Colleen Bowman ’85 ’91 wants to help Native American students recognize that they have a vital role in the Navajo economy.

Courtesy Photo

Tsosie Lewis ’98 applies knowledge he learned at NMSU to make the Navajo Agricultural Products Industry a profitable business.

Jane Moorman

Frank Dayish Jr. ’87 uses business analysis techniques he learned while working at NASA to help the Navajo Area Indian Health Service.

Jane Moorman

Many alumni have taken the knowledge they obtained at New Mexico State University and applied it to a career, climbing the corporate ladder or becoming a leader in their industry, while some have taken their knowledge back to their home to help better the community where they grew up. Tsosie Lewis ’98, Frank Dayish Jr. ’87 and Colleen Bowman ’85 ’91 have done both.

Each have bridged the gap between the Indian reservation and the outside world and have returned with an understanding of how they can help improve life within the Navajo Nation.

Recognizing that the Navajo Nation has an unemployment rate of about 60 percent, Lewis and Dayish are helping their tribe maximize the natural resources of land, minerals and water to provide employment opportunities. Bowman is helping improve the education of the people.

“When I worked in the private sector I learned a lot of different things – concepts, business philosophies,” says Dayish, chief contracting officer with the Navajo Area Indian Health Service’s (NAIHS) division of acquisition management and contracts, a former vice president of the Navajo Nation and former contracting officer for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. “I have applied strategic planning and analysis, which I learned while at NMSU and NASA, to see how we can improve things within the Navajo Nation and our department with NAIHS.”

Dayish, who received a bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in economics and operational management in 1987 from NMSU and a master’s degree in general administration from the University of Maryland in 1994, has led the effort to analyze where NAIHS and the Navajo Nation are now, where they want to be in the future, and how they can reach that goal.

“When you look at the national economy and the Navajo Nation economy, there’s a gap. While I was in office (as vice president) we identified what resources we had and how we could leverage them to provide employment for our people,” Dayish says.

Water was the top priority. The long-awaited San Juan Water Settlement has finally been signed by the federal government to allow a pipeline to be created from Shiprock to Gallup to transport water from the San Juan River. Now, Dayish says, the Navajo Nation must use its natural resources to develop employment opportunities.

Lewis sees his role as chief executive officer of Navajo Agricultural Products Industry (NAPI) as holding four elements – workforce, land, water and infrastructure – in his hands.

“I need to take care of these areas because I’m doing it for the Navajo Nation,” says Lewis, who received a bachelor of science in agriculture with an agricultural business and economics major in 1997.

Lewis has applied the principles of agricultural business and economics he learned at NMSU and through a leadership development program provided by Frito-Lay Corporation to potato crop managers to lead the 70,000-acre farm and livestock operation to become a multi-million dollar corporation. It supplies potatoes, pinto beans, alfalfa, corn and wheat to the food processing industry in the Southwest.

Under his leadership, NAPI is determining the profitability of bringing some of the food processing operation onto the Navajo Nation to provide jobs.

Dayish and Lewis agree that education is an important component in improving the Navajo Nation’s economics. They say it is important that the youth receive a solid educational foundation and that career opportunities are made available for tribal members wishing to live on the reservation, especially those who have obtained college degrees.

Bowman, who received a bachelor’s degree in business administration and human resource management in 1985 and a master’s in educational management and development in 1991 from NMSU, is working to improve the education of the future workforce. As a graduate student in the NMSU College of Education’s American Indian Executive Educational doctoral program, the human resource coordinator for the Central Consolidated School District in Shiprock is being introduced to the educational world at both the state and national levels.

“My vision is to improve educational experiences for Native American students by finding effective ways to integrate culturally relevant instruction to help young people recognize that they have a vital role in the Navajo economy as well as in the world,” Bowman says.

Abernethy endowment memorializes son

Lonnie Lee Abernethy III

Three Native American students enrolled in New Mexico State University’s Department of Civil Engineering are the first recipients of the Lonnie Lee Abernethy III memorial scholarship. This endowment was established by Dr. Lonnie Abernethy and his wife, Maria Elena, in 2007.

Abernethy, a longtime friend of NMSU’s civil engineering program, had been trying to find an appropriate way to honor the memory of his older son who died in an accident at age 12. One night while watching a television program about the WWII Navajo code talkers, he thought that a scholarship to support Native American students might be the perfect answer.

A retired professor and dean of the college of engineering at the University of Texas El Paso, Abernethy uses the Internet to research subjects that interest him. That put him in contact with Peter Iverson, regent’s professor of history at Arizona State University, whose area of interest is “American Indian, North America, Western U.S.”

An exchange of e-mails between the two men resulted in Iverson pointing out New Mexico State’s outstanding American Indian Program for students. Abernethy already knew about the caliber of the civil engineering program so plans moved forward quickly after that.

“A parent never gets over the loss of a child,” Abernethy says, “but this new award will preserve his memory in a way that I think would have pleased him.”

By Ann Palormo