Reaching out to help serve the people of New Mexico has always been the tradition at NMSU, stretching all the way back to its agricultural roots in 1888. Over the decades, the outreach mission has continued to blossom from programs across the campus and is now branching out, not only throughout the state, but as far away as Afghanistan. Access to the rich resources of the university helps transform lives.

“A very important component of land-grant institutions is the activity that involves community participation. It is very important for people to understand that NMSU is here to serve the needs of all constituents, not only the students, but all our constituents,” says President Waded Cruzado, a strong believer in the “transformational power of land-grant institutions.”

In New Mexico, the responsibility to reach out also includes other cultures, and even other nations within the state, as the home of 22 sovereign Native American pueblos, tribes and reservations. Also, New Mexico is the only state in the nation that is a majority-minority state and the only state that is bilingual.

“NMSU has been at the forefront throughout its 120-year history in reaching out to its diverse community,” Cruzado says.

Today, NMSU is engaging the community in many ways, such as research and demonstration efforts like the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Center in Alamogordo; working with other entities on developing alternative energy sources; providing unique expertise through efforts such as the Civil Engineering Department’s Bridge Inspection Program, the only one of its kind in the nation; and building new relationships with the community by working to house music, theater and other disciplines in the planned Center for the Arts, the largest capital project in the university’s history.

Across the campuses and across the colleges, in programs both traditional and non-traditional, NMSU is reaching out to make a difference in people’s lives.

College of Agriculture and Home Economics

That wider sense of outreach extends a great distance, geographically, too. It includes two relatively new efforts to help the residents of Iraq and Afghanistan.

NMSU is partnering with researchers from three other universities on a $20 million U.S. Agency for International Development grant to help Afghanis restore their water systems (see related story on Page 14). In 2006, NMSU and a team of partner universities won a $5.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create the Iraq Agricultural Extension Revitalization Project. The goal is to help revitalize the agriculture economy in Iraq.

A more traditional outreach effort through the College of Agriculture and Home Economics’ Cooperative Extension Service was carried out last summer on a dairy farm near Clovis. Even in such a familiar farm setting, though, the nature of the outreach effort included elements that illustrate new ways of partnering with others.

The first annual Southern Great Plains Dairy Consortium-Teaching program included three, two-week sessions that covered three vital areas of dairy management: herd and financial evaluation; dairy cattle nutrition; and cow comfort and facility management. Eighteen students from six universities, including NMSU, received classroom and hands-on experience from nationally recognized experts in their respective fields.

College of Arts and Sciences

Another international project is closer to home. NMSU’s Center for Latin American and Border Studies and the government department in the College of Arts and Sciences put together a class that had never been taught before – Service Learning: Social Justice on the Border.

After a few classroom sessions, the class put students out in the streets to get involved with the communities and agencies like the ACLU or human-effort organizations that work with undocumented immigrants, and migrant and displaced workers. They also looked at environmental justice – examining the impact of landfills in New Mexico, for example. Most of all, they were able to feel, see, hear and talk to real people who are involved and living through these social justice problems.

“The students got first-hand exposure into some of these problems. They conducted interviews and collected information and brought that back to the classroom for read-ins and a reflection on what they found,” says Neil Harvey, associate professor of government, who taught the course last summer.

Some of the places the students visited became eye-openers for class members who never realized how much immigrants suffer trying to navigate the border to improve their lives or to gain a fair wage to feed their families at home. At one such place, the students sat in a semi-circle and listened to the caretaker of Annunciation House, Ruben García, tell some heartbreaking stories of some of the immigrants who have passed through his haven. Annunciation House is a low-key, almost secret location where undocumented immigrants can find comfort, a plate of food, a place to sleep and a kind word.

When the students were asked if they would have experienced some of the things they have experienced sitting in a classroom, one student put it succinctly. “We got to see for ourselves visually and experience the environment. We were able to connect the dots.”

College of Business

Paintings, sculptures and business plans are not usually found in the same place, but that isn’t stopping the NMSU College of Business. As part of an outreach effort, faculty and students from the college are working with the city of Las Cruces and local artists to let the world know about the Las Cruces arts scene.

“Arts and culture is a major employment source for the state of New Mexico,” says David Boje, management professor at NMSU. “Right now, Las Cruces is under the shadow of Santa Fe and Taos.”

Boje believes the community is missing out on what could become a major enterprise as well as the revenue a vibrant art scene would generate. He and others are taking the first steps in the process – creating an artistic identity for Las Cruces by developing an infrastructure to promote local art and artists.

“A prominent art scene is an additional reason to visit Las Cruces,” says Virginia Maria Romero, a local artist who has lived in Las Cruces for 18 years. “This would help generate the same kinds of opportunities for artists to sell their works in this area rather than traveling to other parts of the state.”

The plan calls for developing funding sources to purchase art for Southern New Mexico; creating a Las Cruces arts and cultural affairs commission; fostering live/work/retail space, studios and arts facilities in available, vacant properties in Las Cruces; and recruiting a Las Cruces entrepreneur to do tours of the Las Cruces Arts Scene.

College of Education

The College of Education is focusing its outreach efforts through the Alliance for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. Developed to serve as a catalyst for improved education, the alliance focuses on assisting school districts and their families.

“There seemed to be a disconnect between higher education and local schools, so we set out to bridge that gap,” says Eric Lopez, the College of Education’s Stan Fulton Chair for the Improvement of Border and Rural Schools.

The alliance now has 18 school districts as well as many state education agencies partnering together with NMSU and other universities.

“We wanted to bring not only our campus programs together, but work throughout the state, especially in southern New Mexico, to problem solve with districts and other agencies,” says Lopez, who serves as co-chair of the alliance along with Brenda Vigil, superintendent of the Tularosa School District.

The alliance has hosted many professional development opportunities for teachers and parents as well as provided technical assistance to school districts through programs and projects such as the Alliance Assessment and Literacy Cadre, the Center for Border and Indigenous Educational Leadership (CeBIEL), Engaging Latino Communities for Education (ENLACE), the Literacy Leaps Secondary Reading Project, and Scientifically Connected Communities. The alliance, which recently developed governance guidelines, works in collaboration with a similar network in northern New Mexico, the Northern New Mexico Network for Rural Education, to make sure every corner of the state is served, Lopez says.

The alliance also partners with education leaders in Mexico to share best practices for the improvement of border schools.

Lopez says a good example of how the alliance network has helped improve rural schools was when, at the request of the Harding County Extension Agent, the alliance partners were able to assist rural schools in Roy, N.M., and Mosquero, N.M., become part of the IDEAL New Mexico project providing online courses for high school students.

College of Engineering

Each fall, for the past seven years, more than 200 middle- and high-school students from throughout New Mexico and El Paso gather to test their metal, literally, in a competition with robots that they have designed and created.

BEST, which stands for Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology, is an annual competition that offers middle- and high-school students an opportunity to work in a situation where they are confronted with the same problems, challenges and breakthroughs that an engineering team encounters. The BEST mission is to inspire participating students to pursue careers in engineering, science, technology and math.

“The competition gives students a terrific opportunity to experience engineering first-hand,” says Sheila Horan, New Mexico BEST director and NMSU electrical engineering associate professor. “It gives them a chance to try engineering in a fun and interesting way.”

Horan has been involved with BEST for eight years and NMSU has been host (or hub) to the local competition for seven years.

Each year, teams are given a specific task and identical kits of equipment and parts to construct a robot that will complete the task. They then have six weeks to design, build and test a robot that will outperform its competitors.

In years past, students have been challenged to perform a wide variety of tasks, such as to design robots that could hypothetically be sent to space to successfully service the Hubble Space Telescope, a mission originally designed for human hands; hang up wet laundry and take down dry laundry in 3 minutes; and capture balls representing blood cells that could be used for a transfusion.

Horan said the contest is judged on two levels: the first is the task itself; the second, where the majority of the points are awarded, is the BEST competition, in which teams are judged on documentation, work, interviews, presentation, spirit and sportsmanship.

Because of the amount of spirit involved, “the competition is similar to a sports-like contest,” Horan says. The top team will advance to a regional competition.

The idea for BEST originated in 1993 by two Texas Instruments engineers, Ted Mahler and Steve Marum.

College of Health and Social Services, NMSU Grants

Finding a need and filling it is the key to solid outreach programming.

NMSU’s College of Health and Social Services’ School of Nursing, NMSU Grants and Cibola General Hospital have formed a partnership to fill the need for nurses in Cibola County.

“Cibola General Hospital understands that if it hires locally, the nurses are more likely to stay because of their local ties. To fulfill that need they have provided a grant of $80,000 per year for five years to support the NMSU nursing program on the NMSU Grants campus,” says Felicia Casados, NMSU Grants president. “The hospital also is offering individual scholarships to our students.”

The second cohort of students, who hold the equivalent of an associate of science degree, will begin the four-semester program through which they will earn a bachelor’s of science in nursing degree. Via the technology of live instructional television (ITV), the 12 students attend nursing classes being taught in Las Cruces from the ITV classroom in Grants. In addition, the students attend a clinical class in Grants. The first cohort of students, who began their classes during the fall 2007 semester, will graduate in May 2009.

“This is the best of two worlds. The students are able to obtain a bachelor’s degree from NMSU while living in Grants,” Casados says. “This program is a blessing for our campus and community because it draws the resources of NMSU to our community. It’s a great partnership between NMSU, the hospital and our campus. The beneficiaries will be the community, an improved health care system and jobs for our students.”

Whether in Albuquerque, distant countries or closer to home, more opportunities for outreach await NMSU’s involvement.

“Our tradition at New Mexico State University is rich with outreach to the community, and continuing to build those bridges of collaboration will be a key goal of mine,” Cruzado says.

Contributing to this article were Justin Bannister ’03, Julie M. Hughes ’95, Jane Moorman, Mario Montes and Darrell J. Pehr of NMSU’s University Communications, and Linda Fresques of the College of Engineering.