Goals for Success: Graduation Goal #1

700 freshman students attended our second annual freshman convocation, where we handed them a challenge coin and urged them to stay on the path toward graduation. This year, the freshmen also were addressed by the Provost, the ASNMSU President, and the VP for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management. A special treat was an academic parade of our deans and faculty in full regalia, showing our new students what to expect when they graduate years from now.

The outstanding new NMSU Barnes & Noble bookstore has been well received. General Manager Joanna Koliba reported a great turnout on the opening day, a good mix of campus and Las Cruces community members. The nearly 45,000 square-foot building houses both retail and NMSU office spaces. This is a prime example of a business partnership working to benefit the students of NMSU and the citizens of the community. The grand opening celebration will be held Sept. 16. The store's former location inside Corbett Center Student Union permanently closed July 26.

As of July 1, New Mexico State University officially has been "taking it to the cloud." NMSU has joined the growing number of universities across the country that have adopted cloud computing to expand students' online learning environment. NMSU estimates that free access to cloud computing will save NMSU about $300,000 over the next four years. More importantly, the new system makes it easier for students to work together remotely in real time through online services like SharePoint.

NMSU continued to enrich the summers of our middle and high school students across the state through its Pre-freshmen Engineering Program, or PREP. The program includes experimental labs, campus tours, guest speakers and field trips. Students also get to work in labs and take classes in logic, physics, technical writing and math. More than 90 percent of students who participate in PREP go on to pursue higher education. And many former PREP participants also return to the program to work as student mentors during the summer.

The NMSU Arrowhead Center launched in August its ninth annual Innoventure competition for middle- and high-school students across the state who want to create and learn how to market their own products. From August through March, students will work to make it to the pre-final competition of 40 teams of three-to-five students. The final competition is set for March 9.