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New Mexico State University EXCELLENCE IN ACTION A Periodic Newsletter from President William B. Conroy I had the privilege in April of addressing an acequia workshop in Taos sponsored by New Mexico State University, the New Mexico Department of Agriculture and the Taos County Economic Development Corporation. Besides the critical role they play in the economy of the area, acequias are part of the social and cultural fabric of north-central New Mexico, and have been since the Spanish colonial days. The workshop gave me a greater appreciation of the challenges that the acequia owners and users face today in holding on to their traditional water rights in light of the initiatives of developers, environmental groups and others. Since NMSU serves all the citizens of our state, it is important for the university to make its expertise on water and water policy available to the acequia owners and users of north-central New Mexico and to others throughout the state who are facing similarly complex issues related to our natural resources. As New Mexico's land-grant university, NMSU is dedicated to teaching, research and service that has practical applications for the people of the state. The outreach activities of our faculty, staff and students make a difference in people's lives, at the grassroots level and at the statewide level, as the following examples illustrate. Monitoring the state's bridges for safety Since 1988, Ken White and his colleagues in NMSU's Department of Civil, Agricultural and Geological Engineering have been checking the safety of New Mexico's bridges through state-of-the-art analysis and non-destructive evaluation techniques. Teams of professional engineers and engineering students inspect New Mexico's interstate highway bridges, steel bridges on federal-aid highways, and other large or critical structures. The students who work on the teams are in high demand in the transportation industry after graduation because of the skills and expertise they learn on the job. NMSU has been involved in bridge inspection training since 1971 and has provided training to inspectors from more than 30 states, eight federal agencies and three foreign countries. Seeking opportunities on the Navajo Reservation Patricia Quintana, NMSU's legislative liaison, spent a few days recently on the Navajo Indian Reservation, meeting with sheep producers to explore ways of strengthening the market for their lamb. She's checking into funding possibilities for establishing a lamb processing facility or setting up a local market for producers on the reservation. Pat, whose background includes extensive work with grassroots producer/community development projects, sees good potential for business development on the reservation. Preparing graduates for jobs in banking In response to a need in New Mexico, NMSU's College of Business Administration and Economics has established a banking program that will train undergraduate finance students specifically for careers in the banking industry. James Cotter, assistant finance professor and director of the newly created Banking Institute, said the program will provide the regional banking community with timely research and a source of new employees with the skills they need. Cotter expects the program's graduates will be in big demand for positions as commercial lenders or trust officers. Preserving New Mexico's multi-cultural heritage NMSU's Public History Program is helping to preserve the Spanish colonial heritage of Las Trampas, a northern New Mexico village that was settled in 1751 as an outpost against Comanche raids into the Rio Grande valley. NMSU historian Jon Hunner, assisted by NMSU students and teen-age volunteers from Las Trampas, recently conducted a building survey of the village's historic district, which was one of the first areas to be designated a National Historic Landmark. Promoting volunteer spirit Each semester, students in Ann Hales' honors nursing class put on their thinking caps and their work shoes as they alternate between the classroom and community volunteer work. Hales believes in giving back to the community, and she believes her students need to experience first-hand the rewards of voluntarism. So she requires each to volunteer at least 30 hours in the semester with a community organization. "I tell the students that the course isn't about us," she says. "It's about who we are in our society and what role each of us plays in the community in which we live." NMSU students come from all corners of New Mexico, and the values they take back to their home communities are enriched by experiences such as this. Bringing technology to the classroom About 70 public school teachers from southern New Mexico spent two days on the NMSU campus this spring learning how to use new technologies in the classroom. Eighteen of them took computers back to their schools with them, to help them put their new skills into practice. "My classroom is set up in centers and one is a writing center, but I was having to use my personal laptop computer because the school couldn't afford one," said Michele Levy, an English teacher at Santa Teresa High School. "Now the class has its own computer." The workshop was sponsored by NASA and NMSU, and the computers were awarded to the teachers who submitted the most compelling proposals for putting the equipment to use in their schools. Thanks to people like Karin Wiburg, of NMSU's College of Education, and Joe Watts, of NMSU's Computing and Networking, school districts know they can turn to the university for help and guidance in this rapidly changing information age. Making their mark Recent reminders that New Mexico State's scholars and researchers are among the best: Sarah Harcum of NMSU's chemical engineering department received a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Program award from the National Science Foundation. The NSF will provide $200,000 to support her research on the use of bacteria to produce human drugs.
Let us hear from you If you would like more information on these or other developments at NMSU, or if you have comments about this newsletter, please let us know. We'd like to hear from you.
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