Foreman brothers to receive honorary degrees during graduation ceremony
Ed Foreman
Harold Foreman
Two outstanding NMSU civil engineering alumni, Ed and Harold Foreman, will receive honorary degrees from NMSU during the spring commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 10.
Born and raised on a peanut and sweet potato farm in Portales, the Foreman brothers both earned degrees in civil engineering from NMSU. Ed graduated in 1955. He also served in both the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force.
As an enterprising oilfield hand on a drilling rig in West Texas, Ed Foreman launched a highly successful petroleum-related business. His unique and innovative idea to utilize an oilfield waste product for drilling oil and gas wells faster and safer made him a millionaire by the age of 26.
He was elected to represent Texas in the U.S. Congress at 28. Seven years later, he was elected as a Congressman from New Mexico. He is the only person in more than 150 years to be elected to the United States Congress from two different states.
Today, Ed is one of the country’s top motivational speakers. He has developed numerous programs and products and persuasively teaches the success formula he lives by.
Harold Foreman graduated from NMSU in 1961. He was selected as one of the top 100 alumni from the NMSU College of Engineering in 1988.
Harold’s career began in construction and then real estate brokerage and management. Today he is the president and co-owner of Valley Leasing and Development, Inc., a property management and asset holding company in Las Cruces.
In 1984, Harold was elected to represent Dona Ana County in the New Mexico State Senate. He served eight years while actively participating on the Legislative Finance and Education committees.
He retired from the Senate in 1992.
Both Foreman brothers have been great supporters and friends of the NMSU Department of Civil Engineering for many years. They are members of the Civil Engineering Academy at NMSU, an honorary group that also provides advice and direction for the department.
In 2005, Ed and Harold Foreman made a $1.5 million gift to the College of Engineering. The gift established two professorships and one endowed chair in civil engineering. The gift, along with their annual contributions to NMSU, helps recruit and retain highly qualified faculty members and students.
NMSU Artesia Agricultural Science Center employee receives award
Hinojos
Leopoldo R. Hinojos, farm supervisor at New Mexico State University Agricultural Science Center at Artesia, has been selected to receive the 2007 Stephen W. and Robert E. Roberts Memorial Staff Award.
Hinojos was presented with a plaque and a $1,000 award at a ceremony Feb. 12 in the Corbett Center Student Union Colfax Room.
Hinojos has been employed at the Artesia center for more than 17 years. He began as a temporary employee but was eventually hired as a full-time farm laborer and has since been promoted to farm supervisor. Among his responsibilities, Hinojos supervises three full-time employees and three to four temporary employees and serves as the center’s weather reporter, reading and recording the weather daily.
He also has performed duties such as irrigation, planting research plots, harvesting and collecting data.
“Leo has been a very dedicated and valuable employee to this organization,” said Guadalupe Carrasco, superintendent at the center. “He is a huge piece of the puzzle that makes the NMSU Agricultural Science Center at Artesia.”
The Roberts Memorial Staff Award is presented annually to a staff member who has made a contribution to university life and demonstrated dedication and outstanding service to the community.
NMSU art professor awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
When applying for an international award where there are 190 winners and more than 2,600 applicants, it’s best to assume you won’t get one.
David Taylor, associate professor of art at New Mexico State University, had applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship and was suffering a minor case of self-doubt after receiving a rejection letter for a less competitive opportunity earlier in the week. When he received an envelope from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Taylor assumed it was another rejection letter.
“With things like the Guggenheim, you put your best effort into the application, submit the materials and forget about it,” Taylor said.
After opening the letter, Taylor found he had joined a list of 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship Award winners graced by two Pulitzer Prize winners, and formerly represented by past Nobel Prize and National Book Award winners. The 2008 winners are represented by 75 disciplines and 81 academic institutions.
The average amount of a fellowship grant in 2007 was $40,211 with the purpose of providing fellows with time to work with as much creative freedom as possible. They may spend their grant funds in any manner necessary to their work.
Taylor said there are many factors that play into winning the award and it ultimately comes down to the right work at the right time.
“It’s possible that I could have sent in the same proposal last year and not received the fellowship,” Taylor said.
In his proposed work plan to the foundation, Taylor outlined projects that are a continuation of work he already has under way.
For two years, Taylor has photographed the U.S. and Mexico border to portray, as he said, “the dissonance between our idealized notion of the West and the present-day issues playing out along the U.S./Mexico border.”
Taylor said he has been fascinated by the word “frontier” and the two distinct usages in the English and Spanish languages.
“The common usage is different,” Taylor said. “In Spanish it means ‘the line.’ In English the ‘frontier’ is an idealized local just over the horizon – the place we test ourselves.”
Last year Taylor completed an artwork that’s permanently installed in a newly constructed U.S. Border Patrol station in Van Horn, Texas. This work became one of the starting points for his Guggenheim proposal.
Taylor said he plans to spend the next year photographing along the U.S./Mexico border.
As one of the requirements for the award, Taylor will have his teaching reduced in order to pursue the project he outlined in the proposal.
A major source of inspiration comes from Taylor’s students. He said some of his students have gone on to pursue a graduate degree from prestigious art schools.
“My real job is to teach people how to be independent thinkers and find their own voice through their work,” Taylor said.
Taylor has been teaching at NMSU for nine years. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1989 from Tufts University and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He received his Master of Fine Arts in 1994 from the University of Oregon.