:30-9:30 p.m. on UNM’s big stage, Popejoy Hall. Proceeds will benefit the UNM Health Sciences Center’s Center For Life Preventive and Integrative Medicine Specialty Clinic.
Tickets are on sale now - $20 for the general public; $12 for students; and $10 for kids 12 years and under. A special package of 50 seats and attendance at the post-performance gala with judges and performers runs $100 per seat.
This cadre of exceptional finalists will be judged by New Mexico Symphony Orchestra Conductor Guillermo Figueroa; Dance Theater Southwest Director Patricia Dickinson; KOB-TV 4 Anchor Tom Joles; UNM Executive Vice President for Health Sciences Dr. Paul Roth; and UNM Associate Professor of Music Dr. Patricia Repar. First place prize is $500; second place wins $300; and third place wins $200.
With generous support from Señor Pino Foods, New Mexico State Employee Credit Union and Sandia Oil Company, You Got Talent? promises to be a delightful evening of entertainment that will expand preventive and integrative medical services for patients coping with chronic diseases, and other preventable conditions. For more information, visit http://hsc.unm.edu/som/cfl or contact the Center For Life directly at 505/925-4551.
The University of New Mexico and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently hosted the 2010 SHRM Southwest Central Regional Student Conference at the Anderson School of Management. The Conference provided an important opportunity for HR professionals, advisors, and students from 10 surrounding states to network and to explore potential careers in HR and to participate in Jeopardy-style games that challenged the students’ knowledge of the HR profession. More than 160 students, advisors and volunteers participating in the conference.
Photo: SHRM conference attendees
"The commitment and hard work of organizers, students and volunteers added to the success of this event, which was quoted as being 'world class,' and 'put in the history books as the 2010 SHRM SWC Student Games that raised the bar for the legacy of this event,'" said Mark Christensen from Jobing.com.
Students considered the conference a great success and were impressed with the activities, training, games and giveaways that were offered. Brett Farmolie and Zach Hubbell, authors of Pursuit of Passion, keynote speakers, inspired students and volunteers to be creative and think differently when finding a career path that “Pursues their Passion.” Additionally, Lobo Louie and Lobo Lucy added to the spirit of the competition.
E-mails from students have been filled with enthusiasm and thanks, many of whom have already expressed an interest to attend next year’s conference.
Participant feedback...
“I’m so glad that I decided to come to NM for the student conference and had the chance to meet everyone who contributed, I had a blast”
“Congrats on an amazing conference! You all did a fantastic job of creating a polished event that reflected beautifully on the state, UNM, and SHRM! Kudos!”
“Students and volunteers left the event full of inspiration and pride. Their passion and excitement for Human Resources was energized and renewed!”
HR Consulting and Staff Employment Director Denise Montoya, Dr. Richard Holder, Deputy Provost, and Dean Doug Brown of the Anderson School of Management gave great support and time to make possible such a successful conference.
Special thanks goes to The Society for Human Resource Management – National, SHRM New Mexico State Council, Human Resources Management Association (HRMA) of NM, University of New Mexico’s Division of HR, Anderson School of Management and many dedicated volunteers.
Special recognition also goes to Utah State University, who had an outstanding appearance by its Blue team, which won the champion title, and the White team, which claimed the runner-up title, and also the University of North Texas for earning the Collegiality Award.
Story by Jason Blankenship, Rebecca Chavez and Jack Surouji
Approximately 40 students from Albuquerque High School spent part of their day last Friday thinking about chemical engineering at UNM. The students visited Farris and Centennial Engineering Centers as part of an ongoing outreach program of professors in the Chemical and Nuclear Engineering and Center for Biomedical Engineering professors to attract students to the wonders of an engineering career.
The Biomaterials Engineering Outreach program was formed in 2005 as part of a research and educational grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant’s focus is to increase the participation of minorities and females in materials science-related careers, and to stimulate general interest in science and technology. The demonstrations developed through the outreach program are focused on the understanding and improvement of human health through advances in engineering and materials science.
In one lab the students learned about UNM research to engineer cells that can easily be lifted from a growth medium to be used to repair damage to skin. In another lab they learned about the properties of polymeric materials, forming colored “goo” by cross linking alginate in cationic solutions. UNM researchers are particularly interested in polymers that can be used as scaffolds for tissue engineering, an emerging interdisciplinary field that applies the principles of biology, medicine, and engineering to the development of viable tissue substitutes that restore, maintain, or improve the function of human tissues.
The students were fascinated with the properties of the polymers, since they can be stretched, formed and altered in a variety of ways. UNM faculty and graduate students have prepared dozens of outreach opportunities over the last few years in an effort to help students preparing for college to understand some of the more interesting fields of study in engineering. The Biomaterials Engineering Outreach program is supported by an NSF grant, and the Center for Biomedical Engineering.
For more information visit: http://www.unm.edu/~prem/.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
A small group of undergraduate students are working to find a way to track exactly where lightning originates in storms. It all began with a cattle prod to generate electrons in the laboratory. Now the students are putting together a sensor that can locate the stream of electrons in the 50 to 340 megavolt range. They will use that to better understand what is going on in a storm that contains lightning and what frequencies are best for tracking the electrical activity.
Photo (l. to r.): Barry Crow, Daniel McClure, Corrina Hoffman and Thomas Christian.
They hope to complete a prototype that can measure lightning in the vicinity of their lab in the next few weeks. This project will involve more than one generation of UNM students. Most of the students working on the prototype graduate in May and will have to hand their project over to a new group of students who will test the prototype in real conditions during New Mexico’s monsoon season over the summer.
If all goes well, students at the Configurable Space Microsystems Innovations & Applications Center (COSMIAC) will build more sensors and begin spacing them so they can work together to pinpoint the origin of lightning in an electrical storm.
The long term goal of the research is to find a way to equip a small satellite and have it work in conjunction with ground sensors to give researchers a fix on where conditions are right for producing lightning. The research is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grant.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
Ladonna Harris, a nationally known Native American activist is expected to attend a talk presented by two fellows from the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections, Ashley Sherry and Max Fitzpatrick on Wednesday, May 5, at 5:30 p.m. in the Anderson-Waters Room of Zimmerman Library on the UNM main campus.
Photo: Native American activist LaDonna Harris
Under a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the fellows are processing papers from the LaDonna Harris and the Americans for Indian Opportunity collection. They work under the direction of project archivist Beth Silbergleit. Their talk is titled “Everybody Has Medicine: LaDonna Harris: Americans for Indian Opportunity and 40 Years of Activism.”
Harris, an Albuquerque resident for many years, has been an ardent advocate and activist for Native American equality and social justice for more than four decades. She is a member of the Comanche tribe and was born and raised in Oklahoma. In the 1960s and 70s, she became nationally known as a Native American activist. She was instrumental in founding Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity and was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to serve on the National Council on Indian Opportunity (NCIO).
In 1970, she founded Americans for Indian Opportunity, an organization dedicated to advocating for the cultural, political, and economic rights of Indigenous peoples around the world. During the Carter administration, Harris was appointed to UNESCO as a special advisor to the Office of Economic Opportunity. Harris was instrumental in founding the National Indian Housing Council, National Indian Business Association, and the Council for Energy Resource Tribes, among others. AIO continues to serve indigenous peoples around the world, and the CSWR is committed to preserving LaDonna Harris’ and AIO’s record of achievement for researchers and scholars.
Ashley Sherry is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology. Max Fitzpatrick is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology.
The event is free and open to the public. For more information contact Beth Silbergleit at bsil@unm.edu or 277-0060.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
On Thursday, April 22, from 10 a.m. - 2 p.m., more than 80 displays from students, staff, departments, and other organizations will line Cornell Mall in recognition of Earth Day and in celebration of the commitment and accomplishments of the University of New Mexico community toward achieving a more sustainable future.
“Sustainability at UNM is not just a set of ideas. From the programs within University departments to the related research and initiatives of our students here on campus – sustainability is alive and growing,” said Clovis Acosta, Director of UNM’s Parking and Transportation Services (PATS), one of three UNM departments sponsoring the event. “This is the kind of momentum we need to truly achieve carbon-neutrality and a better future for the generations to come.”
The Sustainability Expo is sponsored and coordinated by staff from the Office of Sustainability and Sustainability Studies. Additional sponsorship for the event came from ASUNM Student Special Events, Frontier Restaurant, and Whole Foods.
Highlights of the event include:
• New Mexico’s largest Alternative Transportation Fair with a UNM Police Department Bicycle Auction
• A Lobo Grower’s Market
• A Clothing Swap sponsored by the UNM student Sustainability Club
• A tree planting ceremony in honor of PPD's Frank Feather. The planting spot is in the swale on the northeast corner of Las Lomas/Yale. The tree planting and short ceremony will be at University House, southeast corner of Yale Blvd. and Las Lomas. The event starts at 10 A.M.
• And many other sustainability displays such as the Osher Life Long Learning Institute’s presentation - “80 Years of Sustainable Living” – featuring sustainable living mementos and tips from individuals who lived through World War II.
In addition to the Expo main activities, UNM will host 70 elementary school students for a special program, “Sustainability: What It Is and How You Can Contribute.” The outreach program, in its second year, provides presentations to elementary school students on bicycle safety, energy conservation, and organic foods.
“Reaching out to the community and engaging youth in what sustainability means to both their lives and the future is an important responsibility,” said Acosta. “Sustainability and what it means will greatly affect the lives of our youth. Our program gives them a sample of just a few of the ways sustainability can shape the choices they make.”
Also expected to attend the Sustainability Expo are New Mexico State Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino, and representatives from Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry's office.
For more information contact: Danielle Gilliam, program coordinator, UNM Parking and Transportation Services, dgilliam@parking.unm.edu or 277-0461.
Media Contact: Benson Hendrix, (505) 277-1816; e-mail: bhendrix@unm.edu
Faculty and staff invest time, labor and passion as they serve UNM for years or even decades. Every year, the university recognizes dedicated employees reaching milestones in their years of service. Recently, six were honored for 40 years of service, seven for 35 years, 22 for 30 years, 76 for 25 years, 100 for 20 years and 173 for 15 years. The 40-year honorees are Harjit Ahluwalia, Lorraine Deck, Linda Lewis, Dan Myers, Charlie Steen and Ferenc Szasz.
Photo (l. to r.): Charlie Steen, Harjit Ahluwalia and Dan Myers.
Ahluwalia is professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy. He is an active researcher, publishing more 300 articles. His research interests are in the areas of cosmic radiation, plasma physics and space weather. He is a fellow of American Physical Society and life senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and several other professional societies.
Deck is professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Her research focuses on the design and synthesis of novel protein inhibitors with potential therapeutic use in cardiovascular disease, malaria, stroke, breast cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. She also chairs the Teaching Allocations Subcommittee, Office of the Vice President for Research.
Lewis is professor emerita, University Libraries. She recently retired as director of collection development. In her time at UNM, the library and its collections doubled in size. She co-authored three books in library and information science, including a forthcoming book on disaster preparedness and prevention. She was among the librarians who worked to replace and restore collections damaged in a fire at Zimmerman Library in 2006.
Myers is television producer/director, UME ACES, Health Sciences Center. He has kept pace with audio-visual technology across decades of incredible change. For example, he was involved with the original installation of black and white equipment and the later interfacing of the color systems at HSC Biomedical Communications. In addition to managing all A/V equipment at the School of Medicine, he is production director and audio specialist.
Steen is associate professor and chair of the Department of History. For 40 years he has served the department in a variety of positions, including undergraduate advisor. His research focuses on the cultural aspects of Early Modern Europe and the impact of the Reformation in the Netherlands. He has published two books on the period of the revolt in the Netherlands.
Szasz is professor in the Department of History. He teaches the social, intellectual and religious history of the United States and the American West.
His research areas include American intellectual history, American religious history, religion in the American West, the early atomic age and the impact of Scotland on the West. Szasz was a Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the University of Exeter. He has authored six books.
The Department of Parking and Transportation Services (PATS) recently launched its first university-wide commuter survey in order to learn more about student, staff, and faculty transportation behaviors and the carbon footprint associated with campus commutes. PATS is encouraging all students, staff, and faculty to lend a few minutes of their time and take the survey.
The survey can be found online at: Commuter Survey. The survey through May 3 (midnight).
“Understanding more about the carbon footprint of the University and developing strategies to mitigate that carbon footprint is an important part of working toward sustainability at UNM,” said Clovis Acosta, PATS’ Director.
Acosta says the survey will provide information that will be used in the development of a comprehensive, University-wide greenhouse gas emissions inventory. Additionally, the results of the survey will be used to assess the commuting profile of University.
“There are more extensive transportation options available to students, staff, and faculty than there were a few years ago,” said Acosta. “This survey will provide us with the opportunity to learn more about the needs and requirements of students, staff, and faculty and what factors drive the transportation decisions they make.”
For more information contact: Danielle Gilliam, program coordinator, UNM Parking and Transportation Services, (505) 277-0461 or e-mail, dgilliam@parking.unm.edu.
Media Contact: Benson Hendrix, (505) 277-1816; e-mail: bhendrix@unm.edu
The UNM Alumni Association is seeking nominations for the 2010 Zia and Lobo Awards. Recipients of these awards will be honored during Homecoming week at the All-University Breakfast on Saturday, Oct. 2, 2010. Deadline to submit nominations is Monday, May 3, 2010. The theme for UNM's 2010 Homecoming is "Lobo Fever."
The following is the criteria for each award:
Zia Award
The Zia Award is given to New Mexico residents with a UNM degree who have distinguished themselves in any one or more of the following categories: philanthropic endeavor, public office, service to the University community and other volunteer activities, business or professional fields, or who have made a contribution to education.
Lobo Award
The Lobo Award is given to an alumnus of UNM who has given outstanding personal service to UNM or for special achievement in his/her career, which reflects credit on the University.
Lobo Award
The UNM Alumni Association wants to recognize its outstanding alums, but can't do it without help from the UNM community. Print out the nomination form(s) available at the links above and either fax the completed form(s) to (505) 277-6844 or mail:
UNM Alumni Association
1 University of New Mexico
MSC01 1160
Albuquerque, NM 87131
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu
Last month’s column explored approaches to mitigate the rising costs of health insurance. The options available were to change the existing co-pays and benefits offered, increase premiums and implement premium increases based on utilization of different groups such as active employees, retirees and coverage type. After scrutinizing cost projections for each of the three options, we determined a balanced approach would provide the best opportunity for cost containment while still providing affordable medical coverage.
For the 2010-11 plan year, the Division of Human Resources balanced premium increases with minor plan design changes. The details are at hr.unm.edu. This approach will keep premium increases well below the national average for the fifth consecutive year.
The concept of insurance is to pool the collective resources of a defined group to protect individuals from financial disasters. When individuals have a greater need, they make additional demands on the pooled resources. In benefits language, the pooled resources are the premiums paid and the demands are claims. While some individuals rarely access care, others may have a higher need for services. By taking the middle ground of balancing premium increases with modest co-pay increases, the pool of resources, or premiums, remains adequate to meet everyone’s needs, and those who need more services will pay a little more out-of-pocket.
To minimize premium and co-pay increases in the future, the Division of Human Resources plans to convene a committee to evaluate premium ratios between active employees and retirees under 65. We also plan to implement a dependent audit. The impact of health care reform and compliance is as yet unknown.
Since claims account for more than 90 percent of premium costs, we can all take an active role in minimizing future increases by following preventive care guidelines, utilizing resources such as the Employee Health Promotion Program and making healthy lifestyle choices.
Story by Helen Gonzales, Vice President for Human Resources
Two years ago the Construction Technology Department at UNM-Gallup launched an effort to go green. The department and Instructors Rick Krouth and Chris Chavez built a certificate program in green building technology and are developing ties with local builders, companies, institutions, organizations and homeowners, producing biodiesel fuel to power some of the department’s machines and continuing an annual home and garden show.
Photo: Construction Tech students work on green Habitat for Humanity house.
The hope is that Gallup can become a model for what a small, rural community can accomplish in energy savings and helping the environment.
Chavez, whose students are helping to build their third UNMG Habitat for Humanity House, employs green building practices in the construction of the home.
“When it’s finished, this will be most energy efficient home in Gallup,” he said, citing pre-fabricated insulated wall panels and a method of constructing the two-story house in a frame rather than creating a floor, then adding a wall, another floor and another wall. The floor for the second story is hung from inside the first story.
The 1,300-square-foot home may sound small, but Chavez said it is designed for a six-person family.
“It’s got the footprint of a standard house, even though the square footage is not huge,” he said. The spaces “are laid out more efficiently, with wider hallways. Construction is always ADA-compliant when we partner with Habitat. There’s also plenty of closet space. There are lots of ways to save space, and we put that into play when we designed this house.”
The house will be cheaper to heat than other Habitat houses, with its 98 percent efficient furnace.
“Within the last four years, mechanicals [in furnace design] have doubled efficiencies,” Chavez said. “Once you put them in, they pay for themselves.”
Krouth said the department is moving forward in an attempt to establish a building performance institute.
The Construction Technology Department launched its green certificate program last year, designed for high school students in the vocational track and high school graduates seeking the education to be employable in this field. Krouth said he hopes to attain national certification for the program.
Call Krouth at (505) 863-7560 or Chavez at (505) 863-7544.
Story by Linda Thornton
The Department of Theatre and Dance presents the 10th Annual Words Afire Festival, a series of innovative new plays written by graduate students in UNM’s award-winning dramatic writing program, Friday, April 23-Sunday, May 2 in the Rodey and Experimental Theatres, UNM Center for the Arts, and the UNM ARTS Lab. From Canada to New York, Puerto Rico to China, Poland to Albuquerque, this year’s directors bring a world of experience to the productions.
Playwrights in UNM’s dramatic writing program have consistently received national recognition for their work, and this year is no exception.
Graduate student Riti Sachdeva won the Qwest for Peace national playwriting award from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival for her play “Parts of Parts & Stitches.” Sachdeva’s award is the 10th from KCACTF won by UNM dramatic writing students.
Head of dramatic writing Elaine Avila said, “10 years ago, Words Afire transmuted from a Dionysian Festival created by my predecessor, Digby Wolfe.
Dionysus is the Greek god of wine, madness, theatre and of wild, frenzied release. The Greeks believed this release of passion through the theatre was essential for a balanced society. The theatre continues to allow us a place to view some of the most intense aspects of being human.”
Wolfe will be the guest of honor at special tribute on Friday, April 30, 6-8 p.m. in the Experimental Theatre.
World premiere works in the 2010 Words Afire Festival explore comedy, financial crisis, war and finding love in the midst of tragedy. The two fully-staged productions are “That One Forbidden Thing” by Erin Phillips and “Economically Viable” by Aaron Frale.
In the workshop readings, playwrights bring the audience to the heart of conflicts in Juarez (“The Circuz” by GHE), a refugee camp (“Parts of Parts and Stitches” by Sachdeva), and coming to terms with loss (“Anything & Always by Nic Wehrwein). Undergraduate work will be showcased in “The Hot Six,” acted and produced by The Blackout Theatre Company.
For the schedule, visit Words Afire. All plays are appropriate for mature audiences, due to content and language. Ticket prices range from free to $15. Tickets are available at the UNM Ticket Offices, (505) 925-5858 or UNM Tickets.
Story by Kathleen Clawson
Senior Audio Visual Technician Darrell Thompson discovered through a drive held 16 years ago at UNM-Gallup that he had a rare type of blood and was persuaded to sign up as a potential bone marrow donor. Donating bone marrow to help treat people with cancer, immune diseases and aplastic anemia was still new then.
Photo: Darrell Thompson
It wasn’t until last year that he was finally called upon to make a donation. The recipient was to be a 3-year-old boy with leukemia, whose identity is unknown to Thompson.
Thompson traveled to San Diego last year for evaluation, and after a battery of tests that included ensuring he had the right tissue type, he got the go-ahead as a donor. He made a second trip to San Diego for the procedure of having his bone marrow harvested under anesthesia in an operating room.
In January, Thompson was contacted again by the bone marrow transplant registry. The young patient’s doctors wanted a second transplant for the same patient.
“I had to think about that,” Thompson said, recalling the discomfort and anxiety that the first donation had entailed.
Ultimately, the same thoughts that inspired him to embark on this course persuaded him to make the second donation.
“I had thought about what it would be like for a 3-year-old child to go through this, and I just had to do it,” he said.
Thompson flew to San Diego to again undergo numerous tests. Even a minor illness like a cold or sore throat could compromise the impaired immune system of the recipient and risk not only the success of the transplant, but also the now 4-year-old boy’s life.
The operation requires the donor to undergo a needle-sized puncture through the back of the hip. The angle of the needle is rotated to pull out about a pint of marrow. The registry told Thompson he could only donate bone marrow twice in his life.
Thompson said whatever discomfort he experienced was well worth it to enhance this young patient’s chances for survival.
Thompson said the course of the patient’s recovery will be charted over the next year. He’d like to meet the patient some day, but that would be up to his parents.
Thompson hopes other individuals will be encouraged to become bone marrow donors and help children like the one who received his donation.
“Leukemia is an ugly disease. I wouldn’t want my child to go through it, and I would hope if someone else had a chance to help with curing someone, they would step up,” he said.
Story by Linda Thornton
The foliage is getting more colorful, wildlife is more active at the Duck Pond, children are visiting for field trips and students and employees are enjoying the outdoors. Everyone can assist with maintaining a healthy and clean campus by cooperating with UNM’s tobacco-free policy.
While the Health Sciences Center campus has been a smoke-free environment since 2007, UNM’s main campus took its first step toward becoming a tobacco-free campus in August 2009, when use of tobacco products was restricted to several designated areas. These temporary designated areas are intended to create a positive transition as UNM phases into a completely tobacco-free environment within the next five years. This policy demonstrates UNM’s commitment to wellness and providing a healthy environment for everyone. It also reinforces UNM’s commitment to the environment, as non-biodegradable cigarette butts can have a lasting negative impact.
To achieve a healthy and litter-free campus, all must work together. Cooperation and respectful interactions among employees and students can enhance awareness and encourage compliance with University Business Policies and Procedures Manual, Policy #2250 – Tobacco-Free Campus. For more details on the policy and a map of designated tobacco use areas visit: Policy #2250 – Tobacco-Free Campus.
Cessation counseling with free nicotine patches and gum – while supplies last – is available for those who want to quit using tobacco:
• Staff and faculty: Employee Health Promotion Program, (505) 277-4996
• Students: Student Health and Counseling, (505) 277-7947, and Campus Office of Substance Abuse Prevention, (505) 277-2795
• Community: New Mexico Quit Line, 1-800-QUIT NOW (1-800-784-8669).
Nicotine gum is available at wholesale price to students, staff and faculty at the SHAC Pharmacy, (505) 277-6306. This wholesale price gum is offered as a substitute for tobacco users who are unable or prefer not to use designated tobacco use areas and as an aid for those needing extended nicotine replacement therapy.
Story by Mary Jo Quintana and Rhonda Miranda, Employee Health Promotion Program
A live video performance by intermedia artist Claudia X. Valdes and experimental musician William Fowler Collins, “Jornada del Muerto,” graced stages on two sides of the world last month, at Netwerk Center for Contemporary Art in Belgium and the John Donald Robb Composers’ Symposium at UNM.
Though they’ve been together 12 years, this piece is the couple’s first collaboration. Valdes said now that they’ve collaborated, “it’s uncanny to see where some of the concepts overlap” even in their earlier work.
Both have long worked in electronic arts, though primarily for different senses – Valdes for vision and Collins for sound.
Collins teaches sound art and Valdes is assistant professor of electronic arts in UNM’s Department of Art and Art History.
They gave a “Meet the Composers” talk during the Robb Composer’s Symposium, where students, faculty, staff and visitors learned about composers’ artistic histories and processes.
Collins said the guitar is always “at the core” of his music, “even if it’s wearing a different disguise or takes a new shape.” He might alter it to sound like an archival recording, or digitally stretch and smear it to create a wall of sound. He calls the digital transformation a “reinterpretation” of the guitar.
Valdes called Collins’ music a “cinematic soundscape.” She said it takes the audience over a threshold where “how we’re listening is transformed.”
Collins played excerpts from two compositions: “Dark Country Road” and “Enter the Host, Part 1.” He also played an excerpt from “Voltaic Processions” by Mesa Ritual, his collaborative project with Raven Chacon. As the tracks played, internal complexities emerged, dominated and were swallowed again. The sustained tension in the sounds was a palpable force, like a trembling in every cell. Valdes described this tension as an arc building to a moment of climax.
Valdes’ art in 2001-09 focused on the history of U.S. nuclear arms, creating more than 40 nuclear-themed artworks she collectively calls “The Nuclear Project.”
She showed digital video art “Suppressing the Dream,” an investigation into memory and trauma, and “192:291,” which she described as “modeling the potential destruction of the world in five minutes.” The 192 repetitions of footage of the first televised atomic bomb test echo the 192 officially recognized countries in the world.
Valdes is in the process of developing a new body of work.
Story by Sari Krosinsky
Whether advocating for the lottery scholarship program, scoring free tickets to UNM athletic events or devising ways to give back to the community, the Associated Students of UNM is hard at work as UNM’s undergraduate student government.
ASUNM resembles most governing bodies boasting legislative, executive and judicial branches. The president is the central spokesperson, appearing regularly in front of the board of regents and New Mexico State Legislature on behalf of students.
Leaders are also charged with something less measurable yet equally meaningful – inspiring a love of all things UNM. Students involved with ASUNM are passionate about more than resolutions and budgets; they are driven by the organization’s school spirit and community service functions.
ASUNM leadership oversees seven executive agencies: Community Experience, Crafts Studio, Elections Commission, Lobby Committee, Lobo Spirit, Southwest Film Center and Student Special Events. Each senator is assigned to serve with at least one agency.
Students are generally recruited to ASUNM by word of mouth. Daniel Parker, a pre-med senior double majoring in biology and Spanish, recently got involved to gain more experience in teamwork.
“I plan on being on hospital boards and committees, so I need to learn to dialogue in a formal, community-type setting. It’s important to see what it takes to get things done,” said Parker, who sits on the outreach and appointments committee and is vice chair of the sustainability ad-hoc group.
Parker was interested in raising admissions standards and through ASUNM had the opportunity to conduct admissions research alongside administrators as well as speak to the topic during a public board of regents meeting. A former residence hall advisor, Parker said students who want to join the student senate should network with other students interested in forging change.
UNM senior Adriana Romero, a senator serving on the Elections Commission, outreach and appointments committee, agrees. “ASUNM is the best way to make changes at UNM, and that has always been my passion.”
For information about ASUNM, visit the office on the plaza level of the Student Union Building or call (505) 277-5528.
Story by Laurie Mellas, Parent Relations Office, Senior Program Manager
The UNM Small Business Vendor Fair, hosted by the Purchasing Department, is scheduled for Monday, May 3, in the Student Union Building Ballrooms A, B and C, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The fair will allow participants and attendees networking opportunities, to create new business opportunities and strengthen existing business relationships within the UNM community.
It will also provide small and disadvantaged businesses a greater opportunity to compete equally in the marketplace. Approximately 75 vendors will be participating, along with several other governmental agencies.
University and HSC purchasing agents, staff and faculty are invited, and encouraged to attend the vendor fair to learn about the products and services area businesses can provide them. Door prizes donated by vendors for attendees will be drawn throughout the day.
For more information contact: Bernadette K. Menchego, 277-1742, menchego@unm.edu, or Veronica Trujillo, 277-5263, vtrujil5@unm.edu.
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu
Eminent scholar will compare ancient road to current construction
Arizona State University Eminent Scholar Emeritus Clifford J Schexnayderm will give a free lecture open to the public about the Inka Road in the auditorium of the UNM Centennial Engineering Center Auditorium on Thursday, April 29, at 9:30 a.m.
Five hundred years have passed since the destruction of the Inka Empire; yet in many places the Great Inka Road is still a viable transportation corridor. Built without the use of iron, the wheel, or stock animals, the Inka Road represents important milestones in the development of civil engineering knowledge. Unlike many modern engineering works, the Inka adapted their structures to the natural environment while preserving harmony with the land.
Schexnayderm will provide an overview of ongoing research comparing the Inka road against the current construction of the 1,600-mile Trans-Oceanic Highway that will link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans on the coast of Brazil and Peru. This NSF-sponsored research is a collaboration between U.S. and South American faculty and students, together with the Smithsonian Institute.
This lecture is sponsored by Brycon Construction and is part of a series that brings speakers who have made outstanding contributions in construction engineering to UNM. Dr. Schexnayder has an extensive career as a civil engineer and a long list of publications, including numerous works on the history of civil engineering.
University Libraries Indigenous Nations Library Program will host a brown bag lunch and lecture on “High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovreignty” by Jessica R. Cattelino on Wednesday, April 21. The brown bag lunch begins at noon in the Herzstein Reading Room in Zimmerman Library. The lecture begins at 3:30 p.m. in Acoma Rooms A & B at the UNM Student Union Building.
Jessica Cattelino is an associate professor of anthropology at UCLA. Her work focuses on indigenous sovereignty, economy, territorialization and environment, and American public culture. Her book “High Stakes, Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty” examines the cultural, political and economic stakes of tribal casinos for Florida Seminoles.
Collaboration is part of national program in IRS’ Criminal Investigation Division
The Anderson School of Management (ASM) and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division (CID) will jointly participate in a mock fraud investigation, a national program, Friday, April 23 from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. in room 302 of the Graduate School of Management building. The event is being sponsored by ASM’s Center for Information Assurance Research and Education (CIARE).
Approximately 20 individuals, including eight special agents from the IRS and 12 UNM students are participating in the mock investigation.
The scenario for this event involves a taxpayer who comes in and states he wasn't able to file his return because a return has already been filed in his name. The taxpayer is worried his identity has been stolen. The filed return goes back to a P.O. Box unfamiliar to the taxpayer. The Service Center is able to identify approximately 10 other returns with the same address. Throughout the scenario, students will participate in surveillance, dumpster diving, an undercover operation and a search warrant which will ultimately lead to an arrest.
Students will also interact with each other to try and figure out the approach they will take to help crack the case.
“We’re thrilled that the IRS’ Criminal Investigation Division is again willing to make this commitment to our students,” said Professor Rich Brody. “We have had this event twice before and it has always been a great success. The CID is bringing in these special agents as well as some high tech equipment on a Friday morning to participate with our information assurance students.
"Local CID agents around the country use this program to showcase the opportunities available in this career field to high school and college students. For our students, all who have volunteered to participate, it will be an amazing experience and it fits in perfectly with what we talk about in our classes.”
The IRS’ CID investigates potential criminal violations of the Internal Revenue Code and related financial crimes in a manner that fosters confidence in the tax system and compliance with the law. While other federal agencies also have investigative jurisdiction for money laundering and some bank secrecy act violations, the IRS is the only federal agency that can investigate potential criminal violations of the Internal Revenue Code.
Directed by Chief Victor Song, Criminal Investigation, the CID oversees a worldwide staff of approximately 4,400 employees, including approximately 2,800 special agents who investigate and assist in the prosecution of criminal tax, money laundering and narcotics-related financial crime cases.
The University of New Mexico is the only four-year institution with a program that combines the efforts of national labs, the NSA and DHS, and the FBI’s Regional Computer Forensics Lab (RCFL). The demand for information assurance skills is strong and will continue to be as technology only gets better.
For more information visit: Information Assurance program.
Media Contact: Rich Brody, (505) 277-7258; e-mail: brody@mgt.unm.edu
Gary Paul Nabhan will present a lecture on “How Traditional Foods Interact with our Inheritance, Culture and Health on Friday, April 30, 7 p.m. at the Maxwell Museum. On Saturday, May 1 at 1 p.m. Lisa Huckell will speak on “Harvesting the Past: Wild Plant Foods and Their Role in Contemporary Culture.” At 2 p.m. on May 1, there will be a wild plant sampling.
The Food and Life series is a two part program that explores the cultural significance of traditional foodways and the archaeological, historic, and modern uses of regional botanical foods in health applications. The series will present keynote speaker Gary Paul Nabhan, an Arab-American writer, lecturer, food and farming advocate, rural life-ways folklorist, and conservationist whose work has long been rooted in the U.S./Mexico borderlands region.
Paleoethnobotanist Lisa Huckell, will provide an overview of wild plants that have been used by past Southwestern cultures and the relevance for modern diets. Huckell has been a practicing paleoethnobotanist for more than 30 years, investigating the interrelationship between people and plants of prehistoric and historic cultures in the Southwest and California using plant remains recovered from archaeological contexts.
The series includes an edible wild plant sampling event: modern recipes that use ancient ingredients, challenging participants to “try something old that’s new.” Included on the menu are Cholla buds, Chia smoothies, Sunflower cakes and Prickly Pear lemonade.
All events are free and the public is welcome. The Maxwell Museum is located on the west side of the UNM campus. For more information about the event, call 277-4405 or visit: Maxwell Museum
Media Contact: Mary Beth Hermans, (505) 277-1400
University Libraries will host an e-Research Lecture on April 23, at 3 p.m. in the Willard Room of Zimmerman Library. Rajan Gupta, Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, will present “Geospatial Cognition and Understanding of Global Energy Systems.”
Photo: Rajan Gupta
Energy systems are enormous, complex, dynamic and adaptive. Understanding them is crucial because energy is the key to development and is the basis of modern technological societies and, at the same time, because of rising concern for associated environmental impacts and green house gas emissions contributing to climate change.
This talk will describe the Global Energy Observatory Dr. Gupta plans to build, with public participation, which will create a comprehensive picture of the world's energy systems so that we can understand regional variations, choices, and needs, and follow their full cycle: from sources to generation to global movements to use to impacts.
The talk will include a discussion on incorporating emerging GIS and information science tools, volunteered information by the public and experts (citizen sensors), and issues of trust and quality in synthesizing heterogeneous data in building and maintaining such an open global database.
Rajan Gupta is a theoretical physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a Laboratory fellow. He came to the USA in 1975 after obtaining his Masters in Physics from Delhi University, India, and earned his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from The California Institute of Technology in 1982.
The main thrust of his research is to understand the fundamental theories of elementary particle interactions. In addition, he uses modeling and simulations to study Biological and Statistical Mechanics systems, and to push the envelope of High Performance Computing. He has published over 125 research papers in prestigious refereed journals and is a fellow of the American Physical Society.
During 2007 he served as the chair of the LANL energy council. In this role he helped create a strategic plan for LANL’s investment in energy R&D and advocated for energy security to be made a part of the core LANL mission.
He is currently building a web based Global Energy Observatory that will provide a comprehensive view of the world’s energy systems and their networks and interdependencies. Based on this understanding and database he is carrying out a global analysis (integrating demographics, economics, health, education and energy and water resources) to help accelerate the transition to cheap and clean energy for the global population.
Free and open to all. For more information contact Pauline Heffern at 277-0818 or pheffern@unm.edu.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
The Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference, "Networks of Power: Re-imagining Imagined Communities in a Globalized World," is set for Friday and Saturday, April 16-17 in the Student Union Building.
Friday’s events will be held in Lobo conference rooms A and B, and will begin at 2:30 p.m. Saturday’s happenings will be in Acoma conference rooms A and B, and will start at 9 a.m. The complete schedule is up on the Foreign Languages and Literatures Website: Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference.
Neil Larsen, University of California, Davis, will deliver the keynote address, "'Actually Existing' Globalization and the Future of Literary Studies: Five (Paradoxical) Theses." He will also lead a workshop on Saturday afternoon.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Paul Hutton, Distinguished Professor of History, receives a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum at a black-tie gala, Saturday April 17, in Oklahoma City. The award is for Hutton's on-camera commentary and narration of the program "The Real Wyatt Earp," an episode of the History Channel six-part series "Cowboys and Outlaws" that aired last November.
This is Hutton's sixth Western Heritage Award, but his previous wins have been for his writing. This award, for acting, reflects the more than 200 television programs Hutton has appeared in since the mid-1990s on a wide variety of networks including CBS, NBC, PBS, BBC, TBS, A&E, Disney, the Travel Channel, TNN, C-Span Book TV, Discovery and the History Channel.
He has also written a dozen television documentaries, was historical consultant on the Ron Howard film “The Missing,” which was filmed in New Mexico and even had a speaking role – as the doctor – in the David Zucker comedy “Naked Gun 33 1/3.”
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
The Spring 2010 History Department Colloquium still has three speakers left, with the next scheduled for tomorrow featuring UNM Distinguished Professor Linda Hall.
The colloquium features discussions of pre-circulated papers, which can be obtained two weeks prior to the event through Zimmerman Library’s e-reserves, course: History 999, password:unmhistory.
All events are held in the History Commons Room in Mesa Vista Hall from 2-4 p.m. Faculty and graduate students from all disciplines are welcome to submit papers for consideration. Refreshments will be served.
On Friday, April 16, Distinguished Professor Linda Hall of the UNM History Department presents a chapter from her current book project on Mexican film star Dolores del Rio.
On Friday, April 23, Kelly O’Neill, Department of History, Harvard University, presents, “Our Women for Your Salt: The Structure and Significance of the Black Sea Slave Trade, 1774-1900”
On Friday, April 30, Maria Lane, UNM Department of Geography, presents, “Water Technology, Discourse, and the Courtroom: New Mexicans Resist the Reclamation Era.”
The colloquium is supported by the Regents’ Speaker Endowment, the College of Arts and Sciences Speakers Fund, the Center for the Southwest, the Feminist Research Institute, the Latin American and Iberian Institute, International Studies and the Department of History.
For more information contact Eliza Ferguson, eeferg@unm.edu
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
It's been 40 tears since Sesame Street hit the airwaves. This week on New Mexico In Focus, host Gene Grant sits down with Gary Knell, president and CEO of Sesame Workshop, an organization dedicated to the well being of children across the globe. Also, go behind the scenes of the 5th Annual Experiments in Cinema Festival going on this week in Albuquerque. New Mexico In Focus airs Friday, April 16 at 7 p.m. and repeats Sunday, April 18 at 6:30 a.m.
Guests this week on New Mexico In Focus:
• Gary Knell, President & CEO, Sesame Workshop
• Marika Borgeson, Assistant Director, Experiments in Cinema
• Laura Bouza, Filmmaker, Experiments in Cinema
• Brian Konefsky, Artistic Director, Experiments in Cinema
• Christopher McNamara, Filmmaker, Experiments in Cinema
Additionally, viewers can also watch New Mexico In Focus online at: KNME. Get updates, watch, and follow KNME on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more.
“New Mexico in Focus” is produced by Kevin McDonald and Kathy Wimmer and closed captioning has been made possible by a gift from Mrs. Elspeth G. Bobbs.
Media Contact: Evy Todd, (505) 277-1812; e-mail: etodd@knme.org
$25,000 Michael Gallegos Prize for Entrepreneurship up for grabs
The third annual UNM Technology Business Plan Competition will be held Friday, April 16, from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Come and watch students present their business plans and compete for thousands of dollars in prize money in this exciting competition. The competition will be held in various rooms at the Anderson School.
The UNM Technology Business Plan Competition encourages UNM students from all schools and colleges to collaborate on teams that commercialize technology products developed at UNM, Sandia National Labs, Los Alamos National Lab, or elsewhere in the state.
These student-owned startup firms bring inventions from lab to market and have the potential to boost economic development in New Mexico. Top prize for the competition is the $25,000 Michael Gallegos Prize for Entrepreneurship. TVC Lockheed Martin sponsors the $10,000 second place prize, and vSpring Capital offers the third place $5,000 prize
For more information and specific team presentation times, visit: UNM Technology Business Plan Competition Agenda Overview.
Colloquium to explore legal, ethical and policy issues
The UNM Center for Science, Technology, and Policy (CSTP) and the Computer Science Department will hold a joint colloquium and panel “Understanding Cyberattack as an Instrument of U.S. Policy on Thursday, April 22 at 2 p.m. in Mechanical Engineering 218 on the UNM main campus in Albuquerque.
Photo: Herb Lin, chief scientist, National Research Council’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
Herbert S. Lin was the director of a 2009 National Academy study on “Technology, Policy Law, and Ethics Regarding U.S. Acquisition and Use of Cyberattack Capabilities.” He is the chief scientist for the National Research Council’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board where he directs major study projects at the intersection of public policy and information technology. He previously served as a staff scientist in defense policy and arms control for the House Armed Services Committee. He holds a doctorate in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Much has been written about the possibility that terrorists or hostile nations might conduct cyberattacks against critical sectors of the U.S. economy. However, the possibility that the United States might conduct its own cyberattacks -- defensively or otherwise -- has received almost no public discussion. Recently, the US National Academies performed a comprehensive unclassified study of the technical, legal, ethical, and policy issues surrounding cyberattack as an instrument of U.S. policy. This talk will provide a framework for understanding this emerging topic and the critical issues that surround it.
Lin’s talk will be followed at the same location at 3 p.m. by a panel discussion which will include
David Ackley associate professor UNM Department of Computer Science, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute; Daniel Dennett Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University and Miller Scholar at Santa Fe Institute; Robert Hutchinson Sr. Manager for Computer Science and Information Operations Sandia National Laboratories; Herbert Lin Chief Scientist at the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council of the National Academies; Andrew Ross director of the UNM Center for Science, Technology and Policy and professor in the UNM Dept. of Political Science
The report is available at: Cyber Attack Report.
A PDF format is also available: Cyber Attack.
Questions about this event can be directed to crandall@cs.unm.edu.
University of New Mexico Hospitals (UNMH) has been named to the first-ever Working Mother magazine “Best Companies for Hourly Workers” list. Only six companies were selected based on an extensive application created in partnership with Corporate Voices of Working Families, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit membership organization.
The application included questions about workforce, benefits, training, development, advancement programs, child care, flexibility programs and paid time off.
Public and private firms in any industry, with the exceptions of government agencies and firms in the business of providing work-life services, with a t least 500 U.S. employees were invited to participate. UNMH was one of only two hospitals named to the list.
“We’re honored to be a part of this inaugural list,” says UNMH CEO Steve McKernan. “We know our hourly employees are a strong and integral part of our 24/7 workforce. Staff members at UNM Hospitals are our greatest asset in providing all members of our community with accessible, quality health care.”
Working Mother magazine reaches 2,000,000 readers and is the only magazine for career-committed mothers. The Best Companies for Hourly Workers list can be found in the May issue of Working Mother and at Working Mother.
Lauren Cruse 505/272-3322
The UNM Department of Linguistics and Navajo/Diné Language Program feature Lorene Legah, Navajo/Diné language instructor, Diné College, Window Rock, Ariz., presenting, “A Language Carries a People's Heritage,” Wednesday, April 21 from 1-3 p.m. in Dane Smith Hall 120. The event is free and open to the public.
Over many generations Diné elders have told their stories, said their prayers and sang their sacred songs to pass along to future generations, but evidence reveals that not much of it is going on. In 1992, UNM Assistant Professor Paul Platero, Navajo/Diné Language Program, found that only 17 percent of Navajo children ages 3 to 5 had native speaker-like command of Navajo.
Wayne Holm and Laura Wallace found the situation worst in their 1995 study. They found that only 5 percent were fluent Navajo speakers. Although Navajo people are said to be as much as 50 percent fluent speakers of Navajo, the numbers are severely exaggerated. Thus, the language and the culture are both endangered. Among the Navajo some say it is a waste of their time to learn the Diné language and the Diné way of life.
This presentation explores language and culture as a means to enhance the essence of being.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
On May 18, 18 UNM undergraduate and graduate students will fly to Managua to begin a month-long educational expedition in Nicaragua. The students will earn six credits in “Sustainable Development in Central America: Economic Development, Poverty, and Growth in Nicaragua,” a course designed and taught by Matías Fontenla, assistant professor, UNM Department of Economics.
Fontenla and Teaching Assistant Benjamin Waddell call this new economics course “Culture Shock 101.” Fontenla said, “When I was a college freshman in my native Argentina, I set out on a year-long backpacking adventure throughout the Americas that was truly a life- and career-changing experience. I witnessed people in deep levels of poverty who devoted all their energy to just basic subsistence.”
Fontenla predicts that his students this summer will also be strongly influenced by what they see and hear each day in an impoverished Nicaragua.
According to the course description, the class “takes a hands-on approach to understand failed development, poverty and deep social inequities that affect our world, and most importantly to explore solutions to these social problems.”
Participants will visit coffee co-ops in northern Nicaragua, dialogue with managers of microfinance organizations, and tour the urban squatter communities of Solidaridad and Paz y Vida. One carefully-planned fieldtrip will take students to the remote east coast of Nicaragua and the struggling Afro-Caribbean village of Orinoco.
The base station and teaching facility for the course is renowned community center and language school Casa Xalteva in Granada. While studying the local businesses and industries of Granada, including local street vending and open-air markets, UNM students will stay with host families.
Students will keep detailed daily journals on their observations of business enterprise. At evening lectures by Fontenla at Casa Xalteva on economic theory and practice, students will discuss theory in relation to their observations and insights during their explorations in Nicaragua.
“The evening lectures and discussions will be keys to learning the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills necessary for any solutions to the business and trade problems in Latin America,” Waddell said. “The discussions and debates should be fascinating.”
“This new Nicaragua program is a great example of the short-term, faculty-led international courses offered by UNM each year,” said Ken Carpenter, associate director, UNM Office of International Programs and Studies. “And fortunately, more and more UNM students are learning that there are Regents International Study Grants and other financial aid to help them join such learning adventures.”
More than 50 applications were considered for “Sustainable Development in Central America,” with selection criteria including grade point average and college economics coursework. Fontenla’s objective was to admit a diverse group of both undergraduate and graduate students with different majors, career interests and competencies. A command of Spanish was not a requirement, but an essay on exactly why applicants wanted admission to this study-abroad course was a primary factor in selection.
A group of 13 undergraduate and 5 graduate students was selected. The students’ major concentrations are in diverse disciplines like community and regional planning, engineering, pre-med/biochemistry, international management, Spanish, economics, sociology and political science.
The group includes a deaf student, Richard Bailey, who will be accompanied in Nicaragua by two sign-language interpreters. Many of those selected have never before traveled outside the United States.
Nanda Ruiz-Jones, a double-major in political science and Sign Language interpreting, said, “I can’t wait for this course to start. The experience will be awesome!”
Story by Paul J. Suozzi
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu
Executive Director Stephen Aron of the Institute for the Study of the West to speak
The University of New Mexico Center for the Southwest announces the 2009–2010 C. Ruth and Calvin P. Horn Lecture in Western History and Culture. This year’s lecturer is Stephen Aron, presenting, “Can We All Just Get Along: In Search of an Alternative History of the American West,” Thursday, April 22, at 5:30 p.m. in Lobo Rooms A&B of the UNM Student Union Building.
Photo: Stephen Aron
Aron is professor of history at UCLA and executive director of the Institute for the Study of the American West at the Autry National Center. He is the author of How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay and American Confluence: The Missouri Frontier from Borderland to Border State, the co-author and co-general editor of Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World from the Beginnings of Humankind to the Present, and co-editor of Trading Cultures: The Worlds of Western Merchants.
His current projects include editing the four volume Autry History of the American West and writing a book with the tentative title Can We All Just Get Along: An Alternative History of the American West, from which his Calvin and Ruth Horn Lecture derives.
The lecture is sponsored by the Center for the Southwest and the Department of History at UNM. The lecture is endowed by C. Ruth and Calvin P. Horn. This event is free and open to the public. For information call 277-7688 or e-mail, cntrsw@unm.edu. Interested individuals may also visit: Center for the Southwest.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Human rights, education focus of presentations
The Latin American and Iberian Institute’s series Mexico in Crisis: Global and Local Realities, continues on Thursday, April 22, at 7 p.m. in Dane Smith Hall 125, when two of Mexico’s significant indigenous leaders speak about economic, social and educational realities faced by those born in the basement of Mexican society.
Azael Santiago Chepi, Zapotec teacher and head of the 71,000 member Oaxacan teachers’ union that faced armed repression in 2006, will discuss educational realities and alternative educational efforts by and for indigenous communities.
Francisco López Bárcenas, prolific writer on indigenous human rights and Mixtec delegate from Oaxaca to the national Congress, will address realities of Mexico´s indigenous peoples.
Question time will be available following the presentations. The community is invited to learn about the struggles for justice and autonomy on the other side of the border. This event is free and open to the public.
The Mexico in Crisis series is presented in response to the pressing need for current information on the economic and political issues in contemporary Mexico.
For more information contact the LAII, 277-2961.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
A Diversity Celebration and Fundraising Dinner to benefit diversity programs at the University of New Mexico is set for Friday, April 30 at the Student Union Building ballrooms. The silent auction begins at 5 p.m., with entertainment provided by Hector Pimentel; dinner and awards are at 6 p.m. and live music at 9 p.m. Native American writer, economist and environmentalist Winona LaDuke is the keynote speaker. Tickets are $50 per person or $500 for a table for 10. Organizers are working to get LaDuke to campus to visit with classes and groups during the day.
“The purpose of the event is to foster a sense of philanthropy among the communities we serve. They often haven’t been asked to give and even small amounts help,” said Jozi DeLeon, vice president, Equity and Inclusion.
The fundraising from the event will also benefit the three ethnic centers and diversity programs across campus. “Individuals can designate where they would like their contribution to go,” DeLeon said. She added that recent budgetary constraints have severely impacted programs.
The event is an opportunity to recognize diversity efforts on campus by presenting the inaugural “Luminaria Awards.” “They recognize efforts of those who ‘light the way’ for others in a significant way,” DeLeon said. She said that the award is a way to acknowledge those who work to diversify the campus through their efforts toward equity, inclusion and social justice.
The committee received many nominations, all worthy of recognition, DeLeon said, which made selecting the awardees particularly difficult.
Those receiving the first Luminaria Awards are:
Faculty: Alfred Mathewson, School of Law and acting director, Africana Studies; and Gabriel Sanchez, political science
Staff: Custodial staff, biology department; and Christopher Ramirez, College Enrichment and Outreach Programs
Community Organization: Native Health Initiatives
“Those who are being honored deserve the recognition and support from the university and broader community. This is just one step in our path toward a greater understanding and appreciation of true diversity,” DeLeon said.
For more information about the event visit: Diversity Dinner.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
The UNM National Security Studies Program (NSSP) will host a "National Security Colloquium: Opportunities and Challenges," on Tuesday, April 20, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the Student Union Building Theater. The NSSP is a new university program specifically tailored to prepare UNM students for careers in national security from a broad spectrum of disciplinary and professional fields of study.
The Program is sponsored by the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Among its program efforts is the development of Centers of Academic Excellence (CAE), which now counts UNM as one of its members.
The NSSP colloquium will have expert panels discussing a number of topics, including the active border drug wars and its affects on New Mexico's border security, and the US/Russian Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).
Additionally, a distinguished panel of UNM scholars will discuss the numerous, and largely untold, links between culture and life in the Middle East and that of the first Spanish settlers in New Mexico.
For a complete agenda visit: National Security Colloquium Agenda.
For more information on NSSP contact Frank Gilfeather at, (505)269-0346 or e-mail, gilfeath@unm.edu.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Cathleen Cahill will present the Snead-Wertheim Lecture in Anthropology and History on Monday, April 19, at 3 p.m. in the History Department Common Room in Mesa Vista Hall. Cahill’s lecture is titled, “An Indian Teacher among Indians: The United States Indian Service, 1869-1929.” Cahill, from the UNM History Department is the 21st recipient of this prestigious lectureship.
The Snead-Wertheim Endowed Lectureship in Anthropology and History is awarded annually to a full-time, tenure-track faculty member alternately in the Anthropology and History Departments. The lectureship is held for one academic year. The lectureship is awarded on the basis of distinguished research and/or teaching.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
The Spring 2010 Staff as Students event, hosted by the Division of Human Resources, will be held on Tuesday, April 13, 2010 from 11:30 am - 1:30 pm at the Student Union Building - Upper Level, Rooms Lobo A & B, Fiesta A & B, and Santa Ana A. All UNM benefits-eligible employees are invited to attend this special event where you can be admitted to UNM, register early for Summer and Fall courses, receive academic advisement, and learn more about your education benefits at UNM.
For more information visit: Staff as Students.
Karen D. Cowden Dahl, with UNM’s College of Pharmacy, is one of 25 researchers nationally being recognized by the American Association for Cancer Research for her leadership in the minority cancer community with a Minority-Serving Institution Faculty Scholar in Cancer Research Award at the AACR 101st Annual Meeting, April 17-21, in Washington, D.C.
Photo: Karen D. Cowden Dahl
The Minority-Serving Institution Faculty Scholar in Cancer Research Awards are given to assistant professor or above scientists working at a minority-serving institution and engaged in meritorious basic, clinical, translational or epidemiological cancer research.
The award is intended to increase the scientific knowledge base of faculty members at minority-serving institutions, to encourage them in their research and to assist in inspiring students to pursue careers in cancer research. It is supported by a grant from the National Cancer Institute’s Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities.
UNM Libraries will open a new exhibit in Zimmerman Library on Friday, April 16 with lectures and a reception at 6 p.m. in the Herzstein Latin American Reading Room. The exhibit celebrates the experience of modern pilgrims from the United States and Canada who set out to retrace the paths to Santiago de Compostela on its Camino francés from Roncesvalles on the French border, down the slopes of the western Pyrenees, and through the fertile vineyards of La Rioja.
Painting: “Cruz de Fierro” by Kate López.
The exhibit opening will feature a welcome by José Suárez Otero, Ph.D. of Xacobeo 2010 Galicia and a presentation “Pearls and Perils of Pilgrimage to Santiago: A Literary Perspective” by Anthony J. Cárdenas-Rotunno, UNM professor of Spanish.
The images in the exhibition on Sacred Steps capture on film and canvas the visions the contributing artists gathered along their own pilgrimages in Spain. Like pilgrims of every age, the contemporary pilgrims seek to express their sense of wonder at both the monuments and the mundane beauties they encounter. Many of the structures they find are restored to their former glory and rededicated to the purpose of hospitality to travelers.
The pilgrims also seek to communicate in art something of their inner pilgrimage by contributing images of landscapes made sacred by the questing of untold millions who traveled the same routes and under the same sky. The photographs, sketches and paintings are the record of travel that transformed them and gave them new vistas and new ways to see them.
Additional Lectures in the Herzstein Latin American Reading Room:
April 30, 2010
6 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.
“Pescador, Peregrino, Matamoros, Redentor: The Conversions of Santiago”
Enrique Lamadrid, UNM professor of Spanish
June 25, 2010
6 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.
“Painting the Pilgrim’s Way”
Kate López, artist and Santiago pilgrim
The exhibit and lectures are co-sponsored by the UNM Institute for Medieval Studies and the University Libraries. The exhibit will be in place through June 30. For more information, please contact Pauline Heffern at 277-0818.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
The Clinton P. Anderson Room at Zimmerman Library on UNM’s campus is a time portal. It’s where researchers go to look at the original documents in the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections. The thousands of boxes of materials collected by hundreds of scholars and left in the care of UNM archivists hold the history of New Mexico in their folders.
Photo: Eleanor Adams
“Your Excellency will see that I should be paid back for what I shall have expended when I shall send in this account, because at my own expense I did the undertaking, availing myself of my friends, and at this date I go out to join my said encampment.”
This request for reimbursement sounds almost modern, but it comes from a translation of a document in the Archivo General de la Nación de México written on October 13, 1693. It is a fragment of the plea from Diego de Vargas to his patron the Viceroy, Count of Galves, as he tried to recover money lent by his friends to bring Spanish settlers back to the territory after the Pueblo Revolt.
The translation is from the Eleanor B. Adams collection. Adams began her career at UNM in 1934, working with France V. Scholes, a former professor of History. Scholes did extensive research into the administrative archives in Mexico City, and Adams became an expert at translating 17th century Spanish documents into English. She kept copies of many of the translations she did and her work can be found now in the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections in Zimmerman Library at UNM.
Adams was the editor of the New Mexico Historical Review from 1964 through 1974, and her collection contains correspondence with many historians as well as published articles. There is also correspondence from her involvement with the Western History Association.
But it is her translations that bring history into the sharpest focus. The De Vargas translation brings to vivid life, as he closes his letter, both the difficulties and half buried resentment at his having to finance the resettlement of Santa Fe …”Bidding farewell to your excellence, which as my prince and lord, I anticipate from your greatness that you will give me aid in this far land so that I may perform the duties that weigh upon me, and depend from the fact that the people are under my charge, the difficult support of the females and others, for the employment of Indians for their assistance in the reconstruction of their homes, which personal labor I shall also have to pay for to said Indians.”
The pain and financial burdens of governance couldn’t be clearer if the governor of New Mexico were writing about them today. For scholars, this collection is an extraordinary view into the past.
An inventory of the collection can be found online at: University Libraries Rocky Mountain Online Archive.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
UNM and Lobo Development, LLC are hosting weekly Student Housing Outreach Workshops on Thursdays through May 6 at the UNM Student Union Building Ballroom A, from 3:30 to 6 p.m.
The next session is titled, "We have questions...You have answers, Part II." This week's session will pull together many of the questions and comments from previous sessions in a lively, provocative discussion. The events are free and open to everyone in the community interested in campus development.
UNM’s main campus will need to provide thousands of new beds to accommodate the anticipated growth of the student body. A public/private partnership between the university and American Campus Communities was then launched to address this growth.
The workshops are aimed at gaining insight and input from those interested and impacted by development of student housing on UNM’s south campus and the projected future growth of UNM’s dorms. Members of the public are encouraged to attend and add their input to the project.
Kim Murphy, director of real estate operations, said, “This is an open invitation to engage in concepts of student housing, a discussion of ideas and future possibilities. We invite the campus and broader community to review the work of graduate architectural students and see how they considered ideas about student housing for central campus.”
Topics offered throughout the series include:
• An Introduction to Student Housing Development
• Student Housing: Why Here, Why Now?
• Academic Life: Models for Student Communities
• UNM Lands: Past, Present and Future
• Parking, Transit and Campus Land Use
• Design Workshop for Student Housing within Johnson Core
• What if Johnson Field were relocated?
The events are free and open to everyone interested in campus development, students, faculty, UNM neighbors, and public officials. Light refreshments will be served at all events. Sessions subject to change.
For more information, contact Bertha Gomez at 277-4620, e-mail to ldc@unm.edu or visit: Lobo Development Corporation.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu or Benson Hendrix, (505) 277-1816; e-mail: bhendrix@unm.edu
McPhearson was pronounced a Type 1 diabetic
Most well-conditioned, highly decorated athletes have an air of invincibility. It's the time of their lives and nothing can take them down. That all changed for current Lobo Emmanuel McPhearson on Feb. 2, 2007. McPhearson was sitting in biology class as a 15-year-old sophomore at DeMatha High School in Washington, D.C.
Photo: Emmanuel McPhearson
"I got really lightheaded," McPhearson explained. "I went to the bathroom. When I came back to class, I kind of dozed off. One of my classmates woke me up. I called my mom and told her I needed to go to the hospital as soon as possible. My older brother picked me up. We met my mom and a pediatrician and I was sent to the hospital immediately."
For the complete story visit: McPhearson Balances Diabetes and Football.
Media Contact: Greg Remington, (505) 925-5525; e-mail: gregrem@unm.edu
The Native American Student Advocacy Institute will host its third annual Institute with the theme, “Strengthening Connections for Access and Equity in Education.” The Institute, which will feature a community of dedicated educators, professionals, and tribal leaders, will come together to address the challenges that face today's Native American students. The Institute will be held Monday-Tuesday, April 19-20 at the University of New Mexico.
Educators from across the country will convene to ensure that Native American issues remain at the forefront of diversity agendas on college campuses. This year's conference will feature more than 30 sessions with an emphasis on promoting partnerships between K–12 and higher education institutions.
Interested participants should include counselors: K–12, tribal education, not-for-profit organizations, college personnel including staff in areas such as admissions, financial aid, advising, student services, K–16 educators, administrators including: college administrators, superintendents, principals, tribal leaders and policymakers.
Individuals who wish to address this national issue and discover ways to increase academic access and achievement for your American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian students may register at: Institute Registration.
For more information on the Institute visit: NASAI 2010 Program.
The American Indian Language Policy Research and Teacher Training Center in the College of Education and the Language, Literacy & Sociocultural Studies Graduate Student Organization are hosting the 2010 International Indigenous Language Policy Research Conference on Monday-Tuesday, April 26-27. The conference, which will be held in the Student Union Building from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day, will focus on the impact of national and local policies on the survival of indigenous languages throughout the Americas.
Featured keynote speakers include Dr. Richard Little Bear, President of Dull Knife Tribal College in Montana and longtime Native language activist, and Dr. Matthew Martinez from New Mexico Higher Education, a grandson of Esther Martinez for whom the recent Esther Martinez Act was named, who will talk about the legacy of his grandmother’s work with New Mexico language issues. The Esther Martinez Act helps provide for the revitalization of Native American languages through Native American language immersion programs.
Additionally, Dr. Barbara Rogoff, an internationally-known researcher of childhood socialization in Indigenous communities of Mexico will address, along with Indigenous representatives of a special research collective, “Continuities and Changes in Indigenous Ways of Teaching and Learning.”
The conference, which has doubled in terms of the number of papers submitted for presentation from last year, will also feature two new strands this year including one where graduate students present their research works in progress and also a poster session.
“The new strands will provide both an opportunity for graduate students to present their own research work in progress to conference participants and researchers in the field and representatives from local Indigenous communities and other Native American tribal language programs to talk about Indigenous language issues in their own communities,” said Dr. Christine Sims, assistant professor in the College of Education.
Indigenous communities in the Americas face daunting challenges in maintaining their respective languages in the midst of rapidly expanding global influences and the impact of national and local educational policies that often place Indigenous languages in conflict with majority languages. In the Americas alone, 1,000 languages have already disappeared or reached the threshold of extinction within the last quarter century.
The future survival of remaining Indigenous languages is an increasing area of concern among many Indigenous groups engaged in emerging community-based and school-based language initiatives. As these efforts have emerged, a major source of conflict has often been the impact that social, economic,
political and education policies have had on these initiatives. Research about the long-term effect of policy development upon the survival of Indigenous languages has been of particular concern among Indigenous leaders, educators and advocates working on behalf of Indigenous communities.
Some of the topics and issues that will be explored during the conference include: International social, economic, or political polices and their impact on grass root efforts for Indigenous language maintenance and revitalization; national education policies and their on impact Indigenous language maintenance initiatives; the role of school and community-based efforts in the survival of Indigenous languages and key issues, and challenges facing Indigenous language communities.
Housed in the College of Education, a central aspect of the Center’s mission is to facilitate an international dialogue about policy issues that will foster a better understanding of the unique issues challenging Indigenous communities in the maintenance and survival of their respective languages. Its goal is to explore the commonalities that will help build collaborative support and advocacy of Indigenous language maintenance efforts by bringing together scholars and advocates representing diverse language communities.
A complete conference schedule will be released soon. Conference registration information is available by calling Assistant Professor Christine Sims at (505) 277-3175, via e-mail, csims@unm.edu or Program Manager Dr. Penny Bird at, (505) 277-0537 or e-mail, cpbirdsd@unm.edu.
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu
Bette Jo (B.J.) Sisneros-Ciesielski, Outreach Education Coordinator at University of New Mexico Hospital, was recently awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for Advocacy on Behalf of Community Health Workers by the New Mexico Community Health Worker Association. Sisneros-Ciesielski has over 15 years experience working with community health workers also known as promotoras de salud.
Photo: Bette Jo Sisneros-Ciesielski
She has shown courageous and innovative leadership in local, statewide, as well as national efforts to improve the health of under-served communities by promoting the unique, essential and often under-recognized contributions of community health workers.
Sisneros-Ciesielski has spearheaded the training for community health workers utilizing the “Reaching Out Curriculum, a training manual” developed under the University of New Mexico Area Heath Education Center. She has written grants to provide stipends for community health workers from rural areas to attend the 40-hour training. She has also collaborated with UNM Health Sciences ECHO Project, to offer the training through teleconferencing, enabling promotoras from rural areas to access the classes in remote locations.
The New Mexico Community Health Worker Association was established under the University of New Mexico Health Sciences center in 1995 under a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grant. Through Sisneros-Ciesielski’s dedication and commitment, it continues to operate under its own 501 (c) non-profit status where Sisneros-Ciesielski was a founding leader and has nurtured the organization from its humble beginnings to its current state and continued growth and expansion within New Mexico.
Sisneros-Ciesielski is a University of New Mexico graduate with a BA degree in Communication with an emphasis on Organizational Training and Development.
The Office of Career Services will host the Educator’s Job Fair 2010, Wednesday, April 21, from 2 to 6 p.m. in the UNM Student Union Building Ballrooms. The Educator’s Job Fair is open to UNM students, alumni and community members interested in education related jobs and careers. Recruiters from New Mexico as well as many other areas of the nation will attend this event.
Interested job seekers should come well prepared in professional attire along with resumes, portfolios and relevant credentials. For an up-to-date detailed list of registered recruiters and their openings, and or more information on the job fair visit, Educator's Job Fair 2010. Interested individuals may also contact Mary Montano, placement manager in the Office of Career Services, at 505-277-2531.
Need help?
The Office of Career Services can assist interested jobseekers with career fair preparation that includes Resume Rescue. Resume Rescue takes place before the career fair. On selected days, job seekers can come by Career Services on a walk-in basis and meet with a Career Development Facilitator to create or update a resume and/or ask any questions related to the career fair. Resume Rescue dates are scheduled for April 16, 19 and 20 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Additionally, Career Services will also be conduct three How to Work a Career Fair workshops. Topics will include general job search processes, career fairs, resumes and interviews, as well as any questions or topics asked by the workshop group.
The dates, times and locations of these workshops are listed below:
• April 16, 3 to 4 p.m.
UNM Office of Career Services - University Advisement & Enrichment Center - Student Services Room 220
• April 19, 10 to 11 a.m.
UNM Office of Career Services - University Advisement & Enrichment Center - Student Services Room 220
• April 20, 12 to 1 p.m.
UNM Office of Career Services - University Advisement & Enrichment Center - Student Services Room 220
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu
University will eliminate the position
Steve Beffort, UNM’s vice president for institutional support services, has announced his retirement effective July 1, 2010. Beffort has worked for the university since 2002.
Institutional support services includes the business enterprises of the university, such as parking and the bookstore, as well as facilities/campus planning, and real estate and business development. Upon Beffort’s retirement, the university will eliminate this vice president position.
Executive Vice President for Administration David Harris notes that Beffort will continue working quarter-time for the university on specific projects. “Steve will step back into a part-time position where he can focus on the operations of Lobo Energy Inc. and Lobo Development Inc. as well as UNM’s presence at Mesa del Sol,” said Harris. “We’re fortunate to have someone of his caliber agree to continue on in this capacity and to mentor the young managers who will fill his role.”
Following a 35-year career with Sears, Beffort served for eight years as New Mexico General Services Administration Secretary in the Gary Johnson administration. He came to UNM’s Anderson School of Management in 2002 to develop the Center for Support of Economic Development. Following stints as associate vice president for facilities and associate vice president for auxiliaries, Beffort was named vice president for institutional support services in 2007.
Media Contact: Susan McKinsey, (505) 277-1807; e-mail: mckinsey@unm.edu
UNM will join colleges and universities across the country to recognize the student work experience during National Student Employment Week April 12-16. According to the National Student Employment Association, campus jobs provide career-enhancing opportunities to better prepare students for the world of work upon graduation. UNM employers are also encouraged to celebrate student employment week in a variety of ways in the workplace.
Photo: A student employee at the UNM Bookstore assists a customer.
An award ceremony celebrating UNM's Student Employee of the Year is scheduled for Friday, April 16, from noon-1 p.m. in the SUB Atrium. For the first time, UNM’s top honoree, Halle Kells in the Dean of Students Office, will also compete for a regional title.
The finalists included: Adria Cordova - College Enrichment and Outreach Programs - CAMP, Zachary Fierro - Continuing Medical Education, Demetrius Gloster - College Enrichment and Outreach Programs - TRIO, Christie Gross - NM Museum of Natural History and Science, Joshua Stewart - College Enrichment and Outreach Programs - CPP.
UNM’s Graduation Task Force Student Engagement Committee coordinated the award competition and will host a 4th annual recognition ceremony. A broader celebratory event wraps up the week and is designed to honor UNM’s entire student workforce.
On Tuesday, April 13, from 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. the committee will provide refreshments and entertainment for student workers and their employers in the SUB Atrium. The carnival-themed event includes free beads, cotton candy, nachos, punch and a Wii kiosk.
The NSEA advocates for the weeklong celebration on its web site: “By celebrating, you will reap the incidental benefits of increasing employer awareness of the service you and your students provide, increasing your employer base and positions available for students, and providing an open forum for discussion of student employment and career-related issues.”
Complete with a classic Hollywood movie theme featuring quotes and pictures from the movie Casablanca, the Division of Student Affairs recently celebrated its annual "Louie" awards which are given to staff and student employees within the Division and from the general UNM community, who exemplify the very best in providing great student service.
Photo: Student Affairs Employee of the Year Jo Antresian (far right), Student Health & Counseling.
This year's winners are:
• Student Affairs Student Employee of the Year: Sergio Najera from the College Enrichment Programs;
• Student Services Awards: Elsa Castillo from the School of Engineering Student Services Program; Thomas Keyes from the College of Education; and Veronica Mendez-Cruz from El Centro de la Raza;
• Student Affairs Fellow Award: Jayson Capps from the Office of Career Services;
• Student Affairs Employee of the Year: Jo Antreasian from Student Health and Counseling;
• Community Service Award: Henry Jake Foreman and Travis McKenzie from UNM Service Corps; and
• Excellence Award: Emily Cate Wisdom, UNM Student Regent.
Each winner received a gift and a golden Louie.
Media Contact: Dorene Dinaro, (505) 277-5299; e-mail: ddinaro@unm.edu
“New Mexico in Focus” correspondent Terrie Sayre sits down with two of Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry’s new appointees, Betty Rivera, Director of the Cultural Services Department, and Barbara Bruin, Director of the Animal Welfare Department on this week’s episode. “New Mexico in Focus” airs Fridays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 6:30 a.m. It also airs KNME Digital Ch. 9.1 on Saturdays at 5 p.m.
Also on this week’s episode:
• In the wake of the state preprimary conventions, the LINE panelists take turns handicapping the upcoming June primary battles.
• Former President Bill Clinton’s about-face on NAFTA.
• The grassroots movement called the “Coffee Party.”
• The rise of online campaign ads.
Host/Commentator:
Gene Grant, Weekly Alibi Columnist
New Mexico In Focus Correspondent:
Terrie Q. Sayre, Talk Radio Host, KKOB AM 770
Panelists:
Sophie Martin, Managing Editor, DukeCityFix.com
Laura Sanchez, Former Executive Director, New Mexico Democratic Party
Jim Scarantino, Editor, New Mexico Watchdog
Guest Panelists:
David Alire Garcia, Former State Editor, NewMexicoIndependent.com
Guests:
Barbara Bruin, Director, Animal Welfare Department, City of Albuquerque
Betty Rivera, Director, Cultural Services Department, City of Albuquerque
Additionally, viewers can also watch New Mexico In Focus online at: KNME. Get updates, watch, and follow KNME on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more.
“New Mexico in Focus” is produced by Kevin McDonald and Kathy Wimmer and closed captioning has been made possible by a gift from Mrs. Elspeth G. Bobbs.
Media Contact: Evy Todd, (505) 277-1812; e-mail: etodd@knme.org
Career week set for April 19 - 22
UNM Anderson School Career Services and alumni office have teamed up to organize a “Speed Networking” opportunity for community business leaders to interact with Anderson students and alums. The event is scheduled for Wednesday, April 21, beginning at 5:30 p.m. in the Jackson Student Center. The event begins with a reception followed by an hourlong networking activity where Anderson students and alumni will have 2.5 minutes to introduce themselves, exchange business cards and share information.
Anderson Career Services Manager Karin Kase stresses these are not interview sessions. She says, “The goal is for students and alumni to build their networking skills and gain advice and information from successful business leaders.” Because space at the speed networking event is extremely limited Anderson students and alumni are required to RSVP at: ASM Jobs.
Career Week takes place the week of April 19 – 22 and consists of approximately ten career programs such as "Rock the Interview", "Build your Brand", "Career Change & Decision Making", "Speed Networking" and "How to Job Search in Tough Times". There will also be mock interviews, resume reviews, cover letter/resume workshops and the Native American Career Fair. For a complete list of events and times go to ASM Jobs.
Media Contact: Leslie Venzuela, (505) 277-7117; e-mail: venzuela@mgt.unm.edu
Every year on April 16, speech pathologists, teachers of singing, otolaryngologist-head and neck surgeons, and other voice health professionals worldwide join together to recognize World Voice Day. In recognition of World Voice Day, the UNM Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences offers free voice screenings Friday, April 16 from 9 a.m. to noon at the S&H offices, Lomas and University, next to the UNM Business Center.
“World Voice Day encourages men and women, young and old, to assess their vocal health and take action to improve or maintain good voice habits,” said Phyllis Palmer, assistant professor, S&H. No appointment is needed and the screening is available to the entire community.
For more information, call Palmer at 277-4456, or the Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences at 277-4453.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Joseph Sánchez, director, UNM Spanish Colonial Research Center, presents a program in honor of Alburquerque Founders Day 2010 on Saturday, April 24 at 10:15 a.m. at the Special Collections Branch of the public library, on Central and Edith NE.
Photo: Dr. Joseph Sanchez
Sánchez will relate how the Hispanic communities in the greater Alburquerque area were founded beginning in the early 18th century. Who were these people, where did they come from, and why Alburquerque? Sanchez opens a window to the past in the Alameda, Atrisco, Los Ranchos, Martineztown and Old Town areas.
Sánchez is also superintendent at the Petroglyph National Monument, and, in his capacity at the Spanish Colonial Research Center, is founder and editor of the Colonial Latin America Historical Review. He has the author numerous articles and books, including “Between Two Rivers: The Atrisco Land Grant in Albuquerque History, 1691-1968,” “Don Fernando Durán y Chaves's land and legacy” and “Explorers, traders, and slavers: forging the old Spanish Trail, 1678-1850.”
He has received numerous awards and honors including being inducted by King Juan Carlos into the Order of Isabel la Católica, one of Spain’s highest honors.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
With a lithograph by Ed Ruscha recently selling for $170,000, and hundreds of lithography workshops dotting the map today, it is difficult to imagine a time when lithography was on the brink of extinction here in the United States. However, for the past 50 years, Tamarind has focused completely on breathing life into this once-underappreciated art form.
Image: Special 50th Anniversary Commemorative Print - Jim Dine, Double Dose of Color (09-307), Panel A
From Josef Albers and Philip Guston in the 1960s to Ed Ruscha and Kiki Smith in recent decades, contemporary artists have teamed up with professional printmakers at Tamarind to create an archive of exceptional lithographs.
In 1960, in an effort to generate interest in lithography and make it accessible to artists, June Wayne founded Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Inc. Fifty years and many thousands of prints later, Tamarind will showcase the broad aesthetic capabilities of lithography in the exhibit Tamarind Touchstones: Fabulous at Fifty, which opens Sept. 10 at the University of New Mexico Art Museum in Albuquerque. The exhibit will demonstrate the diversity of the artists who have embraced lithography and their increased facility and comfort with the medium.
A second exhibit, Stepping Stones: Prints and Process, will show artists proofs as the artist and printer collaborate throughout the process. This exhibit will open the same weekend as Tamarind Touchstones in the new Tamarind gallery at 2500 Central Avenue SE.
Highlighting the 90 lithographs in the exhibition, reproduced in full color, the catalogue also includes glimpses into the recent activities of Tamarind, the psyche of the professional printmaker, and the curatorial perspective that guided the selection for this National Endowment for the Arts-funded traveling exhibition.
In conjunction with the opening of these two exhibits, Ed Ruscha, Jim Dine, June Wayne, Clinton Adams and Garo Antreasian will be honored during a symposium taking place Sept. 10-12, titled Fabulous at Fifty Symposium and Birthday Bash. During the symposium, Ed Ruscha will be interviewed by Dave Hickey, and Jim Dine by Ruth Fine, Curator of Contemporary Projects at the National Gallery in D.C. Tamarind's founder, June Wayne, will also speak, and an international panel, exploring the challenges of lithography outside of the US, will include Tamarind-trained printers from South Africa, Finland, Germany, and Mexico.
Although Tamarind's original mission was to revitalize lithography in the United States, today Tamarind's impact is much broader. In celebration of Tamarind's 50 years, several exhibits are already scheduled beyond the United States' borders. One such exhibit, Imprimiendo Historias: Litografias del Tamarind Institute, a show consisting of 75 lithographs created at Tamarind, will be on exhibit starting in June at the Museo de la Estampa, National Museum Foundation in Mexico City. This show will travel throughout Mexico and land in Buenos Aires, Argentina. On the other side of the world, Tanzania, will host a separate exhibit focused on Tamarind's role in fine art lithography.
With its trademark passion, Tamarind enters the next fifty years committed to its original goals to invigorate and fortify lithography and to expand its reach throughout the world. Tamarind will cut the ribbon on its new 14,000 square-foot, $4.9M newly renovated home. This move to a prominent location across from the University of New Mexico at the center of Albuquerque's cultural corridor is important to Tamarind's future as it will provide increased visibility within the community, additional space for educational programs and the gallery, and state-of-the-art health and safety equipment. The new formal gallery, with proper climate control and additional space, will allow Tamarind to exhibit prints and paintings by visiting artists, many of whom work primarily in other mediums and create their first lithograph while at Tamarind.
Tamarind Institute, a division of the College of Fine Arts at UNM, is a nonprofit center for fine art lithography that trains master printers and houses a professional collaborative studio for artists. Founded in 1960 in Los Angeles, Tamarind played a significant role in reviving the art of lithography in the United States and continues to provide professional training and publishing opportunities worldwide. Tamarind Institute is recognized internationally for its contributions to the growth of contemporary printmaking around the world.
For more information, call (505) 277-3901, e-mail, tamarind@unm.edu or visit Tamarind Institute.
Media Contact: Shelly Smith, (505) 277-3792; e-mail: sjsmith@unm.edu
UNM Communication & Journalism, in conjunction with its 60th anniversary celebration, presents a career fair on Tuesday, April 13 from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. in the SUB ballrooms.
Many local employers will be present and available to talk to students about potential internships and employment opportunities. Students are encouraged to dress professionally, and bring copies of their resumes and portfolios.
For more information, contact Valerie Kast, at valerie_kast@hotmail.com.
For more information on Communication & Journalism's 60th anniversary celebration visit: UNM C&J Celebrates 60th Anniversary.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Jeanette Boyer has won the 2010 Zia Award from New Mexico Press Women for her debut novel Junkyard Dreams (University of New Mexico Press). The Zia Award is given annually to a woman author who lives in or has ties to New Mexico and each year focuses on one of three genres: fiction, non-fiction or children’s literature.
Image: Junkyard Dreams (University of New Mexico Press)
In Junkyard Dreams, single mother and high school dropout Rita Vargas owns an automobile junkyard outside of Santa Fe. Her property abuts a hill with a spectacular view, making the junkyard a magnet for ubiquitous developers. But Rita’s land has been in her family for generations, and she doesn't want to sell.
Also, her son Parker, a talented artist, uses salvaged pieces from the junkyard for his sculptures. Local wheeler-dealer Leroy Sena has already bought the ridge above Rita's property, and when Leroy sells that land to a small-time landlord and his gallery-owner sweetheart, the stakes are raised.
In this political and compelling portrayal of land conflict, old-timers retaining their emotional ties to the land face newcomers with money who want to build on every hilltop. Junkyard Dreams illustrates that for every person opposed to the rapid growth of the real estate bonanza, two more people are scheming on how to profit from the boom.
Boyer, former adjunct professor at the College of Santa Fe and English as a Second Language instructor at Santa Fe Community College, currently resides in Mendocino, Calif. Beth Hadas of University of New Mexico Press will receive the award on her behalf at the Zia Award luncheon on Saturday, April 17 at the Sheraton Uptown in Albuquerque.
This is the fourth year in a row that a UNM Press title or distributed title has won the Zia Award. In 2007, The King’s Lizard by Pamela Christie won the award for fiction, The Voyage of the Beetle by Anne Weaver received the award for children’s literature in 2008, and Paula Moore received the 2009 Zia Award for her thoroughly researched account of the Cricket Coogler case, Cricket in the Web: The 1949 Unsolved Murder that Unraveled Politics in New Mexico.
New Mexico Press Women, an affiliate of the National Federation of Press Women, is an organization of professional journalists and communicators that promotes the highest ethical standards while looking to the future in professional development, networking, and protecting First Amendment rights.
For more information on Junkyard Dreams or to schedule an interview with Boyer, contact Katherine MacGilvray, UNM Press, at 505-277-3291 or katm@unm.edu.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
The Student Organizations of Latin American Studies at the University of New Mexico holds its annual Sin Fronteras Film Festival at the National Hispanic Cultural Center on Friday, April 9 from 5:30-11:30 p.m.
Showing a variety of both fiction and documentary films related to immigration, the U.S.-Mexico border and identity, the festival looks to encourage an open a dialogue about these issues, which are often difficult to talk about.
This year's movie lineup includes: "Awakening From Sorrow," "What Runs in Our Veins," "Tijuaneros," "Adán," "The Beast," "El Regalo," "Bracero Stories" and "3 Pm."
Throughout the evening, audience members will have a chance to participate in discussion about the movies and voice their views on the topics the films highlight.
Films run between five and 87 minutes long.
Also, there will be a presentation by the writer and director of the film "Adán," Gabe Long.
Tickets are $5 and can be bought at the door or at Ticketmaster.
For more information, call 505-277-6847 or e-mail lasfilm@unm.edu.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
The Latin American and Iberian Institute presents Miguel Lopez, Spanish & Portuguese, who will present his research, "Imagining Feminicidios: Violence and Narrative in the Northern Frontier," on Thursday, April 8 at 1 p.m. in the LAII. A light lunch will be served. This event is free and open to the public.
Photo: Miguel Lopez
For more than a decade, the disappearance and murder of hundreds of young women in Ciudad Juárez, among them many maquiladora employees, has brought international attention to the question of how gender interacts with the political, socioeconomic and cultural dimensions of globalization.
In this context, Ciudad Juárez has come to represent a negative society geared toward global production encouraged by programs such as the National Border Program [Programa Nacional Fronterizo, PRONAF]; Border Industrialization Program [Programa de Industrialización Fronteriza, PIF] and enhanced by the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992.
The femicides and the lack of official response have not escaped the cultural imagination across Mexico, the United States and Europe. Since the 1990s many book length reports have been published – some of them fictional – that describe the femicides often in sensationalistic terms. These texts represent a challenge for those working cultural production as they both denounce the impact of savage capitalism in the border region as well as perpetuate the image of the border as a zone of terror.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
The annual UNM International Festival, sponsored by the Office of International Programs and Studies and the World Student Alliance, is set for Thursday, April 15 from 10 a.m. - 2 p.m., east of the SUB on Cornell Mall. The International Festival is a celebration of culture and diversity at UNM, featuring international food, information, arts and crafts, and performances from all over the world. This event is free and open to the public.
Unique this year is an international fashion show featuring traditional clothing from across the globe – from noon – 1 p.m. in the SUB atrium. Other performances include a Buddhist drumming group, African dance, baile folklorico, capoeira and performances from our French and Italian students.
For more information, contact Stephanie Suliman, OIPS, 277-4032, or steph376@unm.edu.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Recipients to be honored Thursday, April 15
The University of New Mexico Provost’s Committee for Staff announces recipients of the Outstanding Staff Awards. They are: Jennifer Flores, program coordinator from the Center for Academic Program Support, Jacek Tomas Giermakowski, collections manager for the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles/Museum of Southwestern Biology, and Steven Peralta, director of Engineering Student Services, School of Engineering. The winner for the workgroup award is the IT Network group.
The winners will be honored at a ceremony on Thursday, April 15 from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in the Centennial Engineering Center Auditorium, Room 1041 (located in the south east corner of the first floor).
Media Contact: Dorene Dinaro, (505) 277-5299; e-mail: ddinaro@unm.edu
The UNM Bookstore begins its Noon Poetry Series today in celebration of National Poetry Month. The series begins with David Wilde and continues each Wednesday through April 28. Other featured poets include Rebecca Aronson, V.B. Price and Ken Stewart. The series is open to the public. The UNM Bookstore is located at 2301 Central Ave. NE at the intersection of Cornell and Central.
Image: UNM Bookstore celebrates National Poetry Month with Noon Poetry Series.
April 7: David Wilde
Originally from South Wales, long time UNM researcher and scholar David Wilde writes about southwestern history and local biography.
April 14: Rebecca Aronson
Rebecca Aronson's first book--Creature, Creature--won the Main-Traveled Roads Press poetry book contest, and was published in 2007. She has poems recently in Quarterly West, Prairie Schooner, Cream City Review, and other journals and is the recipient of a Prairie Schooner Strousse Award and the Loft Literary Center's Speakeasy Poetry Award, among others. She is a contributing editor to The Laurel Review, and lives in Albuquerque.
April 21: V. B. Price
V. B. Price, lecturer emeritus, UNM honors program, is the recipient of the Arts Alliance Bravo Award for Excellence in Literary Arts, the Erna Fergusson Award for Outstanding Achievement from the UNM Alumni Association and the ACLU-NM First Amendment Award. He is the editor of the University of New Mexico Press's Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry series and author of Albuquerque: City at the End of the World and The University of New Mexico and, with Baker Morrow, Anasazi Architecture and American Design and Canyon Gardens: The Ancient Pueblo Landscapes of the American Southwest.
April 28: Ken Stewart
The Smell of Blood is a memoir in poetry form of Stewart’s experiences overseas—he discusses in honest, visceral language the immediate experience of watching friends die, as well as his later reactions to the political and social ramifications of sending an entire generation of men off to fight a needless battle. Stewart is donating all proceeds from the book to Veterans for Peace.
Parking will be validated in the parking structure for up to one hour with purchase. Please contact Lisa Walden at 505-277-7494 or lwalden@unm.edu for more information.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
The Sigma Chi Fraternity at the University of New Mexico will be conducting its annual Derby Days Event from April 7-10. Every year Sigma Chi chapters internationally host an annual Sigma Chi “Derby Days.” This series of events and festivities is designed to create a fun, competitive, and successful philanthropic event. The participants of Derby Days include the women of the University’s Pan-Hellenic Sororities.
The Beneficiary of this year’s fundraising drive is the Huntsman Cancer Institute, Sigma Chi’s International partner. Huntsman Cancer Institute Mission Statement: Huntsman Cancer Institute’s mission is to understand cancer from its beginnings, to use that knowledge in the creation and improvement of cancer treatments, to relieve the suffering of cancer patients, and to provide education about cancer risks, prevention, and care.
Schedule of events:
Wednesday April 7, 2010
Sign-A-Sig, Donation Dinner, Derby Snatch
Derby Snatch: The object of the day is to collect as many Derbies from Sigma Chi Brothers and Pledges. This is meant to be a fun activity for both sides (team members and Sigma Chi derby holders)
Sign-A-Sig: Each Sigma Chi Brother should be wearing a plain white T-Shirt and carrying a permanent marker. It is the object for each team to find as many brothers as possible throughout the day and sign their shirts, each team member’s signature.
Donation Dinner: Location is Fuddruckers at Yale and Gibson. Beginning at 6 p.m., fifty percent of every meal purchased under “Sigma Chi Derby Days” will be donated as part of the Sigma Chi fundraiser. Everyone is welcome to participate.
Thursday April 8, 2010- Backwards Serenades
Backwards Serenades: Opportunity for Pan-Hellenic Sororities to serenade the gentleman of Sigma Chi. This closed event begins at 6:00 PM and will be held at the Aquinas Newman Center.
Friday April 9, 2010- Derby Games
Derby Games: Competitors for the Derby Games include the women of the University’s Panhellenic Sororities. Games include: Tug ‘O’ War, Three Legged Race, Balloon Toss, Capture the flag, and Burlap sack race. Event Starts: 6:00 PM at Johnson Field at UNM. The public is welcome to attend and support the competitors.
Saturday April 10, 2010- Brother Auction
Brother Auction: Each brother will be auctioned off to an audience composed of the teams and some public. The purchased brother will be responsible for spending one evening with the buyer. (Could include a date, dinner, help cleaning, etc. nothing degrading) Event Starts: 11:00 AM at the Student Union Building Theater, inter-fraternal participation only.
Media Contact: Joshua Gallegos, (505) 287-0439; e-mail: jgallegos127@gmail.com
Available to speak to classes
Peace Corps recruiter Linda Tucker will be at the Latin American and Iberian Institute on Tuesday, April 20 at 6 p.m. to provide information about the Peace Corps and opportunities currently available. She is also available to speak to classes on Monday afternoon, April 19 and early in the day on Tuesday, April 20.
Peace Corps has just opened about 1,500 new opportunities for people to teach, work with youth, perform HIV/AIDS education, share business or information technology skills, raise environmental awareness and improve agricultural practices.
“Each position is challenging and provides an opportunity to work within an international community on sustainable development initiatives. Students looking for opportunities to build their skills, who are eager to make an impact on peoples' lives and who are ready to experience life in another culture, in rural communities or large cities, should apply by April 21,” Tucker said.
To apply visit: Peace Corps Apply Now.
Applicants need a relevant degree in one of these fields listed above. Applicants will bachelor's degrees outside of these fields must have a willingness to gain at least 3-6 months of teaching, tutoring, HIV/AIDS or agricultural volunteer work.
For more information, visit: Peace Corps Events or contact Linda Tucker, 214-253-5411, ltucker@peacecorps.gov.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Information Technologies (IT) will host Cyberinfrastructure Day on April 22, at the UNM Student Union Building. The event will bring together educators, researchers, information and network professionals, and students both from UNM and around the state, to collaborate on the development of UNM’s cyberinfrastructure strategy. Topics and presentations will include the DataOne project, Statewide High-Speed Network Services for Researchers and Collaborative Design of Shared Cyberinfrastructure.
Additionally, there will be open houses sponsored by IT and the Research Office to help answer your questions on services available to researchers. The day will end with visualization and dome demonstrations at the Center for Advanced Research Computing.
Cyberinfrastructure is preparing UNM and New Mexico for the oncoming globalization of universities and research institutions for future growth. Universities that effectively use cyberinfrastructure to support their research needs and communities gain a competitive advantage in the race to attract excellent scholars and secure external research funding.
Major collaborations between scientific research and technological innovation require rethinking and redirection of these activities. The purpose of this event is to Foster active communication among Researchers, Information and Network Professionals, and Students that will lead to collaborative working relationships and collective problem solving.
Registration is $75 for faculty and staff, and $40 for students, and online registration is available. Visit Cyber Day to register, see presentations, view speaker bios and for general information.
Student researchers are also encouraged to attend. IT will sponsor 10 UNM students to attend this event. Contact Moira Gerety, Deputy CIO, at 277-8125, for more information on student sponsorship.
Media Contact: Vanessa Baca, (505) 277-0987; e-mail: vjbaca1@unm.edu
April conference designed to help raise awareness
Two half-day conferences, on the origins, evolution, migration and impact of Spanish horses in the American West, will be held at UNM's field station at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge near Socorro, Saturday, April 17-Sunday, April 18. The conferences will be hosted by Paul Polechla. Polechla is no stranger to the saddle. A jovial, cowboy hat wearing associate research professor in the biology department at the University of New Mexico, Polechla has spent the past nine years helping to preserve Spanish horses in the American West.
Photo: Paul Polechla on Bailey, Carlo LoPopolo's and the New Mexican Horse Project's sorrel mustang mare. Photo courtesy of nadelbachphoto.com@2008.
Collaborators on the project, “Natural History of the Horses of the American West,” include the New Mexican Horse Project, UNM Institute for Social Research, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, PBS, Smithsonian Institute, Texas A&M University, Cambridge University and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
The goal “is to implement an educational package involving STEM, or science, technology, engineering and mathematics, as it relates to the whole natural history of horses in the American West,” Polechla said.
He’s planning a conference to be held at UNM’s field station at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge near Socorro, Saturday, April 17-Sunday, April 18. Attendees will fill out questionnaires before and after watching a movie on wild horses to see if their attitudes and knowledge change.
After the initial conference, Polechla will develop a series of 10 focus group discussions over the course of a year targeting elementary and middle school teachers, Hispanic and American Indian families and horse enthusiasts.
“We need greater awareness and our job is to try and educate the public to help conserve these horses,” Polechla said.
The New Mexican Horse Project started in 1999 to find out if any of the original horses from the Spanish Colonial period still existed. Many claimed to have these horses but when asked for scientific and historical proof, little was offered to validate their claims, said Carlos LoPopolo, New Mexican Horse Project director. Today, the organization dedicates more than 30,000 acres to the preservation and protection of wild horses.
“The conference will bring a lot of people together from all over the world who have been a part of the New Mexican Horse Project the past 10 years,” LoPopolo said. “It will be beneficial to get everyone in the same room and to develop a public understanding of what happened to these Spanish mustangs.
“The foundation of this country was built on the backs of this horse. We need to prove to the government that there’s a need to conserve this rare breed, that it needs a home and it needs to be here in the Rio Grande Valley where it originated.”
To attend either conference, contact Polechla at (505) 277-8170 or ppolechl@sevilleta.unm.edu and indicate a preference for either Saturday or Sunday afternoon.
For more information visit; New Mexico Horse Project.
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu
Mahmoud Reda Taha, associate professor and Regents' Lecturer of Civil Engineering (cross appointed to Mechanical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering), has been presented with the 2010 Walter P. Moore Jr. Faculty Achievement Award by the American Concrete Institute. This national award recognizes Taha’s dedication and commitment to student involvement in concrete research and his ability to connect theory with practice in the classroom.
Photo: Mahmoud Reda Taha
Taha conducts research into nanomaterials, structural health monitoring and biomechanics. He currently is integrating nanotechnology with construction engineering to create blast-resistant materials that could have many applications. Taha’s innovative teaching methods bring nanotechnology to his introductory level undergraduate civil engineering materials class. He works with three doctoral students and two master’s students collaborating with them to develop lighter, stronger, blast-resistant materials.
The Walter P. Moore, Jr. Faculty Achievement Award was established in 2001 to honor the late Walter P. Moore Jr. Moore was an ACI Fellow, an ACI Board Members, and a structural engineer in Texas who believed in the development of educators committed to the teaching of concrete. This award is given to an individual with less than seven years served in all faculty positions.
The award recognizes excellence and innovation in the teachings of concrete design, materials or construction, with demonstrated evidence of technical competence, high character and integrity. The American Concrete Institute is a forum for the discussion of all matters related to concrete and is the largest organization on concrete research, education and practice worldwide.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
UNM students who plan to seek a loan to attend the university next year are facing a different process. Last week President Barack Obama signed into law a major change in the U.S. student loan program. That means between 10,000-11,000 students, depending on loans who currently attend UNM, will now receive their loans directly from the U.S. Department of Education, rather than from a bank or other lending entity. This change will also apply to incoming freshmen.
Students still will apply for loans through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) website and work with their financial aid office as they did previously.
All students, with existing loans or not, who wish to receive federal loan funds in the future will need to sign a new master promissory note with the U.S. Department of Education. They can do so through Student Loans. UNM will implement the change beginning with the summer 2010 semester.
Current students who seek a Direct Loan may find they owe money to two different lenders when they graduate if they have existing loans. But UNM Director of Financial Aid Brian Malone said the loans can be consolidated with Direct Loans so that the graduate can make one payment.
For incoming freshmen the process will be simpler. Freshmen will be given the link to the U.S. Department of Education website rather than a list of possible lenders from which to choose.
Malone said he is somewhat concerned about how smoothly the process will work this year as more than 5,500 colleges and universities throughout the U.S. will now be on Direct Loans, but he added there will be enough funds to meet demand and that in the long run this change should streamline the student loan system.
Congress made the change in the loan program to shore up the Pell grant program. The change may save the government as much as $68 billion over the next 10 years, with the extra money flowing into the Pell grant program. Malone said the new law also makes more families eligible for grants, which is a welcome change for states like New Mexico who have many low income families.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
Theme is “Love in the Middle Ages”
The University of New Mexico’s Institute for Medieval Studies celebrates the 25th anniversary of its spring lecture series with the theme, “Love in the Middle Ages,” April 12–15. Events include six lectures and a concert. The lectures will take place in Woodward Hall, room 101 on the main UNM campus, and the concert in UNM Center for the Arts, Keller Hall. The lecture series, supported by a grant from the New Mexico Humanities Council, is free and open to the public.
The opening lecture is Monday, April 12 at 7:15 p.m. and continues with 5:15 and 7:15 p.m. sessions on the following three days. Six internationally prominent visiting speakers will attend, including award-winning faculty from Northwestern University, William and Mary College, Southern Methodist University, Grand Valley State University, the University of Iowa and Rice University.
The concert, scheduled for Thursday, April 15, 5:15 p.m. in Keller Hall, features UNM Early Music Ensemble, directed by Colleen Sheinberg, founder-member and co-director of Música Antigua de Albuquerque.
“Love in the Middle Ages” will include presentations on topics that have exercised an enduring fascination on the public imagination. Two lectures focus on troubadours, poet-minstrels of southern France whose preoccupations with romantic love between man and woman were fueled by their contact with the Muslim courts of medieval Spain.
One lecture looks specifically at the concept of love as it emerges from troubadour culture and poetry while the other investigates the originality of the musical forms developed by the troubadours as settings for their poems. No medieval literary tradition has exercised greater influence across the ages than the Arthurian legends with their exaltation of the concepts of chivalry and courtly love and their portrayal of life-changing quests.
The series includes an exploration of the vicissitudes of romance in the Arthurian tales of medieval England. Perhaps the most famous, if ill-starred, pair of medieval lovers were Abelard and Heloise. Their passionate affair, which ended in his castration and her dispatch to a nunnery, is chronicled in a remarkable set of love letters—whose authenticity has sometimes been questioned—as well as in Abelard’s vivid autobiography, The History of My Calamities.
One lecture investigates the couple’s relationship from Heloise’s standpoint; examining the part she played in helping Abelard acquire his reputation as the greatest philosopher of his time. In the Middle Ages just as in the present, love often refused to confine itself within legal and social norms; the series includes a presentation examining romantic attachments of those on the outer edges of society who resisted efforts to regulate their love lives. The final lecture offers a witty and visually delightful exploration of the representation of sexual intimacy in late medieval and early modern art, from Van Eyck’s famous 15th-century representation of the betrothal of the Arnolfinis to the erotically suggestive 17th-century portrait of Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton.
“Love in the Middle Ages” informs and entertains, offering audiences the opportunity to learn from and interact with speakers who are at the very forefront of their fields.
The lectures:
Monday, April 12, 7:15 p.m.
William Paden, “Troubadour Love”
According to widespread belief, troubadour poetry had nothing in common with marriage in its time and place, the High Middle Ages in the south of France. In this view the poets sang of adulterous desire, whether consummated or not, and marriage had nothing to do with love since it was usually arranged by two families with little regard for the feeling of those to be married. This belief, based on few poetic texts and little investigation of the historical evidence, should be revised. Abundant sources regarding marriage show that it did involve love, and love was the dominant theme of troubadour poetry. But could poetry refer to marriage? It could and did, but not very often, perhaps about as often as it referred to adultery. The poets sang of love; usually this love sought neither to violate marriage nor to support it, although it might lead to it. The infrequence of marriage as a theme in troubadour love poetry relates to its lack of institutional status: marriage was not yet established as a sacrament, and had no connection to the state as it does today. Marriage was a social practice, as was poetry. The poets focused on love without giving much thought to its implications for marriage, though the potential implications must always have been close at hand.
Tuesday, April 13, 5:15 p.m.
George Greenia, “Passion and Restraint: Love among the Lawless”
Love in the Middles Ages was formalized in theology, spirituality and song, but jurists too plied their trade reining in love-making among the unruly. Law codes labored to safeguard consecrated marital love and set it apart from the wide variety of casual alliances that formed, dissolved and sometimes left children in their wake. The re-conquest frontiers of medieval Spain defined instances of criminal conduct and established ways to normalize relationships that sprung from wayward behavior by adventurous women, and still other ladies who should have been more circumspect in their sacred precincts and along the sacred trails of pilgrimage.
Tuesday, April 13, 7:15 p.m.
Bonnie Wheeler, “Enduring Love in English Arthurian Romance”
How do literary characters engage in romantic relations in medieval English romance, especially romances of King Arthur and his chivalric court? If romantic love is an ideal, how is it achieved? If passionate engagement is a requirement for the fully noble secular knight, how does such passion propel a fully realized life? If passion goes awry, how does one endure its consequences? In this lecture, Bonnie Wheeler will look especially at such famed lovers as Sir Gawain and Lady Bertilak, Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, as well as Lady Elayne and Sir Tristram and the Isoldes along with such fugue characters as Sir Pelleas and Lady Ettarde, as she considers some medieval English modes of loving and being loved.
Wednesday, April 14, 5:15 p.m.
William Levitan, “Heloise and the Passions of Reason”
Levitan’s lecture focuses on the afterlife of Heloise and Abelard, that is, on some of the ways in which they have been understood and represented in later centuries. For their celebrated love affair has less often been viewed as the experience of unique individuals in a specific historical circumstance than as a compendious myth of love onto which different generations have cast their own notions of love’s nature and character. More pointedly, Heloise has retained the status of a paradigmatic woman-in-love even as the understanding of what that paradigm is has changed significantly. The lecture will discuss the shifts in the ways Heloise’s love has been seen and in particular will concentrate on the intellectual passion that was never far from the surface of her love for Abelard and that formed the basis of their decades-long intellectual collaboration. It is this passion—the passion of the independent, educated woman—that more than any other feature has characterized the representation of Heloise in recent times.
Wednesday, April 14, 7:15 p.m.
Elizabeth Aubrey, “Singing of Love in the Middle Ages”
During the 12th and 13th centuries in the region of what is now southern France, a new type of song blossomed, an extraordinarily powerful and engaging new poetry sung to a new style of music. Most of these songs were about love in its many manifestations. The poetry is full of vibrant images and creative language to express the broad range of feelings associated with this most fundamental of human emotions. The melodies follow closely the carefully crafted structures of the poems: they were relatively short, sometimes elegantly simple and accessible, sometimes soaring and dramatic, all quite unlike the long, sometimes monotonous, and remote melodies of church plainchant to which medieval hearers were accustomed. But it is difficult to explain what it is about a particular melody that effectively captures the meaning of the words, just as it is for any popular love song today. If the poet-lover is rejoicing in his good fortune, what musical notes does he use to express his joy? If she is despondent over her lover’s departure, what melodic gestures can capture her dismay? If the lover complains that his beloved is ignoring him, how does the melody convey his frustration? Aubrey’s lecture explores what it was about this music that was able to express the multifarious themes of love of which the poems spoke so eloquently.
Thursday, April 15, 5:15 p.m.
Concert by the UNM Early Music Ensemble directed by Colleen Sheinberg: “Love and Dalliance in Medieval Music”
Thursday, April 15, 7:15 p.m.
Diane Wolfthal, “In and Out of the Marital Bed: Picturing Marital Sex from the Arnolfinis to Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton”
Wolfthal traces the changing nature of marriage from the ideal of the chaste marital bed to the belief in a companionate marriage, which embraces romantic love and physical passion. Earlier images, such as the Arnolfini portrait, dated 1434, reflect and reinforce the Church teaching that sexual intercourse should be confined to marriage, performed in a particular manner, and reserved for specific purposes, and that any deviation from this practice was deemed sinful. But later works reveal a change in attitude. The portrait of Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton, dated around 1600, is perhaps the first to place a wife at the center of a private erotic fantasy. This portrait opens a window through which to explore how one couple defied the moralizing judgments of their age and chose instead to embrace the notion of the joy of marital sex. If earlier images construct marriage as the opposite of adultery, later ones show that adultery sometimes served as a model for marriage, instilling it with the ideals of romantic love and sexual desire. The portrait of Elizabeth Vernon makes clear that despite moralists’ condemnation of premarital sex, secret weddings, and even at times the enjoyment of conjugal sex, some couples chose to privately celebrate their sexuality.
For specific biography information on a particular lecturer, click on the individual's name. For a complete list of lecturers biographies visit: Institute for Medieval Studies Spring Lecture Series.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
The Science & Society Distinguished Public Talks series presents, “An Iconoclast Revisits Climate Change: Some Plesant Truths,” with Albert Engelhardt on Thursday, April 8 at 5 p.m. in rm. C of the UNM Conference Center located at 1634 University Blvd. N.E. A meet and greet will also be held prior to the talk at 4:30 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public. Plenty of free parking is available.
A considerable share of the limited resources of the country and of scientists and engineers, is being wasted on speculation about global warming and the role of CO2. Data obtained by scientists about the temperature cycles without the effect of large human populations. However, there are many wrong actions taken because of political and financial reasons. There is solid data out there, which conclusively proves that man-made global warming is insignificant at best.
Engelhardt is the president and CEO of Enfiteck, Inc., which he founded in 1982. With more than 50 years of professional experience, Engelhardt covers a broad spectrum of activities as a university professor, a research engineer, physicist and a LANL staffer among other experience.
The Science & Society Distinguished Public Talks series are co-sponsored by Albuquerque Section of the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (IEEE), Sigma Xi (the Scientific Research Society), the Department of Physics & Astronomy, College of Arts & Sciences, University Honors Program, and the Division of Continuing Education.
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu
The Art Education faculty and the Masley Gallery presents the 2010 Spring Graduating MA Exhibition II Friday, April 9 through Friday, April 23. Opening presentations and a reception will be held on Friday, April 9, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Masley Gallery on the UNM Campus. MA Grads will give their final presentations on Friday, April 9, starting at 5 p.m. Studio artwork and a thesis will be displayed. A reception with refreshments will follow the presentations.
The UNM community is cordially invited to attend an exhibition featuring the dynamic work of graduating MA students: Joseph Baca, Marian Berg, Leah Caruso, Karen Edwards and Linda Krecker.
Masley Gallery is located in Masley Hall on the north side of the UNM campus. Gallery hours are Monday - Friday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
For more information contact arted@unm.edu or call, 277-4112.
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu
STC.UNM will host an awards reception on Monday, April 12, from 5:30-7:30 pm, at the UNM Science & Technology Park Rotunda, to honor the 23 faculty and students who have been issued patents and disclosed copyrights within the past year.
For a c omplete list visit: Inventors.
The reception will also honor the first annual STC.UNM Innovation Fellow, Dr. Steven Brueck, who is being recognized for his achievements as one of UNM’s top innovators.
Keynote speaker for the event will be U.S. Representative Martin Heinrich for New Mexico’s First Congressional District.
If you are interested in attending the reception, please RSVP to Denise Bissell at dbissell@stc.unm.edu or 272-7310.
The Rotunda is located at 801 University Blvd. S.E., Building 801, Albuquerque, NM 87106
The School of Architecture and Planning speaker series features Eric Naslund, FAIA, presents, “Architectural Alchemy: Housing from the Humblest of Ingredients,” Friday, April 9 at 5 p.m. in George Pearl Hall’s auditorium. Naslund is principal and design partner in Studio E Architects in San Diego, Calif. This special presentation is jointly sponsored with the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority.
Photo: Eric Naslund
Naslund has led the design team effort on many of the firm's award-winning projects. He also served as principal-in-charge and designer on numerous affordable housing, urban infill and new community plans throughout the Southwestern United States.
His current interest is in the design of mixed-use urban infill projects in downtown San Diego, Solana Beach and Long Beach, Calif. Naslund’s sensitivity to the design of humane places rooted in their location has helped earn the firm a reputation for an innovative and people-focused architecture.
Naslund is a licensed architect in California and New Mexico and a member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. He earned a bachelor of architecture degree with Honors from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
Naslund has spoken frequently on architecture and affordable housing and is adjunct faculty at Woodbury University, San Diego.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
The New Mexico Coalition for Financial Education (NMCoFE), the Lt. Governor’s Office, and the UNM Anderson School of Management are inviting all Anderson students to attend the 4th Annual Lt. Governor’s Summit on Financial Education on Monday, April 19, from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., at Hotel Albuquerque Old Town. There is no cost for Anderson students to attend the summit that includes breakfast and lunch.
The theme of this year’s summit is, "Gain Control – Keep Control," and it will feature more than 20 workshops from experts in the financial industry to help you gain control of your current financial situation and keep control well into the future. At least two seminars per breakout session will specifically target college students
Why should students attend an Annual Summit on Financial Education?
- Prior to 2010, our nation’s saving’s rate was a negative 1 percent
- More than 70 percent of us live paycheck to paycheck – that means that less than 30% of us are able to save and invest for the future
- Most college students will graduate with an average of $19,000.00 plus interest in student loan debt and an average of $5,000 - $7,000 in credit card debt
The luncheon will feature an address by Lt. Governor, Diane Denish and the Keynote speaker, Dr. Rickie Keys, Ph.D., MPH, Senior Fellow of Health and Social Policy at the University of Denver, will discuss, "The Clear Connection: Showing the Impact of Insufficient Financial Education on the Poor and Credit Challenged."
Anderson Financial Management Association members will play a key role in this year’s summit helping at the event while also serving as hosts and guides to summit attendees.
To attend the Lt. Governor's Summit on Financial Education interested participants are encouraged to register now at, (505) 383-2327 or bernice.geiger@state.nm.us. Space is limited.
Media Contact: Leslie Venzuela, (505) 277-7117; e-mail: venzuela@mgt.unm.edu
Drive to be held April 7-8 in SUB
This past January, native New Mexican and former UNM student Gene Valles was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, a disease that is characterized by the growth of abnormal white blood cells, which build up in the bone marrow and interfere with the creation of normal blood cells.
Valles, like 10,000 other patients a year, is depending on a bone marrow transplant as his only chance for a cure.
A donor drive, to find a potential match for Valles, will be held in the Student Union Building, Ballroom B on Wednesday-Thursday, April 7-8, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Valles is a former University of New Mexico graduate and graduate student lecturer who has dedicated his life to working with students with special needs and encouraging students from diverse background to enter the teaching profession. He received his BS in education in 1976, MA in special education in 1981 (with a bilingual emphasis) and his Ph.D. in special education learning disabilities in 1993 from UNM, while he worked as a graduate student lecturer from 1989-1993.
When looking for a donor match, ethnicity does have a huge impact, as patients are most likely to match people who share their heritage.
Of the 7 million people in the National Marrow Donor Registry, less then 9 percent are of Hispanic/Latino heritage, which is why Valles is looking toward his fellow Hispanics for help. Donors of a diverse racial and ethic background are especially needed so that every patient has a chance for a cure. Joining the Registry only requires a simple mouth swab. If you are a match, the most common way to donate marrow is similar to giving blood.
For more information about donating or becoming a donor visit: Marrow Drive or contact Aubrie Vargas at avargas@nmdp.org.
The UNM core curriculum task force invites faculty, graduate students and staff to an open meeting on Friday, April 9, 3-4:30 p.m. at the Student Union Building, Acoma room. Subcommittee leaders will present recommended changes to UNM’s core curriculum requirements, followed by a question and answer session.
During the past year, faculty, staff, students and administrators on the core curriculum task force have examined approaches to general education with an eye toward improving the quality of higher education, graduation and retention rates, and student satisfaction.
They recently held an open meeting for students, who turned out in a standing-room-only crowd. English Associate Professor Michelle Hall Kells, task force chair, told students, “We want to know what’s working for you and what’s not working, what needs to be changed.”
School of Engineering Associate Dean Chuck Fledderman chairs the educational values subcommittee. He said UNM adopted the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes developed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities.
The LEAP Outcomes, detailed at aacu.org/leap/vision.cfm, are:
• knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world,
• intellectual and practical skills,
• personal and social responsibility, and
• integrative and applied learning.
Fledderman said the current core does address those outcomes, but not coherently.
“A graduate should meet these outcomes in a way that’s appropriate for the discipline,” he said. He also said the core should continue throughout a student’s time at UNM. The perfect situation, he said, would be to “design it in such a way that students wouldn’t even realize they’d been through a core.”
Assistant Dean Doug Thomas said that at the Anderson School of Management, “As we go out into the community, we find that employers really want the people they hire to have good written communication skills.” Thomas chairs the writing across the curriculum subcommittee.
Anderson faculty have worked with writing experts to help students adapt writing skills learned in the core to advanced business writing, an approach Thomas said the task force recommends throughout the core. They also recommend developing a writing council and writing center.
Task force members see a need for a permanent committee to oversee the core curriculum and allow it to evolve. “The core curriculum doesn’t have any ownership,” said College of Pharmacy Assistant Dean Stefani Hines, learning outcomes subcommittee chair.
Part of the committee’s task would be ongoing development of clear, well-defined and measurable learning outcomes, Hines said. “The learning outcomes really need to drive course objectives.” Such learning outcomes, rather than fixed course requirements, could form a more flexible basis for the core.
In comparing UNM’s curriculum to other models nationwide, University Libraries Professor Kathleen Keating said, “We found that universities across the nation are looking at restructuring the core for the 21st century.”
Keating chairs the general education models subcommittee. She said common components in these new models include multi-disciplinary cooperation in the core, exit exams after core courses and flexible course offerings.
Students asked about adding 300 and 400 level courses to the core and offering options in more disciplines that satisfy both core and major requirements. Kells and Keating said the task force would like to see both happen.
The task force will submit a plan to the provost and Faculty Senate for further action. For more background on the work of the task force, see the December 2009 issue of UNM Today.
University of New Mexico students will see an increase in tuition and fees of 7.9 percent following action by the UNM Board of Regents at the university’s annual budget summit.
Regents approved a UNM tuition increase of 3.5 percent, which must be added to the 5 percent tuition credit approved by the New Mexico Legislature. University administrators refer to this legislative tuition tax credit as the “SAD pass through” for “state appropriation deduction.” They said it amounts to a legislative tax on students.
Regents also approved an increase in student fees of $64. Added together with the legislative tuition tax credit and the UNM tuition increase, undergraduate students will be paying approximately $5,505 in tuition and fees for the next academic year – an increase of about $404. Graduate students will see an approximately increase of $444 in tuition and fees for a total of $6,040.
“We will continue to do everything we can to protect the classroom and our workforce,” said UNM President David Schmidly. “But we have to be realistic about this worsening economy and understand that tough choices will continue to be made.”
During the budget summit, Schmidly outlined nearly $6 million dollars in cost containment measures that will be implemented to help balance the university’s FY 2011 budget. These measures, plus the UNM tuition increase, will help off-set approximately $15 million in cuts from the state to UNM’s main campus.
“We have demanded internal efficiencies and implemented cost-saving measures to demonstrate our willingness to shoulder most of the burden of the budget cuts,” said Schmidly. “Our cost containment measures will generate twice the amount generated by the university’s portion of the tuition increase.”
The administration will now take the decision by the Board of Regents on tuition and fees and will build a budget for the coming fiscal year. That budget will be considered by the regents at a meeting at the end of this month. University budgets must be submitted to the Department of Higher Education by May 1.
Media Contacts: Susan McKinsey (505) 277-1807 or cell (505) 362-5530; e-mail: mckinsey@unm.edu or Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627 or cell (505) 220-0313; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
Popular former broadcast journalist Carla Aragón will be at the UNM Bookstore on Saturday, April 17 to read and sign copies of her bilingual children’s book, Dance of the Eggshells: Baile de los Cascarones (UNM Press), celebrating the popular Hispanic folk event, and one of the author’s favorite customs while growing up in Santa Fe. This event is free and open to the public.
Carla Aragón, popular broadcast journalist, will be at the UNM Bookstore on Saturday, April 17th at 11 am to read and sign copies of her bilingual children’s book, Dance of the Eggshells: Baile de los Cascarones (UNM Press), celebrating the popular Hispanic folk event, and one of the author’s favorite customs while growing up in Santa Fe.
When Libby and her brother J.D. are sent to visit their grandparents in Santa Fe for Spring Break, a special surprise is in store for them. It’s the week after Easter and Grandma Socorro is eager to share a cultural tradition with her young visitors—the Baile de Cascarones, the Dance of the Eggshells.Through Libby’s first exposure to the Baile de Cascarones, Aragón explores the history and preservation of one of northern New Mexico’s treasured customs.
Aragón is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who spent thirty-five years in broadcasting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Los Angeles, California. This is the first of many bilingual children’s books she hopes to write on her family traditions. Illustrator Kathy Dee Saville is a former art teacher in the Iowa City and Albuquerque public schools. She is also a musician, singer, and composer. She resides in Rohnert Park, Calif.
The UNM Bookstore is located at 2301 Central Ave. NE at the intersection of Cornell and Central. Parking will be validated in the parking structure for up to one hour with purchase. Call Lisa Walden at (505) 277-7494 for more information.
The UNM RWJF Center for Health Policy presents its spring lecture series, “Plural Perspectives on Health and Health Policy” with Marie Mora, professor of economics, University of Texas-Pan American, whose lecture “Self-Employment, Health Insurance Coverage and Race/Ethnicity” is set for Thursday, April 8, 12:30 - 2 p.m. in the Student Union Building Lobo Room A.
Mora, an Albuquerque native, is serving a second term as president of the American Society of Hispanic Economists. She earned a doctorate in economics from Texas A&M University in 1996, after completing her B.A. and M.A. degrees, also in economics, from the University of New Mexico. Mora’s research interests are in labor economics, particularly regarding the economics of language and Hispanic labor-market outcomes.
Using the 2008 American Community Survey, Mora will discuss:
• How this study will analyze racial/ethnic differences in health insurance coverage among working adults in the U.S., taking into account whether the worker was self-employed.
• How this study provides insight into how much of these racial/ethnic differences in health insurance coverage can be explained by differences in education and other observable characteristics.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
The Lobo Card office will begin printing new cards this summer. A task force is finalizing details on the process to re-card all current ID cards for faculty, staff, students, retirees and affiliates. Incoming students will receive the updated card.
As UNM has moved forward into Banner, more and more elements have fallen into place to make re-carding campus feasible. Printing new cards will bring them into alignment with new technology and services. A design competition for the new card is currently underway in which students can showcase their design skills.
For more details about the re-card initiative and a timeline of activities visit: Lobo Recard.
Media Contact: Corine Gonzales, (505) 277-0839; e-mail: corineg@unm.edu
To commemorate 60 years at the University of New Mexico, the UNM Communication & Journalism Department hosts a celebration Saturday, April 17. The public is invited to join faculty, staff, students and alumni as they celebrate the department’s history and accomplishments while keeping an eye on the future.
The evening begins with a reception from 5-6 p.m. in the recently renovated C&J building, located at Central and Yale NE, where guests can interact and network with others, while enjoying wine and cheese and touring the building. At 6:30 p.m., guests will proceed to the Student Union Building ballroom where dinner will be served with a serving of the department’s history and current condition, with light seasoning of speeches from prominent alumni and recognition of student achievements.
Alumni speakers include Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, candidate for Governor of New Mexico, who graduated from UNM C&J with a bachelor’s in speech communication in 1974; Dan Herrera, Albuquerque Journal editorial page editor, graduated in 1978 with a bachelor’s in journalism; and Jennifer Riordan, Wells Fargo Bank’s director of community and media relations, graduated with a bachelor’s in communication in 1999.
John Oetzel, departmental chair, said, “The UNM Communication & Journalism Department has an illustrious history with notable faculty and students whom we wish to commemorate. The celebration is an opportunity to reflect on the past while focusing on the future. Through our fundraising associated with the celebration, we look to support student scholarships and develop multimedia journalism.
This event isn’t exclusively for those associated with the school – the community is encouraged to attend. The public is familiar with the work of many of our alums through reading newspapers and exposure to broadcast news. We look forward to the opportunity to share with them the changing trends in communication and journalism education for the 21st century.”
Tickets are available for $60 per person (of which $35 is tax deductible). The student price is $25. Tickets can be purchased at UNM Fund C&J. The deadline to RSVP is Tuesday, April 13.
If unable to attend the celebration, but still interested in contributing, alums and others can participate in the ongoing Buy-a-Brick Campaign. A personalized brick is $60 (small) or $120 (large) to be placed at the entrance of the Communication & Journalism building. Guests can also make donations at the ticket Web site noted above.
Money raised will contribute to the education of a new generation of communication and journalism students and professionals. All proceeds for the event will go to either the Communication & Journalism student travel fund or for the department’s efforts in multimedia journalism.
The Department of Communication & Journalism at the University of New Mexico creates excellence in learning through academic scholarship, teaching and service to the community and the field.
Other anniversary events include Mercer Speech Tournament, on Friday, April 9 from 5-9 p.m. in the C&J building; and the C&J Career & Internship Fair, Tuesday, April 13 from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. in the Student Union Building.
For more information on the 60th anniversary celebration, visit the department Web page: C&J 60th Anniversary.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
The Office of the Vice President for Research is sponsoring a Spring Symposium on the Responsible Conduct of Research on Friday April 16, 2010 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Student Union Building.
10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Introduction to RCR
Student Union Buiding - Ballroom C
Presented by M. Kalichman, PhD, UC San Diego
This is an excellent opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students, and curious faculty and staff. This two-hour session will combine lecture and small group discussions to introduce basic content on the responsible conduct of research (RCR). Attendees will receive a Certificate of Completion (2 hrs. RCR training). Lunch provided.
12:30 p.m. - 12:45 p.m.
UNM’s Scientific Integrity Plan and Response to new National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health Training Requirements.
Student Union Building – Ballroom C
Presented by W. Gannon, Ph.D. UNM
This is a discussion of ways to meet RCR training requirements and an overview of resources and opportunities at UNM that support scientific integrity.
1 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Train-the-Trainers Workshop
Student Union Building - Mirage/Thunderbird and Trailblazer/Spirit Rooms
Presented by M. Kalichman PhD and D. Plemmons, PhD, UC San Diego
This workshop is for faculty, program directors, and research administrators. Learn how to teach Research Ethics in Context (introducing RCR into everyday activities) or Ethics across the Curriculum (providing RCR content into courses that you already teach).
For more information visit: Research Ethics. To register for the Symposium at: Symposium Registration.
The Maxwell Museum of Anthropology on the UNM campus is hosting a number of events this month. They begin with the 19th Albuquerque Antiquarian Book Fair on April 2-3 at the UNM Continuing Education Conference Center. All events, except the Chaco Outliers Excursions are free and the public is welcome.
April 2 – 3
19th ALBUQUERQUE ANTIQUARIAN BOOK FAIR
Friday, April 2
5 - 9 p.m.
Saturday April 3
10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Books, prints,photos & other printed collectibles
Dealers in all fields
Silent Auction Friday
University of New Mexico Continuing Education Conference Center
1634 University Boulevard, just north of Indian School Road
Admission: $6 both days; $2 Saturday
April 3
BOOK LAUNCH: SLINGING THE BULL IN KOREA: An Adventure in Psychological Warfare Saturday, April 3, 1 p.m., John Martin "Jack" Campbell & Katherine Kallestad Published by University of New Mexico Press Free and Open to All Maxwell Museum
April 7
INDIAN BREAD BAKING
11 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Oven bread baked fresh in the Maxwell horno; Indian tacos & more by the Edaakies of Isleta Pueblo, $5 Maxwell Courtyard
Saturday, April 17
Sunday, April 18
EXCURSION SOUTHERN CHACO OUTLIERS
Travel to seldom visited sites in the Grants, New Mexico area defined by prehistoric roads, great houses and great kivas, dated AD 900 - 1250. Sites include Andrews, Casa Mero, Las Ventanas and Candelaria.
$75 each day, Museum Association members $70 each day, UNM tuition remission accepted Optional van ride for two-day reservations $20.
Call 277-1400 for more information
April 21
INDIAN BREAD BAKING
11 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Oven bread baked fresh in the Maxwell horno; Indian tacos & more by the Edaakies of Isleta Pueblo; $5 Maxwell Museum of Anthropology Courtyard
April 30
FOOD & LIFE SERIES: A Place at Mother Earth's Table
7 pm Culture and Health: How Traditional Foods Interact with our Heritage Lecture by Gary Paul Nabhan Dr. Nabhan is a leading figure in the prmotion of local food for health and cultural sustainability. Writer, food and farming advocate, rural lifeways folklorist, his work has long been rooted in the U.S./Mexico borderlands.
Anthro 163, Free and Open to All
For more information on events call 277-1400, or visit Maxwell Museum.
The UNM Peace Studies Program, in conjunction with the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, the New Mexico Anti-Defamation League, and the UNM Office of International Programs International Festival presents, "Red States, Blue States & the Jewish State: America and the Quest for Middle East Peace" with Gil Hoffman, chief political correspondent and analyst for the Jerusalem Post on Thursday, April 15 at noon at the SUB, Lobo A&B Rooms. The event is free and open to the public.
Photo: Gil Hoffman
Hoffman is well-connected to Israeli and Palestinian leaders, has interviewed every major figure across the Israeli political spectrum, has been interviewed by top media on six continents and is a regular analyst on CNN, Al-Jazeera and other news outlets. Called “the most optimistic man in Israel” by Israel Television, Hoffman’s writing and TV appearances provide a behind the scenes look at the intrigue and humor in the Israeli political arena.
Hoffman, who was raised in Chicago, graduated magna cum laude from Northwestern University’s School of Journalism and wrote for the Miami Herald and Arizona Republic before moving to Israel. A reserve soldier in the IDF’s Spokesman’s Unit, he has lectured in seven countries and 35 US states.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Fresh off of Congress’ landmark healthcare reform, New Mexico Representative Martin Heinrich sits down with “New Mexico in Focus” correspondent Gwyneth Doland to talk about how this reform will impact New Mexico, plus his efforts to make sure the reform will also benefit New Mexico’s veterans. “New Mexico in Focus” airs Fridays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 6:30 a.m. It also airs KNME Digital Ch. 9.1 on Saturdays at 5 p.m.
Also, to remember U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, filmmaker Joe Day shares his short documentary on him, “Advocate of the Earth.” Then “The Line” panelists will offer their reflections on Udall and his legacy here in the Land of Enchantment.
Host/Commentator:
Gene Grant, Weekly Alibi Columnist
New Mexico In Focus Correspondent:
Gwyneth Doland, Managing Editor, NewMexicoIndependent.com
Guest:
Representative Martin Heinrich, (D) First Congressional District
Guest Panelists:
Lorene Mills, Host, Report From Santa Fe
Laura Sanchez, Former Executive Director, New Mexico Democratic Party
Panelists:
Sophie Martin, Managing Editor, DukeCityFix.com
Jim Scarantino, Editor, New Mexico Watchdog
Additionally, viewers can also watch New Mexico In Focus online at: KNME. Get updates, watch, and follow KNME on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more.
“New Mexico in Focus” is produced by Kevin McDonald and Kathy Wimmer and closed captioning has been made possible by a gift from Mrs. Elspeth G. Bobbs.
Media Contact: Evy Todd, (505) 277-1812; e-mail: etodd@knme.org
The Indigenous Nations Library Program will host an open house and drop in research help lab on April 13-14 in Zimmerman Library room 254. On Tuesday, April 13 the lab will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. to help with any student research need. On Wednesday, April 14, the lab will be open from 9 a.m. to noon.
The Native Services Librarian from the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center will also be available. Every student who stops by for research help will be entered in a drawing for a prize.
INLP will also host an open house during the same days and hours in their offices located in Zimmerman Room 209 in the West Wing of the 2nd floor above the Willard Room. Snacks and pizza will be provided.
For more information, contact Mary Alice Tsosie at 277-8922 or mtsosie@unm.edu or Paulita Aguilar at 277-4243 or paulita@unm.edu.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu