New Mexico State University faculty members have a long-standing tradition of reaching out to the state's public schools with innovations that help teachers become more effective. Recent activities suggest that the tradition is stronger than ever, and it pleases me to share just a few examples with you.

Helping students and teachers appreciate math

With a grant from the Eisenhower Foundation, David Finston and Doug Kurtz of our mathematical sciences department created a unique course this spring that put high school math teachers, future math teachers and non-math majors together in the same classroom. Through demonstrations and group discussions, the non-math majors learned the math concepts we encounter every day - probability, acoustics and encoding, for example - and the teachers and future teachers learned how to explain the concepts better.

"Training the Trainers Institute"

Forty teachers from throughout New Mexico received technology training last month at a "Train the Trainers Summer Institute" at NMSU. Each of the 40, in turn, will give technology workshops for other teachers in the coming year. Within five years, 10,000 teachers will learn to use technology more effectively through such training, sponsored by the Regional Educational Technology Assistance Program.

Using the Internet to teach biotechnology

College students and advanced high school students can have fun while learning microbiology skills, thanks to a team of biologists and computer scientists at NMSU's National Biotechnology Information Facility. The NBIF group developed an interactive World Wide Web-based computer game that lets students play the role of a laboratory technician who must correctly identify the germ causing an outbreak of illness. "Outbreak!" is available free of charge to teachers and students everywhere who have access to the Web.

I could mention many more examples of this kind of outreach, but then I wouldn't have space to update you on other recent activities at New Mexico's land-grant university:

Major advance in laser technology

NMSU physicists Robert Armstrong and Vladimir Shalaev have developed a new class of composite material that enables lasers to work at extremely low power levels. Since the first lasers were built 40 years ago, advancements in the technology have led to laser surgery, compact disks, bar-code scanners and other applications. The work of Armstrong and Shalaev, assisted by graduate students and visiting scientists, promises a new generation of tiny, low-power, highly efficient lasers.

Art gallery assembles retablos traveling exhibition

The Rockefeller Foundation Museum Program is providing $60,000 to help the University Art Gallery prepare the most comprehensive exhibition to date of 19th century Mexican retablos, which are religious images typically painted on tin plates. The exhibition, El Favor de los Santos: The Retablo Collection of New Mexico State University, will open at the NMSU gallery on Nov. 20 and remain on display there through Feb. 7, 2000. The exhibition subsequently will travel for three years to major museums in Mexico and the United States, says Gallery Director Charles Lovell.

Making their mark

Recent reminders that New Mexico State's faculty and students are among the best:

NMSU chemistry professor Joseph Wang is the 1999 winner of the American Chemical Society's Chemical Instrumentation Award, recognized for his work in developing hand-held sensors for detecting lead in blood, measuring glucose levels in diabetics, analyzing DNA and monitoring water pollution.

Mark Medoff, professor emeritus of theater arts, was named one of seven outstanding leaders by the College of Fellows of the American Theatre (ATF). Medoff, widely recognized for his Tony Award-winning play "Children of a Lesser God," was inducted into the ATF this spring in a ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

NMSU student Melissa Martinez of Espaņola, who graduated in May with a degree in communication studies, has been selected for two prestigious fellowships. A Woodrow Wilson Foreign Affairs Fellowship, one of only 10 awarded nationally, will cover her expenses at the graduate school of her choice. But first, she will spend the coming year doing research in Mexico under a $30,000 National Security Exchange Program graduate fellowship. Also receiving a National Security Exchange Program fellowship to study abroad is James MacKenzie of Albuquerque, a sophomore majoring in biology and history. He will study in China for a year.

Chris Beltran, a math and physics major who graduated in May, won a National Physical Science Consortium Fellowship for a six-year doctoral track program worth an estimated $185,000. Beltran will pursue graduate studies in theoretical particle physics at Indiana University and spend his summers working at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

If you would like more information on these or other developments at NMSU, or if you have comments about this newsletter, please let me know. I'd like to hear from you.

Office of the President
New Mexico State University, P.O. Box 30001, Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001
505-646-2035  wconroy@nmsu.edu  http://www.nmsu.edu
Volume 2/Number 2/July 1999